The cost of crime

Today a new report I've written titled The Cost of Crime (PDF) has been released. It uses Home Office studies of the national cost of crime, and their estimates of the average cost per incident, along with crime statistics provided by police forces in response to Freedom of Information requests (unfortunately...).

It follows on from a paper (PDF) released during the mayoral race with calculations for the London boroughs but expands coverage to the entire country. The results are shown on a map to the right (darker = worse, blue = no usable response). The clearest pattern is that urban areas suffer the worst cost of crime.

I think the link between various behaviours (likelihood of driving to work is another example) and population density is both obvious and underappreciated. Greens trying to get people out of cars would, if they looked at the numbers, quickly have to conclude that the obvious solution is to move everyone into cities. Yet, that isn't exactly a proposal you'll hear a lot of.

The cost of recorded crime, £275 per person, discovered by our study is high enough that the even the low crime areas, like Surrey at £194 should clearly be aiming to cut crime rates; particularly when you remember that recorded crime is thought to be just a fraction of total crime. Direct, democratic control of police forces needs to be put in place so that the police can spend their time fighting crime rather than trying to satisfy the bureaucracy. For more on the subject either read the report or see this video produced for Friction TV:

John Redwood, coal and co-operatives

I had a bit of a debate with Chris Dillow (a lot of my posts at the moment seem to involve responding to Chris, this might continue while Comment is Free is on an even weaker than usual streak) a while back about large firms, co-operatives and the divide between them. There are two points he made that I meant to respond to:

"It is true that big firms are typically publically quoted. But this is because they have huge capital requirements which can only be met by external shareholders. But these are only a minority of all firms."

Absolutely. My argument is that the questions of whether a firm should be owned by workers and whether they should be run by managers have more than one right answer. Big firms with senior managers are not inherently irrational and the products of egos and ideologies, as Chris has sometimes implied.

Also:

"And what Matthew hasn't done is successfully controvert the idea that public services - schools and hospitals - should become some type of co-operative organizations."

That's the last thing I'd want to do. Schools, in particular, seem fine candidates to be operated as co-operatives (with a relatively low capital requirement). I don't think I'm the only right-winger who is quite willing to endorse the co-operative model when it seems successful, here's John Redwood writing today on the coal industry:

"Some looked nostalgically back to the age of the nationalised industry, without any great belief that the present Labour government would want to revisit that approach. It is curious how nationalisation still has a grip on their hearts, when the nationalised industry under governments of both parties so let down the mining communities. The 1970s Labour government was in the business of closing mines and sacking miners, just as the subsequent Conservative government was. Each of those governments did so on the advice and at the command of the nationalised industry, which systematically failed to make mining economic enough to sustain a decent sized industry in the UK.

The miners of Tower Colliery proved the Coal Board wrong when they took over their mine and worked it profitably when the Coal Board management had wanted to close it on the grounds that it was uneconomic. Why would we want to go back to management like that? Isn’t the future a more mechanised, safer industry where those who mine the coal share in the profits?"

The question of how a firm should be organised, not to mention why they exist in the first place, is interesting and the answer varies with circumstances. Firms are organised in different ways in response to differing technologies, resource endowments, capital requirements, labour markets, consumer tastes and government regulations - among other things. The best instincts of an economic liberal scream at them to love the sheer variety of it all.

James McGrath

I think Sunny Hundal and Chris Dillow have this wrong. Racists do tell people to go home, and they are being racist when they do so, but that does not mean that everyone who says "well, leave then" is being racist.

Chris argues that only certain groups (and the implication is, certain races) are ever told that they should leave:

"When Melanie Phillips bemoans Britain’s moral decay, no-one replies: “well go to Israel then”. And this would be a foul thing to say."

I can come up with another example: sensible lefties wouldn't tell Milton Friedman, in exasperated tones, to just move to Hong Kong.

Chris draws the implication that the divide is a racist one:

"In applying the meme so selectively, the impression is created that some people are less than full members of society - that their ties to the country are weak, and that they wouldn’t be missed if they left. This is certainly inegalitarian."

I don't think the divide is always based on race. Here are a couple of groups that I have definitely heard told "if you don't like it, just leave":

1. The rich. I have definitely heard lefties say, when it is argued that businesses and the wealthy may move abroad in the face of higher taxes, that they should just leave. The Toynbee Tendency.
2. Commies. Plenty of middle class, white Socialists were told "why don't you just move to Russia" by enthusiastic conservatives.

It isn't a divide based on race but whether the person's complaint is felt to be legitimate. While - as Chris Dillow says - a politician should want to appeal to all their constituents sometimes someone just seems a little too unreasonable. Now, applying that to entire races and writing them off as you have no interest in reconciling them with your country and beliefs could be described as racist but McGrath definitely isn't doing that. See the context:

"McGrath was far from politically correct, David-Cameron-new-cuddly-Conservative Party, when I pointed out to him a critical comment of Voice columnist Darcus Howe that the election of “Boris Johnson, a right-wing Conservative, might just trigger off a mass exodus of older Caribbean migrants back to our homelands”.

He retorted: “Well, let them go if they don’t like it here.” McGrath dismissed influential race commentator Howe as ‘shrill’."

He isn't writing off any actual ethnic group at all. The people he has no desire to appeal to aren't actual Carribean migrants but the hypothetical group summoned up by Darcus Howe who can no longer stand to live in London for no reason other than the election of a right-wing Conservative. It isn't him who has conjured up the idea that non-whites and right-wingers just can't get along but Howe.

McGrath isn't writing off ethnic minorities - he's simply exasperated by Darcus Howe's suggestion that ethnic minorities write off right-wingers. He isn't a racist, wasn't saying anything racist and shouldn't have been fired.

The conspiracy to coerce British Muslim women

This article (via DK), from the Telegraph, is based on warnings from the spokesman on forced marriages for the Association of Chief Police Officers and is absolutely horrifying. It sets out the range of ways in which unfortunate women, normally of Pakistani descent, are trapped by their families, communities and the public services that should protect them into relationships that at best they do not want and at worst are incredibly abusive.

