Let's not have a referendum

I suppose it should be mildly encouraging that the House of Commons is to debate and vote on whether there should be a referendum concerning the UK's membership of the European Union. The BBC informs me (here) that what will be debated is whether a referendum should be held giving the great British public three choices: (i) remaining in the EU, (ii) withdrawing from the EU and (iii) staying in but renegotiating the terms "in order to create a new relationship based on trade and cooperation".

My initial reaction was to wonder at the absurdity of offering three options. Nothing seems to be said about the proportion of votes required for any single option to be deemed the winner. Will it be more than one third or more than half? If the former it will lack legitimacy, if the latter it will set a very high hurdle for each option. 40% for staying in, 30% for withdrawal and 30% for renegotiation could be contrued as 70% for staying in but trying to change the unchangeable or as 60% for changing the status quo without any obligation on government to do anything about it. Either way it is completely unsatisfactory.

My second reaction was to ask whether there is any difference between the first and third options and, indeed, between the second and third options.

Staying in does not prevent renegotiation of the terms of membership, so option (iii) (if acted on by the government) merely adds a requirement to enter negotiations. What it cannot do is dictate the outcome of those negotiations because, by definition, negotiations only lead to a change if all parties to the discussion agree on a specific outcome. As I understand it an outcome in favour of option (iii) would not require the government to do anything, although it would be bad politics for them not to make at least a token gesture of trying to change the terms of EU membership. And even if they were constitutionally obliged to negotiate that would not guarantee any particular result.

Leaving the EU cannot take place in a vacuum. The UK has numerous trade treaties with countries around the globe, absent such treaties practical business cannot be conducted and just those sorts of treaties will be required if we are to deal in a sensible manner with the remaining EU nations. Withdrawal from the EU necessarily requires new treaties to be negotiated with the new, slightly smaller, EU because country-by-country treaties with EU members are not an option - the EU as a conglomerate has control over such matters. In other words, withdrawal will require negotiation "in order to create a new relationship based on trade and cooperation" - so what of option (iii)?

The terms proposed for a referendum look like a hopeless and confused committee-created fudge. A referendum on the terms proposed is likely to achieve only one thing, namely to kick the issue into the long grass for the foreseeable future. Only a straight in/out question is appropriate.

80mph? Oh no, the planet is at risk.

The government has suggested that the national maximum speed limit might be increased from 70 mph to 80 mph in two years' time, in the interim they propose a consultation exercise. Whether the outcome will be a change in the maximum permissible speed of motorcars on our roads is pretty much irrelevant to me. I have held an unblemished driving licence for decades and will not knowingly exceed a speed limit because I want it to remain unblemished. Consider me a boring prig if you will, but I prefer to live within the law whether or not I agree with it.

Today on my way back from a hack around the golf course I heard an item on this issue on BBC Radio 5 (actually not so much of a hack, I went round in 78 gross on a par 72 course, something went wrong with my usual ineffectual sporting technique - I only throw this in because I'm very proud of it and will almost certainly never do it again).

A number of statements issued by people and organisations involved in the motoring business were read and a few people were interviewed, including a former racing driver and the current Secretary of State for Transport. Some supported the proposal, some opposed it and some said it was necessary to investigate the likely consequences before changing the law. Fair enough.

What was not fair enough was that almost all contributors, including the Secretary of State, said a relevant consideration was the effect of an increase in the maximum lawful speed of motor cars on British roads on the amount of carbon dioxide exuded into the atmosphere.

It really is quite flabbergasting that the anti-carbon dioxide religion has taken hold to such an extent that a minor change in the law of England, Wales and (I believe) Northern Ireland should be thought to have a potential impact on emissions of CO2 that can be of relevance to the well-being of our planet and/or human life on our planet.

The UK (including Scotland which is in charge of speed limits through its own so-called Parliament and is unaffected by the proposed change) produces less than 2% of all carbon dioxide spewed forth by human activity. Traffic on roads carrying a speed limit lower than 70 mph will not be affected by the proposal and not all those travelling on roads to which the national speed limit applies will drive faster and spew more CO2 as a result of the maximum permissible speed being 80 rather than 70.

Against that background it is obvious beyond doubt that any additional CO2 coming from those cars that will be driven at higher speeds because of the proposed change will be such a small amount that it can make no difference to anything. It will be a small percentage (if, indeed it even reaches 1%) of the less than 2% of world emissions coming from the UK.

You can close down all human activity in the UK and the result will not have any measurable effect on the climate. Even if we accept the very direst predictions of those who claim additional human-produced carbon dioxide will cause great changes to the climate and that those changes will be detrimental to human existence, the removal of the 2% currently produced by the UK cannot affect matters to a measurable degree because other countries (especially China and India) are increasing their emissions by far more every year.

To take a proposal that might increase the UK's emissions by a tiny amount and seek to include that effect as a consideration that should affect the decision to accept or reject the proposal is, frankly, moronic.

A pincer movement of sheer lunacy - Part II

In Part I (here) I bemoaned the absurd overreaction by the professionally smug to the non-news that newspapers buy information obtained by illegal phone tapping. A week has now passed since a Parliamentary committee manned by incompetent cross-examiners conducted a kangaroo court trial of three people connected to a particular newspaper and failed to pin a tail anywhere near the donkey's anus. The only public outcry of which I am aware concerns the distasteful bugging (tapping, hacking, call it what you will) of telephonic communications involving the families of deceased people. Reprehensible though I consider such activity to be, there is no evidence that disclosure of any improperly obtained material has caused inconvenience, embarrassment or upset to any family members. In short the whole thing is a bit of a non-issue over which politicians - sniffing the chance to pass laws preventing their own sordid secrets being exposed - have whipped themselves into an unnecessary lather.

Part II is about the apparent intent of all our main political parties to make electricity oppressively expensive. I am not going to rehearse the unanswerable arguments against reliance on generating electricity from wind and waves, nor am I going to rail against those in rabid servility to every scare story promoted by those whose financial position rests on acceptance of the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis. My concern is with something much more basic and, in my view, important.

As recently as twenty years ago I doubt many would have argued with the proposition that elected politicians in the UK had one duty above all other - to do what they considered to be in the best interests of the people they represent. Of course there can be honest disagreements about what is in the best interests of the little people but the focus of the exercise was unaltered by the outcome of the debate. MPs were in parliament to represent their constituents by acting in what they considered the best interests of their constituents. On local issues they would fight for what they felt was best for the constituency, on national and international issues they would broaden their remit to cover all the people living in the UK because the interests of their constituents were the same as the interests of every other person in the country.

Is it in the best interests of those living in a particular constituency and those living in all constituencies for electricity to be cheap or expensive? To my mind that is not a difficult question and should permit only one answer. Cheaper electricity eases pressure on household budgets and reduces the costs of doing business, as such it is a blindingly obvious desire for any right-thinking person whether or not he is a Member of Parliament. More expensive electricity hits the poorest hardest and hampers our businesses in their aim of selling goods and services to overseas customers. It takes a weirdly warped sense of priorities for any MP to promote a policy that impoverishes his own constituents and the country as a whole.

We all know why they continually pass laws making electricity ever more expensive. In part it is because they have fallen for the great global warming scam. In part it is because they hope it will bring in additional tax. In part it is because they want to set a pointless example to other countries in which politicians are not so craven to Saint Al of Gore and his distinctly unmerry fellow-travellers. In part it is because they have fallen for the "green jobs" scam. In part it is because they are scared of the party whips. In part it is because they think there might be votes in presenting themselves as "green". All these things explain why they support a particular line of policy, but none justifies voting for measures that hurt their constituents and damage the economy of the whole country.

Never let it be said I will miss an opportunity to state the obvious, and today is no exception. The reason we in the UK enjoy our current standard of living is that we have found ways of making physical comfort cheaper than it was before. Human beings have always been doing this and over the last two hundred years or so we have done it so successfully that we now measure material deprivation in the UK not in terms of basic housing, food and clean water but in terms of access to the internet, holidays and mobile telephones. Material comforts that are now taken for granted and deemed essential to subsistence living were either science fiction or oppressively expensive as recently as forty years ago. This happy state of affairs has been brought about by the amazing ability of human beings to invent new things and improve old things so that a luxury lifestyle of the 1950s is attainable on the minimum wage in 2011.

At the heart of all this improvement in the quality of everyday physical comfort is electricity. The cheaper it is, the better we all live. And do not ever forget that those earning good money will always be able to afford comfort, what really matters is allowing those of modest means the ability to get more comfort for their limited money. That is a fundamental part of the duty of MPs to act in the best interests of their constituents and of the country as a whole. However tempting it might be to satisfy international or party agendas, their duty is to their constituents and to the UK. Electricity costs are at the heart of all our lives, especially those of modest means, and any MP with his or her eye on the ball should be fighting against any government measure that increases its price.

A pincer movement of sheer lunacy - Part I

In the curry house yesterday I was asked whether I had been out in the sun, apparently my forehead was bright red and deeply blistered. The reason is not exposure to sunlight, it is relentless frustration with the stupidity of current political debate that has caused the vigorous and repeated application of palm to head. At the moment our Parliament seems to be dominated by two topics - the activities of the press and the government's desire to make electricity prohibitively expensive. Both subjects seem to have a magical power over MPs such that they spout complete and total nonsense without any comprehension of the lack of common sense behind their analyses. I'll deal with the press today.

