Opening up the NHS?

"Death rates of patients undergoing major surgery at NHS hospitals are to be published on the internet.

[...]

Death rates are expected to be at a disproportionately high level in hospitals where fewer operations are performed and surgeons have less opportunity to improve.

The government believes publishing the figures will mean badly performing trusts will have to improve standards or halt areas of surgery where they are lagging behind."

This, from a report in the Telegraph, is great news. If patients can make an informed choice then that should put pressure on the acute trusts to up their standards. In fact, this is long overdue:

An inquiry into the deaths of children at Bristol Royal Infirmary a decade ago showed how poor practice persisted because mortality rates were not disclosed.

The effect will be limited though as - within the NHS - patients only have a limited amount of choice. While the trusts could compete with each other to a certain extent they are protected from new entrants to the market, a restriction that will severely limit the ability of patients to take advantage of this new information.

Beyond that, the structure of the NHS will restrict the ability of the trusts to respond to quasi-market pressures introduced by this new source of information. The NHS is essentially a quango of quangos. It is made up of a combination of the primary and acute trusts, strategic health authorities and a maze of central quangos. In our report, Wasting Lives: a statistical analysis of NHS performance in European context since 1981 (PDF), we set out how the central quangos control many of the most important NHS decisions:

"The NHS has a large number of local bodies, the Primary Care Trusts, NHS Trusts and Regional Strategic Health Authorities. However, these are all both legally non-departmental bodies answering to the Department of Health and effectively part of one organisation. Most have only a very limited ability to act independently:

• Their decisions over which drugs to buy are expected to conform to guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.



• IT expenditure is mostly handled by Connecting for Health which runs the National Programme for IT , the largest single information technology project in the world.



• Staff pay, the largest item of expenditure, is determined nationally by the NHS Pay Review Body.



• Amounts of funding are also set nationally according to a weighted capitation formula. This became very controversial in 2006 when the Government were accused of manipulating the funding decision for political advantage."

This information will be a valuable resource for NHS patients. It would be so much more valuable if our healthcare system were liberalised more broadly.

Cross-posted from the TaxPayers' Alliance blog.

"Democracy, freedom, subsidiarity - federalism, the solution we've got!"

They're young, lyrically imaginative and enthusiastic for the European Project!

Lipdub Europe United par les Jeunes Européens - France
Uploaded by JeunesEuropeensFrance

This gave me rage blackouts.  I defy any Briton of good sense to watch it and not want to quote Nelson's advice to a midshipman aboard the Agamemnon.

P.S. If this has been posted by someone else already, and I missed it, then apologies.

Glorious Isolation

Zoe Williams, at Comment is Free, is confused by our lack of friends that might support a bid for Eurovision victory:

"But still, two questions: first and most obviously, why have we got nobody to vote for us? Everybody goes on about eastern Europe and their bloc voting, but this is not some ex-communist curiosity that we in the hyper-individualised west will never understand. Everyone has chums: the Scandinavians vote for one another; Cyprus votes for Greece; and Andorra, Portugal and Spain stick together."

Well, the answer's obvious, isn't it? Humans are angry, tribal killer chimps.

Europe's other nation states aren't very stable. Most have them have had their borders redrawn endlessly and have even ceased to exist several times pretty recently. All sorts of people aren't in the nation they started out in and have tribal loyalties elsewhere. Even when no one is being conquered a land border is far more porous than a watery one. All this means that most European countries have human ties to others in their proximity.

We're just as tribal. In fact, Anglos of one kind or another have been - for some centuries - the biggest, baddest tribe on the planet. Not only do we keep our own borders steady (the last battle on our mainland was in 1746) but we also conquer the others and take their stuff. However, we generally haven't taken territory in Europe (too high maintenance) but in the rest of the world.

If it wasn't Eurovision but Worldvision (World Vision might be peeved if it were set up) then our Anglo cousins and Commonwealth buddies would be in play. We'd do fine. The best evidence available suggests that we would do extremely well, that we are the world's favourite nation.

Our relationship with continental Europe has defined our history and frog-bashing has become a dull cliche best left behind. However, there is no reason to get wound up in a fit of teenage self-consciousness just because the continentals won't vote for us at Eurovision.

Cross-posted from CentreRight.com.

The decline of the traditional family - the sixties or Thatcher?

I've written a response to a post by Unity addressing that subject. Unfortunately it is a bit too heavy on the graphics to easily copy over here so you should go to CentreRight.com to read my argument.

Taking responsibility

Great post by Pub Philosopher:

"But there is another similarity between both these tragic stories. Khyra's and Victoria's fathers were not living with their daughters and were out of the UK when they died, yet they displayed their grief for all to see and launched tirades of criticism at the British state for its failure to look after their children.

[...]

Much of this disproportionate response resulted from a mind-set which assumed that the state must take all the blame for Victoria Climbie's death. Anyone who suggested that, perhaps, her father should bear even a little of the responsibility for entrusting his daughter to inappropriate carers was drowned out in the chorus of "something must be done".

[...]

I'm not saying Birmingham's social workers are blame free. They should have asked questions when the child had been away from school for so long. If they were unaware of this, then that is a system failure too.

But Mr Zaire has some cheek to blame just about everyone else when, it appears, he had very little involvement with his children. "

Re: Overclass values created the underclass

Tim links to a blog by Melanie Phillips who attacks the Guardianista crowd. She accuses them of being responsible for many of today's social problems through an attack on the social institutions that are often called "traditional values".

If you haven't read it before, Theodore Dalrymple's The Frivolity of Evil, a piece for City Journal, is a superb introduction to this subject and one of the best articles I've ever read. The effects on the 'underclass' of the dangerous combination of the welfare state and the moral equivalence that pervades our culture and institutions is a subject Dalrymple has spent a huge amount of time discussing and if you want to read more his archive at City Journal is well worth a browse.

I think Phillips is wrong on one point. She suggests that "the supercilious overclass" has "the money to get itself out of trouble". It does have the money, education and other advantages to largely avoid the kinds of problems that afflict the underclass. That doesn't mean that it has got out of trouble. Allan Bloom's landmark book The Closing of the American Mind sets out the harm that relativism - emerging out of a frivolous nihilism - has done to the Western elite. It is a hard book to sum up within a single post but here's what I wrote when I first discussed it on my own blog:

"Bloom's masterpiece is hard to precis. It begins discussing his students and how relativism has closed their minds; how a doctrine of 'openness' has perversely undermined serious dialogue between different opinions and cultures. It then goes on a tour of Western philosophical thought illustrating the struggles that brought us to where we are now. My understanding of his critique is that we have lapsed into nihilism without taking the condition seriously. We cannot take seriously old visions of the good life and have broken the processes and destroyed the environments in which new visions might flourish. He sees this as a broad problem for Western civilisation but sees the crucial centre of the problem in the decline of liberal education within the Universities.

[...]

Dalrymple's work is excellent but if you only read Dalrymple and look at the problems of the poor it is as if you are studying an oceanic earthquake by measuring coastal waves and understanding the misery of those they make homeless. You need to understand the problem at its source. The source of the awful problems Dalrymple describes is in the elite and their intellectual decline. A philosophical decline in the West. Hopefully Bloom can provide a valuable first step in understanding that source of our problems."

That's pretty inadequate but this is a hard subject to get your head around. It is worth the time though as it is the thread that connects so many problems the modern Right should aim to confront. A relativist distaste for morals, nations and individual free will can be found at the root of a host of less esoteric problems.

The class card

This article by Nick Cohen has an interesting explanation of why Labour's attempt to play the class card backfired so badly in Crewe & Nantwich.

Of course, in some sense it is easy to explain why the "toff bashing" went poorly. It was done badly. They didn't have enough else to say, Edward Timpson isn't a "toff" in any meaningful sense and Tamsin Dunwoody is part of a political dynasty. However, it does seem to have been particularly ineffective and it might be worth thinking about whether there is a broader weakness in appeals to class.