Recently the Washington Post ran an incredible article about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's attempts to prevent British citizens essentially being abducted into marriages in Pakistan. It alerted me to the scale of a problem that I had always assumed was far rarer:

"The Forced Marriage Unit operates out of an office on the edge of Trafalgar Square in London and rescues hundreds of women every year. Many of the 4,000 calls it receives each year involve cases in the United Kingdom, but the
unit has diplomats in embassies around the world on standby for overseas rescues.

[...]

The teenage girl sat in Salimi's office, wearing a black niqab that covered everything but her sad brown eyes.

"I don't want to hide; I want to be free, open," she said in a pronounced Scottish accent. She said she usually wears jeans.

Lowering her niqab enough to reveal her long, dark hair and pretty earrings, she said she is scared of her family. Her brothers, she said, had already beaten up one of her friends because of her, and she believed they would kill her for shaming the family.

"My father would shoot me before letting me go," she said. "My parents say things are screwed up in the U.K., so they want me to marry a guy from here, who doesn't drink and smoke."

"My boyfriend is even a Muslim and from Pakistan, but they don't accept him," she continued. "I am British, but I am Pakistani, too. But why shouldn't I get to decide whom I marry?"

She looked tired, and she bent over several times complaining of stomach cramps. The pressure of recent days had been too much.

"I have left everyone, everything," she said. "I have not been a bad person to anyone. I don't know why this happened to me."

4,000 (reported) cases a year from a relatively small population is a huge issue. The threat of violence and the huge social sanctions within their community attached to resisting and going to the police must make this incredibly difficult to police and mean that many (quite possibly most) cases are not reported at all. If we assume that the estimate that there are 1.6 million Muslims in the UK is accurate, that half of those are women and the problem is underreported by half (that is almost certainly a massive underestimate of the number of unreported cases) then there is 1 case for every 100 Muslim women every year; an astonishingly high rate.

What must make things so much harder, and is so disgraceful, is that some women are being placed in this situation by doctors who breach their confidence:

"Cmdr Allen, of the Metropolitan Police, said: "GPs will tell fathers their daughter has seen them and is on the pill. That can get a girl killed."

Then, when they brave shunning and a threat of violence from their families and communities to try and escape, they then have to fear the police returning them to their tormentors:

"Shahien Taj, director of the Cardiff-based women's group The Henna Foundation, said: "Recently I had a case in Birmingham of a woman who said she can't trust the police because nine times she had run away and nine times the police returned her to her family where she got abused. Fortunately ACPO are now addressing this kind of problem openly and trying to do something about it."

And, the Job Centre using their National Insurance number and other data to help family track them across the country:

"Cmdr Allen also told The Sunday Telegraph that Job Centre workers have accessed the National Insurance details of women who flee violent husbands, tracing where they collect benefits and passing the details on to their families so they can be found and forced back to their marital home."

As if we needed more reason to distrust the argument that "if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide" with respect to big government databases.

The final result is:

"Cmdr Allen said: "We have too many areas where people don't believe this is an issue for them. But we are seeing situations across the country where victims, who are at extreme risk, are being moved to another part of the country, away from their home towns, by their families. "We also are talking here about bounty hunters and professional killers being used to track down relatives and these people are going to be killed. This is about child protection, human rights and young people having their lives destroyed and all too often being murdered because they dared to love with their heart."

I'm sorry I haven't added much to these stories but they seemed worth sharing even if I didn't have much to contribute.

What is a nation state good for?

Chris Dillow asks a good question.

After all, most sensible Britons are localists now. Confident that significant amounts of power currently in the hands of the central state should be handed back to individuals or local communities. On the other hand, the tranzis want to remove substantial amounts of authority for 'bigger' problems out to supranational institutions (a mistake, in my view, but that's beside the point of this post). For what activity is the nation state suited? Are we just clinging to them out of status quo bias?

My answer would be that nation states are the best ultimate guarantor of individual rights.

Nation states are better at that task than local communities. The relatively dense social networks of local communities - while an asset in other areas - make them too easy to bias and sway unfairly. By contrast, as nation states are bigger even if one dense social network does take over (a family, for example) there is more likely to be a sufficient number of other people who can control them. Even when Britain was ruled by an aristocracy they were kept in significant check by the knowledge that there was a great mass of Britons out there who could only be pushed so far. A genuine tyranny of the majority usually involves too many people to really hold together.

Nation states are also better at defending rights than supranational organisations. Those organisations lack legitimacy as they lack history and have, instead, been superimposed on better established communities. A nation state's legitimacy is rooted in its history and, usually, a common stand against some adversity (wars build nations as well as destroying them). Supranational institutions never have that as they are superimposed and never command enough loyalty to take a serious common stand against serious adversity.

While people do appeal to the European Court if they think there is a slim chance they'll get the 'right' answer no Briton really expects that the EU is where they should appeal for help if they are being mistreated. Most important rights cases are decided by British courts. When there is a supranational input (such as the ECHR) it is resented and enjoys little popular support. By contrast, despite China having a much larger population and the current regime being even less democratic than the EU Beijing is still where a Chinese person with a grievance will take his or her petition. This has carried on through decades of Communism to the astonishment of outsiders. That means that China is a legitimate authority where the EU is not, even if China is currently run in an undemocratic way.

What that purpose means is that a nation state should be bigger than any one local community but seen as a natural authority to appeal to if your rights are infringed. Of course, that means nations can fail, in light of my definition of their purpose, for two reasons:

1) They become captured by a certain group within the nation who fail to respect the rights of other citizens.

2) They are not seen as a legitimate authority to appeal to if your rights are infringed.

It also means that those who bash nationalism out of a cosmopolitan sense of superiority are playing with fire. If I'm right, and nations are the best guarantors of rights, undermining nationalism risks creating a very dangerous world.

Bob Ayling

I'm not sure if I have a clear answer to the question of whether Heathrow should expand. There is a reasonable case to be made that Heathrow itself might not be the ideal place to expand. However, I have no sympathy whatsoever for hysterical and joyless campaigns against flying itself and am well convinced that more capacity in the region is necessary. As such, the proper question is whether you have a feasible alternative in mind. Vague speculation about new airports in Kent just isn't good enough. No responsible conservative should make the same mistake Labour made over energy and road building; using green politics as an excuse for failing to confront difficult questions until a crisis is at hand.