The basis of Parliamentary hysteria seems to be the "revelation" that a tabloid newspaper published information gleaned from illegal phone taps and computer hacks. Well, well, what a surprise, who'd have thought any such thing has occurred in this country? Everyone, that's who. Another, secondary, "revelation" is that journalists paid money in return for information the law requires to be kept confidential. Well, well, what a surprise, who'd have thought such a thing has occured in this country? Everyone, that's who.

There is only one sensible reaction to these "revelations". It is to get the police to investigate the matter and charge anyone against whom there is sufficient evidence. The activities complained of are already illegal under our law so there is no need for any more laws. The one and only thing that should be done is to enforce existing law.

Instead a Court of Appeal Judge is going to be kept out of court for a year or more so that he can conduct an inquiry which will be called a whitewash if he says current laws are fine and a witch hunt if he says new laws should be passed.

In Parliament we have witnessed the unedifying spectacle of buckets of sanctimonious hogwash being sprayed around by hundreds of MPs, each trying to out-outrage the previous speaker with the level of their ignorant and hypocritical humbug.

Everyone with a brain larger than a pea knows newspapers act in underhand and, sometimes, unlawful ways to get attention-grabbing information they can plaster across their front pages. They all do it. Locals, nationals, broadsheets, tabloids - they all do it.

How do you think the Yokel Local Chronicle learned about the intention of Big Supermarket PLC to buy farmer Giles's front field for a new shop? It's obvious, someone working for the company leaked the news, probably in return for a fee or favour. In that instance the person working for the supermarket company broke the terms of his contract of employment and risked summary dismissal. He had to balance the benefit he gained against the risk of losing his job. The newspaper knew he was breaching his contract but also knew there was no realistic chance of being sued, so it published anyway in order to have a good headline, a reputation for having it's finger on the local pulse and the chance of greater circulation in future and higher advertising revenues. The only question that would trouble the editor is whether the information was true.

Paying for information obtained in other unlawful ways is different only in degree from paying for leaked confidential information about the intentions of a supermarket chain. The degree might be higher or lower, but the substance is the same each time. That some information results from activities that amount to criminal offences and other "feeds" involve a breach of contract but not a crime is a distinction without a difference in this field. We have laws against this sort of activity. Those laws provide a penalty for anyone proved to have breached them. There is one reason and one reason only why those laws were broken - the people breaking them considered the benefit of the breach to outweigh the risk of being caught and/or the penalty for being caught and pursued to judgment. Making the activity doubly unlawful will not change this because it is a matter of human nature rather than of law.

Increasing the penalty can make a big difference to how people behave but it brings up a wholly different matter that makes serious penalties impossible. How does phone tapping or hacking emails compare to burglary, or stabbing someone or holding-up a bank with a shotgun? Obviously infringements of privacy are not in the same league, so what maximum penalty can be justified without the law becoming absurd? There is no certain answer to that question although the general answer is that the maximum penalty, and the penalty actually imposed in any particular case, is unlikely ever to be so severe that it would deter those offered a chunky financial inducement.

Members of Parliament can huff and puff all they want about how morally reprehensible it is to tap the phones of the families of deceased soldiers and victims of crime. I doubt that there are many in the country who have not huffed and puffed in disgust. Nothing MPs say and no amount of hot air they expel can change anything. Newspapers will still use whatever means they can get away with to obtain the information they think their readers want to read, because more readers means more advertisers and that is where the money is.

A theme that ran through contributions in the debate in the House of Commons was a call for regulation not just of how newspapers obtain information but of what they publish. This deserves to result in blistered foreheads across the nation. Do these people really think the interests of the people of this country as a whole are best served by newspapers being constricted in what they are permitted to print and how in buggery do they think such restrictions can be imposed?

Only two restrictions can ever be justified. First, they should not publish things that are untrue. The law covers that already (albeit imperfectly) through the law of libel. Secondly, they should not publish anything that causes them to lose business. This is nothing to do with the law, it is all about the little people voting with their feet. Editorial judgment must be exercised to decide whether a story will be good or bad for circulation. If it will be bad it should not be published, if good it should be published, if it appears good but turns out to be bad the paper can look for a new editor. No other restrictions can have any justification under any circumstances. I hear you cry: what about kiddy porn? Simple, advertisers will disappear overnight, only a few pathetic dribblers will buy the paper, the publisher and numerous editorial staff will face lengthy time behind bars and next week there will be no newspaper.

The very suggestion that there should be any sort of State control over the content of newspapers other than the law of libel is so absurd as to be obscene. Some might suggest it is part of a plot by politicians to protect themselves from criticism, I do not agree. I believe it to be nothing other than an irrational knee-jerk reaction to extremely distasteful newspaper activities that have been exposed recently. The politicians want to be heard expressing disgust so they can have their local paper report they have stood up to be counted. OK, fine, let them say it and get their favourable editorial, then they can return to the real world and acknowledge that what was done was unlawful so no new law is needed and that any attempt to censor the press is bound to fail.

The question they are really addressing is this: should Parliament legislate to prevent publication of the truth? Sadly, they do not seem to be willing or able to understand that this is what they are doing. In any event, how can Parliament legislate to prevent publication of the truth? The key here is "prevent publication". How can Parliament - which can only do anything through the laws it passes - prevent someone doing something? As the law now stands there are penalties for doing naughty things once you have done them, and only then if you are caught and there is sufficient evidence to prove you did them. It is the risk of penalty that is preventative. Short of physical restraint, all the law can do is threaten a penalty in the hope the threat will prevent naughtiness.

So, how do you prevent the truth being told? The simple answer is that you cannot, all you can do is pass laws imposing penalties for telling the truth and therein lies the fundamental flaw in all the guff spouted in Parliament. They can moan about invasions of privacy and the extreme distastefulness of some of those invasions until they are any colour in the face they choose, but they cannot produce a rational argument for the truth being suppressed. If that truth is not to the taste of a newspaper's readership there is a risk to advertising revenue, if it is to their taste the till will ring triumphantly. The little people will vote with their £1 coins. Parliament is an utter irrelevance on this issue. Honourable members should shut up and keep their fingers crossed that their peccadillos remain below the radar.

Captain Ranty's "Legal Fiction"

I have been reminded by the good Mr Wadsworth (here) of a recent posting on the site of the deliciously entertaining but occasionally deranged Captain Ranty (here). In the piece highlighted by Mr Wadsworth the Captain made a bizarre and patently absurd assertion, namely that a judge in a County Court had made a finding in law that there is a distinction between between someone calling himself Roger Hayes and living at a particular address, let's call it 34 Acacia Avenue, and Mr Roger Hayes who has been billed for Council Tax at 34 Acacia Avenue.

The case to which he refers involved a claim being made in the County Court and I infer the local council had issued a summons against "Mr Roger Hayes" and served it at 34 Acacia Avenue claiming whatever sum of Council Tax for 34 Acacia Avenue had not been paid. I also infer that the only adult human being who is both known as Roger Hayes and lives at 34 Acacia Avenue attended court. When there he claimed not to be Mr Roger Hayes and not to be liable to Council Tax for 34 Acacia Avenue because he was Roger Hayes, the human being, whereas Mr Roger Hayes is legal corporation but not comprised of flesh and bones. I don't propose to waste a good keyboard on explaining everything that is wrong with this manifestly ludicrous proposition, save to say it has no merit in law and is almost certainly unfounded in fact (for example, I'll bet you a pig to a pork scratching that the human being has acknowledged himself to be Mr Roger Hayes hundreds if not thousands of times and has benefited from doing so - in passing, I wonder whether he has a bank account and, if so, whether the bank records the account as being that of Roger Hayes or Mr Roger Hayes, if the latter poor Roger would be liable to repay every penny he has ever withdrawn). What I want to explain is what the judge's conduct of the hearing amounted to.

By way of background, I should point out that nothing Captain Ranty or (Mr) Roger Hayes are saying today is at all novel. Every year the courts hear these and similar arguments being put forward in a vain attempt to challenge either the right of the court to hear the case or the very concept of enforceable law. Friday afternoons are reserved for such people by the procedural judges (known as Masters) of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court. The arguments range from demands that the judge provides evidence of his appointment followed by a refusal to accept that the judge is a judge unless he can do so, to assertions that certain Acts of Parliament have no effect because they contravene Magna Carta, to attempts to get one judge to re-hear a case that has already been heard by another judge, and all sorts of nonsense in between. Experience shows that the best thing to do is sit back, let the barmy argument be put and then get on with the case. Frequently this involves adjourning the matter to a later date on the ground that further evidence is required on one point or another or because the court has run out of time due to the spouting, at great length, of unmitigated tosh by the misguided litigant. In some instances these adjournments are made in the hope the nutter will give up, and sometimes they do.

The choice for the judge is to allow the rubbish to be spouted, or to try to prevent it being spouted. No third way exists. Trying to prevent carries risks because the litigants are often either unstable or obsessed or both. Neither County Courts nor the High Court are usually staffed by a six-foot bouncer with a stun gun, instead they have an usher who is more likely to be a lady in her late fifties called Enid with no weapon more effective than a clipboard and a ballpoint pen. No judge is going to put his or her staff at any physical risk if they can avoid it, so the path of least resistance is adopted. This involves trying to dismiss the point briefly in the hope the annoyance will accept the indication and go away, but if that fails it is safer to allow them a "day in court". That does not mean that any credence at all is given to the eccentric theories being expounded, far less does it amount to an acceptance of those theories or that the person arguing them has any legal right to appear in the case at all. It's all a matter of practicalities. Years ago judges tended to be somewhat brusquer on average than they are today, yet even the most robust would show their greatest politeness when faced with a litigant in person barking up the wrong end of a very sturdy tree.

