The problems with the Happy Planet Index

Informed sources think that something along the lines of the New Economics Foundation’s Happy Planet Index is going to be recommended in the Conservative Quality of Life group report this Thursday.

The purpose of the Happy Planet Index is to create a measure that captures a society’s ability to produce what we really want, long and happy lives, from what we have to work with, natural resources. To support it you have to accept two key propositions:

First, you have to accept that happiness economics properly captures true human aspirations and needs. Second, you have to accept that resource efficiency is the proper standard to hold economies by.

Both of these should be an absolute anathema to a conservative and the Conservative Party.

Happiness economics isn’t the reliable policy tool that the New Economics Foundation makes it out to be. It is based on one key observation, which Lord Layard is most famous for advancing, that average happiness doesn’t increase along with national income. As Helen Johns and Paul Ormerod pointed out in a book published by the Institute of Economic Affairs it isn’t only national income that happiness doesn’t correlate with, it’s also public spending, longevity, income equality, even levels of depression and almost any other variable you care to name. As the iea authors point out this implies that either happiness can’t be created through social policy or it isn’t a reliable measure. Either way it is toxic to the NEF’s view that improving happiness should be the primary goal of social policy. “State control with a smile”, as Corin Taylor described happiness economics in The Business, cannot be justified empirically.

Another idea that cannot be sustained is that resource efficiency is the standard economies should be held to. As the NEF suggest we do have a limited stock of natural resources, however, other resources such as human time and ingenuity are also only available in limited quantities. Both environmental and human resources have the capacity to be used in alternative ways and produce returns both now and in the future. Deciding how those resources should be used and which it is more important to use efficiently is a job the market does very well. Let’s think about that in more concrete terms, with a historical example:

At the beginning of the twentieth century Britain was far more resource efficient than the United States. We used less raw cotton for each yard of cloth produced, less coal and iron ore for each tonne of steel. However, we used far more skilled labour. This was the result of us having more skilled labour, as we had been an industrial nation for longer, but less natural resource, as we did not have the big resource endowment of the US. The market prioritised resource efficiency in Britain but efficient use of skilled labour in the United States. Resource efficiency is not an unqualified good.

The Happy Planet Index is based upon assumptions that classical liberals, conservatives and the Conservatives should all be opposed to: An understanding of what people really want and need based upon the opinion of “experts” rather than preferences of those concerned and an ignorance of the capacity of market mechanisms to prioritise the efficient use of different scarce resources.

There is a simpler, more intuitive, rebuttal though. Leaving aside tiny Pacific Islands the number one ranked country in the NEF’s index is Colombia. One of the worst ranked is the United States. Where would you rather live?

The answer is obvious. Thousands risk death each year attempting to get from 38th placed Mexico to the 150th (out of 178) placed United States. This is just one way that people clearly reveal their preference for a higher standard of living. I’m sure the New Economics Foundation can blame this on some kind of false-consciousness. The reality is that it illustrates that the free-market economies and resulting high living standards that the NEF deride are people’s real priorities.

Cross-posted from the TaxPayers' Alliance.

Channel 4 on Demand

The programme I appeared on yesterday evening, the Great Global Warming Debate, is available for free for 30 days on Channel 4 On Demand. You can get the On Demand service here. It seems to work pretty well.

Business Green blog on green taxes

This blog sounds like it is written by someone with aspirations to be an expert on green issues. Unfortunately, their attacks on our study on green taxes are utterly facile. Hopefully business isn't actually taking environmental policy advice from these people. I'll leave aside the lazy ad hominems and deal with the substantive criticisms:

"As The Treasury has already pointed out the TPA report classifies as green taxes measures such as fuel duty, road tax and air passenger duty which the government does not recognise as purely environmental taxes."

These are clearly green taxes. They place a particular burden on activities that result in greenhouse gas emissions. Don't take my word for it, take the Treasury's: look at the last budget report where increases in Fuel Duty and Air Passenger Duty were included in the chapter "Protecting the environment" (PDF). While they may have other purposes, a central contention of our report is that these are in fact devices for raising the tax burden while minimising political protest, if these aren't green taxes the whole concept is utterly meaningless.

"Furthermore, its research offers no clear definition of "social costs". Instead it simply takes an average of four other reports into the social costs of CO2 emissions. These include the Stern Report and research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but appear to have been selected based on the undefined criteria that they are "the most widely quoted official and academic estimates of the social cost"."

There is no need for us to define social cost. The term is pretty clearly defined and in common usage in the rest of the literature. It is used as a proxy for the optimal level of taxation throughout the discipline of climate-change economics. If we reinvent the wheel each time we conduct a study we'll waste a lot of time.

There is no objective criteria which one can use to decide which social cost studies should be used. I absolutely stand by our subjective judgement. If anyone can name a study with more justification to be in our list then please let me know but till then I think our selection is pretty authoritative. The most senior academics in the field and the UN body charged with establishing the state of climate change science for the international community.

The only objective alternative is to use every peer-reviewed study. If we had done that Stern, whose estimate is an alarmist outlier, would have been diluted far more and our study would have shown green taxes to be even more excessive than it does now. The social cost estimate would have been more like that of the IPCC or Tol (who has just released a new, lower, estimate of social cost), both give an estimate lower than the average we used.

"The highest figure quoted by the TPA research, from the Stern Report, puts the social cost of the UK's CO2 emissions in 2005 at £30.5bn, while the lowest estimate from research by William Nordhaus puts it at just £2.7bn. As such if it had just focused on the Stern Report figure or perhaps added in other figures to reflect the fact that some scientists regard the Stern Report's analysis as too optimistic then the TPA's research would have found itself arguing that green taxes were far too low."

There are massive problems with Stern's methodology that we discussed in Box 1.3 of our report. These have led to his report being rejected by the most respected climate change economists. If BusinessGreen.Com want us to use that estimate alone they will need to address some of those arguments.

There are very few credible studies that think Stern's analysis was too optimistic. In the peer-reviewed literature his result is at the extremely pessimistic end of the spectrum. I'll reiterate: if we had included more studies we would have reduced our estimate of the social cost and increased our estimate of the extent that green taxes are excessive.

If this and the Lib Dem statement are the best the green movement can offer in response to our report then they are on very weak ground.

The challenge of integration examined empirically

It may not seem like news that Muslim populations are not integrating into the communities around them. This study, via Chris Dillow, still seems important. It provides statistical confirmation that we have a very serious and novel problem; that we're not just looking at the integration of other communities with rose-tinted spectacles and ascribing to Muslims problems integrating that all immigrants share. Muslim immigrants do not integrate like other communities as they spend more time here and improve their socio-economic status.

The study only looks at the UK but I'd guess its results replicate throughout Europe. It has long appeared that the scale of a country's difficulties with integrating its Muslim population varied, more than anything, with that population's size. While with previous waves of immigration some countries seemed to do better than others, Britain in particular appeared to have done well, now all countries are faring pretty much equally poorly. The understanding of why Muslims struggle to integrate that I came to the best part of a year ago is still pretty solid I think.

This is a very serious problem. It means a clash of values and perspectives within Europe that few are willing to confront. Instead everyone will avoid the problem as the continent sleepwalks towards disaster. The few solutions we do have in mind, such as seeking physical integration in the hope that social integration will follow, fail dismally according to this research.

With these kinds of social trends we should be thinking very carefully about where our multi-ethnic community is going. Unfortunately, the debate over community cohesion and integration tends to be dominated by a lot of very superficial thinking.