The coalition opposing the new runway is an uncomfortable one. It is split between those wanting new airport capacity elsewhere so they do not have to face aircraft noise and those who want to inconvenience people into taking fewer flights. If the Conservatives oppose the runway they will have to, if they form a government, dissapoint one of the two groups who will either resent poor service and delays at the airport or accuse them of green heresy. Opposing the third runway without a clear alternative, set out in advance, is risky.

What really worries me is the possibility that the party is taking Bob Ayling's opinion on the matter seriously:

"The Conservatives have moved more firmly against a third runway after the former BA chief, Bob Ayling, came out against the big increase in transfer passenger[s] for causing "Heathrow hassle"."

The man responsible for the disastrous 'dirty tricks' campaign against Virgin, the ethnic tailfins which infuriated British and North American customers alike and a failed merger with American Airlines. He was then forced to resign as head of the company running Millenium Dome because of a poor performance controlling costs. He's the private sector's answer to Sir John Gieve.

The great fashion divide and Thorstein Veblen

Each day my computer starts up and MSN tells me what's really important. Today, I'm getting "30 skills every man should master", "Wimbledon fashion" and "Boy falls into wolf enclosure" among others.

Yesterday (a few hours ago), one of the pieces highlighted Sadie Nicholas, writing in the Daily Mail, arguing that there is a North-South fashion divide and that Northerners dress more glamorously. Her evidence is largely anecdotal and it's all pretty complex but her article, roughly, boils down to these two paragraphs:

"And the key differences between women in the North and their fellow fashion lovers in the South-East?

'In London,' says Justine, 'women will dress down their Louboutin heels with skinny jeans or leggings and less-is-more hair and make-up, which they see as being very cool.

'In Liverpool, that would be criminal: the girls here make sure the rest of their outfit is as glam as the shoes themselves.

[...]

My own view is that Northerners are finally asserting themselves when it comes to what they wear. We love glamour and we're no longer afraid to flaunt it."

Funnily enough, I've recently come across a theory that can explain this, a refinement of Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. Here is Virginia Postrel, setting out that the 'bling' phenomenon isn't illusory - despite being poorer African Americans do spend more of their income on clothes, cars and jewelry - and explaining why.

"On race, the folk wisdom turns out to be true. An African American family with the same income, family size, and other demographics as a white family will spend about 25 percent more of its income on jewelry, cars, personal care, and apparel. For the average black family, making about $40,000 a year, that amounts to $1,900 more a year than for a comparable white family. To make up the difference, African Americans spend much less on education, health care, entertainment, and home furnishings. (The same is true of Latinos.)

[...]

"So the researchers went back to Thorstein Veblen, who coined the term conspicuous consumption. Writing in the much poorer world of 1899, Veblen argued that people spent lavishly on visible goods to prove that they were prosperous. “The motive is emulation—the stimulus of an invidious comparison which prompts us to outdo those with whom we are in the habit of classing ourselves,” he wrote. Along these lines, the economists hypothesized that visible consumption lets individuals show strangers they aren’t poor. Since strangers tend to lump people together by race, the lower your racial group’s income, the more valuable it is to demonstrate your personal buying power.

To test this idea, the economists compared the spending patterns of people of the same race in different states—say, blacks in Alabama versus blacks in Massachusetts, or whites in South Carolina versus whites in California. Sure enough, all else being equal (including one’s own income), an individual spent more of his income on visible goods as his racial group’s income went down. African Americans don’t necessarily have different tastes from whites. They’re just poorer, on average. In places where blacks in general have more money, individual black people feel less pressure to prove their wealth.

The same is true for whites. Controlling for differences in housing costs, an increase of $10,000 in the mean income for white households—about like going from South Carolina to California—leads to a 13 percent decrease in spending on visible goods. “Take a $100,000-a-year person in Alabama and a $100,000 person in Boston,” says Hurst. “The $100,000 person in Alabama does more visible consumption than the $100,000 person in Massachusetts.” That’s why a diamond-crusted Rolex screams “nouveau riche.” It signals that the owner came from a poor group and has something to prove."

There we go, an explanation!

Northerners are, on average, significantly poorer than Southerners, particularly Londoners, and people generalise and assume they all "get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work".

The signal that dressing glamorously sends is, therefore, more valuable to Northerners.

Why I do not want Obama to win

Douglas Carswell writes that he wants Obama to win. I find the idea horrifying and think that McCain would make a far better President. I'll try to set out why by going through Obama's positives, as set out by Douglas and, earlier, Dan Hannan and then briefly discussing McCain's negatives before describing what I see as the big divide between Obama and McCain.

Arguments for Obama

Douglas argues that Obama's refusal of public money to fund his campaign should count heavily in his favour:

"Does Obama believe in small government? As with McCain, I really don't know. But I do know that last week he became the first Presidential candidate since Nixon to refuse public money to fund his campaign.

Instead of relying on State handouts, Obama's campaign will be funded by millions of people each giving small on-line donations. In the primaries alone, the $133 million spent came via 1.5 million web donors. That's less than $100 each.

Sounds pretty Edmund Burke.com to me."

I think that the motive this implies just isn't there. Obama originally committed to take public funding and accept limitations on his fundraising but changed his mind when his campaign proved better able to raise funds than expected. We shouldn't - as some Republicans are - get in a hissy fit about his u-turn, to expect him to hobble his campaign out of some sense of chivalry would be silly, but it is clearly not an act of Burkean principle. McCain is dreadful on campaign finance reform but his differences with Obama are only as old as Obama's fundraising success. As such, I don't see how this can be a critical issue unless you think, and I guess Douglas does, that there aren't significant other issues that make McCain the better candidate.

Dan Hannan's suggestion that electing Obama would be a great idea because it will repair America's reputation is unrealistic. America's friends are dismayed by foreign policy incompetence and there is little sign that Obama will improve things on that front. America's enemies take their hatred of the country rather too seriously to be convinced by the election of a black man. Those Europeans impressed by Obama's election will return to their anti-American ways the first time he makes a decision that doesn't fit their tranzi agenda (if he doesn't make such a decision we have bigger problems). There is also the rather unfortunate likelihood that if Obama is elected it will probably be with a white majority voting against him (the Republicans usually have a majority among whites) which will be prime fodder for the US bashing BBC and America's domestic race industry.

