On Question Time, about 24.30 in, she says that private pension funds receive about £40bn a year in subsidy because of tax relief.
Well yes, because otherwise people pay income tax on their pension contributions, and then income tax on the annuity they receive. Which is being taxed twice, isn't fair, and doesn't encourage people to pay into a pension. The way it works is that people pay their pension contributions after tax, but the pension funds receive tax relief at 20% of their contribution.
It's unbelievable that she considers this a subsidy. That not taking money off people costs them. It's unbelievable nobody on the panel took issue with this.
Saturday, 3 December 2011
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Doctorocracy
A doctorocracy would work like this:
I can understand doctors wanting us to be educated about issues affecting our health (although they might worry about the stress this might cause us, if we spend too much time worrying about unhealthiness), but I don't know how if they care too much about the result of using their professional voice to call for things to be banned or made compulsory. Such things can only be achieved with the implicit threat of force from the state, which will be certainly be injurious to a freedom loving individual, whether physically, or from the stress of being up against the state's inexhaustible potential to make sure people comply.
- Some thing is studied, and it is decided that it is injurious to our health or well-being.
- The thing is banned, or taxed heavily.
- A new thing is identified, and we return to step 1.
I can understand doctors wanting us to be educated about issues affecting our health (although they might worry about the stress this might cause us, if we spend too much time worrying about unhealthiness), but I don't know how if they care too much about the result of using their professional voice to call for things to be banned or made compulsory. Such things can only be achieved with the implicit threat of force from the state, which will be certainly be injurious to a freedom loving individual, whether physically, or from the stress of being up against the state's inexhaustible potential to make sure people comply.
Sunday, 14 August 2011
Timbersbrook Project
A few days ago police and council officials turned up at a privately owned nature reserve, demolished the sheds, and took the animals away. See the Congleton Chronicle for details, and a blog post here. Here is the Council's press release about it.
The problem was that the owner didn't have the necessary planning permission to use land that he owned as a nature reserve. Therefore the council eventually went and used "direct action" to uphold a planning decision, after a long legal fight.
This green belt development appears to be a collection of animals housed in temporary structures. It was open to the public and without admission charge, one of the few free family attractions in the area.
It certainly seems like very bad PR and very disproportionate for them to use such force to destroy something loved by lots of people. Some accommodation could surely have been made?
The problem was that the owner didn't have the necessary planning permission to use land that he owned as a nature reserve. Therefore the council eventually went and used "direct action" to uphold a planning decision, after a long legal fight.
This green belt development appears to be a collection of animals housed in temporary structures. It was open to the public and without admission charge, one of the few free family attractions in the area.
It certainly seems like very bad PR and very disproportionate for them to use such force to destroy something loved by lots of people. Some accommodation could surely have been made?
Friday, 12 August 2011
Writing for a wider audience
I realise I'm a crap writer (I'm good with sums not words), and also probably a hypocrite for saying what I'm about to say, but reading lots of blog posts about the riots from across the political spectrum has made me think that if someone is writing for a wider audience, rather than just nodding-dog readers, then there are a few rules of thumb:
- Keep posts short and cogent. Pure Orwell: "If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out."
- Don't use emotive language, names, loaded terms, etc. Besides anything else, I'd start to worry about myself if I found using the term "Nu Liebour" gratifying.
- Credit political opponents with intelligence and good motives. If I disagree with the gist of a blog post, I'm going to struggle to read the post when it's sprinkled with the insinuation that I'm stupid and want to eat poor people. I think that if you can conceive of your opponents in a good light, it enriches your understanding of that position, rather than just to think of them as bogeymen.
Monday, 1 August 2011
£3.75bn of cuts
Right, so to put the increased IMF subscription into context, it's the annual salaries of 490,000 junior nurses, or 368,000 secondary school teachers. Or HS2 is 907,000 nurses' salaries or 680,000 teachers'. Our national debt would pay for 50.7 million junior nurses. The cost of servicing our debt will shortly be 3.9 million junior nurses.Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude described the savings, confirmed by an independent audit, as "staggering".