Nothing in the case referred to by Captain Ranty hints for even a second that the judge accepted any part of the fanciful arguments being put in front of him. Rather, it is a classic case of a judge trying to get a nutter to go away and then sitting back resignedly and facing the unappealing fact that the nutter will persist and should be allowed to do so to prevent any unpleasantness and/or the wasting of even more time by another judge being faced with exactly the same scenario at a later date.

You'd have to be ill to risk this illness

I have just read an item on the BBC news website. It reports American research as showing that showerheads are breeding grounds for bacteria. No one should be surprised at that, I am sure I've read it before and it's obvious anyway. When you turn off the shower some water remains lodged in the showerhead and sits there until the next time it is used. All sorts of little buglets can make themselves cosy in the once warm water and breed as only buglets do. In a few hours there might be millions of the blighters. What terribly dangerous things showers are. Until you turn them on, at which point the little buggers get flushed out. Some, no doubt, will remain and expose you to a risk lower than you take by washing yesterday's dinner plates by hand.

The line that particularly caught my attention said "If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium, which may not be too healthy". OK, we'll allow him "may" when he meant "might". There is clearly no need for panic, to add to the lack of need for this sort of pointless research. Getting a particularly high load of something with a long name is only potentially "not too ... healthy", so there's not much to worry about.

Ah, but there is something to worry about and it is nothing to do with long words to describe very small things. You can only get "a face full of water when you first turn your shower on" if you are a complete moron. You might like a cold shower, you might like it hot, or you might like it somewhere in between, but you cannot know the temperature of the water until it is running and has established its par temperature. Even the best thermostatically controlled showers do not deliver water instantly at the temperature chosen by the fastidious user. You have to wait for it to run a while mixing hot and cold so that your desires can be met. Only a fool would stand under a shower, turn it on and hope for the best.

I have a vague recollection from a couple of years ago of people suing hotels because they were either scalded of frozen by the water from the shower. Obviously morons do exist and use hotel showers despite not knowing the temperature setting of the device. Even in the home someone might have changed the thermostatic control without you noticing or, if you have a basic mixer tap the hot might be hotter or less hot than it was yesterday so you have to test it with a hand or some other part of your anatomy that is more able to withstand variations than your most tender regions.

This is all so obvious that to stand under a shower and turn it on can be the practice of only the seriously mentally ill. Anyone unable to cope with such a simple exercise without putting themselves in peril of burns or chilblains will hardly worry about also getting a high dose of bacteria. And if you don't clean the showerhead you also deserve everything you get.

What a load of twaddle.

Contentment and the common enemy

Casting my mind back several decades to my student days I recall observing a phenomenon associated with communal living. Almost all my fellow students spent some time in college accommodation before finding a flat to share with others. In the normal run of things three or four would share because money was extremely tight and the overheads of rent, rates (now council tax), water rates, standing charges for electricity and gas were little different for a three-bedroomed flat than a two so it made sense to get a bigger place and spread the cost three ways or more. I found a flat together with two friends. From the very day we moved in one of them became marginalised, as we would put it today, it was me and my chum against her whenever a dispute arose. Interestingly, the same was seen with all trios of sharers I knew. Indeed when four shared it was three-against-one.

As far as I could tell there was nothing intentionally malicious about it, it was just how things worked out. When there was a dispute about what colour to paint the living room or whether to buy logs or coal for the fire a decision had to be taken and the majority would rule. What I found interesting at the time and find interesting still is that being in the majority added to the pleasure of life. Had we all agreed about everything there would have been no sense of victory or accomplishment in getting ones way. It goes without saying that on a great many matters we were all in agreement, disputes were few and never bitter nonetheless I found elation in being on the winning side when push came to shove. The victors went to the pub and gloated, criticising their common enemy in order to boost their egos. Without a common enemy that experience would have been lost, there would have been no victory and no elation, life would have been less enjoyable.

What was absurd about the whole situation was that our flatmate was not really our enemy at all. She was a lovely girl and, I presume, is now a lovely middle aged lady; but she was our enemy for certain limited purposes and in that capacity she enhanced our lives. Sadly I have now lost contact with both old flatmates, for all I know they are in contact again and bitching about me.

We see the same phenomenon in all sorts of circumstances. In the workplace the foreman or manager is seen as the enemy of the serfs and forcing him to reverse his position gives pleasure far beyond any temporary material benefits that are received. A football club goes through a bad run and the supporters turn on the manager or owners. They get their way and cheer the replacement manager/owner to the rafters until next season when the exercise is repeated. Do they really cheer the new manager or owner, or do they cheer themselves for having won a battle whether or not the club's fortunes improve? British Airways cabin crew seem to be following this pattern with their current series of strikes. They might or might not gain long term benefits if the strikes result in their present demands being met, but you can be sure their greater pleasure would be winning the battle rather than enjoying what happens next.

It is only a short step to offer the prospect of winning battles as a political strategy to gain support. It matters not whether winning these particular battles will benefit those whose support you seek because they will support you for the chance of enjoying victory even if it leaves them out of pocket or out of work. This has been seen over the last couple of years with calls for penal rates of tax on "The Rich". No one can be certain that the future will mirror the past but all experience from around the world indicates that taxing income at more than around 40% results in a fall in tax revenue (because some move overseas to avoid it, some deliberately earn less and others find it worthwhile to spend a few quid on a specialist accountant to reduce their tax bill to the absolute minimum possible). That evidence suggests that a proposal to tax income at 50% would be counter-productive and should not be tried because it is likely to require higher taxes on the non-rich to make up the shortfall.

The policy has nothing to do with raising revenue and everything to do with gaining support from those who are encouraged to believe there is a group known as "The Rich" against whom a victory can be won. Support is given because the non-rich smell the sweet scent of victory, they sense the chance to get one over an opponent. The opponent only exists as an opponent because he has been described as such by those who invent the battle. Once the policy becomes law those who were persuaded to support it have won, they feel good, their lives have been enhanced by being a winner. Yet it seems likely from past experience that they are the very people who will have to pay when the policy backfires. That doesn't matter to the politicians, they will put forward a different excuse for having to raise taxes on the non-rich, their concern is getting votes by any means they can.

Lest either of my readers is tempted to tell me of Mencken's hobgoblins don't bother, I know them well but my point is different. He asserted, I believe correctly, that setting up mythical ogres gains votes because people want to be protected from the threat those ogres appear to pose. My point is that the prospect of victory against a fictitious enemy gains votes because victory is a benefit in itself whether or not the defeated person posed any threat. Promise the thrill of victory, any victory, and people will say "yes please, I'd like a slice of that". They say it because they know it will make them feel good. The more bitter, envious and spiteful they are, the better it will make them feel. It is a perfect tactic for the political left.

Taking money out of the economy

Sometimes I read something so obviously upside-down that I think I must be missing the point. So it is with the result of the long weekend's thinking by the current government spin team. In a nutshell, the government plans to increase employers' National Insurance contributions whereas the opposition say they would increase them by less. The Prime Minister and Chancellor mounted a twin attack, both of them saying the Conservatives' approach would "take money out of the economy". It's so very bizarre that I have had to wrap a cold towel around my chins in order to try to make sense of it.

As a general rule it's sensible to start at the beginning, so I will. Employers' NICs are a tax payable by an employer as a penalty for having the effrontery to give someone a job in the private sector. Income tax and employees' NICs are deducted from the gross wage or salary so that the employee receives less than the headline amount they earn. Increases in these taxes do not require the employer to pay more for the same job. But employers' NICs are a tax payable by the employer in addition to the contractual wage or salary. Any increase adds to the costs of the business.

Call me a simple fellow if you will, but it seems to me that when Mr Patel has to pay extra to employ old Doris on the till that money must come from somewhere and go somewhere. We know it comes from Mr Patel because he's the mug who pays her wages. So, paying this additional tax takes money from the economy in that it reduces Mr Patel's spending power and might mean he has to satisfy himself with fewer extras when next he visits Madame Fifi's Sauna and Hanky-Panky Parlour. In the language so beloved of our Keynesian friends, it reduces aggregate demand. The other side of the coin is that the money goes to the Treasury to be spent on something, we know not what. On the face of it the reduction in spending power caused to Mr Patel is matched by an increase in spending power for the lucky recipient of his largesse. One set all, new balls please.

It follows from this that if Labour wishes to bleed Mr Patel for an extra £15 a week and the Conservatives want to take only an additional £7.50 nothing at all is lost from the economy. The same amount of cash is sloshing about except that on one proposal £15 of it sloshes at the Treasury and on the other that £15 is split equally between the Treasury and Mr Patel. You see my problem? Where is the loss?