Channel 4 tonight

Barring any major suprises I should be on Channel 4 at 7.30pm in the programme "The Great Green Debate". Essentially the format is four panelists who are disproportionately green (3 to 1) trying to convert an audience which is disproportionately sceptical.

It made for an interesting dynamic. Mark Pennington, as the sceptic on the panel, was excellent. He didn't challenge the science, accepted that the weight of scientific opinion was that global warming was happening and caused by humans, but challenged the idea it should be our sole objective and that it can justify big new interventions into the capitalist economy.

The audience also did well. They more than held their own against the 'experts' who wound up beating a hasty retreat on green taxes in particular. I helped this in a sort of 'expert in the audience' role. I was asked, as a representative of the TPA, why people were cynical about green taxes. I told the programme that people are right to be cynical about green taxes; they're set too high and are just a device to raise revenue.

Penn & Teller on the environmental movement

DK posted this superb episode of the Penn & Teller show "Bullshit". I don't know where he gets them from but an earlier one on smoking was also excellent and I want to see more.

This isn't the entire environmental movement, there are decent and informed people out there, but it does characterise well the ignorance, hysteria and mixed objectives of far too many - quite possibly a majority - within the green camp. Those who use the environmental movement as a new rationale for old socialist dogma; the eco-socialists. Those who mean well but sign up to campaigns without really knowing the issues. Those who, if not properly challenged, will try to pass extreme possibilities off as well established facts.

The Liberal Democrats on green taxes

The Liberal Democrats have responded to The Case Against Further Green Taxes. They make two arguments. First, they contend that Stern is more accurate because it is based on more up to date science than the other studies. It isn't. Then they make a point that we knew would come up and did address; what about externalities to road transport other than greenhouse gas emissions?

This argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I've responded to both their charges here, take a read. This section summarises why you can't justify Fuel Duty by just adding more and more externalities:

"The second argument assumes the simplistic view that all externalities are the same and should be responded to with increased taxation. This is not the case and is not accepted in other parts of the economy. We do not place special taxes on sports classes because someone can injure themselves playing sport, and is almost certain to playing some sports like Rugby. We don’t place special taxes on nightclubs and factories on the grounds that they are noisy although this is also an externality.

For most local externalities our response has always been regulation to ensure that they do not go beyond safe levels. We do regulate road transport: we limit speeds, require that people get regular safety checks for older cars, force people to wear seatbelts, test people’s ability to drive, prosecute those who drive unsafely. All of this is designed to control casualties (we have other rules to control noise and pollution). There is no reason, beyond political victimisation, why this should not be enough for road transport while it is accepted as sufficient in other activities.

Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty are entirely unsuitable to correct for congestion. If you drive on a deserted road in the Scottish highlands during the small hours of the morning you pay exactly the same rate as someone fighting their way to work through an urban rush hour. This means that the tax doesn’t create an incentive to drive at times and in places where you do not create a cost to other drivers.

The problem of congestion could be solved by building roads. The number of drivers doesn’t change that much over time so demand for roads is limited by the number of miles they can drive. Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty could be cut massively with plenty of room in the budget to get plenty of new roads built."

Greenpeace threaten hoodie-terrorism

This is so deeply unpleasant. The needless 'them and us' hatred of an 'enemy' guilty of nothing more than disagreeing with them. The presentation of extreme predictions as facts. The almost explicit call for violence (Greenpeace know that sceptical scientists already receive death threats).

Sick.

The Case Against Further Green Taxes

A report of mine examining the state of green taxes launched today. It sets out how we already pay far too much green tax and that these charges are not particularly effective, are economically harmful and regressive.

I'm very proud of it and the media coverage has been superb. Front page of the Metro, in the Telegraph, Sun, Financial Times and other papers and some broadcast media attention as well.

Do take a read, the full report is available at the TaxPayers' Alliance website as a PDF.

The British State and Al Gore

Today the Daily Mail reports (not online) that more than 500 civil servants are going to spend an afternoon watching Al Gore's film an Inconvenient Truth. The two screenings at the West End Vue will cost £2,675. The wage bill will be £21,000 for the two-hour running time. Is there any other body on Earth with the warped mindset necessary to indoctrinate itself?

This isn't the beginning of the British public sector's love affair with Gore's film though. As a study I carried out for the TaxPayer's Alliance revealed East Hampshire Council have been showing their staff Al Gore's film too. Here's the press release for an earlier preview screening with David Miliband sounding like Al Gore's press agent:

"Opinion formers from across England today attended a preview screening of Al Gore's new climate change film.

Speaking at a preview screening of the former US Vice-President's film, 'An Inconvenient Truth', Environment Secretary David Miliband said he wanted to give opinion formers and leaders from communities across the country the chance to see the film.

Mr Miliband said the film, which vividly portrays the threats and dire consequences of un-checked climate change, could help spread the message amongst those who can make a real contribution in tackling this threat."

It was announced in February that Al Gore's film is to be sent to every secondary school. This has faced a legal challenge but, unfortunately, I hear that challenge has failed:

"Al Gore's climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth will be sent to every secondary school in England, Environment Secretary David Miliband and Education Secretary Alan Johnson announced today."

This always seems to be justified in the same way by DEFRA. "The debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over, as demonstrated by the publication of today’s report by the IPCC." That completely misses the point. Regardless of the state of the scientific debate over climate change's existence there is clearly still a debate over the scale of the problem. The estimates given in Al Gore's film of the extent of sea level rises, for example, are radically different to that given by the IPCC. Equally, Al Gore's proposed response has been dismissed by William Nordhaus - who The Economist called the '"father of climate change economics":

"First, the [UK Treasury’s] Stern proposal for rapid deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would reduce the future damage from global warming by $13 trillion, but at a cost of $27 trillion dollars. That’s not a good deal. For an even worse deal, the DICE-2007 model estimates that the Gore proposal would reduce climate change damages by $12 trillion, but at a cost of nearly $34 trillion. As Nordhaus notes, both proposals imply carbon taxes rising to around $300 per ton carbon in the next two decades, and to the $600-$800 per ton range by 2050. A $700 carbon tax would increase the price of coal-fired electricity in the U.S. by about 150 percent, and would impose a tax bill of $1.2 trillion on the U.S. economy."

Al Gore's film isn't an attempt at presenting a balanced view of the current state of knowledge. It's a radical political manifesto and that our state is actively disseminating it is truly depressing.

Little Dragon

Thunderdragon posts to the Wardman Wire his explanation of why, despite being just 22, he has taken up political blogging.

I had to do a bit of a double-take. "Just" 22?

I started blogging at that age and didn't consider myself young at all. Thunderdragon is old enough to be not just a graduate but a postgraduate.

I'm 23 now, only one year older, and not only express my political opinions through blogging but also work in politics full-time. I'm not exceptional in that regard. While politicians themselves are usually older political parties, think-tanks and other political organisations tend to have a disproportionate number of staff fresh out of university.

Of course, anyone at age 22 has less experience of the world than a 40 or 60 year old but a graduate of 22 is more than able to sit at the grown-ups' table.

Louise Bagshawe on the Conservative Approach to the NHS

Louise Bagshawe, a Conservative candidate, argues on ConservativeHome in favour of the current Conservative strategy on the NHS. Essentially, she argues that the "Stop Brown's NHS Cuts" campaign has been a political success and is highlighting an important issue.