"To put £3.75bn into context, it's equivalent to the salaries of 200,000 junior nurses, or 150,000 secondary school teachers, it could pay for several Whitehall departments, and it's about the same as the revenue derived from one penny of the basic rate of income tax.
Sunday, 31 July 2011
Guido Fawkes
Is there any way I can get a RSS feed to his site, but with all the shit about the death penalty filtered out? While we're at it, can we get rid of the red sentences at the end of each paragraph (as if the posts aren't pithy enough, we need that for our tiny attention spans), the Saturday Seven Ups, and the tiresome constant talk about visitor numbers and past successes?
I don't even know where to start about his call for the death penalty for kid and cop killers. Some thoughts:
I don't even know where to start about his call for the death penalty for kid and cop killers. Some thoughts:
- The state shouldn't have the power of life and death over people. We don't want politicians posturing over this, and we don't want stays of execution to be political or matters of public opinion, which was a reason why it was abolished in the 1960s.
- Judges and juries are fallible, and statistics are very good at misleading people. It's foolish to pretend innocent people will never get executed.
- The death penalty is final and irreversible.
- Revenge isn't the same thing as justice.
- It probably doesn't act as a deterrent. Look at murder rates for US states that have it and those that don't. Pierrepoint observed that if it was a deterrent, he wouldn't have hanged a friend he saw at the pub every week who knew what his job was.
- It's moral vanity for some just like buying Fairtrade is for others.
- Murder is murder. It's stupid to pretend murder of a non-cop or non-child is less serious. Particularly with the police, it gets further and further from the idea of police being ordinary members of the public doing professionally what ordinary citizens should do anyway.
- Just because the public support something doesn't mean politicians should go ahead with something. It's also up to politicians and opinion-formers to take a lead on things and educate people about issues. Maybe if a majority of people support the death penalty, it's only an indication that it's been off the political agenda for a very long time with only the tabloids and people like Guido banging on about it. Opinion formers who have the status quo on their side don't go around arguing in favour of the status quo. Polls show people think it's worse for guilty people to be found innocent than for innocent people to be found guilty. This shows people need education on matters of justice.
- Without the death penalty, we are more able to pile weight on countries with the death penalty for minor things like smuggling drugs. If we have the death penalty, we are only able to criticise their choice of offences they execute for.
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Campaign For HSR
I noticed on the BBC a news item about the IEA's new report on HS2. Naturally to balance the article, they include some opposing views:
On their website, the Campaign for HSR have a background briefing on the IEA's report. This is surely where you can find a rigourous fisking of the IEA's report? They're a respected thinktank, and the Campaign for HSR being a respectable group, would surely want to engage in the debate in a grown up manner? What? No?
The director of the Campaign for HSR, who sits on the board of FirstGroup, is no stranger to throwing mud at opposing views. A link from the BBC article has him calling critics of HSR 'well-off nimbys', that people living on the route were 'economically privileged' while poorer people further afield would benefit from the scheme. Well, no shit, any large infrastructure project is bound to have some rich losers and some poor winners. Now this line of argument is a clear, conscious committed strategy for this group, as evidenced by a recent advertising campaign in Manchester:
So who are the Campaign for HSR? Their about us page tells us that they are independent from HS2 Ltd and the government, but doesn't provide any details of their funding arrangements. Who has paid the invoices from Westbourne Communications, their professional opinion changers? Who paid to develop their swish web site? It doesn't say. They list their 'national council', whatever that is, and it raises eyebrows:
These people who have a vested interest in HS2 being built should not be given the time of day when they engage in ad hominem attacks on people who offer legitimate criticisms, even if their interest in HS2 has been fanned by it being on their doorstep, that in itself doesn't make their criticisms incorrect.
Now it's unfair to criticise people for totally failing to engage with a debate on the basis of how they've been quoted by the BBC, as the BBC like to keep their articles short and pithy. So I went straight to the horse's mouth.The Campaign for High-Speed Rail said it was "hugely disappointed" and "shocked" by the views expressed in the report.
Professor David Begg, director of the campaign group, said the think tank had "completely failed to grasp the wider benefits of the high-speed rail project, which will create jobs, boost investment and spread the economic wealth of this country".
