Moronic Mess from Miliband the Millionaire Marxist

Those of us interested in matters political feel a strange compunction to listen to speeches uttered by those who might be in position to turn their desires into law.  Today it was the turn of Miliband the Millionaire Marxist.  Today he showed what commentators on the radio seemed to consider his true colours.  

The speech itself was actually quite interesting with a sickly amalgam of sentimental sob stories, prices and income policies straight out of HG Wells' time machine, a novel variation on British Jobs for British Workers, proposals to nationalise land and wholescale criticism of the very policies he personally supported and put to the British people at the last two general elections (and some which he helped to create as a Labour Party policy advisor in the election of 2001). 

How refreshing it would be to hear a senior politician say "We introduced a policy which didn't work, we took a lot of advice, considered it carefully and thought it would work but we were wrong.  We are very sorry for our mistake and understand what you are entitled to doubt our judgment.  Nonetheless we now put forward a different policy and ask you to consider it carefully".  But no, for Miliband his previous policies are all the fault of the current government and he is and always has been right.  This fundamental and transparent dishonesty is displayed by the leaders of both main parties, less so by the leader of the third party, but is shown in full measure by the leader of the fourth party (the current Deputy Prime Minister).  One day they will realise people see through them and laugh at their inability to admit they make errors of judgment - we all do it, usually several times a day, and the absurdity of these superannuated oafs pretending to be different does them no favours.  

At the core of every one of Miliband's policy initiatives announced today is the belief that government has magical powers to influence the private sector economy for the good.  Now it goes without saying that different people will have different ideas of what is "for the good", but my point is valid regardless of anyones opinions on that.  You see, I ask what government can do and it is the answer to that question that explains why magic has nothing to do with it.  The answer is obvious provided you start from the correct position.  

The private sector comprises businesses providing goods and services (usually but not necessarily for profit).  By definition these businesses incur costs in making their goods and services available and can continue in business only for so long as the selling price matches or exceeds all the costs (they can, of course, run at a loss for a while but will eventually have to fold when lines of financial support are exhausted).  A business that makes a profit can do various things with it - retain profits for investment with a view to expanding the business, pay a dividend to investors and/or a bonus to staff, retain it to provide a cash buffer in case things turn south, give it to the Battersea Dogs' Home and more. 

From that starting point it becomes clear that the only things government policies can affect are costs, selling prices and profits.  Don't get it wrong, don't think government can do anything that affects a business other than to influence costs, selling prices or profits.  It cannot.  

We had examples of policies intended to affect all three of these in Mr Miliband's speech.  

Small businesses are to be taxed less.  The idea is to reduce costs by reducing the amount of tax that must be paid as everyday overheads.  He promotes this as a benefit being provided to small businesses by his government.  It is nothing of the sort.  He is proposing reducing an impediment to business that the current government, and the government of which he was previously a part, impose on business.  

He said this is a way to create more jobs.  For once I agree with him.  If you reduce the costs of business the prospect of profit is increased and, inevitably, so is the prospect of that business expanding and taking on additional staff.  The same applies to all cost imposed by government as overheads - land taxes, employer's National Insurance contributions, VAT and countless regulations that require expenditure to be incurred (usually pointlessly) on monitoring compliance with random targets and standards that have no substance beyond the egotistical commands of single-issue bigots. 

For big businesses he wants to take more of their profits in tax.  No reduction in costs for them, jobs that might be created by reducing the costs of big businesses are of no interest to him.  To the Millionaire Marxist big business is just a cash cow, to be milked and punished to the fullest extent possible.  How ironic it is that his plans require the big businesses he despises so much to make the largest profits possible.  

Having said that, taxes that apply before sales are made increase the prices businesses have to charge to break even.  An example I have given before is of a furniture manufacturer that spends £50 on raw materials and £50 on labour to create a table, leaving aside other overheads the table cannot be sold at £100 to achieve break-even.  Because VAT at 20% will have to be added the sale price must be £120.  There might not be a market at that level, although there might be at £105 or £110.  If you get rid of VAT and tax profits instead the business has an increased chance of expanding and creating more jobs.  Get rid of land tax (business rates) as well and and pre-sale costs fall further.  I am all in favour of taxing profits and dispensing with all taxes that stress profit-margins.  

Mr Miliband has put on the metaphorical hat he bought when supporting the policies of East Germany in his youth and decreed that electricity and gas prices will be frozen for 20 months if he becomes Prime Minister.  

Give me strength. Government dictating sale prices of any goods or services is a truly desperate policy.  Some of us are old enough to remember the prices-and-incomes policies that formed a cross-party consensus in the 1960s and 1970s.  Lest anyone does not know how it operated, by law prices and incomes could only be increased by the maximum figure dictated by government.  Yes, you read that correctly.  No matter how much the cost of imported raw products increased, that increase could not be passed on to customers if it resulted in the finished product going up in price by more than the percentage the government decreed to be acceptable, the manufacturer had to bear the cost or go bust.  No matter how much more profit a business earned in one year compared to the last, employees could not be given a pay rise greater than the percentage decreed by government.  It was utterly mad.  

Yet Mr Miliband obviously thinks it wonderful because he wants to do it again.  The first basis on which he sold it is entirely meritworthy, he claimed to want to keep energy costs down for the little people.  So say all of us, except those who supported the appalling Climate Change Act 2008 that requires the cost of energy to rise again and again.  Oh hang on a moment, the Climate Change Act was the only major piece of legislation piloted through the House of Commons by a certain Marxist Millionaire called Miliband when he was in government.  No qualms about hitting the little people in the pocket then, so what has changed?  If what has changed is that he has become an honest politician he would want to repeal all parts of his own legislation that increase cost for Mr & Mrs Ordinary, but no.  He wants to punish energy companies because they make profits.  It is no more sophisticated than that, as he admitted when giving the second reason for this proposed policy.  

He does not understand profit - he doesn't need to because he and his slimy brother inherited a fortune through careful tax avoidance and has oiled his way onto the political gravy train so there is no need for him to understand anything about anything other than his own self-interest.  

The full consequences of freezing electricity and gas prices cannot be foreseen although some things are pretty obvious.  Prices are likely to rise in advance of the freeze at least to counter 20-months of inflation, investment by the energy companies is likely to be reduced because they will have less money to invest and the pressure for crippling price rises once the freeze is lifted will be difficult to resist since 20 months of investment activity will have to be caught-up as soon as possible to try to keep the lights on. 