My normal thesis is that the British people never respond the way class warriors expect them to and just don't think in classes. Ever since the First World War nationalism has proved itself just one group loyalty among many more potent than class. When Prescott said that Labour are "always better fighting class" he was clearly wrong. They got hammered by Thatcher when it was socialists versus capitalists in the eighties, the supposedly post-class Blair did far better. Marx was just wrong, at least in Britain and probably elsewhere, and class really isn't a good way of understanding political struggle.

However, Cohen might have a better explanation. He essentially posits a subtler understanding of class - i.e. class can have a significant effect on politics but it isn't just some lever a left-wing party can pull at will. The contemporary Labour party has no credibility attacking the ex-Bullingdon Club types as they are themselves just another tribe within the same elite:

"You will find part of the explanation the next time you read one of the 'when I was at Oxford I hated the Bullingdon Club' articles, which have taken permanent residence in the pages of the liberal press. You can guarantee that the outraged journalist or Labour politician was not at Oxford because they were working on the assembly line at Cowley. When they say 'I was at Oxford', they mean they were living in the same colleges and listening to the same tutors as Boris Johnson and David Cameron. They just moved in different social circles.

Freud's narcissism of small differences can power great hatreds and I have no doubt that the rage at the return of the Etonians is sincere. I feel it myself, while realising that these are tensions within a tiny and privileged part of British society.

[...]

Indeed not. Labour has been marching through the institutions for 11 years. With the exception of the armed forces, it has not allowed one state body to stay in the hands of natural conservatives. The Church of England, the BBC, the judiciary, the senior Civil Service, the trusts, agencies and quangos all have a pinkish hue. Even chief constables sound like Harriet Harman.

You can't run as an anti-elitist when you are part of the elite. You can only argue that you and your kind are best qualified to govern the country. Labour could make their case when Mrs Blair was gloating and Britain was booming. When hard times come, voters blame the people in power for their troubles, not 'the people on the grouse moor'. The old ruling class has been out for so long it no longer frightens voters, while Labour's jeers strike them as a cynical distraction from the enveloping economic crisis."

His casting of Thatcherism and the right-wingers who reacted with fury at attacks on grammar schools as representing a middle class, meritocratic (for better and for worse) anti-elitism within Britain's conservatives suggests that class distinctions are complex on both sides of the partisan divide. The most obvious expression of anti-elitism within the contemporary Conservative Party is, perhaps, Direct Democracy. That movement could be understood as an attempt to make elites more accountable to the popular will.

It seems plausible that the fate of the 'pink hued' elite, with values that might best be described as 'tranzi', that Cohen describes could come to dominate our politics in the coming decades.

Cross-posted from CentreRight.Com.

Emissions trading continues to dissapoint

From the European Commission Spokesman's briefing yesterday:

"Overall emissions of CO2 from businesses in the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) increased by 0.68% in 2007 when adjusted for changes in the number of
installations covered, according to the information provided by Member State registries. While well below the 2.8% growth in the EU's Gross Domestic Product recorded last year, the slight increase in emissions underlines the need for the tighter emission caps that have been set for the 2008-2012 trading period."

Ignore the spin that this is well below GDP growth. It is no achievement of the ETS that emissions intensity (emissions/GDP) is falling - that has been happening across the developed world for some time.

In fact, the real picture is even worse than this suggests as the EU is, in part due to schemes like the ETS, exporting huge amounts of manufacturing activity, and therefore emissions, to the developing world. If green taxes and regulations result in a very efficient plant in Sunderland being replaced by a very dirty plant in China that is no green achievement at all.

Kissinger and Metternich

There is a fascinating article over at The Atlantic discussing the lessons Kissinger took from his own experience and history; the foundations of his realism. In particular, the Austrian Prince Clemens von Metternich's construction of a peaceful order following the Napoleonic Wars and the hideous consequences of appeasement at Munich.

It's worth reading it in full but this is a choice paragraph:

"The "most fundamental problem of politics ... is not the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness." The Nazis, the Jacobins, the ayatollahs, and the others who have made revolutions have all been self-righteous. Kissinger suggested that nothing is more dangerous than people convinced of their moral superiority, since they deny their political opponents that very attribute. Tyranny, a form of disorder posing as order, is the result. This was one of Edward Gibbon's arguments against early Christianity. Gibbon represented the Enlightenment in full flower, just as Metternich, Kissinger reminded us, represented its dying breath before the onset of modernism, with its righteous causes. In any event, Kissinger observed wryly, punishing the wicked is "a relatively easy matter, because it is a simple expression" of public decency, and thus not a crucial task of statesmanship."

The logic of collective action taken to a bizarre extreme

Recently I wrote, for ConservativeHome's Platform, about Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action. That landmark political text set out how minorities could impose their will on a majority in a democracy. People have an incentive to free ride on the political efforts of others and minorities find it easier to organise and motivate their members. This is one important reason why the work of the TaxPayers' Alliance is so vital. It also explains why some truly ludicrous trade deals can get through - the small number of people in industries that benefit from the tariff can organise while the broad swathes of society who benefit will struggle to.

Still, this case from the Aplia blog, via Marginal Revolution, is exceptional:

"Advocates of trade restrictions often argue that protection will save jobs. Since we can observe price and cost increases associated with trade restrictions, we can estimate how much it costs to save each job in a protected industry. According to the NPR story, there are roughly 30,000 dry cleaners in the U.S., and on average, each pays an additional $4,000 per year due to the hanger tariff. This indicates an average annual cost of 30,000 firms x $4,000 per firm = $120 million. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission's report, U.S. employment in wire hanger manufacturing was 564 workers in 2004 and fell to 236 workers by 2006. Let's assume that employment in this sector would have fallen to zero in the absence of the tariff, and that with the tariff, employment will recover to 2004 levels. In other words, assume the tariff "saves" 564 jobs. Dividing the cost of the tariff to U.S. dry cleaners ($120 million year) by the number of jobs saved (564 jobs) indicates that each job saved costs about $212,765 per year. Keep in mind that the typical full-time worker in this sector earns about $30,000 per year. Even if we assume that industry employment doubles, the cost of the tariff is still roughly $120,000 per job."

$4,000 per dry cleaner is well above the £100 per household that I figured it would take to get people to sit up and take notice of a decision that hurt their economic position. I can see a few possible explanations for why it happened:

1) The dry cleaners pass the cost on to their customers - that means the $4,000 is spread across hundreds of customers few of whom even know they're paying let alone care enough to change their vote.

2) Enough dry cleaners benefit from this measure which prevents new entrants to the market and puts some existing firms out of business - regulatory capture.

3) This measure won't last and is just an exceptional moment of madness.

Regardless, this highlights how divorced from basic common sense political decisions can become. It isn't just in America. European trade policy is full of similar lunacies, the Common Agricultural Policy is the biggest example, and there is little accountability for most public spending. We need to decentralise and hand decisions back to individuals so that powerful special interests cannot take advantage of us.

Failed asylum seekers and the NHS

Here is an interview I gave this morning, with BBC Radio Wales, debating plans to offer NHS care to failed asylum seekers with the head of the Immigration Advisory Service.

This is one of those plans that, at first, sounds entirely humane but cannot be economically and politically sustained. It is far too vulnerable to be swamped by those who seek to abuse the system and make Britain cover their, often very expensive, treatment. That would either create huge problems for the NHS and British taxpayers or result in the asylum system itself being curbed, to the detriment of those fleeing real persecution. When the courts don't take proper account of these sorts of concerns we wind up in the kind of absurd situation we're in now with regard to Somalian pirates who the Royal Navy can't detain for fear they'll gain a legal right to live in the United Kingdom.

Big Brother is watching

Government plans for a single, massive database containing records of all public internet activity, e-mails and phone calls, reported in the Times, are alarming. This system will be massively vulnerable to abuse and would allow Government officials to snoop, far too easily, on ordinary people. It is also likely to prove exceptionally expensive.