On their website, the Campaign for HSR have a background briefing on the IEA's report. This is surely where you can find a rigourous fisking of the IEA's report? They're a respected thinktank, and the Campaign for HSR being a respectable group, would surely want to engage in the debate in a grown up manner? What? No?
(Emphasis mine). That's a straw man about the local nimby interest, and directing investment to road building (the IEA might support this, but only because it could be funded privately, whereas HS2 will not happen without a large dose of public money), then they try to play to people's fears, that they'd privatise railways despite families and business depending on them. Then there is the unpleasant whiff of the writer claiming the moral apolitical high ground, portraying opponents as politically driven, when actually one group of people overriding another group of people's wishes to build something paid for by everyone without option, is an inherently political thing to do.This morning the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) released their assessment of the proposed high-speed rail project, co-authored by Dr Richard Wellings and Kyn Aizlewood.
The IEA’s report reflects an old-fashioned, free-market-obsessed ideology that wants to spend Britain’s transport infrastructure investment predominantly on roads in the South East.
These sorts of ideologues have no appreciation of the important external benefits that a modern high-speed national rail network would bring for jobs and regeneration.
It is not surprising that the IEA has come out against HS2, when you read about some of the authors’ other thoughts and background.
1. From their past work, the authors are clearly obsessed by roads – particularly in the South East – and would happily privatise the railways on which Britain’s families and local business people depend. See below.
2. The co-author, Kyn Aizlewood, does not disclose that his views are clearly effected by the close proximity of his house to the proposed rail route and that he is a member of an anti-HS2 action group. See below.
...
The IEA have completely failed to grasp the wider benefits of the high-speed rail project, which will create jobs, boost investment and spread the economic wealth of this country to places outside of the TPA heartlands of London and the South East.
I would expect better from an otherwise reputable think-tank than to parrot misinformation and repackage the discredited views of opponents to the project who are clearly motivated by a mixture of small-state ideology and ‘not-in-my-back-yard’ attitudes.
They should be ashamed of themselves for abusing their research credentials to produce such a thinly veiled propaganda piece.
The director of the Campaign for HSR, who sits on the board of FirstGroup, is no stranger to throwing mud at opposing views. A link from the BBC article has him calling critics of HSR 'well-off nimbys', that people living on the route were 'economically privileged' while poorer people further afield would benefit from the scheme. Well, no shit, any large infrastructure project is bound to have some rich losers and some poor winners. Now this line of argument is a clear, conscious committed strategy for this group, as evidenced by a recent advertising campaign in Manchester:
So who are the Campaign for HSR? Their about us page tells us that they are independent from HS2 Ltd and the government, but doesn't provide any details of their funding arrangements. Who has paid the invoices from Westbourne Communications, their professional opinion changers? Who paid to develop their swish web site? It doesn't say. They list their 'national council', whatever that is, and it raises eyebrows:
Mr Dennis Curran, Chairman, Barhale Construction plcI think, given that list, they need to detail their funding. They may be independent of the government and HS2 limited, but who are they not independent from? I'm still not convinced that HS2 isn't about ambitious people building fiefdoms, companies profiting from money forcibly taken off people by the government, and politicians looking for vanity projects.
Mr Jerry Blackett, Chief Executive, Birmingham Chamber of Commerce
Mr Gareth Morgan, Deputy Chair, Birmingham Future
Mr Jonathan Enever, Director, Gleeds Cost Management Limited
Mr Alistair Dormer, Managing Director, Hitachi Europe Ltd
Mr Paul Chapman, Managing Director, HS1 Ltd
Mr Tim Garratt, Director, Innes England
Prof Peter Moizer, Dean, Leeds University Business School
Lord Marshall of Knightsbridge, Chairman, Nomura
Professor David Begg, Chief Executive, Transport Times Ltd.
Mr Andrew Eyre, Executive Chairman, TSL Turton Ltd
Mr Philip Green, Chief Executive Officer, United Utilities
Mr Dalton Philips, Chief Executive, Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc
Mr Chris Fletcher, Deputy Chief Executive & Director of Policy, Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce
Ms Miranda Barker, Managing Director, Allan-Environmental Solutions
Mr Azmat Mohammed, CEO, ID Interactive
These people who have a vested interest in HS2 being built should not be given the time of day when they engage in ad hominem attacks on people who offer legitimate criticisms, even if their interest in HS2 has been fanned by it being on their doorstep, that in itself doesn't make their criticisms incorrect.