The Labour Party professes the desire to seek full employment.  For decades their means of seeking this has been to increase tax and create public sector jobs of little or no value.  Despite that unemployment has been higher at the end of every Labour government than at the beginning.  The only realistic chance of increasing employment is by reducing government impediments to business - both taxes that increase day-to-day overheads and taxes that reduce the funds available for investment.  You cannot expect a Millionaire Marxist to understand that, and poor Mr Miliband is no exception.  

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.

A thought on the Housing Benefit caps

Sometimes I read a "news" report and wonder whether I'm missing something. It's not uncommon for those who drink vast amounts to suffer forgetfulness and, over time, to lose their analytical powers. Perhaps I have reached that stage, but I don't think I have. I'm talking about the proposal to cap housing benefit and, in particular, about an article peddled by the BBC (here).

For the benefit of anyone who has missed the story or who is reading from beyond these shores I'd better lay the background. One welfare benefit payable in the UK is called Housing Benefit, it provides funds specifically to cover the cost of mortgage interest payments or rent. The proposal under discussion is that the amount payable towards rent should be capped. The cap will have four stages. Those renting a one-bedroomed property will be allowed no more than £250 a week, with up to £290 a week payable for a two-bed house or flat, £340 for three and £400 for four bedrooms (or more, or so I presume). These figures equate to annual rent of £13,000, £15,080, £17,680 and £20,800 respectively.

I am not the first to observe that these are large sums of money. To have £13,000 in your pocket after tax you have to earn something in the region of £18,000. On the assumption that someone renting for £13,000 also wishes to eat, water and clothe themselves at an additional cost of £100 a week, their annual pre-tax earnings would have to be in the region of £24,000. That is not far from annual average earnings. The payment of £20,800 in rent requires pre-tax earnings of around £27,000 before a single morsel of muesli has crossed the tenant's lips.

Housing benefit is paid out of taxes received by the Treasury. It is necessarily and inevitably the case that many employed taxpayers earn less than these sums and could not possibly pay that much in rent. Their taxes will be used to pay for other people to occupy homes they could not afford. It's an easy and, I think, lazy argument to say that the proposed caps are justified merely because many of those paying taxes could not afford even those sums in rent. That rather misses the point.

Someone who has been earning more than enough to pay rent of £13,000 or £20,800 a year might lose their job and be reliant on benefits until he or she finds another position. There is nothing essentially objectionable about them receiving benefits to help them keep their home until they find new work. If that work does not allow the payment of such a high rent they will have to move anyway but if it does they will resume paying the rent. In such a situation Housing Benefit provides a stop-gap relief pending the establishment of a new situation which, I would have thought, is what benefits are intended to do. That others have never been in the position to rent a property at such values is really neither here nor there. In this context Housing Benefit is akin to an insurance payment and those who rented at these figures necessarily earned more and paid more tax than those on lower incomes. Although Housing Benefit could be seen to come partly from those on lower incomes the reality is that those who previously paid their rent out of taxed income and claim the benefit while they are between jobs have already paid for it.

There is, of course, another group - those who have not had, do not have and have no reasonable prospect of ever having enough earned income to pay their rent and are habitually dependent on Housing Benefit. For this group the question "why should people with modest taxed incomes who cannot afford such rents pay so much towards their rent?" is more pertinent. Indeed it is hard to see any justification for such people to be subsidised out of tax to live in expensive areas. Harsh though it might sound in the modern world of holistic touchy-feely wibble, beggars can't be choosers. Or to put it less harshly, if you live on hand-outs you can have no complaint about the payer saying "sorry, we can only hand-out so much".

The BBC article I linked to above (this one) asserts that the majority of two-bedroomed properties in London will be too expensive for Housing Benefit claimants if a cap of £290 a week is introduced. This is where I wonder whether I'm losing my faculties. Landlords want the best return they can get but they know they have to pitch the rents they demand according to the ability of likely tenants to pay. Pitch it too high and there are no takers. More importantly, landlords know that the worst thing possible is what is known as a "void period" - a time when the property is empty and no one is paying rent. Say the desired rent is £300 a week, that is £15,600 a year. Four weeks without a tenant reduces the annual rent received to £14,400. If you have a tenant paying £300 a week through Housing Benefit and are told the benefit payable will be reduced to £290 a week, what would you do? Throw out the existing tenants - possibly incurring legal costs and risking a void period - or reduce the rent to £290 a week? No doubt some would choose the first course but reducing the rent would still bring in £15,080 a year, a tiny reduction accompanied by the certainty of payment.

Say your two-bedroomed property commands a rent of £500 a week rather than £300. It would have to be in a very smart part of town for that to be a true market rent. On being told your existing tenant will only pay £290 because he is on Housing Benefit and that is the limit, the question you have to ask is whether you will find a replacement tenant who will pay substantially more. In areas where £500 a week is a true market rent the answer is almost certainly that you will find a new tenant. It's tough luck on the existing tenant but you cannot avoid the fact that such a property is at the high end of the market and it cannot be justifiable for taxpayers to keep someone else there when they cannot pay the going rate and others could.

And that really is the point I want to make today. The Housing Benefit rent caps will only result in existing tenants having to move if others are willing to occupy the same properties and pay a higher rent out of post-tax income. That situation will prevail in some instances. There is no denying that existing tenants who are required to move will find it upsetting. Regrettable though that is, the caps are at high figures and there is only so much taxpayers should be required to pay towards the housing costs of others.

Lurking behind all of this is a state of affairs that arises whenever government subsidises anything. If the subsidy does not have a limit people will milk it for all they can. How many two-bedroomed flats for which Housing Benefit currently pays £350 a week would actually command that figure in the open market? Landlords of benefit claimants pitch the rent at the highest figure they think will be paid in Housing Benefit. The same rent might not be achieved from renters paying from earned post-tax income. If they thought they could get more from non-benefit claimants they would do so, indeed they would be mad not to do so. In real life they know there is nothing to be gained from pitching benefit claimers' rent below open market rent so it can only be the same or higher. I'll give you one guess which is the more likely.