Holding the information in place will always make it easier for a system to be abused. Anyone looking to gain access to people's very personal phonecalls, e-mail or internet records will only need to gain access to, and then search, one system instead of many. The increased convenience to the unscrupulous will be of a greater magnitude than the improvement for those meant to be in the system, who don't need to crack into each database. Government claims that it will be secure are hardly credible after endless lapses in recent years.

Beyond that, government agencies have a track record of creating powers supposedly needed to tackle serious crime and then allowing them to be used to snoop on ordinary people, for extended periods, for inadequate reasons. Tim Aker, our grassroots co-ordinator, provided one example:

"The Regulation of Investigative Powers Act 2000 was introduced on the grounds that it would boost national security. Poole Council, being a creative sort, went well over their remit by using the powers to snoop on families. They monitored this unnamed family for three weeks, with intentions to stop them sending their children to a good school if they lived outside the catchment area."

You should fear the invasions of privacy this measure will facilitate even if you haven't done anything wrong and don't think that the Ed Balls is going to develop a penchant for the goose step any time soon. After all, it's all in the database:

Finally, this is almost certain to be wildly expensive. If you look through the projects listed in our report (PDF) on big government project overruns you'll see that many of the most troublesome, like the NHS National Programme for IT, are those that try to stitch together a lot of incompatible IT schemes. It tends to become a very complex and lengthy process as so many different organisations need to contribute. The Internet Service Providers and other companies involved have not created these systems with combining them in mind. There is every possibility this will become a wildly expensive project.

This new database will be vulnerable to abuse, encourage and enable snooping by officials and is quite likely to cost us a fortune. It should be abandoned.

Cross-posted from the TaxPayers' Alliance blog.

One year at the TPA

This article was first posted on ConservativeHome's Platform.

I’ve been at the TaxPayers’ Alliance a year; I’m a year into my first serious job. It seems a good time to take stock and think about what that work is for. What is the role and function of the TPA?

Of course, there is a simple answer to that question: to campaign for lower taxes and public sector reform. However, I think that such a simple answer misses the deeper problem that the TPA addresses. The case for low taxes, and for the government to do less, isn’t just one more conflicting priority that must be lobbied and advocated for. Campaigning for low taxes requires us to confront the fundamental logic of how a democracy operates.

Mancur Olson, in a landmark work of political theory, set out the Logic of Collective Action in the mid-sixties. An understanding of his thinking is vital to understanding how the modern British state functions. He explained how a minority could effectively dominate a majority.

Any individual has a powerful incentive to free-ride on the efforts of the rest of any group providing public goods. While someone may want lower taxes they have every incentive to leave the political effort required to get tax cuts to others. The results of their effort, or slacking, will be diluted across all those with an interest in low taxes. It will not be in their interests to put the socially optimum amount of effort into securing tax cuts.

Successful societies evolve ways of encouraging people to act in the common good. However, it is harder for large groups to do so. It is easy to encourage six people to act in their common interest by personally appealing to their sense of duty, tradition, loyalty or shame. It is far harder to do the same for a group of sixty million.

Beyond that, in a large group each individual person will usually have less of a stake in a given decision than the members of a small group will. Suppose the British government were to decide to give £3 million a year from general taxation to the 125 residents of the isle of Iona, off the Western edge of Scotland. The islanders would each receive £24,000 a year. That would make a pretty substantial difference to their standard of living. People will definitely turn out to vote in droves to be given £24,000. By contrast, each taxpaying household would face a bill of about 12p a year. Who is going to change their vote for the sake of 12p?

I actually think that it takes about £2.5 billion – if it is paid for from general taxation - for a fiscal decision to become a real live political issue. At £100 a year, £2 a week or half of one percent of median gross income, people start to care. Anything smaller than that and you are no longer appealing to peoples’ concern at how their money is being used and can only really get them interested by finding some lunacy, perversity or corruption that is important or interesting despite the amount at issue being relatively minor. What so many people describe as apathy in the face of significant fiscal decisions is actually rooted in a rational decision to accord little importance to decisions that, in each case, have such a small impact on the well-being of each taxpayer.

£2.5 billion is a lot of money. It is more than the budget for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It is a real problem if a numerically tiny group can so easily extract, say, £1 billion as they have every reason to invest huge effort in presenting the benefits of their billion pound scheme and no one really cares about the cost.

Politicians are faced with hundreds of groups each claiming a vital need for a billion here, a billion there and it all adds up to a colossal, and increasing, tax burden far larger than the socially optimal amount. The political logic becomes simple: Group X won’t vote for us if we don’t give them taxpayers’ money. Taxpayers won’t change their votes for a few pennies each a week. Give X the money. This is repeated for group after group demanding taxpayer cash until people have little income of their own left, the economy is crippled and we are all less free.

Popular outrage at each overly eager use of their pocketbook is further weakened by a lack of transparency that means it is next to impossible to fully understand where taxpayers’ money actually goes – Group X gets their cash and no one but the politicians, civil servants and those directly involved ever hears about it. That’s the main purpose of the quangos that disperse so much taxpayer money with pretty much zero accountability.

There is no single ‘answer’ to the problem posed by Olson’s Logic of Collective Action. Olson himself came pretty close to claiming that only totalitarian revolution and then losing a war could clear the cobwebs of special interests out. I wouldn’t be as fatalistic as Olson though. It clearly is possible for political entrepreneurs to change things. He didn’t predict Thatcher’s successful challenging of union power, for example.

A vital, long-term, reform which would improve matters would be to decentralise and, thereby, decrease the scale of government decisions. If we make decisions on a smaller scale then the majority who need to be mobilised will be smaller and each member of that majority will be more interested in the outcome. If the difference in size between a minority who benefits from a fiscal decision and the majority who pay the bill falls then all of the problems discussed above become less severe. That is why the TaxPayers’ Alliance should always have a respect for localism in its bones.

However, localism cannot ‘solve’ the issue. Most local politics takes place with constituencies of tens or hundreds of thousands. The difference in size between a minority and majority can clearly still be very significant. The disparities that create the Logic of Collective Action can still exist in small democracies, even though they will be less marked than in large ones. Beyond that, few localists plan on abolishing central government and the Logic of Collective Action could easily lead a shrunken central government to grow again.

One thing we’re told a lot by groups who feel slighted by our research attacking their claim to public support for themselves or their cause is “well, I’m a taxpayer”. Indeed, most people are both taxpayers and, in some way, recipients of taxpayer funds. When I get my pay packet or buy something I’m a taxpayer. When I enjoy a painting at the National Gallery I’m a happy beneficiary of public generosity. The TaxPayers’ Alliance speaks not for a clearly identifiable group of ‘taxpayers’ but for the taxpayer in all of us. We speak for the cause of leaving as many pounds in peoples pockets as possible.

Our work is essential as we can help better mobilise the majority, on each individual issue, that has to pay for each government scheme. By making it easier, more rewarding and more obviously necessary for people to look at and take account of the cost to taxpayers of spending on each item we will make it less likely that the Logic of Collective Action will lead to the wrong decision being made. We make wasting each £1 billion a politically bigger deal.

It requires a thick skin. When people are told that their, often quite reasonable, particular pet use for taxpayers’ money – whether higher doctor’s salaries, more wind turbines, increased museum subsidies or anything else – may not represent good value it is understandable that they sometimes take it poorly. It also requires willpower as trying to fight against the very logic of collective action is quite a challenge.

However, the work is essential to our future prosperity and the defence of the basic freedom of ordinary people to spend a good portion of their money as they see fit. The TaxPayers’ Alliance needs to be eternally vigilant if economic liberty is to survive.

The Japanese Mob

This article, via Marginal Revolution, is fascinating.