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
ACPO
Just seen an ACPO bod on the news, unusually not in police uniform. Have often wondered about this, I thought there were strict rules about wearing the uniform off duty?
The right to kill burglars
I'm a bit confused by this. While I can get gleefully behind the populist feel-good idea that some scumbag who burgles your home is fair game, I have a niggling feeling. Or rather several.
- Isn't reasonable self defence already protected in law?
- Define burglar. Would there have to be signs of forced entry? Is an unlocked door OK or does there have to be broken glass or something? Does the person have to be holding an item of your property at the time of the baseball bat hitting their head? Is there any threshold in value of said item?
- What happens when someone gets killed by mistake?
- How does this sit with the 80 or so reasons an empowered person can use to force entry against a homeowner's will? What reasonable measures must a homeowner take to check a 'burglar' isn't a perfectly legal gas engineer who has smelt gas at the property?
- While I think that a bona fide burglar deserves everything that comes their way, let's just indulge the bleeding heart liberal bit first. They might have turned to crime to fund a drugs habit. These people need help before it gets to that point.
- Once you've got druggies out of the equation, that probably does leave your despicable career criminal. But then, they probably shouldn't be able to commit the offence in the first place because they should still be in prison for their previous crime.
- Then there's the timing. At the same time Ken Clarke wants to reduce the size of the prison population and the Tories are going on about Big Society.
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
HS2
Can't help thinking it's a monumental waste of money.
The economic benefit ratio must be weighed against the economic cost of that deferred taxation. That's once the optimistic assumptions have been adjusted, such as the demand for it, the assumption that time spent on trains is wasted, etc. Then this must be compared to the benefit of spending that £17bn on tax cuts.
Those jobs it will create? What about the jobs it will cost because the government has to (at some point) tax us all for an extra £17bn? As for bringing Britain into the 21st century, investing in our future, those are the kinds of vacuous truisms any dubious project can claim it will achieve.
The economic benefit ratio must be weighed against the economic cost of that deferred taxation. That's once the optimistic assumptions have been adjusted, such as the demand for it, the assumption that time spent on trains is wasted, etc. Then this must be compared to the benefit of spending that £17bn on tax cuts.
Those jobs it will create? What about the jobs it will cost because the government has to (at some point) tax us all for an extra £17bn? As for bringing Britain into the 21st century, investing in our future, those are the kinds of vacuous truisms any dubious project can claim it will achieve.
Monday, 6 June 2011
That breakneck deficit-reduction plan
Coalition's spending plans simply don't add up, according to various left-wing economists, including
Richard Murphy, Director, Tax Research LLP.It seems if there's an open letter going round that's vaguely critical of the government, the man will sign it.
Saab jet
From here:
What about the social cost of the taxation required to raise that capital? Besides, what is social return? I'm sure it's a very difficult thing to quantify.
Investment in the Gripen project "has generated an additional social return to society on the order of magnitude of at least 2.6 times the original development investment", according to Mr Eliasson.
Sunday, 15 May 2011
Drugs Part III
As I said in this post, I had received a stock response from my MP outlining the government's drugs policy. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to indulge in a reply, which was mostly along the lines of what I wrote in the post.
I received another reply, this time very short, thanking me for my letter but saying we'll have to agree to disagree, and that her opinion has been formed after years of seeing the damage drugs do and her idea about what British society should be like. There was a nice typo about being against the 'legislation of drugs'.
I know my MP is extremely busy, but however I look at it, it's a pretty poor service. She hasn't justified her position, she hasn't engaged with my points, she hasn't made any comment about the calls for legalisation. She's just asserted her opinion, and offered nothing to back it up. This is an opinion which not only restricts people's freedoms, but in all probability makes things worse.