But there's more. The Chief Executive of the political lobbying group Shelter is reported to have claimed that "tens of thousands of households could be forced from the centre" of London. Shelter started as a genuine charity finding practical solutions for the homeless. The mere fact that it has a Chief Executive means it has outgrown its charitable functon and has become a business. It is in the business of justifying its own existence in order to keep its Chief Executive and such other salaried staff as it might have in their comfortable positions, which means its first function is now lobbying. So let's look at his proposition.

Tens of thousands of households could be forced from central London, he opines. OK, let's assume that happens. How, in the real world, can it happen? The properties they occupied will still exist and the landlords of those properties will still want to have tenants. Chucking out a tenant is only a good idea if you get a replacement. A tenant who pays minimal rent and trashes the furniture but still provides a small overall profit is better than no tenant at all. It is a necessary part of the Chief Executive's argument that tens of thousands of potential tenants are currently prevented from renting because benefit claimants are hogging the properties. On what possible basis can it be right that those tens of thousands should be excluded when they are able and willing to pay but cannot do so because taxpayers (including the prospective tenants) are keeping others in those properties? It is not a one sided coin. Existing tenants will only be ousted if currently frustrated potential tenants are waiting to take their place and pay, from their own post-tax resources, for the privilege. Why is he not lobbying for these excluded unfortunates to realise their dream?

Will "tens of thousands of households" be displaced? Of course not. But even if they were, tens of thousands of other households will take their place and pay for something they desire and can afford but presently cannot attain.

The most incoherent climate change clap-trap ever?

There was a most extraordinary letter in yesterday's Times. Extraordinary not just for its factual inaccuracy and it's blatant assertion of an obvious untruth but also for asserting a conclusion that doesn't follow from its flawed premise and for displaying a poor knowledge of English. I will not bother trying to correct their grammar and syntax, no doubt they are too old to learn. The letter was signed by a number of people involved in the field of medicine. I could call them doctors but wouldn't want to mislead because I don't know whether any of them actually holds a doctorate.

Their starting position is that many people assert "climate change doesn't exist". How breathtakingly stupid of them to put their case in this way. "Climate change doesn't exist" is another way of saying "the climate is not changing" and/or "the climate does not change". For all I know there might be some existing in hermetically sealed mental bubbles who do indeed assert one or both of these preposterous nonsenses, but I have never read anything to suggest that such people exist outside secure psychiatric facilities. No sane person could ever assert that the climate is not changing or does not change. Of course it changes and of course it is changing now, it always has and it always will.

They then assert that many say climate change is not caused by humans. This is true enough provided one defines "climate change" accurately. The buffoons who signed the letter clearly have not defined it with any care. Let's go back to the days before human beings found a way to make life comfortable, back to the days before the industrial revolution and the development of processes that keep us alive but produce atmospheric carbon dioxide in order to do so . The climate was not stable then any more than it is stable now. What caused climatic instability in those days? I'm no expert but I would suggest two (no doubt there are many more but no one can argue with these two).

First, the sun. That's the big yellow thing in the sky. It does its thing and the result is more or less heat at the earth's surface. If it is busy we get more, if it decides to put its feet up and read a good book we get less. It changes the climate and human activity has nothing to do with it

Secondly, the oceans, they are those watery bits that appear as two thirds of the earth's surface in atlases and on globes. They are not just surfaces they go down a long way and slosh a vast amount of water about. Some of that water is cold, some is not so cold. Both the warm and cold bits are vast quantities of matter. It moves about, churns itself around and oceanic surface temperatures vary according to what the churning produces. We can have years of relative warm waters at the surface and years of chilly stuff exposing itself to the air. The churnings of the oceans change the climate and human activity has nothing to do with it

There we have it, two hugely powerful factors that change the climate regardless of human activity. It is axiomatic that human activity does not cause these climatic changes. You have to narrow down the field to find a contributory factor to changing climate that can be blamed on people. We all know what that factor is - production by human activity of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere. From there we have to ask what detrimental effect carbon dioxide is alleged to have in order to know what the allegation against we naughty people is, because unless the allegation is defined clearly any denial cannot be placed in its proper context.

The case put against carbon dioxide is that increased levels of that gas in the atmosphere lead to higher surface temperatures because of the so-called "greenhouse effect." It's not actually anything to do with the way greenhouses retain heat, it would be more accurate to call it the "duvet and storage radiator effect". Atmospheric gases are said to act like a duvet in that they prevent heat escaping as fast as it would in their absence (yes, I know it's not actually "heat" but energy which at surface level is translated into heat). They also act like storage radiators by releasing energy to heat the surface when it is cool.

But that's only a tiny part of the picture and it is not the part that matters. Nice Mr Pogo has been kind enough to remind me of this point when I have been too loose in my use of language in previous offerings on this topic. The worse case scenarios produced by computer models and by applicable mathematical formulae suggest that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might, of itself, cause average surface temperatures (whatever that means) to rise by around one degree Celcius. That is equivalent to moving from Brighton to Birmingham. The newspapers are not swamped with tales of emigres from the south coast of England to the middle of the country being troubled by the changed climatic conditions. It is only when the great hypothesis is added that people start to fret.

The great hypothesis is that adding further carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will give rise to an amplification effect. The starting point is that adding carbon dioxide will increase both the duvet and storage radiator effect because more carbon dioxide means a greater storage capacity for the "blanket" around the earth. The crucial hypothesis is that various factors will result in an increase in surface temperatures far beyond those that the increased storage capacity would produce by itself. Some argue that this amplification process will happen, some argue it will not, some argue that it is impossible to tell but are inclined towards one position or the other. The one thing of which we can be sure is that it hasn't happened yet.

When the medical buffoons asserted that many say climate change is not caused by humans what they should have said, in order to have any credibility, is that many dispute the hypothesis that increased emissions of carbon dioxide will result in an amplification process causing significant and detrimental increases in surface temperatures. Being buffoons, they did not say this. Instead they asserted that many say climate change is not caused by man. Not only does this misrepresent the argument put forward by those who decry the Chicken Licken scenario but it is hopelessly misleading because it adopts the weasel words du jour of "climate change" rather than "man made global warming". Unless human production of carbon dioxide will trigger dramatic and damaging warming, the whole Chicken Licken argument falls to the floor.