No doubt you could invent ways in which leaving money in the private sector amounts to a loss to the UK economy, for example if it is paid as dividends to overseas investors and therefore leaves these shores (subject to such tax, if any, that they pay on it over here). There could also be a drop in aggregate demand if some of the money is saved rather than spent and, on a particularly warped view of reality, that could be said to be a loss to the economy. Again, however, that is to look at only one side. Marginal businesses can be tipped over the edge by modest increases in their staffing costs and a reduction in profits reduces the money available for investment (I mean real investment not government-speak investment). And what happens to Mr Patel's money once the government has it? We know it will be spent but also know that a lot of it will not be spent on anything that adds value. We also know that interest payments on government debt will not all stay within the UK economy.

The argument that taking less tax removes money from the economy is moronic humbug. If they were concerned about taking money from the economy they would not have racked-up hundreds of billions of pounds of debt on which interest must be paid. And if they were honest they would say "we need to take more tax because we are spending too much and we think there might be more votes in taking it from filthy capitalist pig employers than by raising taxes that the little people will feel directly."

It seems to me there is something more sinister behind this piece of spin. Taking it at face value they are saying that government spending is of net value whereas private sector spending is a net cost to the country. It is obvious nonsense and we know it is nonsense because they claim recovery from recession will be fuelled by private-sector economic growth. Nonetheless, it sets the scene and tells the lie they want the little people to believe, namely that everything government currently does is essential and beneficial and once we are over the current difficulties the government can be even more beneficial by doing even more things. There is not a hint of them looking to cut-back the number of things government does in order to balance the books and make a start on repaying the enormous debt their incompetent profligacy has created.

What is even more worrying is that the Conservatives do not seem to want to grasp this most essential nettle either. We can argue about the benefits of street football consultants, grants to the arts, five-a-day advisors and carbon footprint investigators until the cows stop farting. Perhaps there is some benefit perhaps there is not. What is certain is that these sorts of activities are fripperies, they are luxuries, they are most certainly not essential. The only way we can make any serious inroad into the annual deficit and then into the massive accumulated debt is by cutting out spending on non-essential things.

I wonder whether the heart of the problem is the seductive concept of aggregate demand. An awful lot of UK GDP depends on consumer spending. In the private sector wages and hours are being cut so that businesses can survive and one consequence of that is that the employees have less to spend and, therefore, their local shops and eateries are suffering. There is a superficial attraction in maintaining levels of public-sector pay and employment so that the detrimental effect of private-sector belt-tightening is not exacerbated by public sector employees also spending less. The attraction is only superficial because the private sector is dealing with reality whereas the public sector is seeking to avoid reality.

There is no escaping the fact, for fact it is, that we simply cannot afford all the things we enjoyed three years ago. One could say we couldn't really afford them then but that is beside the point. We did pay for them and now we can't so we have to cut them out of our budget. There is no escaping that in the private sector because there is no magic money tree - you cut costs or you go bust. If you go bust everyone loses their job so people have agreed pay deferrals or pay cuts or reduced hours or to cover a vacancy using existing staff without any additional pay because they know the short-term saving in costs might allow them to have a job next month and next year. It is a great example of the benefits of breaking union power, a task which cost lots of jobs in the 1980s. The result is that businesses which would have had to fold a generation ago can now survive. They will still have to keep their fingers crossed about what the future holds but at least they now have a future.

You can bleat as much as you like about aggregate demand but that won't keep alive a struggling business. Only cutting its costs will keep it alive. You can say "you must keep paying your people the same amount otherwise they can't spend and other businesses might fold" to which the answer is "so you want me to fold instead and guarantee that those other businesses fold too". That is the reality.

Maintaining public sector spending will mean more cash in the tills of the businesses the public sector employees frequent but it comes at a cost. That cost is the need to raise additional taxes to pay the shortfall between current tax receipts and government spending and that has an effect on future spending power which necessarily dampens future aggregate demand which, in turn, makes it all the more difficult to generate the income from which those additional taxes are paid.

I've been more than usually circuitous today, but we are now back where we started. Taking one amount rather than another in tax does not take money out of the economy. But taking money out of the private sector inevitably prevents as much wealth and money being generated as would occur if you left that money where it was. The reason for that is that only the private sector can make the stuff to replace what we consume every day. A factory making bread doesn't just pump-up aggregate demand by paying wages that are then circulated around the system, it also makes something that is needed. Take tax from the business and from its employees and you reduce their ability to spend thereby reducing aggregate demand. Pay that tax money to a five-a-day advisor and there is no change to aggregate demand because it is taken from one person who would spend and given to another who has exactly the same amount to spend. But you don't get any bread from a five-a-day advisor's work. We are worse off not better off by keeping these non-value-added jobs.

That is what the politicians should be debating because we simply cannot afford roughly a quarter of what the government currently spends and that proportion will increase as they continue to overspend and incur further interest charges.

The cost of shedding public sector jobs

I can't now remember where I saw it but a couple of days ago a singularly absurd comment was left on a blog. It might have been one of the BBC blogs. The topic under discussion was a televised debate between the chief treasury spokesmen of the UK's two main political parties and a dancing gnome bearing a yellow rosette. One of the points made by the author of the blog was that none of the three debaters gave sufficient details of where and how they would reduce government spending so as to make either serious inroads into the annual budgetary deficit or into the cumulative debt resulting from year-after-year of annual deficits.

It is noticeable how politicians often fail to distinguish between annual deficits and government debt. The point is really very obvious. If you have £20,000 to spend this year but actually spend £25,000 you run a deficit of £5,000 and start next year with a debt of £5,000. That debt doesn't disappear at the end of the year, it stays with you until it is repaid. The next year you might still have £20,000 to spend but actually spend £22,500. Your annual deficit has fallen by half but it is still a deficit and at the end of the year you owe £7,500 (£5,000 from the first year's over-spend and £2,500 from the second's). Reducing the deficit does not reduce debt it merely increases it by less than during your previous period of profligacy. You can only reduce debt substantively by running a surplus rather than a deficit - for example by spending £19,000 out of your £20,000 so that you can repay £1,000 of debt.

In the comments to the piece a whole range of points were made, as one would expect. Among them was a full-frontal attack on the concept of running a deficit at all and a call for government to cut it's spending very substantially so as to run an annual surplus of income over expenditure so that the debt can start to be repaid. In answer to this obvious and sound approach was the comment that caught my eye. It's quite interesting how the mood of a writer can be clear from the way he or she expresses himself on the page. One or other of my regular readers can probably tell when I've had two bottles of wine before setting out my verbiage and when I am stone-cold sober, but it is also possible to tell whether something is written in a calm and reflective state of mind or as a result of furious exasperation. The mood appearing from the comment in question was undoubtedly one of "how can you be so stupid?" I could almost hear the deep sigh issued by the commenter before he put digit to keyboard. Perhaps you can will be able to tell how loudly I sighed on reading his comment from what I am about to write.

The comment can be summarised as follows: it is counter-productive to cut public sector jobs because it reduces income tax receipts and increases the welfare bill. I had read similar comments before and each time my lower jaw has been drawn downwards by something other than the weight of my chins. People actually believe that shedding someone from the public sector payroll costs the Treasury money. It's really quite staggering. Actually, it can happen, but only if the cost to the Treasury of him leaving his job exceeds the cost of employing him. Say his salary is £30,000 excluding employer's National Insurance Contributions. That means the Treasury's piggy-bank is reduced by £30,000 each year (employer's NICs are neutral because they are just one office of the Treasury paying money to another office of the Treasury). He pays, say, £6,000 in income tax and employee's NICs, so £6,000 that was taken from the piggy-bank is put back into the piggy-bank. More accurately, his income tax and employee's NICs are also just transfers from one desk at the Treasury to another desk and represent neither expenditure by nor income to the Treasury. The cost of employing him is his take-home pay, £24,000 on the figures I have given.

The mistake made by the commenter was to overlook that people paid out of taxes do not in reality pay income tax and NICs - income tax and NICs simply reduce the amount that is paid to the State employee but they are not receipts to the Treasury. The story does not stop there, however, become people do not live in a vacuum and their income does not exist in a vacuum. There are three respects in which dispensing with a State employee (let's call him Mr Paperclip) causes costs to the Treasury in addition to the cost of paying benefits.

First, let's assume Mr Paperclip had a net income of £24,000 and now receives £10,000 in benefits. The saving to the Treasury is £14,000 but Mr Paperclip also has £14,000 less to spend. The figures can be minced anyway you want, I will assume he would have saved £4,000 and spent £10,000 of which £8,000 would have been spent on things subject to VAT at 17.5%. The VAT on £8,000 of spending is roughly £1,200 (because the figure of £8,000 is the total of the cost of goods and services at about £6,800 plus VAT at 17.5%). That is a loss of tax revenue as a result of him no longer being employed so the saving to the Treasury is reduced from £14,000 to £12,800.

Secondly, because he spends £8,000 less at Mr Patel's Merrymart, so Mr Patel receives £6,800 less (not £8,000 because £1,200 of it goes in VAT rather than to Mr Patel). Had Mr Patel received that £6,800 he would have spent £4,000 at Mr Choudury's Cheerful Cash-n-Carry buying replacement stock and pocketed £2,800 himself on which he would have been liable to income tax and NICs of, say, £900. The Treasury loses £900. Mr Choudhury receives £4,000 less which represents £1,500 profit and the loss of a further £500 in tax and so it goes on through a whole chain of transactions. At each link there will be a loss of tax as business takings and profits are reduced but at each link the loss to the Treasury gets smaller and smaller as Mr Paperclip's initial withdrawal of custom is diluted. The financial benefit from dismissing Mr Paperclip is reduced by these knock-on effects.