DonaldS and abortion politics

There is a deep irony to the comment DonaldS left on my last post. His major contribution, before that, to the debate has been to attack politicians for failing to engage with the issue. He argues that politicians avoid it because the issue is to complex to "tabloidize". That isn't it at all. Politicians sound off on energy policy, for example, all the time despite the fact that it is ludicrously complex. Complexity may cause politicians to get an issue wrong but it won't stop them talking about it.

The reason most people whose minds aren't made up about the issue avoid talking about it is that no one who does care about abortion seems capable of having a reasonable conversation about it. Nadine Dorries may be guilty of all manner of sins. That doesn't mean that there is any real point to Liberal Conspiracy's group hate. They are free to do as they will with their blog but if they seriously think it will achieve much, beyond putting a few moderates off the debate entirely, they are mistaken. Donald's snipey response to my post is an example of how this debate is had in a manner that guarantees most ordinary people and politicians will avoid it.

So, to his arguments:

"So, by chopping the date back on the basis of no new medical evidence [his emphasis]"

He's missing the point: As I set out, I don't think that viability is relevant to whether a fetus is deserving of rights or not so neither the old nor the new medical evidence is particularly relevant to my position.

"A tiny fraction of abortions are carried out between 20 and 24 weeks, almost always for reasons of late-discovered abnormality, where the woman doesn't understand what's happening (very young, so doesn't understand she's pregnant; mentally impaired, so ditto; etc.), where a partner has become abusive, and so on."

Okay, so the provision for abortions up to 24 weeks is for exceptional circumstances?

From the Department of Health's abortion statistics it appears there were 2,948 abortions after 20 weeks gestation in 2006. That's pretty high for exceptional circumstances. However, I see no reason we shouldn't make an exception when exceptional circumstances do come up.

It would seem sensible that we can take account of these circumstances with the kind of compromise I discussed in my last post. If we were to move towards a significantly tighter limit, possibly well below twenty weeks but remove obstructions like the two doctor rule below that limit and create a rule to allow abortions in exceptional circumstances above the new limit we would move to a system like the one they have in the rest of Europe. We would have a system where only early or exceptional abortions would take place which might reassure the large number of people (probably a majority) who find abortions above twenty weeks distasteful but would also allow for people in exceptional circumstances.

Abortion uncertainties

I'm really grateful to Chris for writing about the subject of abortion. I've generally steered clear of it due to the strong emotions the subject provokes (even compared to this blog's normal topics). It's nice to know that I'm not the only confused moderate in the debate.

There are a few themes I'd like to cover:

Chris's points

I'm not sure either of these are capable of settling the issue:

"One is simple empiricism. Many women who miscarry feel something like bereavement, which suggests they regard a foetus as something like a living being - not as much so as an actual child, perhaps, but certainly more than just a bundle of cells."

Two points here:

1. I have no desire at all to, in any way, play down the trauma of a miscarriage. I entirely believe it is about as tragic a thing as can happen to a person. However, I would think that people find it incredibly upsetting to lose their ability to have a child as well. Without entering into the ugly process of comparing grief it seems plausible that those who suffer a miscarriage mourn the loss of an expected child rather than the death of the fetus itself.
2. If we are to decide the value of a foetus based on some people's subjective upset at losing one then we have to accept that the argument cuts both ways. Those fetuses that are not valued (those that the mother wishes to abort) have no value.

"The other is that a foetus can be regarded as a call option upon a human being. If human beings are valuable, an option on them must also have value - though again, less than that of a full human."

I'm not quite sure on this one. After all, every sperm has some potential to become a human. Valuing such potentials seems so complex that I'm not sure it can translate to abortion policy. Does the "value" of a fetus translate to the 'on'/'off' quality of inalienable human rights? If not, how do we translate such values to policy?

I have a friend who thinks abortion should be taxed. Is that the logical conclusion of Chris's position? It's an interesting moderate stance.

The campaigns

The extremism with which both sides express themselves, their mutual loathing for each other, is offputting. However, I'm always loathe to condemn those who feel certain about the issue. After all, one group believe that their opponents are endorsing rape, the other that their opponents are legitimising murder. If you hold either belief it seems understandable to get pretty angry about it.

However, what does surprise me is that the pro-choice camp, in particular, don't seem to be trying very hard to appeal to the median voter. The one thing I want to know is this: what use do people have for a post-20 weeks abortion?

I mean, it seems quite plausible that people will make the decision at a pace such that they're pretty much evenly likely to get in trouble and miss the deadline whenever it is set. They'll respond rationally to the deadline.

This seems like such a basic question but I've yet to find an answer. When I click for 'More Information' on the Coalition for Choice website all it gives me is a list of things they want. Nothing about why.

On the other side, I guess the pictures of fetuses that the pro-life movement use are effective but I find them distasteful. They're too similar to the pictures of animals that the animal rights movement uses. Trying to play on simple visual cues that have no deeper meaning. It strikes me as crass.

I'm the median voter on this issue but, of all the countless articles I've read, not more than a handful seem to be appealing to people like me who are uncertain - the vast majority seem to be out to get their own side angrier instead.

The crux of the issue

I really don't think this debate can effectively be settled without answering two simple, but also impossible, questions: What quality makes a human worth the unique protection of basic rights? When does a fetus develop that quality?

I can't believe that a woman has a right to choose to kill a baby. However, I think they absolutely have the right to choose whether or not to keep a fetus. That's the divide. Plain and so far from simple.

I don't believe anyone really has an answer to the first or second questions. The first must, I'm sure, have something to do with the mind; with our status as thinking beings. The second cannot be answered with so fuzzy an answer to the first. All I'm really confident of is that it happens at some point between conception and birth.

Until recently I was of the opinion that with so little certainty the best solution was simply to defend the status quo. Not because I think viability is even particularly important but just for stability's sake. On simple conservative grounds that poorly thought out change tends to make things worse.

Where I am right now

You know the argument that most convinced me?

This one. While I don't know when a fetus becomes a baby, I'd rather err on the side of caution and not have the most liberal limit in Europe. As such, I'd support tightening the limit, I think.

Here's a balance though; what if we tightened the limit and also removed the two doctor rule? That way we'd remove the unpleasantly arbitrary quality of the current system. That would seem like a decent way for both sides to take something from the present process.

The persistence of American power

Will Hutton's article today is excellent (another one on Comment is Free, I'm not sure what's happening today). He explains why the US will remain an economic leader. Traditions of argument and institutions of learning make it a natural leader in "a world where the deployment of knowledge, brain power and problem-solving are the sources of wealth generation."

There are two reasons, that come to mind, why non-Western countries have such a hard time keeping up:

1) Cultural differences

There is something about the Western individualist, adversarial tradition that is particularly productive. Frank and competitive exchanges of views produce the goods. From what I've seen such exchanges are a particularly important part of public, and indeed private, life in the West. To the extent they become a part of other countries' public life it is often associated with Westernisation.

2) Network effects

Good academics like to study with other good academics. Being around others makes it easier for them to establish a reputation (important if you want to advance your career) and bounce ideas of colleagues. That means that an established academic centre can attract new staff far more easily than a new one.

Jay Rayner on Gordon Ramsay

Brilliant attack on Gordon Ramsay's food fascism from Jay Rayner on Comment is Free:

"Indeed, let me confess. I love strawberries in season. I really do think they are better. But I have also eaten mediocre strawberries in winter and enjoyed them. And doing so didn't make me feel like a terribly bad person. So shoot me."

My speech on British environmental policy

The Heartland Institute have posted up an audio file (MP3, 20.4MB) of my speech in New York on British environmental policy. At times it gets a little hurried but we'll put that down to fitting a twenty minute speech into fifteen minutes rather than nervousness!

Otherwise I'm pretty pleased that I got the right balance between hitting important points and having a bit of fun at the expense of Britain's crazy green politics.

Scottish Independence

I'm currently trying to work out if this article is a satire that I don't 'get' or a breathtaking inane waste of space in the Telegraph's Comment section that could have been better used. Still, the fate of the Union is a topic worth returning to.