The problem is that, whatever the short-term results of the "Stop Brown’s NHS Cuts" campaign in the long-term it could hurt the Conservative Party’s credibility. With colossal increases in healthcare budgets over the last decade it will be hard, and very unwise, to claim that the Conservatives will spend more than Brown. Reform has been set serious limits thanks to the leadership conflating it with institutional instability – where the reality is that this is only true, in the medium term at least, with too many superficial reforms. Promises to cut waste without structural reform may hold water in the short-term but will not be sufficient during an election campaign when more concrete proposals for improvement will be expected.

This campaign may do the Conservatives good in the short-term by kicking Labour where they are vulnerable but in the long-term if they cannot propose substantial reforms they will be left looking shallow and opportunistic.

Cross-posted from the TaxPayers' Alliance Better Government blog.

Basic laws of economics

I think the first half of Simon Jenkins' article in today's Guardian is largely correct. Efforts to curb heroin supply from Afghanistan have gone poorly. I worry that he attributes too much of the failure to incompetence and not enough to conditions; like the shortage of troops last year when the Helmand insurgency really got going. Pointing out that wouldn't be worth a post though.

It is the second half of his article that troubles me as it is entirely premised on this little nugget:

"Every schoolchild economist knows demand will always attract supply."

Jenkins thinks he's really bloody clever but his little "basic law", as the blurb at the beginning of the article calls it, is clearly untrue. Consider this example:



I would love to own a talking taco that craps ice cream. There is clearly demand for such a product and yet I've never found a supplier. That's because it is impossible to produce. Similarly my demand for going into space is unlikely to be sated any time soon. It cannot be provided at a price I can afford to pay.

Now, drug demand will usually be relatively inelastic, it will only fall slowly with rising prices, because addiction makes addicts willing to absord quite a high increase in price, they'll steal if they need to. Still, the idea that it is impossible to seriously reduce the quantity of something bought and sold through increasing the cost of supply alone is obviously wrong. If we make using heroin as expensive as going to space then people won't be able to afford it and heroin addiction will plummet.

The important question is, therefore, whether it is practicable to increase the price enough that heroin users start giving up. Understanding that question requires the kind of hard analysis that simplistic and arrogant statements like Jenkins' are designed to avoid.

Cross-posted from CiF Watcher.

Ann Widdecombe at her best

Ann Widdecombe's 'direct' approach to politics has its weaknesses but when she has the right target in her sights it is brilliant. Here she identifies just what a craven business our benefits system can be. The kinds of attitudes it creates. She talks a little about workfare but that isn't really the point. Whatever direction you think change should take this programme should make absolutely sure no one watching can fool themselves into thinking there isn't a problem.

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3

Shoot 'Em Up

This film looks hysterical.



Normally I'd be sceptical of any action film with such an absurd plot but Clive Owen has a good record for picking his roles and it seems unlikely he'd get it as wrong as this will be if done poorly.

More from the Great Global Warming Omni-Justification

The catalogue of things that the threat of climate change has been used to justify continues to lengthen. We've already had:

""China is already doing a lot," said Hu Tao, of China's State Environmental Protection Administration. He said China's one-child per couple policy introduced in the early 1980s, for instance, had a side-effect of braking global warming by limiting the population to 1.3 billion against a projected 1.6 billion without the policy."

and:

"It's used as an argument for agricultural subsidies which take the form of ethanol subsidy (an absurd response to climate change) in the United States and an, albeit modified, continuation of the CAP subsidies in Europe.

It's used as an argument for vegetarianism. We already knew that vegetarianism usually means consuming less agricultural production but so does eating or otherwise consuming less in a range of ways; the efficiency challenge of global warming should surely be to maintain the highest level of consumption for a given level of warming? Eating less probably has more fringe benefits given obesity levels but no one proposes that as a solution to global warming, do they?

It is used as an argument for global governance instead of democratically accountable nations; the transnational elites that Steyn refers to.

It is used as an argument for 'soak the rich' socialism; most notably through the "contraction and convergence" doctrine.

It's used as an argument for greater taxation. While everyone argues the hypothetical of a neutral switch for non-green taxation it never quite seems to work out that way.

It's used as an argument against an expansion of airports and foreign travel for those on medium-low incomes; turning our back on one of the great achievements of the twentieth century in deference to narrow 'not in my backyard' opposition."

Now let's add voting for the BNP:

"The BNP claims that "immigration is creating an environmental disaster", and worries that if we let in more migrants Britain will become "a tarmac desert"."

As I've said before its simply a matter of political incentives. The hysteria of the climate change debate has allowed the green movement to pass off some truly shoddy policies. Other groups hope for a similarly easy ride.

The Morality of Capitalism

Vino argues, in the comments to my last post, that it is capitalism that is breaking down community and leading to the social catastrophe I lament. Essentially, his argument is that capitalism makes people callous about the interests of others. I profoundly disagree.

On the contrary, one of the great moral qualities of capitalism is that, unlike the caricature painted by both the Left and too many on the Right, it promotes less selfishness than any other system. The reason is explained in George Gilder's Reaganite classic 'Wealth and Poverty'.

In a capitalist system my well being depends upon anticipating and satisfying the needs of others. If I can do that then I will have a market and I will prosper. On the other hand, if I do not think of others then there will be no market and I will suffer. As such, the capitalist system has created an imperative for me to think about the desires of others and to try to help them. It has aligned my interests with theirs and, by making me care more about others, morally improved me.

Economists talk a lot about competition and this can further the impression that the process is a cut-throat one. However, this is only to look at the relationship between the competitors. Once one considers the bigger picture it should become apparent that the competitors are competing to be able to serve the market. They are fighting to be the ones best able to help others.

If this sounds too far fetched think of it in the same terms that Baumol argued for the dynamic potential of capitalism. Baumol's argument was that capitalism, by providing returns to productive enterprise, channelled entrepreneurial ability towards productive uses. In other societies it was channelled towards destruction, as in a feudal society where the best means of getting big rewards was to fight, kill and take or a socialist society where getting to the top meant political manoevring. A successful society is one that channels ambition and talent towards productive ends.

Baumol's argument illustrates why capitalist socieities have invariably been more inventive than others. It also illustrates why capitalist societies are more moral. A society in which a bright and resourceful man or woman who wants to get ahead will be most successful if they help others is one which will be, in the long term, more peaceful, more harmonious and morally superior.

Social breakdown has come not because of capitalism but because it has been endangered: By welfare dependency (both personal and regional) that means people can advance their interests best by scamming or politically manoevring for more welfare. By the breakdown of the institutions of law, order and tradition that separate any system of government - capitalism in this case - from anarchy. Restoring true capitalist order is the way we might see our society healed.

John O'Sullivan on the nature and effects of social acid

O'Sullivan's piece for the Telegraph is brilliant (while I will pick a few bits out you really should read the entire thing). This old quote is almost upsetting:

"In 1955, the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer described this tranquillity in his book Exploring English Character: "When we think of our faults, we put first, and by a long way, any lapse from our standards of non-aggression, bad temper, nagging, swearing and the like. Public life is more gentle than that reported for any society of comparable size and industrial complexity.""

While Gorer's description may be an overexaggeration Britons certainly did used to be noted for a certain dignity and reserve. What a thing to lose. What a dismal trade we have made in selling such decency down the river for our modern, crummy libertinism.

His conclusion sets out how hard it will be to undo the damage:

"Rebuilding a united democratic nation that governs itself with decency will be a difficult task. As Geoffrey Gorer pointed out in 1955, however, his gentle Britain had been sculpted by the Victorians from the recalcitrant marble of a brutalised society very much like today's Britain.