Thirdly, Mr Paperclip himself is only one person, it will take a whole warehouse of office equipment to lose their jobs before any real effect is made on the government salaries bill. There will be chain-reactions of loss of turnover for many businesses and some of them will have to lay-off staff or even close completely. The loss of a private sector job is a real cost to the Treasury. Income tax and NICs are no longer received and benefits are paid, all of which affect the books directly; there is no element of the Treasury losing money which would have come out of its own coffers in the first place unlike the nominal "loss" of income tax when Mr Paperclip joins the dole queue.

For these reasons reducing the public sector payroll saves the Treasury the immediate net cost of employing people but not the whole of that cost is saved because there are knock-on effects on tax receipts and the cost of benefits. Nonetheless a net saving will undoubtedly arise because not every redundant public sector employee will remain unemployed for life, not all will draw benefits and the chain-reaction of tax losses involves ever-smaller sums.

What's so special about coral?

It is suggested by some that non-existent global warming will cause carnage to coral reefs. There has been mass panic among the tree huggers when reports have come of some part of a coral reef dying, and silence when another part of the same reef grows by more. Screams of anguish are heard at the thought of coral being bleached by some mystical process associated with keeping our homes warm and our people fed. What I want to know is, why?

As I understand things, coral has not existed since the world began. At some time, I care not when, it formed. Before then there was no coral. And you know what? The earth still turned and the sun still shone despite coral being an unknown substance. And you know what else? There hasn't always been the same amount of coral in the same places. Are you shocked? Of course you are because you are delicate souls who cannot bear the thought that something was once different from how it is today. Let me shock you again. The aquatic creatures that make their homes in and around coral reefs haven't always done so.

Coral is nothing but an underwater fluffy bunny. Latched onto by the wet non-thinkers as a poster child for their latest scenario of doom. We mustn't do anything nasty to fluffy bunnies because they are, well, fluffy. We mustn't do anything nasty to coral because it is wholesome and pretty, just like a fluffy bunny.

Fluffy poster children are essential to the cause of the doommonger. He will get nowhere by saying "global warming will cause the death of millions of scarlet lily beetles and wasps". The whole world would stoke up their coal fires. He needs a fluffy victim to point to so that we feel guilty. Frankly, I couldn't care less about coral. I have no desire to see it destroyed for the sake of destruction but if the cost of feeding people and keeping them warm is that a bit of coral somewhere suffers adverse consequences, so be it. It really doesn't matter. Any displaced water dwellers will settle elsewhere in the same way that their ancestors left their previous habitat and moved to the coral. That it will cause wailing and gnashing of teeth among the tofu-knitting community would be an added bonus.

Far more likely, of course, is that the threat to coral from industrial activity is as illusory as the threat to Arctic and Antarctic ice, to Himalayan glaciers, to polar bears, to Saharan water and to the volume and intensity of hurricanes. All the direst predictions have been exposed as either exaggerations or plain lies. So, I predict, is the position relating to coral. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps one of the fluffy poster children really is endangered. I'm not expecting any of the doommongers to risk a penny of their own money betting on that being the case. Nonetheless, even if they are correct I still ask, "so what"? It really doesn't matter, it is just something some people think is pretty and which is given an elevated a status in the emotions of the vapid. There is absolutely no need for any fuss.

Goodbye Michael Foot

So, Michael Foot is no more, gone at the age of 96. Proof that the old saying "the good die young" gives only half the story.

Reports of his death contain gushing tributes to a "man of principle" who was "true to his beliefs" and a "magnificent orator". I can't read stuff like that without wanting to bring up my dinner. Nick Griffin is a man of principle, David Koresh was true to his beliefs and Mussolini was great at stirring up a crowd, yet they are or were despicable pieces of filth who deserve nothing but condemnation for the dire effects of their principles, beliefs and oratory on other people.

Having misguided principles is not something to be lauded, sticking with them when they have been exposed to be not just flawed but dangerous is the sign of a stubborn bigot and being good about proclaiming them to the world is nothing other than the ability to show yourself to be an idiot to a wide audience.

Foot not only supported but fought for all the things that brought the UK to its knees by 1979. A fervent advocate of nationalisation, massively high taxes, limitless unions power and the destruction of our ability to defend ourselves, he epitomised the recipe for bankruptcy that our current government has fought so hard to emulate. The man's judgment could not have been more flawed. When the failure of socialist economies was brought to his attention he stood his ground like a religious zealot and argued that they hadn't done it properly ... none of them, even though every one had his support. It was like listening to a particularly stupid student union politico. He supported every major pro-soviet and anti-British movement, relentless in his pursuit of socialist dictatorship. Facts never got in the way, they never do with those who can't see beyond the hem of their donkey jacket.

Perhaps it is a little unfair of me to compare him to Griffin, Koresh and Mussolini. Support for the BNP has increased under Griffin's leadership, Labour's support was never lower than under Foot. Koresh's charisma seemed to keep the women happy, Foot kept no one happy. As for Mussolini? Well, there was absolutely no chance of the trains running on time under a Foot government.

Michael Foot was a naive failure.

Don't tune into the BBC

I hum along merrily to a jaunty tune, tap my feet at a pleasing rhythm and occasionally inflict My Way on drunken friends who are too polite to object to the use of notes unknown to musical science. That aside, I really don't do music. Others seem to take a different view, their ears permanently full of pea pods or whatever they're called. Fair enough. I don't like cauliflower but love runner beans, and others have opposite tastes. That's all part of the fun of life. If you want music constantly blaring in the background while you try to do things, be my guest, it's none of my business provided you don't either force it on me or expect me to pay for it.

Time was, not so long ago, that radio choice in music was between poppy stuff on Radio 1, slushy stuff on Radio 2 and pretentious stuff on Radio 3 with the occasional independent broadcaster trying to muscle into the Radio 1 audience. Now there seems to be an endless choice for your listening pleasure care of commercial stations catering for particular demands. Not all commercial stations pay their way and the occasional one drops off the airways because it can't attract enough advertising. No one ever seems to object because everyone knows the rules of the game - they broadcast for so long as they have enough money coming in and they stop when the money runs out. Anyone launching a petition to keep alive a loss making commercial station would be met with a simple response - "OK, you pay for it then".

It has been confirmed that last week's rumours about the BBC planning to close two of its radio stations are true, the BBC Asian Network and BBC 6 Music are for the chopping block. The BBC needs to save some money so it is cutting back on the services it offers. All very sensible, one might think. Unless you are one of the people employed on those stations or an avid listener, in which case you seem to feel obliged to howl with outrage. I know nothing about the BBC Asian Network and little more about 6 Music, although my understanding is that the latter plays music that is liked by some young people.

Why is it a loss to national culture for radio stations run by the BBC to close when it is just business reality for unfunded stations to go off the air? Of course it isn't anything of the sort. Life existed before those stations were started just a few years ago and it will continue once they are silent. This evening I heard a multi-millionaire singer bleating about the unfairness of 6Music disappearing. It was the usual guff we get from the vacuous world of pop music ... "damaging to modern culture" ... "no other way for new bands to break into the market" ... "loss of talent" ... blah blah blah. What utter tosh.

Let's get one thing straight here. The vast majority of pop music is simplistic pap. It might be nice sounding simplistic pap that will get my foot tapping, but it is still simplistic pap. The music itself requires no great musical skill to compose or play however jolly it might be on the ear. And the lyrics are fourth or fifth rate poetry if they have any meaning at all. Indeed almost all lyrics are just noise, you don't need to hear the words because they add nothing to the sound produced by the singer - which is why recordings of songs sell regularly to those who don't speak the language allegedly used by the singer and when you can't make out the words at all.

One can test this theory quite easily. How many lyrics would command attention if written as poems? What level of musical skill is required to play the tunes? Perhaps one only needs to know that a lot of it is produced by barely pubescent bands to understand that it has no sophistication. If one group of spotty youths doesn't find an audience another will and there won't be a fag-paper's thickness to distinguish between the noises they make.

If 6 Music really provides a valuable service, let someone buy the brand and see if they can get enough advertisers to make a go of it. If they can, fine; if they can't, equally fine. But it really doesn't matter one way or the other. The world will no more stop turning when 6 Music closes than it did when Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Tich broke up.

The real question is not whether BBC 6 Music should close but why the BBC spends money on music stations at all. Commercial radio covers every genre the BBC covers today and there is no reason to believe that that would cease to be the case if BBC music radio simply shut up shop tomorrow. In fact the opposite is likely to happen because it would free up further audiences for commercial radio and would increase their chances of securing advertising revenue.

There is nothing in the "it launches new talent" guff. Leaving aside the debatable use of "talent", if people make noises the gullible want to buy we can be sure as eggs is ova that the record companies will find a way to promote them. You don't need "free" advertising at the taxpayers' expense to sell a saleable product. At the moment the BBC is providing unknown millions of pounds worth of free advertising to a business that is perfectly capable of standing on its own feet.