I'll go over the politics and then the issues - the money and the intangible benefits Scotland takes from the Union.

The politics

The SNP are playing an absolute blinder. Some promises such as subsidising first time buyers and paying off student debt have been abandoned but between freezing council tax and boosting police numbers they've got two tangible and very popular measures in place. Not bad for a minority administration in relatively tough times.

The Scottish Tories are doing alright as well, they handled the budget effectively, but they're a bit player in a fight between the SNP and Scottish Labour in a country with little appetite for Conservative leadership. The Labourites are losing that fight so badly it is embarassing.

In that context, Wendy Alexander's call for a Scottish independence referendum now makes some sense. She shifts the question from "would you rather have the SNP or Labour governing Scotland" to "do you want Scotland to become independent. The Union is currently a lot more popular than Labour so shifting the question in that way could improve her position. While it is always possible that Scottish Labour could screw up a Unionist campaign so badly the Nats win it might well be a risk worth taking to fight an independence referendum now rather than a few years down the line with a Tory government at Westminster and the SNP even more popular.

The money

I don't think the money is as big a deal as people make out.

From the English perspective, the pattern of regional fiscal transfers wouldn't change much if Scotland dissapeared. At the moment the Greater South East sends about 8 per cent of its regional GVA to the rest of the country. Everyone else, to a greater or lesser extent, comes out better off.

If Scotland were removed from the picture then there would be a bit more money to either leave with the South or slosh around the other regions but, in the grand scheme of things, not much would change. Things could even get worse if the Scottish subsidy was simply reallocated to the North of England and increased the extent of all the problems that an excessively large state already creates for the Northern private sector. There are only two ways of significantly reducing harmful (PDF, pages 9-25) regional dependency:

1) The wrong way - start winning seats as the Southern League (you would do ten times as well as the UKIP et. al.).

2) The right way - shrink and decentralise the state.

From the Scottish perspective the money is rather more important fiscally. Even if Scotland takes 90 per cent of North Sea oil revenues (as they probably would) they'll lose around 2.4 per cent of their GVA with independence. That's a lot of money and, combined with transition costs building a new state, will mean the Scots are seriously worse off in the years following independence.

However, that isn't the end of the story. When the Scots try to recover their economic position it seems entirely probable that the first country they'll look to learn from is Ireland. It is the obvious parallel as a former component of the United Kingdom and has been astonishingly successful. As Matthew Elliott, TPA Chief Executive, noted in his opinion piece for City Am yesterday:

"In 1993 Ireland was significantly poorer than the United Kingdom, with income per capita 28% higher in the UK. Its economy then took off, with average real terms economic growth between 1994 and 2006 of 7.4%. In contrast, the UK managed just 2.9% real terms growth in the same period. Today the Irish enjoy income per capita 20% higher than we do in the UK."

If the Scots can replicate that they won't be shedding too many tears over their lost Southern subsidy. In the end, the best way for a region to get rich isn't, thankfully, to try and extract a subsidy from wealthier regions. As an article by Benjamin Powell for the Cato Institute establishes, EU subsidies did little for Irish economic growth. As a result, I don't think the Scots should want to stay a part of the UK just so that they can hold onto subsidies from the South.

It is unfortunate and innapropriate that a debate that should be about national destiny is, so often, fought over the fools gold of state subsidy.

The intangibles

As I've set out before, I think that conservatives should be sad at the passing of a state with the history of the United Kingdom and sceptical that we can do better replacing it with something new.

However, I think it is the Scots, in particular, who would lose out from the United Kingdom being broken up. They would lose a grand stage. At the moment an ambitious Scot (and they're not all dismal Scottish Labour politicians) in business, politics or the arts has a domestic "market" that includes a population of 60 million and an international centre in London. Scottish Independence would make all that "abroad". The intangible, psychological effect would, I think, do damage to the ambition and prospects for greatness of all Scots.

Would Adam Smith have left the same legacy to history if he had not lived in the same country as the government of a great empire that could promote or enforce free trade, in particular, around the world?

So many talented Scots head South to make their mark. Any list of Scottish people who have gone on to great things would, I think, find few of them living in Scotland. That process isn't an accident. It is, I think, pretty common for small communities that their best and brightest must go elsewhere to explore their full potential. The same is true of small towns in the South East - people move to London to make it big. It only becomes a 'loss' to the Scottish nation with independence - when someone moving to London is moving abroad.

Sod off Ramsay

I don't like coffee. The bitterness just doesn't appeal and I've never enjoyed it. Normally, coffee has to be flown in from abroad. I think coffee should be banned.

"Not only [do other drinks] taste better, but it also helps to cut carbon emissions by reducing the number of miles needed to transport [it]."

I walk in to work. If there were no cars around it would be quieter for me. Walking to work might cut carbon emissions. Ban cars.

"Not only [is walking more pleasant], but it also helps to cut carbon emissions by reducing the number of miles [we drive]."

It's quite simple really. Combine an arrogant willingness to impose the choices you prefer, or find convenient, on everyone else for no good reason with an appeal to the global warming omni-justification and you can justify banning anything you vaguely dislike. Gordon Ramsay's call to ban out-of-season produce is illiberal nonsense.

...without a paddle

This, from the Sun, illustrates an important PR lesson:

I'm pretty certain the message most people will take from this isn't "the planet is in trouble, it's warming!" They'll think "these greens are completely batty!"

If you're going to try and communicate with a broad audience don't rely on implicit cues that are obvious to you but won't be to them. You might wind up sending a very different message to the one you meant to.

Drinking on the tube

Really bad reason to oppose Boris's ban on drinking on the tube

From Dave:

"Mayor Johnson, as we know, opposed the smoking ban. His voting history on the issue can be found on TheyWorkForYou.com. The noxious fumes produced by the evil weed were not, it would seem, enough in Mr Johnson’s opinion to warrant an
intrusion on people’s liberty and bar and pub workers would have to lump it; they could, of course, choose to be out of a job at any time if their health was such a big issue.

At Old Street station, there is a sign up announcing that alcohol will be banned from the first of June on public transport. The occasional drunken idiot is now more of a threat than smoking, which the World Health Organisation considers to be behind 26% of male deaths and 9% of female deaths in the developed world."

There is no hypocrisy here. The justification for Boris' ban on alcohol is that it leads to drunks on the tube threatening other people. When that happens the Millian sphere has been violated.


Therefore, the proper comparison isn't deaths from smoking but deaths from passive smoking. Those World Health Organisation figures are entirely irrelevant to this debate. The evidence for the dangers of passive smoking is very weak - see Richard North & Christopher Booker's impeccably sourced book for the full story of how weak.

Really good reason to oppose Boris's ban on drinking on the tube

From DK:

"I gave the example of consuming one beer on the way home; it was very pleasant, since from Southfields to Earl's Court is, like 55% of the Tube, not actually underground. The sun was streaming through the windows, the carriage was about only about half full, my Private Eye was interesting, and the gentle rocking of the train was complemented by my lovely bottle of cool ale.

The ale was all the more welcome since my colleague, who gives me a lift from Ockham to Southfields, needed to drop into the supermarket (where I had bought my beer) to buy his week's supplies and I didn't even get onto the Tube until nearly seven in the evening. With an hour on the Tube ahead of me, the beer really appealed."

I fail to see how banning drinking is easier than banning drunk and disorderly behaviour. Stick to banning drunk and disorderly behaviour. If you do so you'll allow a lot of people a little pleasure having a quiet drink on their way home. Those are the small happinesses that we lose to illiberalism.

Less fuel, less noise

This is the kind of innovation that can really solve problems like noise over the West of London and other urban centres and the huge amount of fuel aviation burns:

It is a creation of universities and private industry. No need for a tax as the rising price of fuel, the private market's response to scarcity, ensures innovation in response. Ordinary jets are becoming more efficient and this concept illustrates just how much more efficient planes can become.