The problems with McCain

McCain's support for the EPP is lamentable and foolish. American right wingers have long assumed that a more united Europe, and a more united European right, will make both easier to rally as allies for the United States. Only now are they realising their error; that submerging proud nations in transnationalist, supranational slush makes them weaker in themselves and as allies. Fortunately, the EPP is one issue on which the American President doesn't really have much influence. The question doesn't come up for Obama so a comparison is hard to draw. McCain's soundness on the UN suggests that his instincts are in the right place on the tranzi institutions, even if his judgement is out on the EU. I don't think that the issue can be critical to our assessment of McCain as a Presidential candidate.

McCain has been on the left of the Republican Party on a host of issues such as tax cuts but, with our current binary choice, that is pretty irrelevant. As the debate stands right now he is the one defending the Bush tax cuts and calling for a ten per cent cut in corporate tax rates. That ten per cent corporate tax cut would do great things for America's competitiveness and might even finally convince our politicians that the time has come for serious tax cuts. To describe McCain as "high tax and spend" in that context is bizarre. In fact, I think that the corporate tax cut proposal already puts sufficient clear blue water between McCain and Obama to justify supporting the Republican.

The big difference between McCain and Obama

I'll largely leave aside foreign policy as I don't want to talk past Douglas. Suffice it to say that I think McCain's suggestion Obama is running for Jimmy Carter's second term has an awful plausibility to it. On a broad range of domestic policy issues Obama has proven himself a friend of protectionist, big state special interests while McCain has shown admirable economically liberal principle. Of course, the big example is the attack on NAFTA but here are a few you might not have heard of:

Agriculture subsidies

David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, summed up a new bill ramping up agriculture subsidies: "The $307 billion farm bill that rolled through Congress is a perfect example of the pattern. Farm net income is up 56 percent over the past two years, yet the farm bill plows subsidies into agribusinesses, thoroughbred breeders and the rest." The bill was so bad, such pure pork, that it attracted bipartisan scorn in the press; the New York Times called it "disgraceful" and the Wall Street Journal called it a "scam". Despite that the bill passed with Obama's support. By contrast, Brooks sets out how "John McCain opposed the farm bill. In an impassioned speech on Monday, he declared: “It would be hard to find any single bill that better sums up why so many Americans in both parties are so disappointed in the conduct of their government, and at times so disgusted by it." Quite right.

Class action reform

This may seem like a minor issue but it matters a lot in the States where their class action system is wide open to abuse. Ted Frank, at the American Enterprise Institute, sets out the problem and Obama's dismal response:

"CAFA came about because trial lawyers had been abusing the class action mechanism by filing dozens of class actions in different states seeking to certify a nationwide class. In a game of "heads I win, tails don't count," if the trial lawyers lost in one jurisdiction, they would merely proceed with an identical lawsuit in a more favorable jurisdiction until they found a judge receptive enough to sign on to the most meritless of lawsuits.

As a consequence, the notoriously plaintiff-friendly Madison County, Illinois, ended up with hundreds of lawsuits seeking to dictate consumer law nationwide, and defendants were forced into countless extortionate settlements.

CAFA simply undid this upside-down federalism by establishing that lawsuits alleging a nationwide class belonged in a single federal court rather than the most favorable magnet jurisdiction in state court that trial lawyers could find.

This is entirely sensible good-government legislation, which is why the bill passed by such a large margin. But the bill passed in the form it did in spite of Obama's efforts, not because of them.

While CAFA was under consideration, Senators Ted Kennedy, D-MA, Mark Pryor, D-AR and Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, proposed amendments that would have eviscerated CAFA; Senator Feinstein's proposed amendment likely ran afoul of constitutional due process requirements set forth by the Supreme Court in a 7-1 decision in 1985. Each amendment failed by large bipartisan majorities, supported only by Democrats; each time, Obama voted with the trial lawyer lobby.

These votes were not outliers. Obama also voted to filibuster medical malpractice reform and to kill an asbestos reform bill in 2006, each time providing a critical vote for a minority of senators that blocked tort reforms from achieving a three-fifths supermajority. That is hardly reaching across the aisle, much less showing a willingness to flout a Democratic special interest."

The U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement

From the Wall Street Journal:

"Here's one "change" presidential candidate Barack Obama apparently believes in: higher prices. Witness his letter last week urging President George W. Bush not to submit the U.S.-South Korea free-trade agreement to Congress for ratification.

Mr. Obama's objection, as stated in his letter, is that the deal "would give Korean exports essentially unfettered access to the U.S. market and would eliminate our best opportunity for obtaining genuinely reciprocal market access in one of the world's largest economies." In other words, ordinary American consumers would get too good a deal.

For an idea of how good, look at automobiles, about which Mr. Obama professes particular concern. The free-trade agreement would eliminate America's 2.5% tariff on most Korean car imports. Even better, it would phase out the 25% tariff on pick-ups and light trucks. Overall, the Korean trade deal would boost the U.S. economy by $10 billion to $12 billion.

Mr. Obama thinks this benefit to U.S. consumers isn't worth the risk that South Korea might not live up to its promise to eliminate its own 8% tariff on U.S. autos and cut its bewildering array of nontariff barriers, such as arcane safety standards. This despite the fact that the deal includes enforcement provisions if Korea backtracks.

On the record so far, Mr. Obama is the most protectionist U.S. presidential candidate in decades."

Conclusion

In the end, economic hard times reveal two kinds of politicians. On the one hand there are those who will offer the fools gold of endless subsidies and protections from foreign competition to buy the support of particular communities and industries. The subsidies distort the economy and hurt the chances of a genuine, lasting recovery while protectionism makes most people significantly worse off. On the other side there are those, Margaret Thatcher being the most brilliant example, who make the case for real reforms that can improve the long term prospects of the economy.

In the coming US election Obama is the protectionist throwing subsidies at interest groups, McCain is the reformer promising aggresive action to curb wasteful and distorting subsidies while cutting corporate tax rates. With that choice, I'll support McCain without hesitation.

