Army advertising

Is accountancy fun? The Chairman of KPMG UK certainly makes it sound that way:

"I’ve been at KPMG for over 30 years and, broadly speaking, I’ve loved every, every minute of it. I think my experience, if I was to summarise it, is the sheer variety of experiences. I’ve had some wonderful clients, big clients, small clients, entrepreneurs, clients in trouble, clients doing extremely well. Every single size and shape, and in lots of different industries. I’ve had some wonderful people experiences. We’re a people organisation so there’s the sort of leadership and management challenges as you move up through the organisation, and I’ve had those challenges very early in my career and I’ve still got those challenges today."

On the other hand, this suggests it might be rather dull:



Neither account is exclusively accurate. It depends on who you are, the company or other organisation you join, when you join and innumerable other factors. You'll only really find out if it is for you after you've started - though you can get a pretty good idea before hand if you ask around. Is it some kind of unconscionable fraud that KPMG's chairman focusses on the positive? Of course not. It's staff advertising.

Yet, somehow when the Army - whose ability to recruit staff is a very public good - does the same, makes the positive case for a life in the Forces, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust decides (PDF) that is a great injustice. As Lawrence James points out, there is no shortage of voices telling a young person that life in the army will have its hard side. Movies about the horrors of war and a strong folk memory of the trenches that they are likely to have had reinforced in school, for example. There is no reason the Army should be expected to forgo advertising and suffer resulting shortages of personnel.

Being in the Forces can do wonderful things for a person. Had my grandfather not joined the Army - as a boy soldier no less - he would have been far worse off. I would probably be worse off. He had few skills having finished a misspent education at just fourteen. He could still have reached a respectable position but would probably not have had the opportunity that allowed him to progress to become an officer. Also, he would have missed out on the intangible benefits of a career that inculcated discipline and would not have had a quality, specially provided, education for his children. Without all those things it is quite possible my family would not have done nearly as well for themselves as they all have. There is nothing wrong with joining the Army and its recruiters should not feel guilty for trying to recruit the soldiers that do such an important service for their country.

It is necessarily harder to leave the Army than it is to leave many other careers after a certain point but the process is not instantaneous and a term of a few years is not forever. Of course, there are particular dangers but everyone knows that.

Some people may find that they do not enjoy the Army life, just as some people may discover that they hate accountancy. This isn't due to misleading recruitment ads but the fact that it is impossible to know what being a part of the Army is really like before you start. No matter how balanced the advertising that will always be the case.

The conclusion to Lawrence James' article sums up the study well:

"The trust’s report is as predictable as it is misjudged. An understanding of the values of the military world are absent, just as we would expect from a Quaker institution. One might as well ask a vegan to review the charcuteries of Paris."

Wars aren't short

Great article by Max Boot for the Wall Street Journal. He makes the very simple point that short and sharp wars are not the historical norm. He then sets out one interesting example of a long conflict, that between England and Scotland. Shorter wars are a creation of particularly determined European nation states more than anything.

As he says, this does recast Israel-Palestine. There is a solid argument that Americans, with a history of short wars, assume it is overdue to end. The reality could be that, regardless of whether the Palestinians have a state, this conflict will rumble on for decades yet.

This can be added to the list of myths about war that the War Nerd set out years ago: that wars involve battles, that you win by killing the enemy, that hi-tech beats lo-tech, that insurgents will quit and that everyone really wants peace. All these are myths. Understanding that brings home the real strategic challenges of the coming century.

Back

Sorry for my absence since Thursday. I've been moving myself back into London and the Internet connection here has been broken.

Jeremy Leggett strikes again

Some people accuse the Guardian of being mindlessly opposed to marketing. Well, those people are proved wrong every time Jeremy Leggett is given, for free, space in the Guardian to sell his industry. Last time, he was drawing ludicrous analogies to Spitfires. This time, he's mounting an incoherent attack on the Government's nuclear plans. It isn't worth fisking most of his article as he isn't writing very well and gets lost in inane chatter about consultations. He takes what should have been the central argument in his article, the superiority of renewable power to nuclear, as a given and I can't imagine anyone who isn't a renewable energy executive being convinced.