That deals with the untruth in their letter. Factual inaccuracy is proved by their ridiculous assumption that "nearly 2,000 of the world's leading climate scientists who consitute the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" agree with the Chicken Licken hypothesis. I call this an assumption because there is absolutely no evidence at all to support it. Yet, tellingly, the buffoons assume that all those who contributed their thoughts and analyses to the IPCC agreed with every apocalyptic word in the conclusions written by politicians. Even in real science people can contribute their views and be noted as contributors to a report without agreeing with a single word of the final report. I wonder how many of the buffoons have been involved in a research project as a contributor of ideas and analysis only to find that the authors produced something they consider to be utter tripe.

And so we get to their conclusions. How appropriate it is that I have just used the term "utter tripe". This is what they wrote: "there are immediate benefits to be had from action now, mainly about how we move, how we eat and how we redistribute resources more fairly around the globe - all of which are fundamental to health and welfare." I am almost lost for words. But I'll try my best to find some.

Take the first two phrases: "there are immediate benefits to be had from action now". No. No, no no. If you are looking at influences on the climate there are, by definition, no immediate benefits. Nothing we do now will affect the climate immediately even if you believe the most extreme of the computerised projections. Maybe they did not mean climatic benefits. We need to look at the rest of their conclusion to see whether they are actually addressing the climate at all.

What is it that they say we must do? They identify three areas. The first is described as "how we move". I know I said I wasn't going to pick at their use of English but I have to. What in the world of living buggery does "the way we move" mean? My best guess is that they might be referring to aeroplanes and motor cars because these are pet hates for the greenies. But that can't be what they mean because changing our motorised travel habits cannot have an immediate effect on climate and giving up air travel and the internal combustion engine is not "fundamental to health and welfare".

Then they say we should take action about "how we eat". I'm beginning to lose the will to live at this stage. Do they mean importing runner beans out of season from Kenya? Fine, let's bankrupt Kenya's farmers. Well, actually, not fine at all. It may be fine for the buffoons but it's the absolute opposite of what I want to see. Maybe they mean we should all turn vegetarian so as to do away with flatulent cows. No, that can't be it, you'd just transfer the production of flatus from cows to humans. Sorry, I don't get this one at all.

Maybe their third idea carries weight: "how we redistribute resources more fairly around the globe". And the connection to human incuded climate change is ...? Yes, that's right, it has absolutely no connection at all to what industrial plants, cars and cargo planes full of Kenyan runner beans might be doing to the environment. It is a totally different topic, a purely political topic. No climate science is involved. No medicine is involved. I would say no sense is involved but that opens another subject for another day.

These idiots started by saying there are many who deny the climate is changing, and ended by saying that people working in medicine "will be reminding" those who question the effect of human activity on the climate that "immediate benefits" will result from changing the way we move, eat and distribute resources around the world. The whole thing is incoherent clap-trap.

The lead signatory carries the title "Professor". Now words do fail me.

Sarkozy and the Poznan pantomime

As I throw another carbon-free coal on the fire to sustain me through the bleak midwinter my mind turns to the unstoppable global warming from which we are currently suffering. And where better to experience the full scorching effect than Poznan in deepest darkest Poland. Yes, it's international junket time again. Evidencing the self-sacrifice for which they are noted, the great and good from 192 countries have gathered to take the next step in the elimination of carbon dioxide from the face of history. The Poznan whine and cheese party is the latest in a series of conferences in which the successor to the Kyoto Protocol is expected to the formed. Kyoto hosted the conference at which specific targets were set for reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases by 2012 (the reductions being below 1990 levels). The overall desired reduction was 5.2% with larger targets set for industrialised countries or regions and smaller for developing nations.

It goes without saying that the Kyoto targets show no sign of being met without fraudulent manipulation of statistics and it is almost 2009 already, 2012 is just over three years away. Oh my ears and whiskers! What are we to do? The preferred solution of those benefitting from business class flights and five star hotels at taxpayers' expense is to hold more conferences and make further pious pronouncements which, again, will come to nothing. The next formal agreement, the successor to Kyoto, is due to be made next year.

Alongside the discussions towards a global plan, the EU wants to have its own plan, and this is where the fun begins. There is a small Frenchman currently at the top of the EU tree. All Frenchmen like to feel important, this chap is the President of France so he is required to feel extremely important; add to his status the presidency of the EU and it is impossible for Nicholas Sarkozy not to believe himself the most important person in the world. He has until the end of this month to secure agreement to an EU anti-greenhouse gas plan or his arrogant edifice will fall around him, like cheap underwear exposed to a 60 degree wash. His big chance comes at the upcoming EU summit meeting on the 11th and 12th of December, less than a week away. Mr Sarkozy has a problem. His big idea is for a cap-and-trade arrangement and it is too late for him to switch horses now, but some EU countries don't want to play that game.

As I understand it the way a cap-and-trade scheme works is that a figure is agreed for permissible levels of emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide in particular). Once the overall level has been set for a country, and individual level will be set for different industries. Those who produce less than their allowance will be able to sell their surplus allowance to someone else who is struggling to stay within his permissible limit. Heavy financial penalties will be imposed on anyone who produces too much carbon dioxide so you buy someone else's spare allowance in order to avoid the fine. Of course politicians like schemes which give them lots of other people's money to play with, so the initial levels are not just allocated, they are sold at the highest price they can possibly squeeze out of business.

Our German friends aren't very keen on this because they still make things and making things results in the production of carbon dioxide. Germany simply cannot make as much stuff as it does now and reduce carbon dioxide emissions; not unless a means is found to trap or filter the carbon dioxide before it gets into the sky and fries us all like sausages on a griddle. Our Polish friends are even less keen because almost all their electricity comes from burning coal (of which they have vast natural supplies). They cannot switch to nuclear because it is too expensive for them and would take a decade or more to come on line, so they either burn coal or they convert to gas and find themselves dependent on importing it from Russia. As Ukraine has found to its cost, Russia keeps the stopcock on its side of the border. France doesn't care much because it produces most of its electricity in nuclear power stations and doesn't have much heavy industry. For France, and Mr Sarkozy in particular, it is about being important not about whether the plan will work.