Re: The Wisdom of Crowds

Two points on Peter and Peter's debate on whether the Observer poll suggests that crowds are wise. First, on the philosophical debate, Peter Franklin says:

"I'm concerned that the wisdom of crowds meme, like some crowds, is getting out of control. Obviously, anyone who believes in democracy has to have trust in his or her fellow citizens; but surely, as Conservatives, we should also expect a degree of trust in those who, by virtue of merit, can speak with authority in certain fields of human endeavour." [emphasis mine]

Why? That sounds like pretty much the opposite of what we should believe as conservatives. Whether it is Burke calling for caution to those who would set our private stock of reason above age old traditions, Hayek describing the importance of dispersed information or the religious among us who prefer age old moral wisdom to contemporary theory. Sometimes we might need to set conservatism to one side but it is not an ideology that should ever imply trusting experts and their 'authority'.

While science has a good record of delivering technological advances and pushing the boundaries of the human experience that does not mean that the opinions of scientists should always be taken at face value. A fascinating report for the International Policy Network by Professor Jim Chin shows how the prevalence of AIDS was massively overstated by UNAIDS, leading to poor targetting of the response; a mistake they are only now, in the face of overwhelming evidence, accepting. UNAIDS had a noble goal, trying to increase the resources available to combat AIDS, and their bias was probably not conscious but their errors clearly demonstrate how science can be distorted once it is enlisted to a political movement like environmentalism. Of course, that doesn't mean we should discount scientific opinion, just that we cannot concede our judgement on such important matters to scientists alone.

One final point, I thought Mori's poll was desperately shoddy. The proper question to test whether the public think the sceptics are a significant group isn't really whether they believe that "many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change". That humans are making no contribution isn't the position of most scientific sceptics. Also, the "still" is leading. If you asked some variant of whether "many [or most] scientific experts argue that the amount of climate change we should expect human activities to cause will not be enough to constitute a 'crisis'" that might be more meaningful.

Sign the petition to abandon the Constitution

Neil O'Brien and Richard North have set up a petition calling on the government to, after the one country given a vote rejected the treaty, abandon the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty. Sign it, get everyone you know to sign it.

Just because this Labour government have ignored the people's clear wishes on this matter so many times already doesn't mean we should stop making our opinion heard, loud and clear. The best way I've ever heard political campaigning summed up is Chris DeMuth's think tank slogan: "No one knows when the Berlin Wall will come down." There is always room for surprises in politics.

Besides, even if we can't stop this treaty we can make the process as painful as possible and, perhaps, turn a few politicos off the idea of further ceding power to undemocratic EU institutions.

Caroline Lucas and international capitalism

Tim Worstall's blog is invariably excellent but this post is great even by his high standards.

Is wave power worth £15 billion?

The Independent on Sunday reports that David Cameron is to propose greater use of wave power:

"Mr Cameron will say: "Britain's coastline is over 1,000 miles long and has some of the highest tidal ranges in the world. Tapping into this free, continually renewed energy source could, according to some research, provide us with up to 20 per cent of our electricity supplies."

While we aren't charged for waves tapping their power has very significant costs. It is possible to perform a back of the envelope calculation to work out just how much it would cost to shift 20 per cent of our electricity generation from coal, gas and nuclear to wave.

Energy consultancy PB Power estimate (PPT, pg. 20) that wave power costs around 19p per KWh more than conventional sources. Multiplying that by 20% of our 405,884 GWh of electricity generation each year (PDF, pg. 126) suggests that in 2006, the latest year for which data is available, such a switch would have cost £15.4 billion. That's around 1.2% of GDP, a bit under half the defence budget or a crossrail every year. An absolute fortune.

Now, that cost is necessarily a rough estimate - here are some of the factors that might push the cost higher or lower:

• If we're building that much capacity the technology would likely develop and become more efficient, we would get better practiced at deploying it. This might mean costs would be lower than expected.



• Public projects tend to wind up more expensive than the government expect, the official term for this is 'optimism bias'. We studied the problem in our report Beyond the Dome: Government projects £23 billion over budget (PDF) and found projects, on average, net over budget by one third. This might mean costs would be higher than expected.



• A major UK investment in wave power, a relatively small industry at present, would constitute a huge upward demand shock and, as supply would take time to respond, push up prices for the equipment needed to tap wave power. Again, this might mean costs would be higher than expected.



• Generating a substantial portion of the UK's total electricity needs from wave power would probably not be possible without moving to suboptimal sites. Parts of the coast where it is difficult to install the equipment or wave power is weak would have to be used once the best locations were taken up. This is another factor which might make wave power even more expensive if it were implemented on a large scale.

If present policies for subsidising renewable power are maintained then it won't just be the cost itself but who is paying it that we will need to worry about. The Renewables Obligation, the main source of subsidy for renewables, increases the price of energy which means that the people who suffer most are the poor elderly who spend a large portion of their income keeping their homes warm.

While many sources of power can, theoretically, provide a large portion of the UK's power needs no renewable has yet proven an ability to supply a large portion of our demand for electricity at an affordable price.

Cross-posted from the TaxPayers' Alliance blog.

Copayment ban to be scrapped

It looks like we are going to see the end of restrictions on copayment (via Tim Worstall). That is absolutely brilliant news, for reasons I've set out at length before. It's a real shame that it has taken this long, and comes too late for some patients. However, all credit to Doctors for Reform who have fought the issue very effectively. This section from the Telegraph article suggests their work was key:

"But in recent weeks they are understood to have been persuaded that the NHS already contains “top ups”, particularly in dentistry and in some hospitals, where patients can pay for private rooms."

Such a change of heart may well have something to do with this research (PDF).

Might the Westminster village have the politics of 42 days detention wrong?

Most of SW1 thinks David Davis' resignation over the issue of 42 days detention was a huge political mistake. The Government's position is popular with the public and Davis has shifted the debate to one of the few areas where Brown is in tune with ordinary people. The Conservatives won't be allowed near government if they aren't seen to take the nation's security seriously.

On the other hand, Tim, and many others, have made the point that at every opportunity the public seem to be noisily expressing their support for the former Shadow Home Secretary. If there is a silent majority it is keeping very quiet indeed.