What we are seeing in the absurd reaction to 6 Music's closure is the same belief in the tooth fairy that imbues all public-sector spending with magical powers in the view of the brainless. An "official" body is doing something, therefore it must need doing, therefore it would be harmful to stop doing it. Rubbish on stilts. Pop music is a commercial enterprise. It makes its successful exponents hugely wealthy regardless of their talent. It extorts money from the young by falsely claiming to be important, in much the same way that football does for middle aged men and cosmetics for middle aged women. Fine, let them pay if they think it's important. Let them believe it's important if that makes them happy. But don't claim it is anything other than what it is - a branch of commercial entertainment just like any other.

When is a budget not a budget?

On Thursday I bemoaned the government's idea of putting Windy Miller in charge of electricity generation, today I want to discuss another aspect of their exciting "low carbon" plan. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change announced that every government department now has a "carbon budget" as well as one dealing with pounds and pence. He said it was part of the scheme of "legally binding carbon budgets" announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer earlier this year. The use of the term "budget" is a complete nonsense. What he means is that every government department will be set targets. That is not a budget any more than setting a target for the number of exam passes to be attained by schools is an "examination budget" or the number of arrests made by the police is an "arrest budget". But that is only the start of the absurdity.

Let's just stop for a moment and try to absorb the concept of government departments having "legally binding" targets of any kind. What are the consequences of the target not being met? It's easy to see what "legally binding" means in the real world, it means that the law requires you to do or refrain from doing something and will impose a penalty if you breach that requirement. We have things called courts which enforce legally binding obligations and administer penalties to those who fail in their legal duties. How can that apply to the failure of a government department to meet a target for reducing the production of carbon dioxide resulting from, say, the manufacture of giant windmills? What penalty can be imposed, and who will impose it? Will the department's funding be reduced next year if it fails to meet this year's target? Of course not. Will a fine be imposed or the minister and senior civil servants face prosecution and imprisonment? Of course not. These are just targets.

At the moment they seem to be only internal targets for government departments themselves. As such they are nothing but a massively expensive exercise in navel gazing. Some of it is already in place. NHS trusts and local councils have departments dedicated to reducing their employers' "carbon footprint". Lightbulbs that produce the amount of light everyone is accustomed to are replaced by fat curly lightbulbs that don't. The officially mandated guilt associated with the use of electricity and gas is assuaged by spending taxpayers' money on planting trees in Africa. Trees that would have been planted anyway at a fraction of the cost because they provide a crop. Instead we pay not just for the crop but also for the kick-backs to local "worthies". Lowly council employees are told they cannot have a parking space at work because driving is naughty, while the big wigs retain their chauffeurs. Advisors and consultants are made available to local businesses to tell them how they can reduce their emissions. Reams of paper are shuffled back and forth, miles are clocked-up and expenses incurred in order to meet current targets. None of it will make the slightest bit of difference to anything. Absolutely no difference at all.

Real businesses, businesses that make things and generate the wealth that is taxed to pay for the paper-pushers, don't employ "carbon footprint advisors" unless they think there is something in it for them. They know that there is only one measure that matters, pounds and pence. Employing symbolic greenies can be profitable if your business depends on custom from naive, tree-hugging tofu-knitters. But if you are making nuts, bolts and washers your customers are concerned with only price and quality. If you can make the same things at the same or a lower price by adopting a process that emits less carbon dioxide you might choose to follow that path. I defy you, however, to find a government-employed greenie advisor who has the expertise required to find a way for manufacturing businesses to do so. After all, what can these people know about the technical aspects of manufacturing industry? If they knew that stuff they wouldn't be employed as greenie advisors, they would have real jobs in their field of expertise.

None of this will stop some of them coming up with grandiose plans. And none of it will stop most of their "work" being fiddling at the edges to find utterly minuscule savings in carbon dioxide emissions at a cost far out of proportion to any benefit even the most ardent greenie could identify.

It's bad enough that money will be wasted on the fiddling at the edges, far more worrying is the thought of grandiose plans. Grandiose plans make good politics. For as long as it is thought there are votes in greenieness, governments will divert money from sensible stuff because nothing is a better use of our money than buying our votes.

Lying behind all this wibble is the ludicrous concept of measuring in "carbons dioxides". It is a meaningless measure because it cannot be compared to anything else and it has no utility as a measure in itself. The mile is a useful measure because it allows us to judge how long it will take to travel from A to B and, during our journey, it tells what proportion of the trip has expired. The pound is a useful measure because it allows us to judge whether a particular item of paid work is worth doing and whether it is worth buying a particular thing. Measuring carbon dioxide emissions is pointless because there is nothing to compare it to and of itself it means nothing to say "my new car emits 50 grammes of carbon dioxide per kilometre whereas my old one emitted 150". So what? What difference does that make to anything? No one can identify the difference it will make because it is so small as to be irrelevant to anything.

In fact it can be compared to itself. We can assess, but not measure, how much carbon dioxide we produce this year compared to last year. In doing so we will find that anything we do as individuals is very small because most emissions are unavoidable by individual activity - they come from industry (yes, that industry, the one that lights and heats our homes and provides us with employment). But even that comparison is pointless because the whole man-made global warming circus revolves around worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide, not just the 1.6% or so from this country.

So, what does a departmental "carbon budget" actually amount to? If anyone thinks it will result in substantial reductions in UK carbon dioxide emissions, I fear they are deluded. The likelihood is that there will be a little trimming at the edges and it will cost a huge amount of money.

Just like the windmills. A futile and unaffordable farce.

Whistling in the wind

It is hard to know where to start when discussing the government's new "low-carbon" energy plan, it is so full of internal contradictions and downright nonsense. But I have to pick somewhere so I'll start with the presumption that the world is warming. This ties in nicely with the announcement made last week that some international talking-shop or another is determined to keep global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius above the level of some time around 1750. There's a bit of slack built in already, the earth has political permission to get warmer provided it doesn't get too warm. So from that starting point my initial observation is that a bit of warming should reduce energy consumption because there will be less of a need to heat our homes and workplaces during the chilly months. There, we have reduced our "carbon footprint" already and it hasn't cost a bean.

Where do we go from there? I know, let's see how they plan to generate electricity without producing carbon dioxide. The headline measure is windmills. I am not sure whether these are the same windmills to which they committed £100billion just a few months ago but I presume they are. The intention is to build about 7,000 new windmills by 2020. I've got news for them. It's 2009 already so they only have ten years and five months, 125 months. So that's 56 windmills per month or the best part of two a day every day for more than ten years. Are we really expected to believe that this will happen? Given enough people, materials and money any number of anything can be built pretty quickly, but even so this task strikes me as impracticable.

And what if it does happen? That's where the real fun and games arise. Windmills can only produce electricity when the wind is blowing. When it is not blowing they often have to be kept turning to prevent the blades buckling in the sun (because the size of the things means the three blades will catch unequal amounts of energy from the sun and will buckle unless they are rotated to keep exposure roughly equal). So they will need to take electricity from the grid when they need to be rotated and there is insufficient wind to perform the task.

When the wind is turning the blades electricity will be generated but at present there is no efficient way of storing that juice, it can be fed into the grid and a coal/gas/nuclear plant can be turned down or it can be drained away to earth if there is no call for it. Yet the wind can stop just as quickly as it starts, so there must always be conventional back-up generators to fill the void. Some of these can be turned on and off reasonably quickly but they use a lot more fuel that way compared to running pretty much constantly. Any saving of fossil fuel use through having windy electricity being fed into the grid is ameliorated by the additional fuel consumption and wear-and-tear of the conventional plants. And there is always a bottom line. The bottom line is that we must maintain sufficient conventional generating capacity to provide all our needs because it can never be known how much will come from the windmills.

Coal-fired generators are included in the plan. The government has kindly agreed to allow these provided they are fitted with mechanisms to capture a lot of the carbon dioxide they produce before it floats into the air. What a splendid idea. Or it would be if such mechanisms existed. Some are being trialled at the moment but they are a long way from being usable on a large scale. And all of them require power which means more fuel must be used to generate the same amount of electricity.

So, the plan is to construct an unattainable number of windmills at an unaffordable cost in order to provide an unreliable supply, whilst maintaining conventional generating capacity but not using it efficiently and making it less fuel-efficient when it is used.

Only central planning can come up with such a scheme.

Technological advances might well find ways of storing spare electricity, I would certainly expect that to happen because history shows engineers to be able to find solutions to such problems. Yet no one can say when a solution will be found and there is certainly no guarantee that it will be before 2020. As and when it does happen, windmills might have a serious part to play but even then they can only generate so much power, we are a very long way from windmills being able to make more than a marginal contribution to our electricity needs.

So why is this ridiculous plan being put forward? Ostensibly it is because of fears of catastrophic global warming. Did you spot the adjective I slipped in there? Catastrophic. A bit of warming or a bit of cooling is neither here nor there, even the doomiest of doom-mongers don't argue that small changes will be harmful to anyone other than those who like the cold. You might think that before embarking on a hugely expensive and inefficient exercise the government would take a look at whether the evidence of risk justifies the expense. Those who believe in the catastrophic man-made global warming scenario argue that current evidence of no measured increase in actual average temperatures over the last decade does not undermine their hypothesis. Those who don't believe in it cite the last decade as strong evidence that the hypothesis is incorrect. For the purposes of what I have to say today it really doesn't matter which, if either, of those sides is correct. The simple fact is that the government did not re-assess the evidence before launching the new plan. To say the least, their approach is slipshod.