The article is only worth noting for this, incredible, section - which is a masterpiece of the Comment is Free genre:

"In March the EU agreed a target of 20% renewables in the energy mix; 27 leaders signed up, Blair among them. The EC costed the switch to renewables at €24bn to €31bn a year, assuming an oil price of $48 a barrel. At $78 there would be no additional cost. Before the year was out, oil almost hit $100."

Does he realise what that is saying? Those are estimates of the subsidy that will be required to make renewable energy work. If we are above the oil price at which renewable energy has 'costs' (i.e. costs more than running on oil) then there shouldn't be any need for a subsidy at all.

Leggett clearly thinks the EC estimate is credible or he wouldn't be citing it. Fantastic! Let's scrap the various subsidies to renewable power and let those fine people in the renewable power industry outcompete expensive, peaked oil.

Gracchi responds on the NHS and lifestyle choice

Gracchi has some criticisms of my post on the NHS and lifestyle freedom. I don't think any of his criticisms stand up to scrutiny. I'll take the risk of pulling some sections of his post out for brevity's sake. I'm sure he'll correct me if I've taken anything out of context or missed important arguments.

"Those who support the NHS and support drug legalisation today often overlap. Whereas those who want to privatise the NHS and support drugs being illegal often overlap as well."

This is certainly true. A prime example, that I mentioned in my post, is the Liberal Democrat party that both aspires to be liberal, in the libertine sense, and also to support the NHS. People are quite able to hold positions that make their other positions untenable in practice. They'll be frustrated if they ever try to put their policy platform into effect over the medium term but that's not a concern for a Liberal Democrat. Equally, there are plenty of reasons other than lifestyle liberalism to support NHS reform - better results for example. Gracchi misses the point I was making: not that supporting the NHS makes any given thinker less liberal with respect to lifestyles but that the existence of the NHS makes it harder to sustain lifestyle liberalism in practical politics.

His explanation for illiberalism is the 'yuck' factor. This could be important at the margin but I don't think it can really be the driving factor behind bans. If it were why would there be a new crusade against the relatively attractive behaviour of middle class drinking?

People need to rationalise their beliefs and the 'yuck' factor therefore requires rational justification. I've seen, countless times, the cost to the NHS of a particular behaviour used as justification for a prohibition on that behaviour, a ban on advertising or a new tax. Even if some people are just disgusted by the obese and using the cost to the NHS to rationalise the ability to do so is still important. Rational debate is still relevant to politics even if it is, too often, bent out of shape.

"Matt misunderstands wilfully Mill's argument and consequently misinterprets the zone of Mill's freedom. Mill's concept of freedom is very tricky to understand- but if it were as Matt suggests inclusive of all actions that affected others in any way, the area of free rights would be tiny. Afterall all our actions in some ways effect others- even actions taken in complete privacy- a choice of job afterall effects others sometimes more than a choice of lifestyle does (even in a system with an NHS)."

This seems to be an argument that I should be wrong rather than an argument that I am wrong. Gracchi's criticism is the one that makes Mill's sphere rather weak in theory. However, the harm principle, as summed up by Mill himself, is pretty much exactly how I expressed it:

"The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

It is highly imperfect. All of our decisions do affect others in some way. If I am unhealthy and die as a result then no matter the healthcare system others will be affected as they will feel bad, if only for a short while. However, that weakness has not prevented the harm principle becoming vital to effective liberalism. Non-financial externalities that affect friends, family and other close acquaintances tend to be socially internalised in a manner described by the Coase theorem. If I live in an unhealthy fashion and it risks my health those who care for me risk an emotional loss. However, their closeness to me allows them to influence my decisions. Whose mother doesn't check that they're eating well and hassle them if they're not? The more people care the more they will socially police behaviour.

These kinds of strategies allow for the harm principle to function despite its theoretical weaknesses. As a result, an approximated version of Mill's sphere, allowing choices that have societal effects smaller than a certain magnitude, is an important popular justification for liberalism. It is the best simple guide to what the liberal position is in the first place. It is what people mean when they say "it's none of your business".

The NHS makes people's decisions over diet, smoking and drink, and a massive host of other choices, the business of everyone other Briton. The fat man in Glasgow concerns me because I will contribute to paying if he becomes unwell but there are few practical ways for me to influence the health behaviours of him and millions of others socially and without enlisting the power of the state.