Monbiot's approach to air travel is thoroughly silly:

"While a large commercial airliner cruises at about 900 kilometres per hour, the maximum speed of an airship is roughly 150kph. At an average speed of 130kph, the journey from London to New York would take 43 hours. Airships are more sensitive to wind than aeroplanes, which means that flights are more likely to be delayed."

Utterly unrealistic and not remotely justified by the harms identified by, for example, the IPCC. The only redeeming thing about the article is its brilliant self-parody of a headline:

If there is a God, he's not green. Otherwise airships would take off

...and there I was worshipping the Jolly Green Giant. Perhaps Monbiot is right, his failure to provide suitable blimps does make all the tasty sweetcorn a bit of a hollow pleasure.

The "there will be more scrutiny" conventional wisdom

Andrew Rawnsley repeats the argument put forward by several Labour ministers, that the silver lining for Labour with their dismal election results will be that Tory policy will now face more scrutiny. That's lunacy. One of the biggest problems that the Conservatives have faced for a number of years is that they can't get the public to listen to their policies. That policies become unpopular as soon as they are identified as those of the Conservative Party. If their policies are now taken seriously and subjected to scrutiny that offers them the opportunity to set out a platform for government.

Beyond that, there is good evidence that the more the Tories are in the news the better they do (this is discussed frequently by Mike Smithson). Of course, there are risks for the Tories. If they screw up, as they clearly did with the Quality of Life Policy Group report, then they'll have more to lose and are more likely to be found out. However, unless they never want to form a government this is an upping of the ante that the Conservatives have to be happy about. While things clearly could go wrong and Labour could be offered a way out of their current predicatement, this isn't much of a silver lining for them.

Anyone but Obama

I've always thought that you can tell the quality of an American politician by their attitude to trade. In the States it is so easy, but so unimpressive, for a politician of any ideological stripe to make a populist appeal to protectionist instincts. American protectionism can cause so much harm to both their own prosperity and the world economy but it offers easy wins for a politician willing to pander to the protectionists.

Lawson's excellent article in the Independent yesterday sets out just how dismal Obama has been on this issue:

"Obama is one of three Congressional sponsors of "The Patriot Employer Act", which seeks to give preferential tax status to American companies that choose not to invest overseas. His anti-globalisation rhetoric goes far beyond criticism of free-trade deals such as Nafta. Obama told voters in New Hampshire:"I would stop the import of all toys from China". China supplies 80 per cent of the toys sold in the US, so that's one heck of a pile of embargoed fluffy bunnies."

The risks of the current down turn being turned into something far worse by a return to protectionism couldn't be clearer. A trade war with China could cause untold impoverishment and even be strategically dangerous. His hostility to Nafta would undermine the international drive for new free trade agreements that would do great things for poor and rich countries alike.

Any politician who argues for and sponsors this kind of protectionism is either a dishonest hack or an autarkic socialist. Hopefully Obama is the former - it seems quite plausible - but that would still make President Obama an alarming prospect. As Lawson says:

"The trouble is that Barack Obama has now promised Americans that he will legislate in an attempt to prevent their jobs being lost to foreign competition. If he does not do so as President, they will feel betrayed. If he does so, it will be an even bigger betrayal."

This is an area where McCain has been excellent and taken real political risks. Notably, when he refused to pander to the Iowa corn lobby. I think on those grounds alone we, in the British centre right, should wish him well. Particularly if he is against an opponent who, on this issue and others, promotes truly disastrous policies.

Cross-posted from CentreRight.Com.

The unthinking environmentalist embrace of wind power

It won't come as much of a surprise that I think Tim is right on the money in his treatment of 'unthinking environmentalism'. Most 'green' policies are so poorly constructed they achieve very little at prohibitive cost. Plenty have been actively counterproductive.

Tim is right to give the DDT ban and biofuels subsidies centre stage. The human toll in the developing world is shocking. However, we don't need to look to the poor world to see how dangerous misconceived environmental policies can be.

The Renewables Obligation, CERT and the European Emissions Trading Scheme all increase the cost of energy. They are quietly constituting 8% of a household electricity bill, according to Ofgem (PDF). This hits the poor hardest (Chart 6.1, PDF) and, particularly, the elderly.

In the winter of 2006-07 statistics from the Office for National Statistics (XLS) show that there were 23,900 excess winter deaths in the United Kingdom. Anything that makes it more expensive to turn up the thermostat will increase the number of elderly people who take risks and will kill people.

The Renewables Obligation costs taxpayers and costs lives. The big winners are renewables firms. The Financial Times reported some of the figures earlier this year along with this telling quote:

"Peter Atherton, head utilities analyst at Citi Investment Research, said: “It’s a bonanza. Anyone who can get their nose in the trough is trying to."

What do we get in return for lining the pockets of renewables firms with vast amounts of money taken from the poorest taxpayers?

Even if you judge success by the amount of wind capacity the Renewables Obligation is clearly failing. The amount of wind capacity added in 2007 was about three quarters the amount built in 2006 (see the FT report linked above). That is shocking considering the massive scale of the subsidy. The basic problem is that wind power is doubly inefficient. It is financially and environmentally (in the old fashioned sense of the word) costly. It disrupts a great many landscapes for a given amount of output compared to conventional sources which makes getting planning permission for wind turbines particularly difficult. Short of centralising the planning process there isn't much the Government can do about that and it is stalling the development of UK wind power capacity.

Even if it could be made to work wind power is a deperately poor way of providing for our energy needs. Look at this graph (PDF), by the consultancy PB Power, showing the costs of different types of energy. Even compared to nuclear power (which probably needs something of a subsidy to be economical) onshore wind is twice as expensive and offshore wind is even more costly:

That makes wind a complete non-starter in any thinking energy policy that doesn't aim to massively impoverish the population at large. However, it gets worse, from a BBC report:

"We face many hours a year with more or less no wind," says Martin Fuchs, chief executive of one of Germany's biggest electricity grid operators, E.On Netz. "We can save only a very small number of conventional power stations."

Surges of wind-generated electricity risk overloading the grid, he adds, causing power blackouts."

European wind power turbines typically produce less than 20 per cent of their rated capacity.

It's important to note that too much power is sometimes as much of a problem as not enough. That's the problem with breathless articles like this one from the Telegraph celebrating wind power's 'good' days. Big countries that can't just sell the energy off at a loss like Denmark does risk causing blackouts. The 'rebuttal' from a wind power lobbyist in the next paragraph is very weak. Ordinary power plants don't regularly shut down unless we tell them to.

Serious thinking about energy policy leads you very quickly to one of two conclusions:

1) We aren't in a position to effect a practical transition to non-fossil fuel sources of power right now. Given that Britain produces a tiny proportion of world emissions and China, in particular, shows little willingness to impede its development in the name of restraining emissions our cuts won't achieve much anyway. We should work on adapting to the expected effects of global warming and investing in science to find a better to solution to the problem of providing low carbon dioxide emission power than the ones we have now.

2) We should replace the renewables obligation with an old fashioned non-fossil fuel obligation. This will slash the costs as you can then include nuclear power which is, as can be seen above, pretty cheap compared with the renewable technologies. You could get more low-emission power for much less cost to ordinary consumers and taxpayers.

Cross-posted from CentreRight.Com.

Ben Hur

Along with Gracchi and a few others I was at the Festival Hall last Saturday to see Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ - the 1925 silent, pre-Heston version - with the London Philharmonic Orchestra providing the score.

The experience was incredible. The live music sucks you into the emotions of the story in a way that a soundtrack will always struggle to. Just like with Metropolis I found the lack of dialogue

very easy to cope with. In some ways it is liberating and allows you to enjoy the visual and musical feast that the film and orchestra provide.