It will take leaders in the Victorian mould to do it, though."

I'm not sure that he isn't overly optimistic. Is there an audience, a market, for leaders in the Victorian mould?

There probably is among the masses. The genuine shock at the decline of decent values among the broader mass of Britons is reflected in the right-wing press, which always outsells its left-wing rivals.

However, the danger is that any leader hoping to represent those masses and put the policies their good instincts recommend into practice would run straight into institutional quicksand. A Civil Service asked to manage new policies that they do not understand or agree with can make a mess of them. O'Sullivan describes how the "police have become little more than the paramilitary wing of The Guardian" - the same has become true of much of the rest of the criminal justice system. With such tools political leaders would find the going difficult even if they were cast in a Victorian mould. Of course this does not excuse our present leaders who instead of being frustrated in attempts to make things better have made them immeasurably worse but it should give conservatives attempting to tackle the problems of breakdown Britain pause for thought.

That may be why social conservatism, or at least the labrador conservative version I find most attractive, needs to think about seemingly unconnected themes like the way our public services are delivered. Leave aside the courts for now as I'm currently having something of an intellectual crisis over them. So long as services like the police and education are directed through centralised bureaucracies unnaccountable to the people they will have the means to impose cultural liberalism and to corrupt or frustrate any attempt at improvement. To think that they can be bent to our will by politicians of the Right is dangerous naivety.

Without reform of the way our State works no changing of its priorities is practicable.

"He'll make you wish you hadn't been Bourne"

If that had been the tagline I might have enjoyed the Bourne Ultimatum more. As it is I came out feeling distinctly underwhelmed.

The pace is kept up pretty well and the film keeps you on your toes. Unfortunately unlike in better thrillers where the pace of the action gives potency to the core drama in this film it seems designed to cover up for the lack of a compelling underlying plot.

The first five or so minutes are a Guardian writer's wet dream with all the unsubtle conspiracy theories that implies. According to the BBC, Greengrass, this film's director, is a "political filmmaker". Unfortunately his political thought does not rise above the dismal Hollywood norm. His criticism of the CIA is about as telling as Culture Club's attack on militarism: "The CIA, The CIA is stupid, and people are stupid".

The question I kept coming back to is simple: why should I care about Jason Bourne?

He does appear to have been treated pretty poorly by the CIA spooks but he's such a robot I don't feel much more empathy than I would for a mistreated vacuum cleaner. When the film tries to get to the emotional root of his character all we find is another robot.

My not caring fed into my regularly wanting the bad guys to win, always a bad sign. Particularly a North African CIA assassin called Desh who appeared to be using 'terrorist' techniques such as bombs detonated by mobile phone. The CIA terrorist was quite an interesting character and appeared to succeed through being cleverer than meathead Bourne. I wanted him to win.

This film is brainless Hollywood entertainment. If you can switch your brain off for a couple of hours you could really enjoy it. I couldn't which is, I guess, my problem.

The Sun at its best

People can be sniffy about the Sun. The combination of Page 3 and a heavy dose of celebrity news make lazy dismissals of its contribution easy. However, those who write it off should think again for a couple of reasons.

First, The Sun is unequalled in its ability to convey sometimes complex ideas in very few words and language that anyone can understand. I've had first hand evidence of this since I've started writing reports for national media attention. The Sun's ability to get to the heart of the matter quickly and effectively is deeply impressive. This makes the paper absolutely invaluable as it is a very efficient way of ensuring that people with a limited amount of time for politics, who fit it in between Page 3 and Big Brother, can remain far better informed than they would if the Sun weren't around.

Second, their editorials often brilliant. Sometimes the balance goes wrong as it clearly did at times during the paedophile hysteria. However, more often than not they'll get it right as in this editorial about the murder of Rhys Jones:

"BRITAIN is in mourning today.

For the appalling murder of Rhys Jones. For the society we have created and for the new depth to which it has sunk.

That little boy’s killing is a defining moment for our country, perhaps even more so than those of poor Damilola Taylor and James Bulger.

For if there is one shred of hope from it, it is that it may force us to consider how we have gone so badly wrong and how we can put things right.

It is time for the Government and the judiciary to radically rethink the derisory sentences handed down to young criminals. It is time for police to go back on the beat and for the Home Office to sanction a huge increase in their numbers.

Most crucially, it is time for blighted communities to rise up against the gangs that terrorise them. Not through vigilantism but through group action, a new spirit of co-operation with police and a zero-tolerance approach to crime.

In every home it is time for parents to look at how they are raising their children, the values they instil in them, the freedoms they allow them."

It's worth reading the piece in its entirety.

Shooting in Letchworth Garden City

I've been following the updates on this story through the day, the last update was just a minute ago:

"August 23, 2007FURTHER ARRESTS FOLLOWING INCIDENT IN LETCHWORTH
By Corporate Communication Dept

POLICE can now confirm there have been a total of six arrests in connection with a shooting incident which happened at Boscombe Court, Letchworth Garden City at 11.40am today.

Five men, four who are in their 20’s and one who is in his mid 30’s, have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. A woman in her 30’s has also been arrested in connection with the incident.

Two men remain in hospital at this time.

Although police are seeking witnesses and information about the incident, officers are confident at this stage that there is no-one outstanding in relation to what is an isolated dispute.

Assistant Chief Constable Gary Kitching said: “This is obviously a very serious situation but we are confident that we know who was involved and what caused the incident.

“This is an isolated dispute but we are very mindful how residents in Letchworth Garden City will be feeling at this time and want to reassure them at this stage.”

Anyone with information should call Hertfordshire Constabulary on 0845 3300 222. Alternatively call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111. You do not have to give your name and you could be entitled to a cash reward."

Letchworth is the town I grew up in and where my family still live.

The town has a population of 33,600. Its main claim to fame is as the world’s first Garden City (it was built shortly before the First World War and has lots of green spaces and all the houses have gardens). It is largely a commuter town (to London, Cambridge or Stevenage) with a disproportionate number of young families. It has the UK's only population of black squirrels. Here is a picture:



I know this blog has some US readers and it would be quite understandable for them to think this isn't quite as big a deal as I'm making it out to be. So, to make things clear: Gun crime is an entirely different animal in the UK.

Gun control is so tight (our sport shooting teams have trouble practicing) that gun crime in an area tends to suggest a massive law and order breakdown. We know that is happening in some areas of London and the Midlands and Northern cities but for it to be starting to spread, even tentatively, to peaceful Home Counties Towns is truly alarming.

I could be wrong. This could just be a freak incident with a shooting by a group of crazies but the fact six people, rather than a lone gunman, have been arrested certainly suggests it is a gang issue. If gun crime has spread to Letchworth David Cameron's description of ‘anarchy in the UK’ is in no way hyperbole.

Update: This is sounding more and more gruesome. While the victims are apparently only wounded they were shot in the face.

Again, while this could turn out to be a freak incident I do think it is significant if the law and order breakdown is spreading to places like Letchworth. It suggests that the problem is not just a breakdown in certain communities but a genuine national crisis.

Public opinion and the environment

Last Thursday Blair Gibbs posted the following graph to the TPA blog, taken from a DEFRA poll conducted every five years:

It shows that the number of people who rate the environment as an issue that they think the Government should be dealing with is actually in decline. This suggests that, while people will say they'd like to deal with climate change if asked directly, it is not a priority and not really on their minds. This suggests that they will not be willing to pay the kind of price Monbiot et. al. want them to.