What polling evidence we have suggests that SW1 is right. A YouGov poll suggests that 69% of the public support the proposal. That's a mountain of opinion, I can't see anything much wrong with the poll and YouGov are by far the most reliable UK pollster.

However, that might not be the end of the story. After all, when the question is asked by YouGov it is rightly and necessarily removed from its political context. I doubt people have a particularly strong opinion on 42 days in particular - they just, quite understandably, want to see the Government strengthen policy to combat terrorism. They would give a positive answer to a broad range of tough security policies.

The issue is that the debate hasn't, and won't, remain that abstract. The choice voters are actually presented with is a debate between a Government they loathe and utterly distrust and a Conservative Party that is not just popular right now but is generally better trusted on security issues. Just as the Conservative brand used to taint a broad range of policies the public now distrust a Government they long to be rid of. While other narratives will be presented, when voters see a Conservative ex-SAS man resigning on a point of principle in order to defend "Ancient" "British" "liberties" squaring off against a grubby government their earlier opinion on 42 days might quickly go out of the window. They'll see the Government, rather than the Conservatives, as the ones not taking security "seriously".

Whether or not this is actually happening or SW1 is right and a silent majority resent Davis' opposition to 42 says will be difficult to ascertain. Headling voting intention poll numbers won't necessarily tell us anything while the Tory lead is so huge; Labour are down to their loyalists now. Movements of a few percentage points in the Government's favour could be the result of some traditional Labour voters returning to the fold as the furore over the 10p rate dies down, ready to abandon ship again when the V.E.D. changes kick in, rather than the 42 days debate.

I think that the only thing that we can say with much certainty about the politics of 42 days is that the Conservatives will have to establish that their opposition is to this measure in particular, and that they have robust plans of their own to defend Britain against our enemies.

Cross-posted from CentreRight.Com.

Baby steps towards educational freedom

The Times reports that successful schools are going to be given the right to expand a little. This will mean more places in successful schools and a bit more pressure on poor performing schools to up their game. Unfortunately, schools have only been allowed an extremely limited amount of new freedom.

Expansion is still severely limited. Being allowed "up to 26 extra pupils a year above their official limit" does not leave a lot of room to grow.

More than that, this only allows schools freedom in one direction. The Government have now gone some way towards accepting the principle that the right response to a shortage places at the best schools is to ensure their are more such places, instead of dreaming up new ways of rationing quality education. Why are they restricting educational freedom to the expansion of existing schools?

There are good reasons to think that the best schools are small ones. By only allowing good schools to expand we might put them in the unfortunate conundrum of either staying small and not offering opportunities to more children or expanding and risking their standards. A better solution might be for new schools to be established. Beyond that, why are we assuming that the best providers of new school places are necessarily existing schools?

What if a business can run a great school effectively, or a co-operative of teachers, or an existing school wants to support a new institution in some kind of franchise arrangement? A successful innovation system would encourage a diversity of providers and real innovation in the way schools are run. Swedish-style school reforms can put power over the education system in the hands of parents and allow any organisation to set up a new school and respond to parental demand.

Cross-posted from the TaxPayers' Alliance blog.

The 42 days detention without trial debate

David Davis was absolutely superb today. Completely in command of his speech and extremely well prepared for the questions. I found him very convincing and, to my mind, he had the case for 42 days detention thoroughly beat. I think the Conservatives were on the right side and I'm glad that they had exactly the right man for the job making their case.

What made it even better was that he clearly wasn't out to strike poses. He constantly reminded his own side to take their opponents' arguments seriously instead of heckling. He gave no quarter in the debate but engaged with those supporting the Government position without rancour. I don't want to be a mushy hippy - making Barney the purple dinosaur's speech at the next Bloomberg Nonpartisanship Symposium - but, when you're arguing against a position supported by a heavy majority of the public for the very credible reason that they want to strengthen the fight against terrorism, it pays to be respectful.

It is a real shame that the blogs can't do the same. Those commenting on the PMQs live blog screamed in incoherent rage that Tim had betrayed the tribe. Apparently independent thinking cannot be allowed when it might aid the enemy - how liberal!

Now it's the DUP who are getting it. I think we should be more careful. If they have decided this on the basis of a bribe then that is a bit shoddy. The dead hand of the state is already weighing more than heavily enough in Northern Ireland. A little more subsidy isn't worth deciding such an important issue over. However, the £200 million is currently nothing more than rumour and coincidence. Fiscal decisions relevant to Northern Ireland are made all the time and siding with the Government now would be a questionable strategy for a rent-seeker. It is hardly necessary to contruct a conspiracy theory to explain why they voted for this measure. They've been on the front lines in an earlier War on Terror, at huge personal risk, for a very long time.

If those insulting them and putting their support for 42 days detention without trial down to venality are wrong they risk pissing off some good members of the conservative coalition to little end.

Cross-posted from CentreRight.Com.

The Stockholm Network: Carbon Scenarios

Yesterday evening I went to see the presentation of the Stockholm Network research project Carbon Scenarios (PDF).  I was, to put it mildly, horrified.

I’ll do a thematic summary, instead of a blow-by-blow as it’ll make things easier.  First, a word on the speakers:

Everyone on the panel was a part of the process that created the report.  No one spoke for moderate policies, or against targeting cuts in emissions.  There was no significant disagreement between the speakers and no suggestion they were merely given a platform by the Stockholm Network.  They were all presenting the report they worked on, as a group.

Helen Disney, the Stockholm Network CEO, chaired the event.

Paul Domjan, Energy Fellow at the Stockholm Network, was clearly the main guy behind the research project.

Hardin Tibbs, Dr. James Keirstead and Dr. Swenja Surminski all seemed to be pretty harmless and largely kept their views to themselves except on narrow methodological issues.  Surminski was the only one to suggest that the alarmism might be a bit overblown; she cautioned Mark Lynas and Oliver Tickell, when they started ranting about fire and brimstone in response to a question from me about cost/benefit analysis, that they might put the public off.  Those two were the off the deep-end alarmists.

The step change policy

They argue that a “step change”, with vastly more commitment to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, provides for the best plausible climate change policy.  They set out a few ingredients of such a policy:

• Global limits to hydrocarbon extraction.  The limit should be applied as close to the source as possible to make the scheme easier to monitor and administer.  The permits should be auctioned by a Climate Security Task Force under the United Nations Environment Programme.