What would I like to happen? I'd like her to have a blog, and if someone sends her a thoughtful letter, she could ask permission to post it to the blog, then she should post her reply in the open, and let people critique the whole exchange in the comments section. With as little moderation as possible.
At the moment, she has a standard Tory template website, with a news section that hasn't been updated since March, a Twitter account that hasn't been updated since March, no user comments anywhere, and a few soundbites about being disgusted by MPs' abuse of expenses. It's all very on-message and it's quite depressing. She's quite probably just another cookie-cutter politician who represents the government to the constituents and not the other way around. After all, she's there because of the party machine, if she stands up to it she'll be betraying what got her there. All she has to do is not rock the boat and she'll be rewarded for it.
This seems like a good opportunity to post this. It's about the two party system but it could just as well be about the fact whoever you vote for, you get a self-serving politician who'll mess around with things and get paid handsomely in the process. Whoever you vote for, they win. Nothing except the periphery ever changes.
As for drugs, the war on drugs has failed. Each successive politician who promises to get tough on drugs should be reminded of Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". On the other hand, it all makes sense if the result they're expecting is we just lap it up...
I received another reply, this time very short, thanking me for my letter but saying we'll have to agree to disagree, and that her opinion has been formed after years of seeing the damage drugs do and her idea about what British society should be like. There was a nice typo about being against the 'legislation of drugs'.
I know my MP is extremely busy, but however I look at it, it's a pretty poor service. She hasn't justified her position, she hasn't engaged with my points, she hasn't made any comment about the calls for legalisation. She's just asserted her opinion, and offered nothing to back it up. This is an opinion which not only restricts people's freedoms, but in all probability makes things worse.
What would I like to happen? I'd like her to have a blog, and if someone sends her a thoughtful letter, she could ask permission to post it to the blog, then she should post her reply in the open, and let people critique the whole exchange in the comments section. With as little moderation as possible.
At the moment, she has a standard Tory template website, with a news section that hasn't been updated since March, a Twitter account that hasn't been updated since March, no user comments anywhere, and a few soundbites about being disgusted by MPs' abuse of expenses. It's all very on-message and it's quite depressing. She's quite probably just another cookie-cutter politician who represents the government to the constituents and not the other way around. After all, she's there because of the party machine, if she stands up to it she'll be betraying what got her there. All she has to do is not rock the boat and she'll be rewarded for it.
This seems like a good opportunity to post this. It's about the two party system but it could just as well be about the fact whoever you vote for, you get a self-serving politician who'll mess around with things and get paid handsomely in the process. Whoever you vote for, they win. Nothing except the periphery ever changes.
As for drugs, the war on drugs has failed. Each successive politician who promises to get tough on drugs should be reminded of Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". On the other hand, it all makes sense if the result they're expecting is we just lap it up...
Thursday, 21 April 2011
Republicanism
If we have a head of state which we elect, what powers should they have? I'm quite in favour of a ceremonial head of state who should have no political power but should do all of the following: unite us in times of difficulty with good speeches, congratulate and encourage our sportsmen and women, reward and recognise people who contribute to charity, raise the profile of the plight of former servicemen and women, opening hospital wards, etc. If the head of state does the things in that list, then our political leaders have fewer media opportunities to make their images electoral assets. If a head of state is only going to do those things, what's wrong with a royal family? Once you start electing people, they're going to start offering reasons why they should be given more power over other people to make things better.
Monday, 18 April 2011
Compare and Contrast
America's attitudes towards guns, and America's attitudes towards drugs.
Especially when guns are scary things which usually harm someone other than the person pulling the trigger, and drugs are scary things which usually harm the person who takes them...
It does not make sense. Why would a wookiee, an eight foot tall wookiee...
Especially when guns are scary things which usually harm someone other than the person pulling the trigger, and drugs are scary things which usually harm the person who takes them...
It does not make sense. Why would a wookiee, an eight foot tall wookiee...
Thoughts on AV
It certainly seems more complicated than FPTP to me. Imagine the first choices cast as follows: Tory candidate on 49%, Labour on 40%, Lib Dem on 9%, and BNP on 2%. Two possible contrived scenarios:
If you want to vote tactically, what should your strategy be? I'm not sure if this is clear. In the case one really doesn't want a particular candidate to win, is it clear one should not rank them instead of ranking them last? But then that would only matter if the first choice is likely to get eliminated.