However, the numbers citing the environment as a priority could be misleadingly high. Those rating the "environment" as an important issue quite likely do not mean the environment in the Gaia, global warming, sense. This AEI poll (PDF) shows that in the US global warming is only the 8th most important environmental issue to most Americans. Opinion may be different in the UK but a similar issue, "the environment" doesn't mean "global warming" to most people, probably exists.

While I'm on the subject of the DEFRA poll, this graph is depressing:

It concerns the number of people who have heard of and are willing to buy 'environmentally-friendly' products. Given that Fair Trade implies subsidising people producing over-produced crops it is inherently wasteful and even if it has some kind of dubious environmental provision that is highly unlikely to outweigh the environmental cost of unnecessary food production. That DEFRA lumps fair trade in as an environmentally-friendly product suggests it has a rather wooly understanding of these things.

"Free Lite!"

London's street newspaper distributors frustrate me. From sellers of the Evening Standard, the oldest London newspaper distributed through street vendors, you are lucky to get a "Standard!" or a "West End Final!" It's unimaginative, uninformative and dull.

The London Paper and the London Lite are even worse. "Free Lite!" is a particularly despiriting example. It doesn't communicate anything at all. I'm pretty certain that every person in London knew, within days of the free papers launching, that they are free. It is noise for the sake of noise.

Why don't they say anything interesting? I'm pretty certain that a lot of people are like me. They buy the Standard or take a free paper when they see an interesting story on the cover. If they shouted out what the headline story is they might spark people's curiosity and get a customer. It would also make the whole process so much more interesting and characterful.

Nathalie Rothschild escapes Climate Camp

As an antidote to most of the media's fawning love-in with the protesters, good old-fashioned Express hippy-rage aside, Nathalie Rothschild's account of her visit to the Climate Camp is superb. I was going to cut some sections out but the whole article is so worth reading I won't. Go read it.

The difference between honour killing and a conservative view of family

Gracchi discusses the position of women:

"At one end of that extreme lies the emerging problem in the UK of honour killings, at the other more benign end you have a character like Dennis Prager who informed his readers in 2003 that women going to see male strippers were betraying their true nature,

"It has told them that equality means acting the same as men. That is how you have the utterly false spectacle of women acting thrilled to have anonymous men strip and rub themselves on them."

Mr Prager ought to remember that women are quite capable of working out their sexuality without his help and that furthermore their sexuality will vary."

Prager is clearly generalising to some extent but I think his claim seems at least somewhat plausible. There is good reason, in evolutionary biology terms, to expect that a woman's sexuality will function somewhat differently to that of a man. After all, in a primitive situation anonymous sex would have worked well for a man (who could have created a child without putting in the effort to bring it up) but exceptionally poorly for a woman (who would face bearing a child without support).

The argument that Prager is patronising women is plausible if you just read the section of the text Gracchi has quoted. However, the evidence Prager uses to back up his argument is the testimony, from calls to his radio show, of young women. He asked women to work out their own sexuality just as Gracchi recommends.

Finally, Prager's conclusion doesn't seem at all demeaning to women. I think that it casts them in a rather good light. As more emotionally intelligent compared to men who are too often at the mercy of their hormones.

"Mr Prager's real concern though in stating this difference is his idea that women are the basis and buttress of the family unit- and consequently can't behave in the way that he perceives them behaving- in that sense like the honour killer he sees the world as one where women are men's property, in mourning what he calls the "death of femininity" what Mr Prager mourns is the period in which a woman's sex life was a way of signifying the virtue of the community in which she lived in."

This is the part of Gracchi's post that really troubles me.

Firstly, Gracchi has entirely assumed Prager's 'real concern'. There is no mention of family values in Prager's piece.

Secondly, the view that women are a basis and buttress of the family unit does not imply the view that they are somebody's property. I think I'd see women as a basis and buttress of the family unit. I'd say the same for men and, indeed, for children. That does not imply that any member of the family is the property of any other. This is just an attempt to fit the square peg of the family relationship into the round hole of the Left's power narrative.

Finally, the idea that Prager is mourning "the period in which a woman's sex life was a way of signifying the virtue of the community in which she lived in." is entirely unsubstantiated. The difference between Prager and the honour killer would be obvious to any less hyperbolic treatment of Prager's piece as his discussion is based upon the question "what kind of relationship with men is most fulfilling, both emotionally and sexually, for women?" The honour killer would see that question as almost entirely irrelevant.

Gracchi is drawing continuities that don't exist. There is no similarity between the entirely caring, decent and respectful perspective of most social conservatives and the sick, twisted worldview of the honour killer.

Stop aggregating Britain

This article by Fraser Nelson for the Business is a brilliant elaboration of a theme this blog has noted before. It is increasingly impossible to understand trends in Britain in terms of aggregate movements.

I know regional divides are not unique to the UK. However, few countries have divides quite as stark as Britain's. Few countries have such a huge divide between the Hong Kong capitalism of the City and other such areas, that exists thanks to things like the non-domiciled rules, and the quasi-Communist North. As I mentioned in the earlier blog there is some indication that we have the greatest regional income inequality in Europe. Nelson's article establishes that there is a similar inequality in terms of numbers on benefits.

Looking at aggregate statistics in income, unemployment and statism for the UK is almost entirely a superficial exercise. There is no significant central tendency. When we compare our record on productivity, income or unemployment (to name just three economic statistics - the same is true for others like life expectancy) to that of other countries we are comparing an entirely hypothetical Britain. The reality will often be that, for example on income, the South is just about the richest region in Europe and the poorer regions are just about the poorest.

I'm not sure our notoriously centralised politics can deal with this. We are used to having national debates (although whenever someone calls for a "national debate" I die a little inside) and those tend to be based upon aggregate statistics. It will take a fundamental shift in our national consciousness to understand that for many policy questions (such as "has the minimum wage seriously depressed unemployment?") no useful answer can be given for the United Kingdom as a whole. If we can't make that shift we're going to keep missing the point on a whole spectrum of issues.

American political organisation in 1972

This is fascinating:



I'm pretty sure that with over three decades of rapidly expanding computing power and declining cost the British parties now have a rather more sophisticated operation than the Republicans in 1972. Still, this video clip hints at how grand the organisational effort behind American elections is and I don't think either British party has the broad-based financing that the Republicans were clearly working on even back then.

Video via RealClearPolitics.

Getting "answers"

Today I forced my first response from a Minister (and in the Metro too but that isn't online).

Not only that; the response is also clearly wrong.

"I learned the names of your cities, what more do you want!"

An Obama campaign video for Iowa:



Less than inspiring.

Video via RealClearPolitics.

Aspirational Rochdale

Tim Aker posts on the TaxPayers' Alliance blog:

"If anyone needs convincing that Regional Development Agencies are a waste of time, space and money, one should look at the Rochdale Development Agency. The Times reports this morning that the Rochdale Development Agency has been advertising Rochdale by using pictures of Manchester.

Yes. They advertised Rochdale by showing pictures of a completely different area fifteen miles away. Why? The development agency said it was to “reflect the aspirations of Rochdale’s citizens”."

I think its probably quite an accurate reflection of the aspirations of Rochdale's citizens. To leave.

The new logo

Maybe I'm just being childish but has anyone else noticed a rather unfortunate consequence of the new variant of the oak tree logo?

It looks like Cameron is smoking something intense.