• Use the proceeds from the auction to fund a series of things:

1. Compensating some countries for lost income under the scheme.



2. Supporting adaptation.



3. Supporting technology transfer – e.g. alternative power sources.

This is extremely worrying in a number of ways.  It is clearly alarmist.  The kind of dramatic, short-term carbon cutting regime that invariably fails any serious cost-benefit analysis.

As it is a cap and trade scheme it takes no account of the opportunity costs associated with massive cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.  If cutting carbon dioxide emissions by the amount required will completely decimate the economy – far more than can be justified in order to cut emissions – the economy will be left to go hang as the emissions have been capped.  There is none of the flexibility allowed by other policies to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Beyond that, it invests huge economic power in a supranational organisation with little democratic accountability.  The UN Environment Programme would have a huge amount of money (it could quite plausibly be trillions of dollars) to distribute under this plan – it would make the EU’s structural funds (never cleared by the Court of Auditors) look impoverished.  That is an economic power that has never been vested in a supranational body before.  Given the record of the UN and EU in descending into a pit of sleaze and mismanagement at every opportunity there is little reason to think that money would be spent well.

The UNEP is given all this money because of “the importance of wealth transfer”.  A question they never quite answer is quite who the money is being transferred from, and who it is being transferred to.  The answer is from the relatively poor in the rich and poor worlds, as they consume the most energy as a share of their income, to corrupt governments who demand a bribe to stay in the system and anyone who can sell their ‘project’ to the UNEP.  This is a massive opportunity for special interests and the corrupt and, with little accountability at the supranational level, they’ll take it.

“It’s the consensus”

I skimmed Carbon Scenarios at the start looking for $, € and £.  That’s normally the quickest way of finding the estimates that should mark any serious policy proposal.  Unfortunately, the only currency I found was in the section setting out the potential safety valve on an American cap and trade policy - $15-$25/tonne apparently.  There simply wasn’t any analysis of the costs and benefits of the different plans, except the extent to which they reduced emissions.  Culling ninety percent of the human population would count as a ‘success’ under this report’s analysis as it would certainly reduce emissions sufficiently.

I had a lot of questions when the various speakers finished (it was tempting to start with, “do you really want to return to the Stone Age?”).  Unfortunately, I was only going to be able to ask one so I went with the safest, most mainstream, one I could.  Did they think their policy would fail to pass cost/benefit analysis as other severe policies to cut emissions do under mainstream analyses like that provided by the man the Economist called "the father of climate change economics" Nordhaus?

Domjan, the Stockholm Network’s Energy Fellow, was the first to respond.  He basically said that they didn’t want to rehearse the scientific debate (fair enough) and that all the governments had settled on a 90% chance of avoiding more than 3oC in warming so that was the consensus we all had to accept.  The problem with that stance is that it defines out of the debate huge swathes of entirely mainstream and respectable opinion; positions that are gaining ground as people prove unwilling to pay ever higher prices for energy.  It makes a mockery of their pretence to be trying to start a serious policy debate.

The precautionary principle

Next was Mark Lynas, who cited some of the more extreme predictions out there and stated that it was simply unethical to risk those consequences.  He argued that cost/benefit analysis wasn’t appropriate with potential harms that serious.  That is, basically, the precautionary principle.  The precautionary principle is utterly destructive to both economic liberalism and basic common sense.  It can justify anything if you start treating remote possibilities, effectively, as certainties.

Finally, Oliver Tickell repeated Lynas’ alarmism and then added that we can’t rely on the predictions that make a cost/benefit analysis possible.  He cited the change in oil prices since last year as evidence that we can’t rely on economic modelling.  Unwittingly, he was undermining the entire case put forward by the report.  All of their predictions of emissions under different policies and, as a result, all of their predictions about how much the planet might warm are utterly dependent upon economic models.  Tickell was so utterly clueless he didn’t realise that, by attacking the reliability of economic modelling, he was attacking the basic foundations of his own side’s arguments.  By contrast, while sceptics take economics seriously they are properly cautious about the long-term reliability of both economic and climate modelling.

Domjan nodded on through all this.  Does the Stockholm Network’s Energy Fellow really believe in the precautionary principle?  Would he apply it in other areas like EU chemicals regulation?

Conclusions

The policy aspirations of the Stockholm Network’s Carbon Scenarios report would be a nightmare.  Such policies would mean vast increases in energy costs.  If technology cannot deliver emissions reductions at the pace they expect their policies could lead to an economic catastrophe.  Huge amounts of money would be channelled from poor people dependent on affordable energy to maintain a decent standard of living to dubious projects and corrupt bureaucracies.  It is justified on the basis of every kind of woolly thinking and alarmism that the environmentalist movement has to offer and  now public opinion, and increasingly political parties, are moving away from.

Cross-posted from CentreRight.Com.

The Tories and the Union Modernisation Fund

Richard Balfe's call for the Conservatives to maintain the Union Modernisation Fund is utter foolishness:

"When the Government set up the multimillion-pound modernisation fund three years ago for unions to draw upon, the Tories criticised the fund as a payback to the Labour Party’s main source of funding. But they are now debating whether to continue with the fund if they form the next government.

To approve the fund would be departure from the days when Margaret Thatcher was leader and the Conservative Party was partly defined by its antagonism towards the unions. And by forging a relationship with the unions, it could ultimately threaten Labour’s exclusive ties."

This is a bad idea on a number of grounds:

1) Political abuse of taxpayers' money - directing taxpayers' money to secure political advantages is disreputable and erodes public trust in politics. Whether it is the Labour party channelling money to their donors or the Conservatives using the same fund to try and break Labour and the unions apart.

2) Building up structural problems in the public finances - Our report (PDF) on a looming winter of discontent set out how, in the last year, public sector staff have gone on strike 100 times as much as those in the private sector. The unions are holding government to ransom in the knowledge that, playing with other people's money and with little accountability, politicians will often fold in the face of a strike.

Over the medium to long-term this is reducing flexibility and increasing wages in the public sector which will push up costs, make reform more difficult and reduce the chances of taxpayers getting good value for money.