One aspect of all this that is, it seems to me, given too little attention is the obvious question: why has the world failed to meet the Kyoto targets despite apparent willingness all round? The answer is in three parts. First, industrialised countries have to increase their wealth just to stand still. Most of them have expanding populations which requires an increase in total wealth for the wealth per head to remain the same. So they need to expand industry, much of which produces additional carbon dioxide. Secondly, developing countries want toasters and microwaves, as well as option extras like warm homes and enough food, so they need to expand their industries to create the wealth required to provide these needs. That means making more electricity at the lowest cost, which means burning coal. Thirdly, no one is prepared to be the first to take a hit. The USA did not ratify the treaty containing the Kyoto Protocol because it was not prepared to sign-up to reducing its industrial base while its competitors were expanding theirs. In passing, let us not forget that it was President Clinton and his Vice President, St Al of Gore, who first decided not to submit the treaty to Congress for approval.

The current stage of EU negotiations looks to be floundering, even according to the well-spun piece published by the BBC on the matter. Try though they might, they cannot hide the fact that some countries would be crippled by a cap-and-trade scheme unless they are given such extensive concessions that the scheme might as well not exist. There is talk of a compromise such that the countries most heavily dependent on coal will be given generous allowances for free while others producing less will have to pay a lot for a smaller allowance.

And that leads us to the essential problem with cap-and-trade schemes in this area. How can they result in lower emissions? For so long as we require manufactured goods, aeroplane flights, electricity and everything else that makes life comfortable, we will produce those things. There are only two paths to follow, either we give up some of the comforts of modern life or ways are found of producing those comforts without also producing current levels of carbon dioxide. Seeking to force people to give up comforts they take for granted is political suicide for any government. Have you ever heard a government minister say their electors should suffer a reduction in standard of living? Of course not. Now that a reduction is being forced on people through recession we see why it cannot be part of overt government policy.

So how does a cap-and-trade scheme cut emissions? The obvious answer is that it sets the cap at a lower level than current emissions. But how is that actually going to be enforced? The very nature of the scheme is that there are no physical means of lowering emissions, only financial penalties if you exceed your allowance. Build in distortions, such as Poland and Germany being given allowances for free because of their current industrial base, and there will be renegotiations tomorrow, next week, next month and until the end of time as those distortions prove unfair to other countries. Poland and Germany won't budge an inch, they won't need to, so restrictions elsewhere will have to be relaxed. Enforce the penalties in such a way as to require a reduction in living standards and countries will elect new governments committed to withdrawal from the scheme, unilateral withdrawal if necessary. It is not realistic to expect emissions to fall simply by imposing financial penalties. Perhaps they will fall for a time as businesses are bankrupted or goods are priced out of the reach of potential consumers, but that can only be temporary because practical politics will bring in governments committed to reversing the lunacy.

So that leaves us with new technology to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through some form of trapping or filtration. Some progress is being made in that field but we still seem a long way from it being of any great effect and still further away from it being even remotely affordable. In the meantime a cap-and-trade scheme might be introduced which will add vast additional costs to business, costs which must be passed on to consumers or result in the businesses closing. We don't even need to see whether there is sufficient evidence of runaway global warming to justify such a crippling blow to the economy, of itself it is utter madness to even think of going down this path.

The Germans and Poles are saying all these things now because they will suffer the harshest consequences most quickly. My greatest hope is that Mr Sarkozy will not be able to fudge a deal before the end of the year. The enviro-realist leader of the Czech Republic takes over the EU presidency next month and we can then expect a nice spell of common sense to prevail.

Much ado about hanky-panky

I can understand why those who work as pimps should be targeted by the law. Some of them are pretty harmless and give their girls a bit of protection in case a punter gets threatening or refuses to pay, but many extort a large percentage of the girls' earnings under threat of violence. Making it illegal to traffic people for prostitution is also a nasty business, often involving coercion of girls into a trade they had no intention or desire to engage in. Quite rightly both activities are unlawful already. Today our hapless Home Secretary announced plans to make it illegal to use the services of a prostitute if she is operated by a pimp or has been trafficked into the UK for the purpose of prostitution. To make matters worse, the offence is committed whether or not the punter knows of the pimp or the trafficking. It is a most bizarre proposal. To make it all the more bizarre, the maximum penalty will be a fine of £1,000 thereby putting it on a par with other serious crimes such as failing to pay the television tax and smoking in a pub.

What intrigues me is how the offence can be proved. At the moment paying for consensual sexual services is not illegal, if the proposed new law is brought in that will still be the case but there will be an exception where the prostitute is managed by a pimp or has been trafficked. On the face of it, therefore, it will be necessary for the prosecution to prove three things: (i) that sexual services were provided, (ii) that money changed hands or was due to change hands in return for those services and (iii) the provider of those services has a pimp or has been trafficked. In theory the law could be framed so as to presume that every person selling sex falls into the special categories, in which case only points (i) and (ii) will have to be proved and the defence will then have to disprove the third point, but that is unlikely to survive a challenge under the Human Rights Act because it imposes an impossible burden of proof on a defendant.

Undoubtedly a small number of cases will be easy for the prosecution because the girl will give evidence herself about how she operated, although I wouldn't put any money on an appreciable number of pimped girls doing this. The very nature of most pimps is severely discouraging towards anyone attempting to ruin their business. Furthermore, many of the girls need the money even if they don't like the way their pimp treats them and will prefer to keep earning a living rather than give evidence against a punter they don't know and will probably never see again and thereby run the risk of exposing their pimp who, in turn, will expose them to a right good smacking.

Perhaps the most obvious situation in which the proposed new law will be used is when a brothel is raided and a number of illegal immigrants are found in close proximity to pale and sweaty middle managers in a state of undress save for a small intimate rubber item. It might well be possible to persuade a court to infer that the girls have been trafficked if no other explanation for their presence in the country is forthcoming, but I doubt that it will be as easy as the Home Secretary might wish.

The biggest problem the prosecution will have if it seeks to rely on inference rather than direct proof is that the offence is one to which ignorance of the true facts is no defence. In other words, the punter only commits an offence if the girl was pimped or trafficked and then he cannot excuse himself by saying he did not know she was pimped or trafficked. Since the evil being legislated against is the pimping or trafficking and the punter would be innocent of any crime if the girl is not pimped or trafficked, establishing this element of the offence is particularly important. It is all the more important where the defendant will be condemned even where he has no knowledge and no means of establishing whether the girl is pimped or trafficked. For the prosecution to say "it is no excuse that he does not know" is not very appealing when the case they present shows they do not know either.