We might still allow people some unhealthy choices, taking a stressful job for example, but perhaps that is just the way the societal cost/benefit analysis plays out? We don't respect people's right to take a stressful job - it is just good for us if they do.

"Genes matter as much as environmental factors- would Matt accept a system in which companies were allowed access to our genetic code and set different premiums based on that for various people, sometimes prohibitive premiums."

People don't choose their genes. That means you can't incentivise people. It makes the public policy debate completely different to the one I was addressing. Being genetically predisposed to poor health is more analagous to having a pre-existing condition or being old than to eating an unhealthy diet or smoking. There is an interesting debate to be had over whether insurance companies should be allowed to take account of things like genetic predispositions but none of the logic in my original post pertains to that debate at all.

"What about such premiums actively discouraging people for example from performing various important jobs- take for example those who volunteer to be part of the royal lifeboat association (something that involves them in great risk for a real public good and for free)- that would incur them a higher premium is that fair- the same thing might be said about special constables."

These would not be among the unhealthy behaviours that you would want to allow providers of compulsory social health insurance to attach a price to - just as it isn't one of the activities that might, under Government proposals, get people denied NHS treatment. I don't think this flaw is critical even if you want to implement a system that allows insurers to present higher premiums for any reason at all but, for the purposes of the debate we're having right now, it just isn't relevant. There is no reason why the slope, allowing certain information about health behaviours to affect insurance premiums, should be so slippery that any case for greater flexibility is a case for allowing perfect information.

The NHS cannot properly incentivise healthy behaviours and creates a very real imperative and justification for lifestyle illiberalism. A reformed healthcare system need not create those pressures for a less liberal society. I hope this post has helped to flesh out why.

If you go down to the woods today...

Cry of existential affirmation to greet the New Year or bad movie in-joke? You decide...



Went on quite a fun little trip yesterday. First, Baconsthorpe Castle which was nice but a little too small and ruined to make a full day out. Then, on the way back, traipsing around Thetford Forest causing trouble.

The NHS and lifestyle choice

Threats to deny NHS care to those who don't maintain a healthy lifestyle are a paper tiger. We're not going to see smokers, the overweight and drunkards dying in the street with Gordon Brown standing over them wagging his finger and saying "look at the NHS Constitution". Even if the politicians were hard headed enough to do it, which they aren't, they'd struggle to bring the medical profession along with them.

The only thing that might actually happen is the denial of certain forms of treatment - particularly expensive treatments. Even that probably can't be institutionalised as their are too many borderline cases. Smoking aside, most lifestyles will contribute to health risks instead of obviously causing a condition and in uncertain cases it will be hard to deny treatment. Consider the pretty common case of a man who is somewhat overweight but not morbidly obese and also has a stressful job. We wouldn't want to punish someone for having a stressful job so it would be a moral nightmare to deny that man treatment. Cases like that will be very, very common.

That means decisions over whether to deny treatment will have to be, from the point of view of the public, highly arbitrary. The threat of denying NHS treatment is too idle, too vague and too uncertain to have much of an effect on incentives. It can't get around the problem that a taxpayer funded healthcare system makes each person's lifestyle choices a public good or bad.

Now, every healthcare system that pools risk faces this problem to a certain extent. If you have a compulsory social insurance model and mandate that all insurance policies are available to everyone (as the Dutch do, for example) so that no one is going to be left without treatment and the vulnerable (thanks to age or existing conditions) are looked after you might also wind up subsidising unhealthy lifestyles. However, there is a key difference.

When individuals, rather than taxpayers, are paying for their health insurance it should be possible to allow adjustments in their premiums for healthy behaviours. As Wat Tyler describes this is already happening in the private health insurance market. It doesn't face any of the problems that I've mentioned above and prevents unhealthy behaviours imposing a cost on the health conscious.

Sin taxes are a clumsy substitute that have to make do without price signals (the level of tax is arbitrary whereas the correct level for lifestyle compensation in an insurance fund can be discovered by a market process). They are an easy way to raise revenue rather than a serious attempt to internalise the externalities associated with poor health. They will always be inferior to a solution that stops unhealthy lifestyles being an externality.