3) Bad politics - In the long term any political party that hopes to advance free-market policies and secure value for taxpayers' money will often clash with unions attached to centralised, big government organisation of the pubic services and after big pay increases for their members. If the Conservatives are really attached to ushering in a post-bureaucratic age and shrinking the state they are likely, sadly, to have to do so in spite of the unions. Maintaining Labour's bung to the unions won't change that.

Cross-posted from the TaxPayers' Alliance blog.

Britain, America and YouGov

It is well worth looking into the details (PDF) of the YouGov poll on British and American attitudes that was written up for the Economist.  Even the more obvious results are quite interesting.  Here are the best headline figures I've found:

The British public are a lot more sensible on environmental policy than the politicians.  There is a majority against increasing taxes on petrol, air flights and increasing taxes to subsidise renewable power.  However, there is a plurality in favour of nuclear power.  If only the public were in charge, if only the demos really ruled Britain!

Britain is a lot less religious than the United States.  Democrats are more religious than Conservatives.  53% of Americans see religion as an important part of their lives against just 21% of Britons.  80% of Americans believe there is a God against 39% of Britons (I didn't know Britain had an atheist/agnostic majority).  We wouldn't care if the Prime Minister were an atheist, Americans would care if the President were one.  Only 30% of Americans think that the theory of evolution is the correct explanation for the origins of life on Earth.  It is clear that religion is pretty much spent as a moral force in Britain but I'm not sure we quite take that seriously enough.  I don't think, as some American conservatives suggest, that you can't be conservative without being religious.  I'm conservative and not religious so clearly it is possible.  However, that doesn't mean the death of God isn't a rather big issue, that it creates a new and extremely open contest of values.  Perhaps we all need to read some Nietzsche?

Republicans are still stronger than the Conservatives in underlying support.  Anyone observing American politics at the moment will have seen that the Republicans are getting completely hammered.  By contrast, the Conservatives are on top of the world with massive poll leads.  However, 29% of Americans identify themselves as 'Republicans' against 27% of Britons who see themselves as 'Conservatives', both Labour and the Democrats enjoy 34%.  This might suggest that, while the Conservative brand has been decontaminated that has yet to feed through into an expansion of the Conservative 'base'.  Perhaps that only ever happens slowly?

Americans want their parties to come together and compromise, we don't.  39% of Britons want the two principal parties to come together and compromise against 69% of Americans.  Clearly all the agreement in the major British parties over things like fiscal policy actually pisses voters off.  By contrast, Americans really are sick of apparent bickering.

We value experience, Americans value character.  In Britain 50% think experience is the most important quality in a Prime Minister against 39% who cite character.  In American the result is reversed with 63% thinking character is most important.  What causes this difference?  Is it the lower number of religious people in Britain?

Britons want TV, rather than the church, to teach kids right and wrong.  We are significantly less likely to think that religious leaders should teach kids right and wrong but more likely to think TV and movie makers should.  People in both countries place the most responsibility on parents.

Britons trust public officials less than Americans do.  Apparently our supposedly neutral Civil Service does not engender more public trust than the more politiscised American system.  53% do not trust public officials (civil servants/administrators) much or at all, though they are somewhat more trusted than politicians.

We trust big business leaders more.  My understanding was that, unfortunately, the Left's 'fat cat' attack of the nineties worked really well.  Business leaders aren't exactly the most popular of people but they're trusted more in Britain than in the States and more than national politicians.  They are also admired by 46% of the population, against just 18% who are clear that they do not admire them.  The exception is a question on 'excess profits' which more Britons think major companies make.

We are a lot more hostile to immigration and multi-culturalism than Americans.  Immigration is the number one issue, with 60% placing it in the top three issues facing Britain today against just 40% of Americans who see it as a top issue.  49% of Britons disagree with the pro-immigration argument that immigration has boosted the economy against just 26% who agree.  I do wonder how long the Conservatives can keep up their relatively quiet position on this issue.  I'm not saying we should return to talking about nothing else but it is dangerous for such public concern to not be reflected in the political discourse.

We take the UN seriously.  26% of Britons think we should only go to war if the UN approves.  Sigh.

We are a lot more pro-free trade.  This isn't particularly a surprise but its always nice to see.  A majority of Britons think it is a good thing, despite concerns about globalisation.

In both countries three quarters of the population support the death penalty for murderers.  This surprised me.  I thought that in Britain there now wasn't a majority in either direction.

Mongol

Genghis Khan is a fascinating character. I first really read his story in the book Genghis Khan by John Man. His impression on history is hard to underestimate. He united a nomadic people and led them to conquer half the world. Despite his empire fragmenting and declining after his death he left behind a Chinese dynasty - no small matter - and a legend for the Mongolian people that lasts to this day.

Thankfully, Mongol doesn't shy away from embracing the legend. It is always tempting for biopics like this to engage in a quixotic attempt to get at the 'real' hero behind the legend. With the passage of centuries having obscured the tracks a historian would need to follow, they can rarely find an adequate replacement for the myth.

In this film the Mongol god provides almost tangible support for Temudjin. Those moments where something truly incredible happens are genuinely ecstatic. If I describe them now I might spoil it but the film conveys a quiet awe that really sucked me in and made miracles seem really miraculous.

The star, a Japanese actor called Tadanobu Asano, handles the challenging role of Genghis Khan with authority, though Temudjin's stern silent act leaves him with only a limited range of visible emotions to play with. The supporting cast are excellent, particularly Honglei Sun, playing Temudjin's blood brother and later adversary, Jamukha. The love story, showing Temudjin's marriage to Borte, has to share the film with Temudjin's rise to become Genghis Khan so never has the space to develop and carry the film as the makers, perhaps, intended it to but it functions well enough to make Temudjin more than just a shouting conqueror.

The photography is spectacular. Behind every scene the steppe is invariably stretching into the distance looking gorgeous and lending a powerful sense of the epic to proceedings. That is fortunate because, except in a limited number of action set pieces, the pace is quite slow. Those action scenes have an incredible kinetic kick but they are too rare for this to really be an action junkie's movie - if you go looking to just cheer on grand battles there won't be enough there.

Instead, sit back and enjoy a luxurious recreation of an incredible legend.