On another practical note there must be doubt whether the police would be prepared to devote substantial resources to investigating the background of a prostitute where only her punter is charged and the maximum penalty is a £1,000 fine. It would be rather different where an alleged pimp or trafficker is in the dock, but to target resources at a middle aged saddo just to keep Jacqui Smith and simple Harriet happy does not seem at all sensible.

To secure a conviction for a criminal offence usually requires proof both that the accused person did something and that he had a particular state of mind when he did it. To be guilty of theft you must have the intention to deprive someone of property permanently, to be guilty of murder you must have the intention to cause serious harm, to be guilty of handling stolen goods you must know or believe them to be stolen, and so the list goes on. Merely doing something without having a guilty mind is not usually enough. There are exceptions, many exceptions, but I cannot think of one in which the thing which makes conduct illegal is outside the control of the defendant. For example, driving in excess of the speed limit or with more than the permitted level of alcohol in your system both involve criminalising something entirely within the control of the defendant even if he had no intention to speed or to be over the limit. Before killing an animal of a protected species someone can find out whether the object of his brutal desire is indeed of a protected species. I might be wrong (it is many years since I practised in the criminal courts except on planning and regulatory matters) but I cannot think of any example of the law criminalising conduct because of a state of background facts which the defendant neither knows nor has any reasonable prospect of being able to discover.

A very obvious situation comes to mind which illustrates just how bizarre this proposal is. Assume two pasty middle managers visit Madame Fifi's Sauna and Hanky-Panky Parlour. Two girls are available, one middle manager goes to Room 1 with Chantelle the other takes Tatiana to Room 2. In burst the police and both men are arrested. It turns out that Chantelle is an illegal immigrant from Russia and was forced into prostitution after being smuggled to the UK by the Russian Mafia. Tatiana is actually Joyce Stubbins from Canvey Island and works two days a week to save for a new caravan. Each man has done exactly the same thing. Neither of them has any means of knowing the background of the girl who was to be the temporary object of his fleshy lusts. Yet one is guilty and the other is not. It really is a complete nonsense, an absolute lottery, arbitrary and ill thought out law at its very worst.

And what will it achieve? How many more pimps and traffickers will be identified and prosecuted as a result? Of course there is no need even to waste time asking that question because the answer is a big fat zero. If the desire is to stop men using prostitutes for fear of losing out in the lottery draw it might have some effect, but it will only do so at the expense of imposing a ridiculous, unfair and random law.

Making the criminal law used to be a serious business involving careful consideration of the consequences the proposed law might be expected to have. These days we have Jacqui Smith and simple Harriet thrusting the contents of their combined half-brain on the populace without regard to anything other than the desire to prove just how very shallow they are.

The icecream cones hotline

I have mentioned before how a government that runs out of ideas turns to gimmicks, just like situation comedies which have exhausted their comic situation but can't break free from the addiction of ratings. They have been coming thick and fast over recent weeks with ministerial toes dipped into stagnant waters full of windmills, population limits, the censoring of blogs, under the counter cigarettes and much more. Today witnessed a bumper crop. In addition to tax cuts which will be nothing of the sort and evicting decent people from council houses to give priority to the feckless they also managed to squeeze out a true turkey of a proposal, on a par with John Major's motorway cones hotline. Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, announced a scheme to give £30million to nine towns to pay for attempts to get people to take more exercise and eat more healthily.

Yet another massive chunk of money they don't have to do something that is already being done in a futile attempt to change the ways of people who just aren't interested. One can't fault the intention behind it. Idle fat slobs like me should eat less and exercise more, but what do they really think they can achieve?

How are they going to get us to the sports centre? I heard someone from one of the lucky councils warbling on the radio this afternoon about "empowering" the obese to get to a gym. The obese don't need empowering, we know where the gym is, we could walk there if we wanted to or get the bus, that's all the power it takes. We don't go because we don't want to. There is talk of incentives being offered, attend three times and get the fourth session for free. That's how we buy our cakes, for us it doesn't work for a gym. There's no cream and icing in a gym. In any event, every gym runs that sort of promotion from time to time because they know it can achieve two things, it encourages those who are keen but haven't yet got round to it to start attending and it drags in a few hopeful fatties who pay for one or two visits then remember why they gave up gyms years ago and never get as far as the free session.

And then there are the healthy eating initiatives. Lose so much weight and you get a voucher for a free sprig of broccoli. No, sorry, that is not what taxpayers' money is for. One thing which would surprise Mr Johnston is that an awful lot of us fatties eat sensible balanced diets, we just eat more of them than we should. I can't eat any more runner beans and savoy cabbage than I do, it simply isn't physically possible. Those who have reached the age of 30 and never been seduced by a nice sweet parsnip are so unlikely to turn in droves to the organic veggie counter at Lidl that there really is no point trying. OK, fine, some will change. One in a thousand will relinquish the fried chipped potato and have boiled spuds or a dollop of mash instead. One in a hundred might be encouraged to add a small spoon of peas or a few carrot batons to that tiny part of their plate not laden with gristle pie and lardy gravy. But that cannot begin to justify such vast expenditure.

Where do they think the fatties have been for the last twenty years or so? Endless cookery programmes litter the televisions and receive high viewing figures, yet fewer and fewer people seem to be prepared to take the time to cook rather than buying a ready meal for one from the "sad loners" section of the supermarket. The message of organic this, free-range that, wholemeal something else has been crammed at us for years and years and years, but still people buy sliced white loaves of tasteless, unwholesome, underdone cotton wool. A valiant attempt to return school food to the standard I used to enjoy: meat, veg, spuds, pud with custard was pressed as hard as any attempt at public education in history, and what happened? Those who eat well because their parents feed them well continued to eat well while those with retarded parents were fed chips and crisps through the school fence by a bunch of moronic, fat, greasy-haired baggages in dirty black leggings. How on earth is it thought that a mother who brings up her children on salty fatty processed muck with as much nutritional value as roll of loft lagging is going to change not only her own attitude but also that of her stubborn and stupid children? It can happen to one or two here or there, just as one or two awful golfers will score a hole in one each year. But it will not happen en masse and anyone who thinks it might is deluding no one other than themselves.