Pooling the costs of bad health and turning lifestyle into a public good is a problem for the NHS that leaks into the rest of public policy, turning it in a distinctly illiberal direction. There are few individual choices that don't have some kind of impact on a person's health. Unhealthy behaviour is controlled in an ever more draconian manner through taxes, regulation and outright bans. The Millian sphere (the set of decisions that don't affect others and should be left to individuals) is always unstable but completely dissapears with socialised healthcare. Liberalism becomes almost entirely untenable.

One quick aside: If the Liberal Democrats were an intellectually serious bunch they'd take this issue very seriously. The contradiction between healthcare socialism and lifestyle liberalism is one more example of the kind of issue that makes an attempt to marry their attachment to Britain's socialist institutions with a notional commitment to 'liberalism' a complete farce.

Liberalism isn't just undermined by the real externalities to unhealthy behaviour, created by socialised healthcare, that I have discussed so far. It is also politically expedient to exagerrate the problems associated with unhealthy lifestyles. The NHS, as it is currently organised, just can't deliver the performance that people expect and that would warrant the huge amounts of taxpayers' money that politicians have spent. That is a political nightmare for any political party that can't countenance calling for serious reform. They can dilute perceived responsibility for that institutional failure by announcing measures relating to people's lifestyle.

That is how we should understand this new threat to deny care to people living unhealthy lifestyles. It isn't even a serious but vain attempt to address the problem that the NHS makes everyone's health a public good. Instead, it is another attempt to avoid criticism for the ongoing failure to deliver quality healthcare and value for money in the NHS.

Grizzly Man

I watched Grizzly Man last night. Gracchi's review of the film is superb and there's not a lot I'd like to add to it. He gets to the core of the film with admirable clarity and perceptiveness. There's little sense repeating him except to confirm that this film is well worth watching.

All I'd add is that I found the footage of Timothy Treadwell (the Grizzly Man of the title) with the foxes more distinctive than either Gracchi or Werner Herzog (the filmmaker) did. The bears did seem totally uncaring with their only real reactions to Treadwell a hostility if he got too close and, finally, killing him when they were hungry. By contrast, I do think there was a genuine reaction from the foxes. They are animals with a social instinct that, as we do with dogs, humans can, I guess, become a part of. At times he did seem to have formed a connection with them more genuine than the one with the bears that were more central for the film and Treadwell himself.

I would guess that the foxes weren't enough because the relationship was more genuine. As Gracchi says Treadwell wasn't after an authentic, reciprocal relationship but something unreal. He found love that could not be requited safer. While the relationship with the fox was not real in the sense that human relationships are I still get the sense he preferred the complete fantasy of his relationship with the bears.

The Closing of the American Mind

I've just finished reading Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind - just twenty years after it was written. While its title and content is directed towards Americans Harry Mount is right to argue that the disease now afflicts us and all the Western nations.

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.

This isn't a book to discuss in one post and I'm sure it will be brought up frequently on this blog in the coming months but what I thought I'd note right now is how it relates to Dalrymple. Theodore Dalrymple's social conservatism has been a frequent topic of mine over the last year and relates in a very interesting way to Bloom's work. Dalrymple discusses (most effectively in this essay - which I will keep linking to until I'm satisfied every one of this blog's readers has read it) how the relativism of the elite creates desperate social problems for the disadvantaged.

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.

The Economist on the changing nature of equality

This is brilliant. The whole article is worth reading but this section illustrates the point they're driving at:

"You can see this levelling at work in markets for transport and appliances. You no longer need be a Vanderbilt to own a refrigerator or a car. Refrigerators are now all but universal in America, even though refrigerator inequality continues to grow. The Sub-Zero PRO 48, which the manufacturer calls “a monument to food preservation”, costs about $11,000, compared with a paltry $350 for the IKEA Energisk B18 W. The lived difference, however, is rather smaller than that between having fresh meat and milk and having none. Similarly, more than 70% of Americans under the official poverty line own at least one car. And the distance between driving a used Hyundai Elantra and a new Jaguar XJ is well nigh undetectable compared with the difference between motoring and hiking through the muck. The vast spread of prices often distracts from a narrowing range of experience."