In scale this film is hard to parallel. Gracchi suggests that the cast may number in the tens of thousands and you can well believe it. Even Hero doesn't have the same mass of humanity in crowded scenes and this is long before computer animation provided a substitute for such large numbers of extras. When you see this number of people moving about you realise how far computer graphics still have to come. CG just isn't as credible as actual people even at a distance - I think it is the reduction in variety associated with a CG crowd that does it. Despite being over eighty years old this film felt incredibly tangible compared to many modern, rendered works.

I actually think that the film conveyed its message more effectively, and with less compromise, than Gracchi suggests. He argues that because Marcellus, Ben Hur's nemesis, is killed and his family are cured of leprosy the film has not been able to entirely reconcile itself to the Christian moral message that "forbearance [...] a confidence in eternal justice, [...] meekness, kindness, forgiveness no matter the slight and turning the other cheek" are the right path instead of "the pagan virtues of revenge and anger". I think Gracchi misses the film's message in that synthesis.

While Ben Hur does achieve his revenge over Marcellus it does nothing for him. He is instantly dissatisfied and complaining that his revenge has not brought his family back. Instead, his family are brought back thanks to their "confidence in eternal justice". This is the same way the same message is put across in the Lord of the Rings - not by having someone foresake violence but by showing a character who succeeds in the pagan fashion and finds the victory pyrrhic. I see no reason why this approach compromises the message at all.

Great Article on Colombia in the Washington Post

"There are two important countries at the north of South America. One, Colombia, has a democratic government that, with strong support from the Clinton and Bush administrations, has bravely sought to defeat brutal militias of the left and right and to safeguard human rights. The other, Venezuela, has a repressive government that has undermined media freedoms, forcibly nationalized industries, rallied opposition to the United States and, recent evidence suggests, supported terrorist groups inside Colombia. That U.S. unions, human rights groups and now Democrats would focus their criticism and advocacy on the former, to the benefit of the latter, shows how far they have departed from their own declared principles."

Just like Israel it looks like Colombia is being singled out not because it is particularly in the wrong but because the cause of human rights is being perverted as a means to attack those perceived as on the wrong political 'side'.

Iain Murray has a new blog and a new book

Iain Murray, one of the sharpest thinkers around - has a new book out. It keeps selling out on Amazon.co.uk but I think there are some copies on there now and I've got one ordered. If you're interested in learning about some Real Inconvenient Truths, environmental disasters created by the Left, get yourself a copy.

To discuss the issues raised by the book and to write about British politics Iain is launching his own blog. There are already some excellent posts up - go take a read.

Re: The Independent and biofuels

Peter responds to my charge that food security is a non-issue.  His essential argument is that while we're not going to go hungry there are still serious food security concerns as the price of food imports is likely to go up.

I stand by my statement that Britain had little trouble feeding her population during the war.  Let's consider the basic foodstuff, bread, in the first world war (where we started from smallest agricultural base).  Here's the scenario:

1)  Separated from the Continent and, crucially, Russia - a major grain exporter - that drops out of the world market.

3)  Importing four fifths of our grain at the start of the war.

4)  Submarine warfare making importing from the US difficult.

5)  Huge numbers of men enlisted from the farms into the army - this was the real reason that land girls were needed.

6)  All these conditions lasted for several years.

Did this imperil our security?  Not really.  There was a panic at one point in 1916 when it was feared food was running short which led to temporary rationing of some foods but not bread and there was never a real crunch.  In fact, the Germans - who had aimed for self-sufficiency in food before the war - might have gotten in more trouble as that meant more of their workforce worked in agriculture and, when they were enlisted in the army, that led to shortages (our blockade didn't help).  By contrast, Britain moving men out of manufacturing didn't imperil the food supply.

Short of another European land war there is little chance that we'll face similar constraints on our outside food supply again.  Remember that natural disasters damaging food production don't create the same imperative to localise food production.  The best way to avoid getting in trouble if the worst happens and ecological disasters threaten food supplies in a given country or region is to diversify your sources of food as much as you can.  That way the effect of particular regions suffering reductions in yields will be diluted.

So, it's not really about security.  The word "security" is only included because the "food security" lobby think they can break right-wingers' attachment to free trade if they invoke spurious security concerns.

Peter suggests it is actually about reducing food prices.  A few points on this:

1)  Forming economic policy in order to take advantage of expected changes in the terms of trade has a really bad history.  The idea that some products are going to get more expensive so you'd best start making them led a House of Lords report to condemn deindustrialisation under Thatcher (foundation of our economic success since the nineties).

2)  Short of actually going for autarky - which will make food cost more now just in the name of making it less of a shock if it costs more later - international food prices will still be the important thing for consumers.  British output will never be particularly significant for world prices in many foodstuffs.  Of course, some prices are heavily dependent on British output but those are necessarily the areas where our farmers already have a large domestic market share.

3)  If you want to improve food security and prevent prices going up the most important thing to do is increase yields.  As such, Peter's combining his fears of food insecurity with a love of "home-grown" and "organic" produce is something of a contradiction.  It's a lot easier to feed lots of people with good, old fashioned factory farming and as much genetic modification as you can fit on a chromosome.

4)  What does Peter think of biofuels?  If he does anything other than condemn them as folly right now then he doesn't really care about food security.

Cross-posted from CentreRight.Com

The Independent and biofuels

Mr. Eugenides has a must-read post exposing just how completely the Independent has turned around on the biofuel issue. In 2005 they were fervent supporters of biofuels and the new transport fuel obligation. Now, without the slightest embarassment, they are running a front-page on the mounting criticism of the new obligation from within the green movement and the human cost of buying up large amounts of agricultural output to replace petrol.

Massive subsidies for biofuels across the developed world are creating more and more human and ecological crises - and are pushing up food prices. This disaster is a testament to the dangers of listening uncritically to a green movement that too often fails to think seriously about the effects of its proposed measures. The Renewables Obligation is another example of a green policy that has seriously unpleasant side effects and fails to achieve its objectives as I set out in this blog for the TaxPayers' Alliance.

It is unlikely that, despite the clear evidence that biofuels are a dreadful idea at the moment, the policy will reverse. There are a series of uninspiring reasons why reversing these kinds of policies is hard but this, from the EU Environment Commissioner, is perhaps the most dismally unimpressive:

"There is no question for now of suspending the target fixed for biofuels," said Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.

"You can't change a political objective without risking a debate on all the other objectives,"

While I'm on the subject of environmentalists misunderstanding agricultural economics, Peter Franklin is completely wrong on food security which is largely a non-issue for Britain. We produce a pretty large share of our own food at the moment compared to the norm since the abolition of the Corn Laws. In the First and Second World Wars, for all the "Dig for Britain" rhetoric we had little difficulty feeding our population - in fact, diet is thought to have improved. Unless Peter really thinks there is going to be a greater challenge to our food supply than the U-Boats and economic demands of WW2 then there's little reason to worry about it. Britain can feed itself easily enough if it really needs to.

Cross-posteed from CentreRight.Com

In honour of Chris Dillow's relocation

This is a thought that has been occuring to me from time to time while reading Chris Dillow's blog for months now:

If I called Chris the Last Man incarnate, would he take it as a compliment?

After all, this is the man who said he wanted his epitaph to read:

"He made no difference."

If Chris is the Last Man, does that matter? After all, given how rarely I meet someone who can think outside the box of utilitarianism isn't everyone a Last Man nowadays?

The Human Rights Act and the struggle to combat Islamist terror

There is an excellent article over at Comment is Free discussing the bind that we have been gotten into by the Human Rights Act with an inability to effectively control or kick out dangerous Islamist terrorists.

I've said before that I think the real tragedy of Guantanamo bay is that it responded to a real problem in such a shoddy way. Terror suspects come from conditions similar to those of prisoners of war where it isn't really possible to gather evidence - as it is overseas in a conflict zone - but they are part of a conflict that won't have a clear end after which we can hand them back. That means that neither prisoner of war nor civilian law are really appropriate. Some new legal resolution was needed.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration didn't set about coming up with a real solution but instead came up with a shoddy ad hoc legal limbo.