A further aspect of the plan is worth mentioning. It seems that they want to compel people to utilise energy-saving measures in their homes and work places. We already see this in the current Building Regulations that require a newly-built property to meet strict energy efficiency targets before the work will be certified and the property becomes marketable. Usually these targets can only be met by the installation of cavity-wall insulation or the use of insulating boarding on internal walls, in either case combined with double-glazed windows. It seems likely that they will extend the Building Regulations to ensure that double-glazing and wall insulation have to be added even where work of a non-structural nature is undertaken.

There is a precedent for this in the regulations about noise insulation between flats. Originally noise insulating flooring (which is nothing more than inch-thick chipboard with a layer of hard rubber) had to be fitted only when a new block of flats was being built. Then they extended it to conversions of single dwellings into one or more flats, and now the installation of nothing more than a new bathroom is viewed by some Councils' Building Control departments as triggering the need to replace all flooring so as to provide effective sound insulation between one flat and the flat below. I expect the same creeping process to apply to double glazing and the insulation of walls.

The reason I mention this is that the cost of the work is almost always far in excess of the saving in heating bills. Decent quality double-glazing of a modest home can easily cost between four and five thousand pounds whilst saving only a few pounds a year in heating costs. Wall insulation might only set you back a thousand or two (including the cost of redecoration) while also saving very little. Say these measures save £150 a year, itself somewhat unlikely for a modest property even with electricity and gas costing what they do today, it would take almost thirty years to recoup insulating costs of £4,000. Maybe the windows and wall insulation will last that long or maybe they won't, no one can tell. What we can tell is that people will be forced to fork-out a lot of money on a pure gamble whether they will ever get a benefit from it.

At every stage of this plan one thing is clear. The costs are enormous whilst the benefits are purely speculative. Actually, one other thing is clear. Even if catastrophe will strike through substantial further emissions of carbon dioxide, those emissions will happen anyway. Nibbling-away at the 2% or so of global emissions originating from the UK is utterly futile while China and India today, and Brasil, Mexico, South Africa and others tomorrow, use coal to provide them with energy to give them a small leg-up in their attempt to match the standard of living we currently enjoy.

The whole thing is a futile and unaffordable farce.

Michael Jackson

So, it's said Michael Jackson has fallen off the twig.

I don't know why anyone is surprised, he's been looking very pale for years.

No electric cars for "ordinary motorists"

Electric cars have hit the news today with the announcement by the eponymous Geoff Hoon of a plan to offer subsidies towards the purchase of electric cars as and when they are more generally available than at present, currently estimated to be in about two years' time. As usual the BBC report tries to put this in what it considers the best possible light for the government, describing it as "Motorists will be offered subsidies of up to £5,000". If one digs a little deeper, it seems all is not quite as the BBC portrays.

The Department for Transport website carries the details (here). It becomes clear from the government's own account that there are no firm proposals to give anything to motorists. The main article says it is "an initiative to help put electric cars into the reach of ordinary motorists by providing help worth £2,000-£5,000 towards buying the first electric and plug in hybrid cars when they hit the showrooms". I wonder what "help worth £2,000-£5,000" means, it doesn't sound much like money to me. Not that it really matters what it means because we find important clarification in the "notes for editors" section at the bottom of the page: "Consumers will be able to receive help from the government worth in the region of £2,000-£5,000 to allow for the maximum choice of which car they buy. We are beginning discussions with the automotive industry and financiers to determine how best to deliver this help." No longer are we in the realm of subsidies being given to "ordinary motorists" for them to use as they will, we are firmly in the territory of giving cash subsidies to the motor manufacturers. And we mustn't ignore than the headline figure of £5,000 is now "in the region of £2,000-£5,000". It is the reference to "ordinary motorists" that troubles me most because I can see that only extraordinary motorists are likely to benefit from any such scheme.

I rather like the idea of electric cars. It would be wonderful if we could reduce our dependence on oil so that we are no longer at the mercy of the OPEC cartel and reliable electric cars would help achieve that. An additional benefit is that the need for a reliable supply of electricity would be even more important than it is today, thereby rendering even more absurd the current lunatic plans for windmills and waves to be substantial sources of electricity generation. To that end I can understand tax breaks for research and development, but it all gets rather tricky once you start fiddling with prices of manufactured products.

There is no reason to think that, left to their own devices, the manufacturers would bring out a product until they are satisfied that it is reasonably saleable. What we usually see with novel products is that they are very expensive when first launched because the manufacturers need to try to recoup some of the R&D costs and they know some people will pay a lot either out of interest in the concept or out of snobbery. It soon becomes clear whether the product is capable of being a long-term profit maker and if it is, the unit price falls as some R&D costs are recouped and the remainder are spread over substantial anticipated future purchases. With electrical products we sometimes find that novel ideas don't take off, hence there are attics around the country containing dusty laserdisc players, betamax recorders and novelty peppermills. The position is rather different with electric cars because, for different reasons that appeal to different people, it is necessary to wean ourselves off oil and the only alternative with any reasonable prospect of being workable in the short term appears to be electricity. So the manufacturers can be fairly sure that a reliable electric family car with a reasonable range is likely to be a long-term success.

If, as the government suggests, such cars should be available as early as 2011 (I'll believe it when I see it) it is hard to see that the manufacturers could sensibly price them in line with petrol and diesel cars because they would then forgo the additional price that could be commanded through sheer novelty value. If we assume (and I pluck these figures out the the thinnest of airs) that a petrol driven car will cost £14,000 and the closest equivalent electric model could sell for £20,000, they would be mad to price it at anything lower than £20,000. As the novelty value wanes and production increases we might find it can sell for £17,000 and make the same profit as the £14,000 petrol vehicle, it might even be that further technological developments would allow it to undercut the petrol powered car. The market will determine price as it does for petrol and diesel cars and as it has for other new products such as flat-screen televisions and those frightfully complicated mobile phones that can make you a cup of tea while you talk.

Where does subsidy come in? Perhaps the manufacturers could be given £3,500 per car to start with so that they sell at £16,500 instead of £20,000. This might accelerate demand and lead to additional early sales but it would also mean that those prepared to pay £20,000 get a bargain. Those who were not prepared to pay £20,000 but were prepared to pay £16,500 enter the market earlier than they otherwise would. What is the value of those accelerated transactions? Is it sufficient to justify the taxpayer chipping-in £3,500 per vehicle? I don't know, but it is worth considering what the earlier purchase of goods really means. Say you would buy at £16,500 two years later when the price naturally fell to that level and now you can buy immediately because of the subsidy. You are not receiving £3,500, you are spending £16,500. The seller is receiving £20,000 now rather than £16,500 in two years' time, so he is getting the same lump sum from the same customer that he would otherwise have to wait to receive and he is being paid £3,500 for the privilege. Those who would pay for novelty value - which with high priced items like cars means people of quite substantial means - receive a bonus, manufacturers and/or retailers receive a bonus by making sales early and being paid for doing so, and the ordinary motorist gets only the fun of having a new car two years early. Then he has to get his next new car two years earlier than would otherwise happen and over time his benefit is negligible. And we mustn't leave out of account the possibility that the manufacturers/sellers will price the product at £23,500 so that it can be sold at £20,000 thereby ensuring they get both the full potential of novelty value and the taxpayer subsidy. They will do their sums and decide whether they are better off cashing-in on novelty value or on accelerated future sales.

However the scheme is arranged it will most assuredly not result in "ordinary motorists" receiving a benefit anywhere near close to the cost they pay wearing their other hat of "ordinary taxpayers". Oh, I must add something else. Those with chauffeurs, nice ministerial vehicles and grace-and-favour homes provided free of charge probably don't know this, but most "ordinary motorists" can't afford to buy new cars.

Starvation, the new answer to global warming

The genocide charity movement seems to be gathering momentum. They don't actually plan genocide as such, no Saddamesque gassing or Stalinesque starvation is mentioned in their plans, but as sure as nuts is nuts the result of their proposals will be massive loss of life among those least able to ride out difficult times. I speak, in particular, about the Optimum Population Trust. which has just proudly announced the support of Sir David Attenborough, the well-known creator and presenter of staggeringly expensive (and sometimes rather good) television programmes about gorillas, fish, insects and fluffy bunnies. Sir David is in no danger of starvation himself so he has a free hand to support any bunch of fanatical fruitcakes he wishes without their dangerous practices ever affecting the availability of lentil and garlic bake at his table.

The OPT argue that human population is already at or near or beyond the numbers that can be sustained by the planet (it could be any of the three depending on which of their publications you read). In consequence, they argue that population must be limited so that there is less of a strain on Mother Nature. We can get a feel for their position by looking at some of the papers they have published, they are flagged on the right-side of their homepage, the most interesting of which (to me) is headed "UK overpopulated by 70 percent". Their starting point is their own definition of sustainability. It is based unequivocally and unashamedly on plans to eliminate industrial activity that produces carbon dioxide. They have fallen for the anthropogenic global warming claptrap hook line and, quite probably, sinker. If I didn't know they were serious I would think their writings a parody of everything that is laughable about troglodyte raffia munchers. One analysis they use which really makes me giggle is something they call the "ecological footprint" (see their full paper here), this looks at the raw resources of countries and continents (predominently farming capacity and expressly excluding fossil fuels) and calculates how many people can be supported by those resources.

Please put down all drinks before reading the next bit.