Mine Your Own Business

I've just finished watching the documentary film "Mine Your Own Business". It is made by the former Financial Times correspondent to Romania and Bulgaria and examines environmentalist campaigns against mining projects.

It restates a common complaint against environmentalists: that those who claim to be defending local interests have a deep arrogance in telling those locals what their interests are. However, it also illustrates how innacurate the picture presented to the world by the green campaigners often is.

He shows how the inhabitants of a Romanian village that is going to have a mining project built do not prefer horse and cart to cars and were not forced from their homes but gratefully sold; how the village is not a pristine environment risking destruction at the hands of greedy foreigners but an already damaged environment that needs investment to avoid becoming a wasteland and that claims that the villagers can do equally well out of tourism or farming are deeply spurious. It shows how the best friends of environmentalists fighting a mining project in Latin America are landowners worried that the new project will offer their workers an escape from poverty wages. In short, it shows that the claims of foreign environmentalists are often entirely disconnected from reality.

It is highly credible to me thanks to my own experience of this kind of thing in a different setting. When I was a fair bit younger, 17 I think, I went to Lake Baikal in Siberia on a programme with an organisation called Earthwatch. Essentially, it attached me as a helper to an expedition monitoring pollutants in the lake, one of the largest bodies of freshwater in the world.

While we were out there they showed us a Greenpeace film. It upset the woman who hosted us. It showed the lake dying, poisoned. However, the man leading our expedition, an amazing sixty year old who had smoked for decades but still outpaced a group of us many of whom were half his age, gave a different account. He had spent decades studying the lake and told us in a matter of fact tone that what was presented on the film was entirely untrue. While Lake Baikal is a lake one would expect to become polluted as most of Mongolia's industry discharges into a river that feeds it things have not turned out that way; it is incredibly clean. It is much purer than even bottled water in the West and I quickly got used to filling my water bottle straight from the lake. Some kind of natural filter operates to keep the lake so clean.

Our scientist was attempting to work out how that filter operated, and whether it would continue to function. Greenpeace were ignoring reality and communicating a fiction to the outside world. That other environmental activists will do the same in other situations seems entirely credible to me. Mine Your Own Business shows the consequences: communities needlessly denied the chance of a more comfortable and hopeful life.

The Hidden Costs of the Olympics: £4 billion in construction inflation

I have a new TaxPayers' Alliance report out today looking at the implications of the Olympics for construction inflation. As I said:

“Increasing the cost of construction in London and the South East is not only hazardous to the health of the British economy but also imperils the objective of getting enough new homes built to make things easier for first-time buyers. The bigger the bill for the Olympics becomes, the more damaging this knock-on hidden cost will be.”

This has led to my first front-page quote, in today's Metro. Good times.

Giuliani talking to Charlie Rose

This interview is superb. Very impressive showing by Giuliani.



It also shows how the long, non-confrontational interview style that 18DoughtyStreet (which I was on again yesterday evening, the episode of Vox Politix on council tax) is going for can work and become far more informative than the combative Paxman style, although Paxman's approach clearly has its uses. What both methods of interview require is a superbly informed and prepared interviewer. Charlie Rose is clearly a master of the art.

William Dalrymple's suspect economic history

William Dalrymple's article for the Telegraph is full of historical detail which makes it a pleasure to read. However, his analysis of the big picture appears weak to me.

A few criticisms:

1. His main example of abuse under the Raj is sensational evidence given by the prosecution of a man later found innocent. A rather suspect source to say the least. The acquital suggests the evidence might well not have been accurate and even if the events did occur there is no way we can really get to the bottom of whether they can be generalised from.
2. He talks of "the destruction of Indian political, cultural and artistic self-confidence". The question has to be, whose? The Mughal dynasty certainly took a heavy blow but they were foreign conquerors like the British. Imperialist dominance of India did not begin with the Raj. Did the broad mass of Indians suffer such a blow to their confidence?
3. The shift in the share of global GDP produced in India and Britain is ascribed to Indian economic failure rather than, as would be more realistic, to the colossal relative success of Britain as the first industrial nation.
4. India's relative decline is understood entirely in political terms of imperialism or exploitation. However, a classic paper by Parthasarathi showed how Britain was unable to compete with Indian cotton production before the Industrial Revolution. Industrialisation transformed Britain's competitive position in a vital industry. India's decline can therefore be seen, at least partially, as a matter of changes in economic conditions rather than as some kind of political crime.

All that makes this a dissapointing piece. Dalrymple does attest to the force of the debate over Britain's impact on India and clearly has a lot of knowledge but is not prepared to do that debate justice.

Why not walk it?

Over the last few weeks I've been enjoying these posters from Transport for London, displayed on bus stops around London:

They just beg for someone to answer the "Why not walk it?" tagline with "You might as well given the state of the Tube."

The whole campaign sounds like an admission of defeat given that they're the ones who are supposed to be providing public transport in our fine city. The campaign has also been revealed, this Saturday in the Times, to be hilariously wrong in the impression it gives of the 'green' benefits of walking. Apparently walking uses more CO2 than driving thanks to the amount of carbon dioxide and, crucially, methane emitted during food production.

Suffer and Survive - Gas Attacks, Miners' Canaries, Spacesuits and the Bends: The Extreme Life of Dr J. S. Haldane by Martin Goodman

Cross-posted from Westminster Wisdom

This book is hitting the shops now but, courtesy of being the author's nephew, I've been reading an advanced copy over the last couple of weeks.

It is a very enjoyable read. Martin's writing is assured and unpretentious but very vivid when necessary. He has researched thoroughly enough that he has the detail to really bring the characters to life.

The era, late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain, is a fascinating one and not written about enough. Suffer and Survive, like George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England, gives us a glimpse of the world before the First World War. A world making the transition, in fits and starts, from that of the Industrial Revolution to one we might more easily recognise today.

Haldane's story is well worth telling. He was born to one of the oldest Scottish aristocratic families. The Haldanes already had quite a history of public service - the book's title is inspired by their motto "Suffer". J.S. Haldane extended that tradition. His exploration of how the human body interacts with its environment advanced science and also saved thousands upon thousands of lives.

Just taking his more famous creations Haldane was responsible for canaries in mines, gas masks and diving tables. However, he paid quite the price for incredible discoveries, subjecting his own body to poison gas and extreme conditions including alarmingly regular carbon monoxide poisoning in order to understand the effects of environmental conditions on the human body. Indeed, at times this book can get a little lost in descriptions of the physical peril faced by Haldane and his various research partners before being snapped back to its narrative.

Like many great popular science books this gives an idea of how incredible the scientific process itself has been. It provides a remarkable case-study of the lengths to which people have gone to increase the sum of human knowledge. Hopefully it might cause us all to be a little more appreciative of the legacy suffering survivors down the ages have left us.

CiFWatcher

DK has created a home for responses to Comment is Free. CiFWatcher.

It is just getting started but should be well worth keeping an eye on. Comment is Free is central to the mainstream Left's presence in the blogosphere. That makes fisking or otherwise rebutting Comment is Free articles a fine task for any right-wing blogger. If you'd like to contribute e-mail DK.

Charlie Bell - If this is the future of the Left...

Cross-posted from CiF Watcher

Charlie Bell's "I'm young but I care" article for Comment is Free is quite the demonstration of why 'grown-up' politicians shouldn't take the voice of 'the youth' too seriously:

"A common response, by one of my friends, to any questions that could possibly touch on the area of politics is: "I don't care - I'm not really interested in politics." But who can blame him? Not a week seems to go by without yet another depressing statistic about today's youth in this country. Not only do we have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe, but the Institute for Public Policy Research has just released a report that brands British teenagers the worst behaved in Europe. With gun crime, drug taking and binge drinking never far away from the headlines, we must be an appalling generation."