I'm not sure a complex system is a great idea. We want transparency because otherwise people can dress up stupid arguments using the complexity as a justification. For instance, if the BNP does decide any results under AV, does this raise their profile and increase the likelihood of legislation to deal with legal but highly distasteful parties? Or if people are confused by an outcome, will this turn them off politics?
At the end of the day, it only changes the way votes in a constituency are counted. It's not going to make your vote count if you don't live in a marginal constituency. I don't know if it makes it harder for a politician to win, and I find it unconvincing rhetoric that the winner needs 50% - well yes, because of the way the votes are counted.
I'm not sure how it will affect small parties either. With FPTP people are reluctant to vote for a small party because they don't want to waste their vote. I suppose this is understandable. With AV, they can vote for the parties of their hearts, heads, and wallets in whichever order they like. This might be a good thing, but if one of those choices is a small party, they're almost certainly still not going to win, and their vote transfers to one of the big parties, who might then not need to worry about little parties costing them the election. Small parties hope to influence the bigger parties policies rather than to win elections, and I have no idea how AV will affect this.
I'd like to vote for whatever's going to make people freer and politicians less important. Is that AV or FPTP?
P.S. What's happened to the right to recall? That would surely keep politicians on their toes a bit more?
- All BNP voters put Tory as their 2nd choice. Their first choice is deleted, so Tories now get bumped up to their first preference. Tories are now on 51% and win.
- All BNP voters put Labour as their 2nd choice. The result after the first round is now: 49% Tory, 42% Labour, Lib Dem 9%. The Lib Dems are now last, and get eliminated. All Lib Dems put Labour as their second choice. Now we have Tories on 49%, Labour on 51%. Labour win.
If you want to vote tactically, what should your strategy be? I'm not sure if this is clear. In the case one really doesn't want a particular candidate to win, is it clear one should not rank them instead of ranking them last? But then that would only matter if the first choice is likely to get eliminated.
I'm not sure a complex system is a great idea. We want transparency because otherwise people can dress up stupid arguments using the complexity as a justification. For instance, if the BNP does decide any results under AV, does this raise their profile and increase the likelihood of legislation to deal with legal but highly distasteful parties? Or if people are confused by an outcome, will this turn them off politics?
At the end of the day, it only changes the way votes in a constituency are counted. It's not going to make your vote count if you don't live in a marginal constituency. I don't know if it makes it harder for a politician to win, and I find it unconvincing rhetoric that the winner needs 50% - well yes, because of the way the votes are counted.
I'm not sure how it will affect small parties either. With FPTP people are reluctant to vote for a small party because they don't want to waste their vote. I suppose this is understandable. With AV, they can vote for the parties of their hearts, heads, and wallets in whichever order they like. This might be a good thing, but if one of those choices is a small party, they're almost certainly still not going to win, and their vote transfers to one of the big parties, who might then not need to worry about little parties costing them the election. Small parties hope to influence the bigger parties policies rather than to win elections, and I have no idea how AV will affect this.
I'd like to vote for whatever's going to make people freer and politicians less important. Is that AV or FPTP?
P.S. What's happened to the right to recall? That would surely keep politicians on their toes a bit more?
Thursday, 14 April 2011
More drugs
After I'd written this post, I wrote to my MP along those lines, and got a stock response detailing the government's drugs policy, without engaging with my points. I'm not surprised and didn't think I'd get anything else. I assume that MPs who simply delegate their views to the government either don't have enough time to research the matter themselves, more or less agree with the government's position, or more or less disagree but don't want to say anything because it's not worth their ministerial career or the disunity.
If it's that they don't have the time, I hope they could be persuaded to have a more involved opinion. There are many high-profile people who have called for a rethink about drugs policy. Vicente Fox called for legalisation after he left office, and his incumbent successor is in favour of a debate. Not satisfied with prohibition are a quite a few ex-police chief superintendents, and then there are ex-heads of medical bodies, and government drugs councils. Recently an ex-home secretary and a current chairman of the bar council advocated legalisation, and amazingly in 2005 David Cameron advocated legalisation, not just decriminalisation. These are illustrious opinions, and what forms them and why they change is definitely worth careful consideration. I think it is the remarks made freely and frankly that have more value, but people are often reluctant to make such remarks while in office. I think MPs need to be more circumspect about supporting a policy that might be shaped by pressures which lead to such reluctance.