I mean it, you don't want to have to contribute to global warming by buying a new keyboard. OK? Ready? Here goes.

According to their "ecological footprint" analysis the population of Africa is sustainable but the populations of the USA and the UK are not.

There now, aren't you glad you put that cup of tea down?

These people are eco-extremists of the most absurd type, but they are not without wry humour. In the next section of the report the author says "At the sustainability limit, the relationship between population and the biocapacity is a hyperbola", which he then illustrates with a few graphs. How droll it is that their hyperbole creates a hyperbola.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, we can see what actually happens. To my unjargonised mind we can measure the sustainability of a population by asking whether they eat or starve, live to adulthood or perish in infancy, keep warm in winter or risk freezing to death, have clean water and good sanitation or cholera, in short by asking whether they have a long or a short average lifespan. The current population of the USA and the UK are entirely sustainable because we have advanced economies which, despite current difficulties, allow us to have warm homes, food, clean water and good sanitation. We have average lifespans unimaginable even fifty years ago. Much of Africa, on the other hand, suffers through political corruption and economic ineptitude resulting in its current population containing a great many who will die in infancy and few who will last as long as the average pie-munching fat Englishman.

Except to those with bizarre notions of what "sustain" means, the sustainability of a population is not about how much the land can produce because that is just part of the equation, and because it assumes agricultural techniques will not develop in the future as they have in the past. Sustainability is about a whole package of things of which one of the most important is the availability of a reliable supply of electricity. If you look at sustainability by examining the earth first and calculating how much you think it can produce and then dividing that by the number of people to see whether each gets enough tofu and nut roast you are looking at entirely the wrong thing. I think I can illustrate this very simply with the humble tomato. If the UK produced tomatoes only in open fields and without any pesticides or herbicides to reduce damage to crops we might well (with enough fields) be able to produce as many as we do today in greenhouses. But we could not do so at an affordable price (although they would probably be rather tastier). As it is, our farmers build greenhouses covering several acres, use composts specially prepared to maximise cropping, add fertilisers made in factories, use electricity to heat the greenhouses to optimum temperatures and to operate optimal lighting and watering systems and, the bit I really like, they pump in carbon dioxide to boost growth. The result is high yield crops of cheap fruits, the size of the crop is far greater than could be grown on the same acreage without the use of technology.

Africa's current population is not sustainable. We know that because their mortality rates are high, they are not sustained ergo the size of population is not sustainable in current conditions. The answer is not to change the population but to change the conditions. In places it is happening and has been happening gradually over the last thirty or so years, but there is a long way to go. As their mortality rates drop so will their birth rate provided cultural and economic conditions make it favourable to have fewer children.

It is important, in my view, to recognise that birth rates in the developed world have fallen steadily as a result of two things. First, technological advances in food production, sanitation and healthcare that have extended lifespans (thereby limiting the number of children people must have to replace themselves) and, secondly, placing the cost of feeding and caring for children on their parents rather than the state. There are groups for whom the second condition does not apply and they still breed in comparatively large numbers. If you want to reduce the UK population, as the OPT does, the most obvious step to take is to place everyone under the same economic constraints that cause most to think carefully about how many children they will have.

And if you want to reduce the population in Africa ... oh, hold on, they don't want to do that because they think Africa's population is sustainable. Let me tell them a little something. It might be sustainable according to their ludicrous definition of sustainability, but not according to real life; more pertinently, not according to real death. What will sustain the population of Africa is efficient farming, clean water, good sanitation and a ready supply of electricity. Naive notions that they can sustain themselves by farming every acre of potentially useable land are simply absurd, it could never happen; to argue that they must be forced to do so without recourse to machinery powered by fossil fuels is not just absurd, it is cruel.

Any organisation promoting upside-down nonsense should be careful to ensure it is consistent in order to avoid becoming infested by supporters of numerous different streams of idiocy rather than just the one they set out to promote. The OPT seems to encourage as many different categories of fundamentalist nutters as possible. For example, it published a paper (see summary here) calling for governmental action to encourage low birth rates, the author of which acknowledged expressly that there is only a "slim chance" of this being achieved without coercion. At the same time on the OPT homepage there is a prominent box boasting "The Optimum Population Trust is absolutely opposed to any form of coercion in family planning." So they publish a paper saying coercion should be avoided and the author comments that there is only a slim chance of it being avoided - the need for coercion being (yes, you've guessed it) that more humans means a greater risk to the environment through climate change. So, they solicit donations from eugenicists who see a chance of eliminating unworthy populations and from those opposed to birth control and from the global warming fanatics. Nice for income, impossible for principle.

Is the OPT just another in the long list of organisations promoting the great global warming computer game circus? Is it just the latest one to put a different slant on the computer game in order to raise money for the benefit of those prepared to write something they want to read? Maybe. Or maybe they really believe we should live only on what we can grow ourselves and the global warming nonsense is a convenient bandwagon to further their ridiculous desire. The one thing of which we can be certain is that those promoting this twaddle won't die as a result of it. As always, that privilege will be reserved for the weakest; it will be reserved for what they like to think of as the surplus population.

Bob-be-Quick's fundamental breach

I wrote last December about a police officer called Bob Quick. On that occasion he panicked and blurted out the truth, namely that he is biased against the Conservative Party. He remained in his job because hapless Jacqui, the so-called Home Secretary, is even more unfit for office than he is. Or so we thought.

Yesterday, Wednesday, a coordinated raid took part in the north of England and a number of suspected terrorists or terrorist supporters were arrested. It has now emerged that the raids were brought forward because Mr Quick disclosed a briefing paper about the suspects to the press. He did it in a particularly stupid and incompetent way, by holding the paper in his hand while stepping out of a car in Downing Street thereby allowing it to be photographed by the press. There is a fine example of one such press photograph in the BBC's report of the matter.

What wonderful irony. Last year he came up with a lunatic conspiracy theory that the Conservative Party was acting corruptly in association with some newspapers to obstruct a police investigation. Now he has obstructed a police investigation through his stupidity.

When I was in practice at the Bar I often had to read confidential papers on trains or in restaurants or hotel dining rooms. There was rarely anything in them of interest to anyone other than the parties to the case I was involved in, but the information contained in the documents belonged to those people and their interests had to be treated with respect. It was not a difficult exercise. If anyone was sitting next to me or opposite me on the train the papers would be held so that they could not read them. In a restaurant or hotel the arrival of the waiter would result in the file being closed for the duration and reopened only when any possible prying eyes had departed. It was done automatically because it was such an obvious and important part of my job. I could put it pompously and call it a matter of duty, technically that would be correct, but I prefer to look on it as a matter of not disclosing private information to people with no right to know about it.

To step out in front of press photographers displaying sensitive information about an anti-terrorism operation really is crassly incompetent. Had you or I been emailed such information by mistake and then disclosed it to the press we could rightly expect the law to come down on us pretty hard. Had a General or Admiral during wartime disclosed tactical secrets in this way we wouldn't expect him to retain his position for very long. So, can we expect Bob Quick to fall on his sword or be reassigned to count traffic bollards in Cornwall? Oh no. That is not how it works when you are one of the current government's favourites. And what a favourite he is. Hapless Jacqui referred to him by his first name when addressing the press, as I noted in December. No word of censure or criticism has come from the government this time round. Even the sweetly-pensioned has-been known as "Red" Ken Livingstone has spoken out in support of this clumsy dolt. Having lost his poodle Sir Ian Blair as Commissioner, Mr Livingstone couldn't bear the thought of another tame lackey departing the senior ranks of the constabulary.

Mr Livingstone is quoted as describing what Mr Quick did as "holding a piece of paper the wrong way", as though he had used the butter knife for the fish course during a Royal banquet. This was not a matter of paper etiquette, the man disclosed highly secret details of an ongoing delicate investigation. It was a fundamental breach of duty.

Let's go back to the General and Admiral I mentioned earlier. I can be pretty sure they wouldn't wait to be asked before tendering their resignations. They would do so as a matter of duty because they would put their duty above their personal interest. Then let's ask what would happen if a probationary Constable had been sent with this document to Downing Street because Mr Quick had left it in his office. How long would he remain on the public payroll if he stepped out of the cab brandishing it in exactly the way Mr Quick did? One only has to ask the question for the answer to be obvious. The moment his error was exposed he would be made an example of and sent packing without so much as a "thank you and good luck". Mr Quick and hapless Jacqui would be at the forefront of those decrying the irresponsibility of the probationer and warning of the need for eternal vigilance in the war on terror. And they would be right.

If, as I am happy to assume, Mr Quick is a highly experienced and highly skilled anti-terrorist police officer his departure from office would probably be a loss to public service, at least in the short term, although there are perfectly well established ways in which he could be consulted for a fee were his expertise needed.

I am troubled that this is yet another illustration of someone who holds high office in this country putting themselves above their duty. Their duty must always come first. Their personal pride, their ambition and their pension must always give precedence to their duty. Many think they are indispensable but history shows that not to be the case. American Presidents are limited to a maximum of ten years in office no matter how successful they have been (or think they have been). The world continues turning when they leave office even if they have more to give. Whether you are a police officer or a President there is always someone capable of taking over, indeed someone has to take over some day. Breach of a fundamental duty should always accelerate that day.

Update
Well, well, it seems the power of my little blog is greater than I thought. Mr Quick has now resigned. Well done Bob, you got there at last.