That's a complete non sequitur. There is no reason to expect that depressing statistics make people less likely to engage with politics. If things are going alright already why try to make a difference? By contrast, serious problems like those identified by the IPPR suggest that getting involved is worthwhile.

"And even those who claim to be in touch with the youth miss the point. The famous "hug-a-hoodie" idea (unfairly attributed to the Conservatives) highlights this - just because people wear a hoodie and hang around with their friends doesn't mean the next thing they'll be doing is smashing up a cafe or binge drinking. You don't see police community support officers marching up to Costa or Starbucks and breaking up a group of middle-aged women simply because they are all wearing jeans. It sounds ridiculous, but the only reason needed to stop young people who are innocently walking the streets is an item of clothing. And that makes us the terrible generation?"

This is staggeringly ignorant:

• Middle-aged women wearing jeans don't terrorise the law-abiding, particularly senior citizens, into staying at home after dark.
• The 'hoodie' isn't just one more item of clothing. It has a particular function in hiding the wearer's face that aids criminality, petty or serious. That is why it is associated with criminality and rightly causes suspicion.
• Just because not all those wearing hoodies are trouble does not mean suspicion is ill-founded.

"We are the IT-literate generation, the generation that will (seemingly to the horror of the media) eventually take over as this country's leaders. Maybe those who constantly talk of saving the world for "our children and grandchildren" should wake up and realise that's us. We are the future, and we need to be included. Every time someone young comes up with a new idea, they are beaten down for being inexperienced. Take David Cameron, for example. It's taboo to talk about elderly statesmen being too old for the job, for fear of being ageist, but the moment a young politician or commentator opens his mouth to speak, they are criticised for being too young to have any worthwhile ideas."

'Charlie' is clearly too young to remember the last election. Michael Howard faced frequent criticism for being too old. He is also clearly too poorly informed to have noticed the masses of criticism Menzies Campbell has faced for his age. Eric Forth's shouting "declare your interest" during an early question Campbell was trying to ask the Prime Minister on pensions was a particular high point. By contrast, David Cameron used his relative youth as a selling point in the Conservative leadership election.

"The answer is simple - young people feel strongly about things that will affect them. Climate change is going to flood my house, not that of my grandmother."

Actually even under Stern's "alarmist and incompetent" (PDF) analysis, it isn't myself and Charlie's generation that will pay the price for climate change. As Nordhaus noted the majority of the harms Stern identifies come after 2800. With decent flood defences and if he avoids living in an eco-town on a flood plain he should be fine.

If this is the future of the Left politics is about to get fun if infuriating.

Eco-Socialists hate flying

This is my problem with green politics at its most eco-socialist: I don't think they're doing what any attempt at forming environmental policy should be doing - trading off expected costs to climate change against the costs of stopping us doing the things we love. They don't love the things we do.

They hate flying:

"Except there's a catch. The truth is, I don't feel I'm making any sacrifice at all. Because I hate flying."

[...]

"Even before kids came along, I hated flying. Irrational, I know, but I find it frightening: the loss of control, the sheer helplessness up in the sky. I can make my palms sweat just thinking about it."

Now, do we believe that when Jonathan Freedland makes the case for increased taxation on aviation he is thinking "while it isn't to my taste I understand that other people enjoy flying, what a shame we have to cut down to save the environment"? Or, do we think he has "Good. Bloody planes" running through his head?

I reckon it's the latter and I don't think Freedland is alone. They don't like planes, cars and the rest of modern, industrial life. They don't possess the humility to accept that others do. Green politics provides an excuse to push lifestyles in a direction their hippy movement has been pushing for decades.

That's why they'll ignore that, for example, trains aren't better than planes for the environment if they go at a decent speed (as the one pictured in Freedland's article does). From an article by Monbiot of all people:

"Though trains traveling at normal speeds have much lower carbon emissions than airplanes…. energy consumption rises dramatically at speeds above 125 miles per hour…. If the trains are powered by electricity, and if that electricity is produced by plants burning fossil fuels, they cause more C02 emissions than planes."

Funniest libertarian article title ever...

I'm really quite ill so pearls of wisdom will have to wait till tomorrow at the earliest. However, in place of actual analysis I give you the funniest libertarian article title ever - linked from a Ludwig von Mises Institute blog - USA Survival.Org's wonderful:

Secret Agenda: Law of the Sea Treaty Provides Elements of World Government; U.N. "Mother of the Oceans" Exposed as Radical Socialist and Loony Leftist Who "Taught" Dogs to Type and Play Piano

Jokes and the Lucas Critique

Someone repeated an old joke in an e-mail discussion earlier today:

"The French intellectual says: 'Sure, it works in practice... but does it work in theory?'"

The joke is that some people, usually French, have no interest in the real world and prefer academic houses of cards.

However, the French intellectual's question is actually quite legitimate. Consider the Lucas critique, Wikipedia's description is quite good:

"The Lucas Critique says that it's naive to try to predict the effect of a policy experiment based on correlations in historical data, especially high-level aggregated historical data. For example, Fort Knox has never been robbed, but that doesn't mean we can safely eliminate the guards, since the incentive (not) to rob Fort Knox depends on the presence of the guards. If we do want to predict the effect of a policy experiment, we must model the "deep parameters" (preferences, technology and resource constraints) that govern individual behaviour. We can then predict what individuals will do conditional on the change in policy."

Many theories may appear to work in practice. A great example is the Galbraithian explanation of the Wall Street Crash. It took an examination of the theory by a host of economists, most notably Milton Friedman, to reveal its vulnerability.

Cartoonish

Two great posts over at Mr. Eugenides.

First, he spots that the cartoon I pointed to earlier today is one of four using the same theme in the major national newspapers. Even with the Seventh Seal on re-release what are the odds?

Second, apparently Brown's policy that all government buildings will fly the Union Jack does not apply to the Scottish institutions. The possibility of parodying modern British politics grows ever more remote.

Peter Brookes in the Times

This is a great cartoon from Peter Brookes.

I watched The Seventh Seal recently and really liked it. It explores complex themes with a commendable lightness of touch and some truly arresting symbolism like that above.

News from Iraq has been so dismal the central thesis of the cartoon that, in meeting President Bush, Gordon Brown risks the electoral poison of association with that conflict seems very plausible. Richard Posner's decision theory case for leaving (via Stumbling and Mumbling) seems quite strong if there really is a negligible "expectation of a victory" and that has been my understanding of the situation.

However, it now seems possible that things will might turn out better than expected, if still nowhere near what was hoped for in the heady days immediately following Saddam's fall. Bush and Iraq might, therefore, not be quite the liability that the cartoon suggests they will be for Brown. This editorial from the New York Times suggests some genuine good news coming out of the country:

"Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily "victory" but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated -- many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008."

The Michigan TaxPayers' Alliance

The Michigan TaxPayers' Alliance are way cooler than we are. A giant pig called Mr. Perks would be so much fun...



Still, we have taxpayersalliance.com. That makes us the "official" TPA even if we don't have a giant fibre glass pig. Welcome to the Internet age.