I don't think it's purely academic what MPs think in the face of alarmist headlines and public opinion. It certainly isn't in the case of the death penalty, the EU, and other matters. Once MPs have found safety in numbers, they can help provide a drip of momentum that will eventually convince the public that we need a radical rethink on drugs.
If it's that they don't have the time, I hope they could be persuaded to have a more involved opinion. There are many high-profile people who have called for a rethink about drugs policy. Vicente Fox called for legalisation after he left office, and his incumbent successor is in favour of a debate. Not satisfied with prohibition are a quite a few ex-police chief superintendents, and then there are ex-heads of medical bodies, and government drugs councils. Recently an ex-home secretary and a current chairman of the bar council advocated legalisation, and amazingly in 2005 David Cameron advocated legalisation, not just decriminalisation. These are illustrious opinions, and what forms them and why they change is definitely worth careful consideration. I think it is the remarks made freely and frankly that have more value, but people are often reluctant to make such remarks while in office. I think MPs need to be more circumspect about supporting a policy that might be shaped by pressures which lead to such reluctance.
I don't think it's purely academic what MPs think in the face of alarmist headlines and public opinion. It certainly isn't in the case of the death penalty, the EU, and other matters. Once MPs have found safety in numbers, they can help provide a drip of momentum that will eventually convince the public that we need a radical rethink on drugs.
Monday, 14 March 2011
Sunday, 9 January 2011
Labour's VAT figures
According to an article on the BBC, Labour says the increase in VAT will cost the average family £7.50 a week.
So the average family spends x/1.175*1.2 - x = £7.50 => x = £7.50/(1.2/1.175 - 1) = £352.50 per week on VATable goods? That's £1410pcm. Is this plausible?
AFAIK, the list of exempt or reduced rate goods hasn't changed. At least I recall no mention of this happening and haven't found anything by Googling.
Monday, 3 January 2011
Housing
“Over the long term it would be desirable if house prices did not do very much as all as it would allow earnings to catch up and for housing to become more of an affordable commodity as so many white goods have become over the years,” he said.Says Grant Shapps, the Housing Minister.
Let's federalise the UK. Regions in the North could use their autonomy to lower taxes to tempt businesses to set up there, make it easy to get planning permission to build houses on former industrial wasteland, etc.
Far better than building an expensive railway so more people can spend exactly the same amount of time commuting to London, just from further away.
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Is Murdoch More Evil than the BBC?
Presumably anyone against the News Corp buyout, because they're worried about it being anti-competitive or harming media plurality, is in favour of doing something about the BBC's privileged position?
This isn't a point made in favour of Murdoch; I'm hoping that his power over UK elections will decline, that the Times paywall will fail miserably, etc, etc. I just hope people might start to think more about the BBC's unsavoury aspects.
The licence fee is crude, anachronistic and unjust. It's a tax, no two ways about it. If I want to watch live TV, there is no way for me to avoid paying money to the BBC, and this is backed up by the implied threat of violence. I can't shop around or make a protest by denying an organisation my custom. I pay the same no matter how much or how little I consume, rendering it 'regressive'. I'm not sure how it will evolve to react to streaming TV over the Internet, but it will surely get more ugly and unjust unless it's abolished.
AFAIK, if you don't watch live TV, or don't watch content streamed over the Internet at the same time as it is being broadcast, then you don't need a TV licence. If this is the case, then you'll probably get a threatening stream of letters from 'TV Licensing', which fail to clearly explain when you need a TV licence and what their powers exactly are. Interestingly, this is all handled by Capita, and the BBC refused to disclose the details of this arrangement in an FoI request, in case Capita's competitors found it useful - presumably to outbid Capita and provide the BBC with a cheaper service.