We have similar problems with terror suspects here. They are part of a conflict so large and diffuse that ordinary criminal law struggles to cope. Too much of the evidence is from ongoing intelligence work. That means that we do need some kind of new legal synthesis. Unfortunately, one hasn't been provided and the courts have been loathe to consider any 'least bad' option.

Institutional Decadence

In today's Guardian we have yet more evidence that the Commons has, with a few honourable exceptions, become utterly emasculated and decadent.

Douglas Carswell, MP and contributor to this site, wrote, in the Mail on Sunday, that "speaker [Michael] Martin must go". This isn't, outside SW1, very controversial at all. Michael Martin is the speaker who has spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money in a vain attempt to prevent the public seeing the bills they've been paying for MPs' expenses. He is trying to keep MPs' expenses secret while there are serious concerns about his own use of the taxpayer's pound to pay taxi fares when his wife goes shopping. His spokesman resigned for giving "an inaccurate account" of these trips.

While some might disagree with Carswell's call for Martin to resign he has only echoed similar calls from groups outside parliament - including the TaxPayers' Alliance and former independent MP and war reporter Martin Bell. The call should hardly be a surprise or a shock.

However, the response today suggests that the Commons is trying to close ranks.

"[Denis] MacShane said yesterday that the public attack on Martin was part of a plot to discredit the government and parliamentary institutions. "David Cameron must take steps to rein in this campaign and he should discipline Mr Carswell," he said."

An MP should be disciplined for representing the views of his constituents and the public at large? MacShane has a nerve.

It gets worse:

"Tory whips were said to be likely to have "a quiet word" with Carswell, mainly to warn him such a public attack would be counterproductive and end up with him not being called to speak during debates."

A "quiet word" to warn that saying sensible things on an issue of great public concern is "counterproductive". What kind of pseudo-oligarcy do these people think they are running?

If they're worried about not being called during debates there are two options for the Conservatives:

1. If they all speak out then the Speaker can hardly refuse to call the entire opposition.



2. Grow a spine and stop being so pathetically easy to intimidate.

What will really be "counterproductive" is this new, shameful attempt to silence criticism of the Speaker. When the public rightly think that the Speaker is attempting a cover-up of the details of MPs' expenses the idea that a new cover-up is being launched to protect the Speaker himself will strike most as utterly contemptuous of the public that MPs are supposed to serve.

Cross-posted from CentreRight.Com

Judicial Aristocracy

Tim argues that British democracy is being undermined by judicial activism. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made a similar argument to the Times last year using the more poetic and, perhaps, informative term 'judicial aristocracy'. Tim is going to write to Dominic Grieve requesting clarification of the Conservative Party position on this issue. Unfortunately, this article by Fraser Nelson suggests that Grieve might take a different position.

There are a number of problems with British judicial activism:

1) An unnecessary sacrifice of democracy

Many nations have needed written constitutions and judicial power to curb majority tyranny. They're an imperfect tool, though. Constitutions can be circumvented and such 'safeguards' imply sacrificing the principle of rule by the demos to a significant degree. It is to our nations eternal credit that we haven't needed to make that sacrifice. We've done as well as any, and far better than most, without it. I see no need to sacrifice that great tradition now. The great threats to our liberty come not from an angry majority but unnacountable minorities whether in Europe or our own bureaucracy and political class.

2) Lawyers don't think like 'normal' people

Every profession comes with its own set of cognitive biases. A tendency among its practitioners to a particular way of understanding the world around them. These biases can affect the way people approach important debates. One example is that lawyers tend to be sceptical of deterrence.

A couple of generalisations: Every economist, if they're honest and believe in their discipline, believes in deterrence. We understand the world in terms of incentives and expect that setting up a powerful disincentive to being a criminal will, ceteris paribus, reduce the amount of criminality. We have very good empirical evidence that this is the case. By contrast, every lawyer, in their heart of hearts, thinks that the very idea of deterrence is unhelpful and, most of the time, pretty specious. They spend their entire career thinking in terms of individual cases. That's usually how they learn law and how they practice - one case at a time. The big picture isn't something they have any serious reason to look at and sentencing one person harshly just to affect the attitudes of others seems unjust.

These two disciplines sit at opposite ends of this crucial debate. Worse, we can't even talk to each other. Economists sound brutal and unrealistic to the lawyers, lawyers sound wooly-minded and sappy to the economists.

There is no infallible way of getting to the truth of the matter, which side is right. It is a decision that is rightly left to the people in a democracy as I set out in point one. Further, if the lawyers are given a priviliged position to change policy, beyond their ability to convince people, it can mean a massive bias against the right-wing position.

3) Weakening the defence of liberalism

Constitutions and the judges who enforce them cannot, themselves, defend liberalism. The populace can always ignore, change or pervert constitutional rules and disregard or replace judges. A constitution only has value if it has legitimacy. The American Constitution, and the power of judges to enforce it, isn't contested. People believe that free speech, for example, does deserve particular protection as a constitutional right. There is no such source of legitimacy for the British judiciary and they appeal to foreign documents such as the ECHR. This means that the judicial aristocracy actually weakens, by association, liberalism itself by association. The concept of "human rights" itself becomes thought of, by the population at large, as a foreign charter defending awful men on spurious grounds.

I've put these arguments to lawyers many times. The last is usually the most successful.

Cross-posted from CentreRight.Com

Tax evasion vs. tax avoidance

Tax evasion is rightly a crime and honest taxpayers should not have to subsidise a criminal minority. Equally, there are sensible measures - such as simplifying the tax system - that can be taken to reduce the extent to which people can plan their way around tax (and reduce the advantages accorded to those with expensive accountants).

However, we don't think that trying to blur the line between tax evasion (breaking the law in order to avoid paying tax) and tax avoidance (arranging your affairs, within the law, in a way that minimises your tax burden) is a good idea at all. There are a number of reasons why, in practice and economic theory, such schemes turn out poorly whether you attempt to clamp down on anti-avoidance through a grand General Anti-Avoidance Principle or by encouraging the HMRC to become extremely aggresive (as has happened in recent years).

However, the basic problem is that the people who pay the highest price are never the rich foreigners that many on the left like to set up as bogeymen. It is ordinary people. Ex-cabbies starting up a business who haven't done anything wrong but are bankrupted for 88p, for example. This morning we found this 1909 election poster from the excellent collection at the Bodleian library which illustrates the basic problem pretty beautifully:

Cross-posted from the TaxPayers' Alliance blog.

Does a politician's private life matter?

Tim sets out six factors that can help us to understand the relevance of a politicians' private life to his actions.

To my mind the crucial thing to remember is that we are in a representative democracy.  We can't judge politicians entirely on their policies because we are not just electing a manifesto but a set of oligarchs to rule for four to five years.  Politicians can ignore what they have promised in their manifesto.  Beyond that, they may be faced with conditions that policy could not be formed for before hand.  Trusting someone with that kind of power is a big deal, advocates of mixing in some purer democracy might argue it is too much, and it is quite understandable that people should want to know the character of the person they are giving so much authority.

I think that actually presents something of an argument for ideology in politics.  While ideology might be seen to corrupt people's decision making by introducing concerns other than a simple balancing of evidence and expectations it does at least make politicians predictable.  Even if you don't completely embrace a politicians ideology if they take it seriously you do at least know where you stand.

Finally, I have to quickly respond to Tim's particular dislike of indifference (he laments that people are less infuriated by that than by hypocrisy).  I actually think he is wrong on this.  It would be a real shame if the Right were to replicate the Left's weakness for unserious 'caring'.  The idea that, for example, even if someone's prescriptions for responding to climate change are lunatic it is, at least, good that they care cannot be something the Right accepts.

Cross-posted from CentreRight.Com

Apologies for my absence

Sorry for the lack of posts. I'm afraid I've been both very busy and short of the little ideas of which posts are made. The blog will recover soon enough, hopefully over the weekend.