Poor Mr Johnson says he's trying to save umpteen billions currently spent by the NHS each year treating the overly plump. Trying to change ingrained habits at huge cost is not the way to do it. The thing is, Mr Johnson is a bright fellow unlike most of his cabinet colleagues. He must know this is just a futile exercise in window dressing, a big pre-election poster reading "we're doing something because we care". It is a gimmick pure and simple because they have run out of substantive ideas. Just like the cones hotline, only far more expensive.

A new ban is imminent

Courtesy of nice Mr Raedwald my interest in the e-cigarette has been rekindled. I first read about e-ciggies a few months ago but couldn't find many reviews of the available products and have never seen anybody using one so I haven't been able to receive a personal recommendation. My concern was that it might turn out to be essentially the same as the Nicorette Inhalator, a useful device that gets me across the Atlantic very comfortably but gives me a sore throat after prolonged use and is not a long-term replace for the real thing. Now that a man as distinguished as Mr Raedwald has passed favourable comment, I must get one. It won't replace all smoking in FatBigot Towers or the FatBigot limousine because I have a longstanding smoker's cough to maintain, although it might tempt me back into pubs from which I feel excluded at present.

What possible objection, I wonder, could the Righteous (as the great Mr Leg-iron so deliciously describes them) have to my new toy? Although their grounds for banning things are almost always spurious, at least they feel it necessary to give a reason. Much though I hate to give these idiots ideas, existing examples of their muddled thinking could be recycled in this new cause.

Remember the proposed ban of smoking in films and on television? The argument was that seeing others smoking cigarettes can encourage those of even feebler fortitude than the Righteous to take up the evil habit. It is only a short logical hop for the enfeebled to be swayed by the sight of someone using a mock ciggy because it gives off a visible vapour and could be mistaken for real smoking. Not only is the e-ciggy user a bad influence on the enfeebled but he uses deception to pass on his malign message. That would be completely unacceptable to the Righteous, only they are entitled to deceive.

And, of course, if the enfeebled are deceived there is a chance that Ban Enforcement Executives will also be deceived. Swarms of them will be summoned to pubs and restaurants by the telephone calls of concerned citizens (there is a dedicated freephone number for this purpose). It would be contrary to the public interest for BEEs to swarm without being able to hand out fixed penalty notices, the cost of their attendance must be met somehow. What easier and more productive way could there be than to allow them to issue notices to apparent smokers. After all, ostensible sinning against the standards of the Righteous is as wicked as substantive sinning. Only a ban can keep Britain pure.

The Righteous would have a field day if they looked at how an e-cigarette works. It produces a vapour containing nicotine which is drawn into the lungs wherein the lovely nicotine is absorbed. On being exhaled the vapour forms a cloud not dissimilar in appearance to smoke. This gives the Righteous two further causes for complaint.

First, it seems likely that some nicotine will remain in the vapour as it is exhaled. I do not know this for certain but it seems very likely to me. Nicotine is an addictive substance, therefore e-ciggy vapour could lead to passive nicotine addiction. Well, actually, it couldn't because the concentration in the vapour will be too small and it will dissipate quickly. But facts do not stand in the way of the Righteous, hence their reliance on spurious claims that second-hand smoke is dangerous as the main reason for the current ban on smoking tobacco. Elfin safety is paramount in the workplace and the nations waiters and barmaids must be protected.

Secondly, much of the vapour is water vapour. Worse than that, it is water vapour mixed with carbon dioxide - two particularly potent greenhouse gases. Now that the case for man-made carbon dioxide being an H-Bomb in disguise is falling around their feet like a pair of cheap knickers, they must latch onto anything they can to support St Al of Gore's multi-million pound carbon trading business. The need is so much greater since his chums at Lehman Brothers took an early bath. Water vapour is the perfect cause for their collective ire. It has a far greater impact on the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide because there is so much more of it. The last thing the Righteous will want is to see the unnecessary creation of more water vapour by sinful Westerners. The e-ciggy must be banned before it boils the planet.

It's all illogical nonsense, of course, but that has never stopped them before.

The EU and the Irish Bail Out

Sometimes it has to be said that things have gone completely bonkers.

The Irish government has guaranteed deposits in six banks without limit, as opposed to the £35,000 limit to the UK guarantee. There are different levels of guarantee all over Europe and the Irish decided not to ponce around, no debate, no nonsense, they just did what they thought was best for their citizens and their banks.

Now they are under attack from the EU on the somewhat flimsy ground that it is anti-competitive. The argument seems to be that banks all over Europe compete for deposits and an unlimited guarantee might encourage people to move their money from other countries and slip it into an Irish bank. There is a degree of logic to the criticism but it seems so far removed from reality as to be completely nuts.

Lets take the UK. Apparently only two percent of the population have savings in excess of £35,000 deposited in banks. So 98% are completely protected by the current state guarantee and the remaining 2% can split their deposits between a number of banks so as to enjoy the £35,000 guarantee over and again. Some might have unprotected money because the amount they have on deposit is so large that there are insufficient banks to allow them to be fully covered. How many such people exist? No one knows, but the number is so small as to be insignificant. What is significant is that anyone with so much spare cash flopping about is likely to need ready access to it, if it is an investment fund they would not be keeping it on deposit. Might they be tempted to transfer it to an Irish bank? It is always possible although the chance must be pretty remote.

And then there is Northern Rock. Northern Rock has the benefit of an unlimited guarantee from the UK government. Anyone scared that Barclays, HSBC and the rest might fold can just shove his cash into Northern Rock and it will be as safe as houses (we'd better put that old saying on ice for the moment, let's say as safe as an MP's pension). Why place your money in a bank based in Ireland when you can place it in a bank based in the UK? The only reason would be if the Irish bank gave a better return, in which case Northern Rock would not deserve the account. So there is no foundation for saying that the competitiveness of British banks is compromised in anything other than the most peripheral and insignificant way.