Combine this with the fact that the new income inequality is driven by differentials in skills, as set out brilliantly by Becker, and it should become clear that very different policies are in order. The Economist's arguments suggest that we can take a long-term approach to relieving poverty - there is not a driving need for relief right now. Becker's suggest that improving human capital can bring the poor out of poverty - there is not some other problem keeping the poor from improving their condition.

All that suggests that creating the social and institutional conditions for the poor to improve their human capital is the right way forward. Those who see benefit spending as the way to end poverty should think again.

Misplaced self-righteousness

This, via Iain Dale, is full of misplaced self-righteousness. It assumes that fixed term parliaments can only be opposed by those who are "spineless and self-important".

"The Case" on the website of the campaign for Fixed Term parliaments consists of a single deeply flawed article. Unless there is some masterly treatise elsewhere that neither Iain Dale, the campaign for fixed terms nor the Our Kingdom blog have felt fit to link to we'll have to assume they don't have a better case. If they don't then they are astonishingly arrogant to think that anyone who disagrees with them must have some moral failing. Either that or Anthony Barnett's brain is on holiday.

Sad news from Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto wasn't perfect. There are few saints in any politics as troubled as Pakistan's. However, she was a democrat and a moderate and her murder by extremists is a blow to Pakistan's better nature. Her death marks a sad end to a troubling year for Pakistan.

In the end

I always find films and books concerned with the death of a society fascinating. One of my favourite histories is Runciman's description of the fall of Constantinople. I loved Children of Men as much as any film I've ever seen - although my interpretation of it might not be what the film maker intended. I think that when such stories are handled well the characters' responses can tell us things about how we respond to external social shocks. They also beg deep questions about the direction our own society is going in.

As such, the Telegraph's review of I Am Legend is dissapointing. It sounds like the film has a great start considering questions of what someone does if their society dies, how the bee copes without the hive, but then degenerates into an unspectacular zombie film. I'll still go and see it, though, and report back.

Update: The Telegraph's review is basically right. I think it makes too much of the difference between the early stages of the film and the end though. All the content, through to the end, relating to the disaster and his survival alone is good but never quite engrossing enough to be great. There isn't anywhere near the emotional power or incredible style of Children of Men but it's interesting and worth watching. The monsters are lame but they mostly function as a nameless and unseen threat so their offensiveness is limited. All in all, I'd probably be more positive about this film than the Telegraph was and it only really suffers when you compare it to the masterpiece that was Children of Men.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

All our potential

Fraser Nelson has a brilliant post on the CoffeeHouse which sets out the tragic number of deaths among the old each winter. Excess mortality was 23,900 in 2006-07 and Norway - despite hardly being the warmest of places - typically has just over half the rate we do. There is a political conclusion that should be taken from this: measures like the Climate Change Levy, Emissions Trading Scheme and Renewables Obligation that increase the price of energy have a hefty human cost. However, I'd like to focus on a more philosophical question.

Nelson's central point is that we just don't give the deaths of pensioners the attention we should. I don't think this is merely a matter of fashion; it isn't just that other political issues have more partisan potential.

Instead, there is a cognitive bias created by the utilitarianism of the modern discourse. In modern politics we're all thinking in terms of the greatest happiness of the greatest number and approach each policy recommendation longing to ask 'how many utils?'

When we try to assess the value of saving a life we do the same and think in terms of the number of utils lost. Years of Potential Life Lost is the translation of this concept into terms that can be applied to healthcare debates. It is usually understood as the number of years that the deceased could - had they lived - have expected to live. It is the utilitarian opportunity cost to dying - the life you might otherwise have lived.

To make calculations simpler it is usually just life expectancy minus age at death. It is then often time discounted as years of life (just like monetary sums) are more valuable when we don't have to wait as long for them. Even if years of life in the future are discounted at 3 per cent - as the Americans apparently think it should be - the deaths of old people aren't going to be judged nearly as important as those of the young.

That might not seem outrageous. To a certain extent it reflects a quite ordinary moral intuition that it is somewhat more tragic when someone dies with their life ahead of, rather than largely behind, them. I think that Atonement did a great job of portraying an opportunity costs-based understanding of the tragedy of death (I'm worried I'm the only one who took that to be the film's central emotional message). Its final scenes portrayed what could have been if the couple the story revolves around had lived and this gave a real tragedy to their unnecessary deaths. However, in my view this principle is taken too far by the modern policy debate and explains the callousness with which the old are treated.