Rankings and other trivia

I don't agree with the conclusions Chris comes to in his discussion of the ranking Iain Dale is trying to create. While I entirely agree with most of what he says, the ranking won't be a reliable guide to the 'best blogs', I think it, and the associated book, should be welcomed for practical reasons:

Blogging is, for most people, better when there are a larger number of people doing it. There are huge network effects as more people blogging opens more channels. I, and most others I think, enjoy blogging most when there are people responding to my posts and when there are interesting posts to respond to. It is a curiously anti-social social activity but a social activity nonetheless.

Now, an initiative like Dale's can serve an important function as a book, and a ranking, are a fine way of drawing attention to blogging. Of raising its profile and in doing so introducing new people to the pasttime. If some of them turn out to be interesting writers my 'blogging life' will be improved. If I take part in the ranking, and encourage others of an intellectual disposition to do the same, that will strengthen the chances of the blogs listed being ones that I like and should make the book a more effective way of drawing people I want to engage with into the blogosphere.

Green Cars

A report of mine looking at the cost and effectiveness of 'green cars' in government is on the TaxPayers' Alliance website.

In all my life outside of the Westminster bubble (for the uninitiated this is roughly between Victoria Station, the Thames and Trafalgar Square and is where most government departments and political parties are based) I have never seen one of these cars. When I go out for lunch around the office, right in the middle of the bubble, I will regularly see three or four in the space of a quarter of an hour.

It always rings alarm bells when government is wildly enthusiastic for a product ordinary consumers have rejected. The only people who drive these things in any numbers are Hollywood movie stars and British politicians. Neither group faces a hard budget.

As a result of those alarm bells I looked into the numbers. £888,000 wasted on an insignificant contribution to curbing emissions (even using government emissions figures and ignoring questions about the dust-to-dust emissions from a hybrid). Sure enough, ordinary people get it right again.

Top 20

Iain Dale is running a poll for the top hundred UK political blogs. You need to e-mail him with your top twenty (Top 20 in the subject line). Writing a book ranking bloggers is a sure-fire way of pissing huge numbers of people off so Iain deserves some credit for putting himself in the firing line.

I won't put my top twenty up here as I'm sure to forget someone and I'd rather my indiscretion wasn't public.

Identity and the Blogosphere

Over the last month there have been a slow but steady stream of posts - first from Tom Paine, then from Gracchi, then finally Ruthie - discussing identity and the blogosphere. They all focussed essentially on the uses of anonymity. The extent to which you can express yourself free from the encumbrances of an ossified persona.

Sinclair's Musings is a rather different blog to the three above. It is not anonymous and never has been. I post in my own name, the blog is named after me and the tone is very similar to my style in 'real-life'. The background to this site's logo is a painting by my favourite artist, Salvator Rosa.

My blog was never anonymous for a few reasons:

1. The freedom of being at university and then working at the TaxPayers' Alliance has meant that the blog has been beneficial to my career if anything.
2. My tone is naturally moderate and relatively polite.
3. Being in a political career I was going to be publicly identified with political stances anyway.
4. I don't need anonymity to escape a persona which might cause people to write off my opinions; I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are.

The main purpose behind my blogging has always been to keep myself engaged with a broad set of interests. I originally started it as I was embarking upon my Master's thesis and didn't want to have nothing but the effects of deficits in my head for months at a time. Since then it has kept me engaged on themes like foreign policy, philosophy and the likes that don't really fit into my work at the TaxPayers' Alliance.

Another function of my blog is to maintain a voice that is purely my own. While others blog to escape their identities I've always felt that I was confirming mine. The TaxPayers' Alliance is great and I have more freedom there to express myself than it would have been fair of me to expect. However, keeping a little corner of the Internet where I really have the freedom to explore any idea or passing interest that takes my fancy is still a joy. Few things are more satisfying than to see this blog, my thoughts, stirring the thoughts or changing the minds of others.

I think the common thread through the four posts in this thread is that the benefits we've all taken from blogging are based around it opening new channels. So often we are confined to narrow bounds of geography and social circumstance. The erosion of the importance of geographical distance alone is sufficient for blogging to open up incredible possibilities, not to mention engagement across social lines. Where else would a young Minnesota mother aspiring to be a journalist, a British expatriate in Russia exasperated at the direction British politics is moving, a PhD student with a taste for the classics and a pressure group staffer with diverse intellectual tastes find themselves engaged in discussion?

The Simpsons Movie

Very, very good.

There is an obvious reservation. This film is unlikely to change your life. You are unlikely to "emerge with a sense of wonder at the cinematic craft, horror at the life of the prostitute, and some vague questions about dark continents within the soul- of desire, truth and perception- continents whose baleful power has haunted the imagination of the West- over which the ignorant armies of human perception clash by night!"

In fact, I'm not quite sure what the political message was. Something like "saving the environment is good but the government's attempts to defend it are going to be scary and insane" which may not be what they were going for. The reason the political message is unclear, however, is that the film has sensibly focussed upon the emotional story at the heart of the Simpsons; family. It makes simple observations about why families drift apart and why they stay together in a warm and friendly way.

If you want edgy messages or a film that's a challenge to sit through you'll be dissapointed but the easy style the Simpsons deploys doesn't make it less worthwhile or significant. Ella Fitzgerald's music isn't less significant than KoRn's.

This film is very, very funny. I'll avoid spoilers but it compares well with the series near the top of its game throughout the film. No small achievement. The 'Spider Pig' moment is an obvious star but there are a host of others. Hilarious.

Visually they've taken advantage of the big screen. Huge glass domes and angry mobs alike have a real grandeur to them. You also get a better sense of the Simpsons' style than in the series. The scale and quality shows how distinctive the 'look' of the characters is.

A thoroughly enjoyable film, well worth the wait.

Update: I've replaced the dull, normal trailer with a SpiderPig trailer that makes me giggle.

Support for an English Parliament

Vino's argues against an English Parliament in some detail. I think, hopefully he'll correct me if I'm wrong, that his argument can be boiled down to the following:

"However, I strongly suspect that there is not much demand for an English parliament as an immediate constitutional aim among voters in England. [...] So, to sum up, I do not feel that the West Lothian Question poses any significant real political issues – although it does pose logical ones. The way to deal with it would be, indeed, to offer a referendum on an English Parliament and see what happens. Should there not be public demand for it, then it will not pass. There is no reason to give devolution to voters who do not wish it and who prefer powers to be exercised by the national government or by regional or local authorities rather than by an intermediate layer of government. That would in itself be undemocratic and be overriding their preference for the status quo."

I agree with Gracchi's response to Vino: that the central issue is the constitutional inequality created by unequal devolution. I disagree with his identification of a rising tide of English patriotism/nationalism as generally 'nasty'. I think it's an entirely legitimate sense of fellow feeling and see no evidence it is more likely to lead to nastiness than other group-loyalties.

On the issue of having a referendum on a new parliament:

I doubt you would find a single member of a group like the Campaign for an English Parliament or the Witanagemot club (hopefully they'll correct me if I'm wrong) who wouldn't be absolutely happy with a referendum. It is obviously the way to introduce such an important constitutional change and appears likely to return a 'yes' answer.

On 'demand' for an English parliament:

The reason those of us in favour of an English Parliament would be confident about winning a referendum is that there is strong demand for such a parliament, across the United Kingdom. This has been revealed in polls such as this one, from the Telegraph:

Unfortunately it isn't just Vino who has not yet noted the rising demand for giving English voters proper representation. Labour ministers are of the same opinion; that there is little demand for an English parliament. Their mistake is far less understandable and far more important.