If you jump through their hoop and tell them that you don't need a TV licence, they say they might want to send one of their salespeople around to search your home to check you're not lying. If the salesperson (who is paid on commission for TV licences sold and successful prosecutions) has a snoop around your house, and is satisfied he can't catch you out, then TV Licensing will stop harassing you for some period of time, and then the letters will start again.
If you don't comply with their salesperson's desire to search your home, they can apply to a court for a search warrant. It's not clear what might convince a magistrate that there are reasonable grounds to believe an offence is being committed on the premises. Simply refusing a voluntary search might be a good enough reason. I can't find any information about this, and I suspect it varies from court to court and magistrate to magistrate. They must think it helps to send courts their glossy annual newsletters, which has got to be quite an unusual thing for a plaintiff to do.
If a warrant is served, it's not unusual for police to be present, who are only officially there to keep the peace. However, as we have seen many times with bailiffs, rather than uphold the law, police often make unlawful demands, such as for the name of the occupier, or other information TV Licensing don't need.
While they maintain that people who don't buy TV Licences are guilty until proven innocent, it's worth remembering that about 25% of those people investigated require them. While this percentage would go up without their draconian approach, I don't think guilty-until-proven-innocent is a justifiable way to keep it down, furthermore it makes the letters seem all the more unreasonable when they don't even have the balance of probabilities on their side, and it makes the whole concept of a TV licence seem all the more ridiculous.
It would surely be better to let the BBC fend for itself rather than let the state bully on its behalf for its money, and abolish the licence fee?
This isn't a point made in favour of Murdoch; I'm hoping that his power over UK elections will decline, that the Times paywall will fail miserably, etc, etc. I just hope people might start to think more about the BBC's unsavoury aspects.
The licence fee is crude, anachronistic and unjust. It's a tax, no two ways about it. If I want to watch live TV, there is no way for me to avoid paying money to the BBC, and this is backed up by the implied threat of violence. I can't shop around or make a protest by denying an organisation my custom. I pay the same no matter how much or how little I consume, rendering it 'regressive'. I'm not sure how it will evolve to react to streaming TV over the Internet, but it will surely get more ugly and unjust unless it's abolished.
AFAIK, if you don't watch live TV, or don't watch content streamed over the Internet at the same time as it is being broadcast, then you don't need a TV licence. If this is the case, then you'll probably get a threatening stream of letters from 'TV Licensing', which fail to clearly explain when you need a TV licence and what their powers exactly are. Interestingly, this is all handled by Capita, and the BBC refused to disclose the details of this arrangement in an FoI request, in case Capita's competitors found it useful - presumably to outbid Capita and provide the BBC with a cheaper service.
If you jump through their hoop and tell them that you don't need a TV licence, they say they might want to send one of their salespeople around to search your home to check you're not lying. If the salesperson (who is paid on commission for TV licences sold and successful prosecutions) has a snoop around your house, and is satisfied he can't catch you out, then TV Licensing will stop harassing you for some period of time, and then the letters will start again.
If you don't comply with their salesperson's desire to search your home, they can apply to a court for a search warrant. It's not clear what might convince a magistrate that there are reasonable grounds to believe an offence is being committed on the premises. Simply refusing a voluntary search might be a good enough reason. I can't find any information about this, and I suspect it varies from court to court and magistrate to magistrate. They must think it helps to send courts their glossy annual newsletters, which has got to be quite an unusual thing for a plaintiff to do.
If a warrant is served, it's not unusual for police to be present, who are only officially there to keep the peace. However, as we have seen many times with bailiffs, rather than uphold the law, police often make unlawful demands, such as for the name of the occupier, or other information TV Licensing don't need.
While they maintain that people who don't buy TV Licences are guilty until proven innocent, it's worth remembering that about 25% of those people investigated require them. While this percentage would go up without their draconian approach, I don't think guilty-until-proven-innocent is a justifiable way to keep it down, furthermore it makes the letters seem all the more unreasonable when they don't even have the balance of probabilities on their side, and it makes the whole concept of a TV licence seem all the more ridiculous.
It would surely be better to let the BBC fend for itself rather than let the state bully on its behalf for its money, and abolish the licence fee?
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