To get your around why this concept can be so toxic imagine applying it to another group: the poor. Someone living in Calton - near the centre of Glasgow - has a life expectancy of 54. I'm not sure what the life expectancy of someone from my socio-economic group is but it could well be over eighty. At 24 that means a significant difference in our Years of Potential Life Lost if we die. The utils cost if I'm allowed to die unnecessarily is significantly higher. I'm less likely to die at a relatively young age from some other cause and so have a greater expected life in front of me. I don't think that the ONS revision of its productivity figures for healthcare to take account of rising incomes is, in principle, very far from this at all.

Many economists are under the impression that policy makers don't really 'get' opportunity costs. I think that might be wrong. Perhaps policy is predicated on opportunity costs, combined with radical utilitarianism, far more than it should be?

Montaigne described the purpose of philosophy as being to prepare us for the horror of dying - a particular terrifying moment. He described this as an alternative to the viewpoint of Cicero who saw the purpose of philosophy in preparing people for death - the finality. Montaigne's view might provide us with an alternative reason why healthcare should try to avert death.

We should try to stop people dying because of the direct human tragedy of the process of death no matter how painless. While we will all have to die at some point there is still a very real imperative to spare people when we can. What happens next is a matter for fate, chance or God (take your pick).

If we can balance our opportunity costs understanding of death with a more humanitarian concern that people should avoid the mental horror of dying then we might, as a society, attach more priority to care for the elderly.

Man of the Year

Iain is right, it should have been Patreus.




I don't think many of us really saw what has been a substantial turn around in Iraq coming. Who would have thought, before the surge began, that we could ever see a sub-headline like this one in the Guardian: "Attacks plummet as Shias join Sunnis in neighbourhood patrols to tackle militants and reunite communities".

Things aren't perfect. Political progress is elusive and there are still some very unpleasant sectarian confrontations going on. It could still go wrong but there is now a very real possibility of a decent outcome in Iraq. That's an amazing achievement.

Germany defends its carmakers

The BBC reports fury in Germany at EU proposals to restrict emissions from new cars:

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel has opposed European Union (EU) plans to cut pollution from new cars, saying it was "not economically favourable".

She said the move would burden Germany and its carmakers disproportionately."

It would be easy to get up on a high-horse about double standards and a German government unwilling to pay the price for action to meet international targets to cut emissions that they've been so active in pushing for. That would be a mistake, though.

The German government should be defending the German national interest. A democratic government should look out for the interests of its constituents. In fact, we should be asking very serious questions about why our government cares so little about our own interests.

There are two key examples here.

The first example is the Emissions Trading Scheme where countries were allowed to allocate themselves emissions allowances. This way of doing things obviously encouraged every country to set the highest allowance they could. Every country then did just that except for the UK. We set tough limits and Open Europe found (PDF) that we ended up paying £470 million in subsidy to other European states. No emissions were cut at all.

The second example is the EU Landfill Directive which was obviously going to hit disproportionately at Britain as we recycle less than other European states. Hated bin taxes are blamed on the European Union but our Government never seriously opposed the Directive that makes them necessary.

With our overly centralised politics public services monopolise the national debate and squeeze out foreign policy. As few votes are at stake politicians attend to their own foreign policy agendas rather than the priorities of the public. Being popular at international conferences makes them feel good but leaves us worse off. It would be better if our politics was a little more German in this regard, if we learnt from L'exception Francaise.

Cross-posted from the TaxPayers' Alliance blog.

Sinclair's Musings - pissing off all the right people since 2006

Well - it appears I've rather upset the MPAC. They don't link to my original fisk and have failed to respond to my charge that they are idiots who don't even know much about Islam itself let alone the wider world. Tony Sharp is also the target for some of their incoherent ire. Tony can handle himself but suffice to say that he is entirely correct that Policy Exchange's attempt to identify an extremist infiltration of British Islam does not constitute an attack on British Islam itself.

Let's go over their charges against my fisk:

"This level of ignorance is one thing but to step from that into the blatantly paranoid hysteria of some nut called Matthew Sinclair is another. The crazed lunatic, walking the streets of a major political party right now, actually claimed we were trying to ‘murder’ the 8 sufi ‘hate preachers,’ who were caught red handed forging receipts, by simply stating we wanted to know who they were!

If the Muslims have an extremist problem its nothing to the one going on within some segments of the conservative party! Or the one going on in this nuts head – now that’s extreme! He is not just a danger to the Muslims, the good standing of the conservative party but worse to himself. Any one who can read words to the effect of ‘let’s find these dodgy Sufi’s’ on a Muslim website, have a panic attack, have to change his underwear, and then start to dial 999 screaming ‘they are out to kill the Sufi’s’ to some poor police officer, is either on drugs or so out of his mind he should be sectioned!"

Lots of invective there. Very little argument - I certainly haven't even thought about calling the police, although I'd think about doing so for protection if I was one of the researchers - except that I shouldn't read their call to "find these dodgy Sufi's" to be an incitement to violence. The problem is that MPAC don't give any other reason why they want to know "every last detail" about these people.

If this happened in isolation it might be taken as innocent curiosity. That they called their attempt to find the researchers a "hunt" would raise some questions even then. However, they are calling for a "hunt" for researchers they accuse of trying "to destroy their own community" after a series of other frightening examples of extremists attacking people they perceive as critics of Islam. Soldiers in Windsor had their property damaged and been forced to move. Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are a couple of famous examples of people who have faced threats of death and attempted assasinations. Rushdie's Japanese translator and Theo van Gogh are famous examples of that threat being acted upon. There are many more examples out there. We cannot naively give the benefit of the doubt to people like MPAC when they go hunting their enemies.

There is a savage irony to their implication that I'm a coward. If I were easily scared I'd have kept quiet, they'd have silenced someone and infringed free speech. That's the existential challenge to our values that these people pose.

Misunderstanding Northern Rock

There are two points surrounding yesterday's events at Northern Rock that really need to be cleared up.

First, the BBC's Business Editor, Robert Peston, is very enthusiastic about Bradford & Bingley's offer to help out at Northern Rock:

"In the worst case of the Rock being nationalised, it could take assets off the Treasury's hands and lessen the very substantial burden and risks for all of us as taxpayers,"

So, Bradford & Bingley are going to take a load of the rather unreliable Northern Rock debt off the taxpayers' hands?  How good of them!  Should Bradford & Bingley shareholders be up in arms about their company's directors using company funds to bail out the Treasury?

Probably not.  The truth is that Bradford & Bingley's directors wouldn't be looking at buying Northern Rock Assets if that move didn't have the potential to be a good deal for the company.  Not because they're bad people but because they have a legal and moral duty to look out for the interests of their shareholders.  So, unless we think the Treasury has somehow outwitted them - an idea so far fetched it would have to be retrieved from the moon - the proper question to ask is:  how are Bradford & Bingley going to get value from a deal for Northern Rock assets?

The answer is obvious.  They'll take some of the best assets - the most reliable mortgages - at a low price.  We'll have a smaller liability but the range of assets that Northern Rock will be left with to pay off its massive debts to the taxpayer will be more than commensurately smaller.

This is particularly worrying thanks to the other big new Northern Rock story.  We've now guaranteed to wholesale lenders that they won't lose money on Northern Rock.  There are two important things to notice here:

1)  Taxpayers are now covering almost all the downside risk.  This is so close to nationalisation that the final taking of the bank into public ownership is increasingly of totemic, rather than material, importance.

Research into privatisation (PDF) for the Competitive Enterprise Institute by Eli Lehrer and Iain Murray seeks to redefine the concept of privatisation and nationalisation in terms of who bears the downside risk as the question "who will lose money if it goes under" is often more important to incentives and real control than nominal ownership.  If we accept Lehrer and Murray's analysis then Northern Rock is already pretty much nationalised.

2)  We've effectively been booted way down the queue of creditors looking to get paid in the event of Northern Rock going under.  When its assets are sold the wholesale lenders will now need to be paid, in order to satisfy the new guarantee, before we are.  With Northern Rock's mortgage book in doubt and plenty of existing claims on its assets - even before any Bradford & Bingley stripping - we should have very little confidence it will be possible to get taxpayers all of their money back.

All in all, the last forty-eight hours have brought a lot of worrying news for taxpayers.

Cross-posted from the TaxPayers' Alliance blog

Fisking the MPAC

This article (via ConservativeHome) made me more than a little angry:

"You would have to be sitting in a darkened room repeating the name of Allah since 7/7 to be unaware that the new front against Muslims by the Government is
being led by Sufi cults."

Since 7/7? Why exactly is that the date used here as the start of the "front against Muslims"?

Are they acknowledging that violent extremism is the root cause of the problems here, rather than some "Zio-Con" (their term, obviously not mine) conspiracy? If so then I'd congratulate them on the one statement in this entire article that isn't utterly absurd.

Referring to Sufism as a cult is so utterly offensive that if a non-Muslim said it there'd be understandable cries of Islamaphobia. Here it is though coming from the "Muslim" (which apparently means all the Muslims the author likes) Public Affairs Committee.

"It’s an old Russian trick, they used Sufi sects to pacify the Mujahadeen who were fighting for their freedom from occupation. These Sufi cults taught them to forget the world and be content sitting in darkened rooms repeating the name of Allah over and over and over again. The British used it in India too, creating groups who focused on every minor ritual and repeated the words ‘no politics’ over and over and over again…anyone guess who they are?"

Wait. So the same "cults" that are "leading the new front against Muslims" are in fact distinguished by a refusal to engage in politics? Congratulations you idiots you've just completely contradicted yourselves in the space of two pretty simple paragraphs.

The idea that the British "created" Sufism is hard to sustain if the Principles of Sufism were written in the 15th century. Is Wikipedia leading me astray or do MPAC actually know nothing about the history of Islam itself?

"The Sufi Muslim council are the recognisable face of the new Government appointed cults. However there are many Sufi groups operating throughout Britain doing work to pacify the Muslim mind."

The choice of the term "pacify" as their pejorative is unfortunate here. Isn't Islam supposed to be the religion of peace? Is the MPAC's criticism that the Sufis are making Muslims more Muslim?

"Recently these individuals belonging to these undercover cults took one step too far. They teamed up with Policy Exchange a pro Israel right wing, neo conservative think tank, which has gone out of its way to dig dirt on the Muslim community.

One of its attacks led to front page news and headlines across the UK when it claimed that a quarter of all mosques sold ‘hate literature’."

This is the real moment of close to clinical brain death stupidity. Are they seriously responding to a pretty centrist think tank's claim that British Islam has a problem with extremists by ranting about undercover cults co-operating with Zio-Cons? Perhaps they were upset that Policy Exchange were getting in the way of the MPAC's goal of becoming the number one body proving that British Islam has an extremism problem.

"However as we have been reporting on this website, Newsnight uncovered that these Sufi researchers had in fact forged the receipts to prove the case."

This article for the Guardian sets out the real extent of the possible problem with Policy Exchange's work. The allegations are serious but at most they suggest that 20 per cent rather than 25 per cent of mosques have a problem with extremist literature being sold on the premises. The core political message of the report still holds true and is proved prescient daily by the MPAC and their ilk anyway.

To be honest, I wouldn't have bothered rebutting these lunatics. Evolution clearly forgot them so I think it is fair enough that I should too. However, this section changed my mind:

"These Sufi researchers then fled the country to Mauritania for what the Zio-Con think tank called ‘religious purification’!

MPAC now wants to find out exactly who these Sufis are, who are working for the Zio-Con think tank. There were 8 Sufis who worked for them, and all apparently have gone abroad to hide while the storm is raging. They worked, according to Policy Exchange for over a year on the project, so some Muslim out there must have come into contact with them.

Who are they, what are their backgrounds … MPACUK will dig deeper and expose every last detail of the Sufis who tried to destroy their own community.

If you know who they are – please write in and we will expose these men and women for all the Muslim community to see. Write in now and let us do what the incompetent idiots in the Mosque should be doing, protecting our community."

This is a direct attempt to recreate the murder of Theo van Gogh. These people are not just wrong and ignorant. They're dangerous. Their nasty work threatens brave people with death. Of course, it isn't our job to enforce the law upon them if they have broken it by inciting violence.

However, some kind of campaign of peaceful resistance is in order. They've put their e-mail address there for those who wish to lynch by proxy. I reckon we subscribe them to some innapropriate newsletters.