I know far too little about the world across the Channel to be able to say whether the same analysis applies. If it does not, the intervention of the EU is even more bizarre. Let's assume Monsieur Escargot has 100,000 of those Euro things and that French banks enjoy no state guarantee of depositors' money. He could stick it in the Grenouillle Bank S.A. and find it at risk or he could move it to Ireland. What, I wonder, is wrong with him protecting himself and his family by placing his money somewhere safe? Why does the EU think it more important for M. Escargot to be at risk of losing everything than for a French bank to be at risk of losing a customer? In any event, M. Escargot could open an account at Northern Rock.

It is a repugnant concept that it could be contrary to EU competition law for the little man to be given protection against the collapse of a badly run bank. And the whole thing is a complete farce when there is at least one bank in the EU backed by an unlimited state guarantee - a guarantee which is only in place because the EU gave its blessing.

My ghast is well and truly flabbered at this one.

Mind your own business Hazel

There is a long-established tradition that the governments of the UK and the USA do not comment on forthcoming elections in the other country. It is a sensible tradition because, generally speaking, we are on the same side and the new Prime Minister or President will have to work with his opposite number across the Atlantic. A sure recipe for a rocky relationship is the knowledge that the person you have to work with wanted you to lose.

No surprise then that Labour has openly supported Mr Obama. It started with the Prime Minister who issued a statement praising Obama's policy platform, naturally he said it was not him when challenged by the McCain team but no head has rolled so we know he was, yet again, lying to escape the consequences of an error of judgment. Then Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman, criticised Mrs Palin on Question Time. Poor Harriet is such an arrogant woman she thinks she is above the rules in every sphere. And most recently the utterly pathetic Hazel Blears joined in, seeking to justify herself by saying the Democratic Party is Labour's sister party.

The only example I can recall of an incumbent American President doing something similar was when the moveable feast of slime that is Bill Clinton was less than flattering about John Major in the run up to the 1997 general election.

What is so curious is that they feel it necessary to give an opinion when it is remarkably easy to keep to the rules. If asked about a candidate you say "the election in the USA is a matter for the American people, I am sure we can work well with whoever they choose". If asked to comment on policy in the other country you say "it is not for me to comment on the policies put forward by the candidates". So simple, all it takes is a little respect for the right of the voters to make their choice. One thing is certain, for every American swayed by an endorsement there will be at least one determined to give the interfering Brits a bloody nose. Or is it curious?

A feature of politics of the left is that it is a mission to change things for the better by government activity. Taking decisions for other people is absolutely at the heart of their philosophy. Politics of the right is, or should be, based on the belief that people should be left to take their own decisions and government should decide as little as possible for them. Against that background it is, perhaps, not surprising that someone mired in a bog of "I know what's best for you" thinking will carry that view into every area. As usual it will do their cause more harm than good.

The Purple Plague and the art of hypocrisy

There are few things more likely to raise both a laugh and a sigh of dismay in FatBigot Towers than a pious pronouncement from the upper echelons of the Church of England.

To be fair to the befrocked buffoons they have been admirably consistent in their inconsistency since the day the Church was formed.There is nothing surprising about this because the whole organisation is a bit of a nonsense. It was invented by the tyrannical Henry the Eighth when the then pope would not let him divorce his first wife (Henry's wife that is, not the pope's, wives of popes are a whole different ball park of hypocrisy). For more than 400 years it has claimed to be part of the Church of Rome despite the Catholics, who might be thought the correct people to judge such a claim, not accepting it for one second. Since the time it began the Church has accumulated vast wealth in both land and other property whilst claiming to serve a god rather than itself. That is not a very auspicious background for any organisation, for an organisation which lectures us on what to do with our money it is the worst possible start.

Today we witnessed an almost comic spectacle, the leaders of the Church of England marched in central London to complain about the West not doing enough to eliminate world poverty. The protest revolved around a declaration made in 2000 by the United Nations to half extreme poverty by the year 2015. In reality this is all about Africa. The call from the Bishops today was for the West to spend more money. That was it. Like Gordon Brown, throwing money at a problem is all they have to suggest. I suggest they turn their attention elsewhere. Let me explain where and why.

There are three problems. The first is corruption. Corruption if rife at all levels of officialdom in many African countries. At the lower levels it is no different from much of eastern Europe where those given a little power use it to secure "commissions" in order for the wheels of administration to flow smoothly. Lots of little commissions add up to a lot of cash but, to be frank, little can be done about it. Perhaps more serious is corruption at the highest levels of government. Senior ministers cream-off enormous sums to overseas bank accounts to provide for themselves and their families for the future. Some of this type of corruption is overt through the creation of sumptuous estates for the senior ministers to live in while in office. They defend it by saying it is good for the standing of the country that its leaders can receive foreign dignitaries in style. The standing of the country is enhanced by the leaders living in fine palaces, rather like the Archbishops in the Church of England.

The second problem is the level of population growth. A village with a certain amount of land it can farm is limited by what can be done with the land. The quality of soil and atmospheric conditions in much of Africa are not conducive to efficient agriculture or animal husbandry, if the starving people are to be fed from their own land the productivity of that land must be improved. Much has been achieved in this respect through irrigation projects, the use of fertilisers and new crops which get the best out of the poor soil. Such projects must continue but there is no need for the Bishops to get excited about this because those projects are continuing and their continuation will provide benefits for generations to come. But poor conditions for growing food are still poor conditions for growing food, doubling a very poor crop leaves you with a poor crop. Unless the demands on the land are under control even a doubling of production does little to alleviate the problem. It is for this reason that population control is vital and population control can only be addressed by a change of culture in the country concerned, the idea that it can be imposed by the West is simply absurd.

The third problem is that many African countries are engaged in expensive military actions (both wars between nations and civil wars). These absorb vast sums of money which could otherwise be used to pay for the projects currently funded by western aid. The Bishops suggest meekly that thought might be given to eliminating this aspect of spending but they do not demand it. They only demand things from the West. If the Church wishes to be taken seriously it must take a stand on this issue.

In order for the Church of England to take a truly moral stance it should call for aid to be dependent on proof that corruption is limited, population is limited and military action is limited. Let them choose their own limits by all means, but do not let them call on the ordinary taxpayers of this country to fork out more while their organisation holds billions of pounds of assets and not a single vicarage will be sacrificed in today's cause.

These people really are the Purple Plague.

Government by sit-com

The essence of situation comedy is exactly what the description "situation comedy" dictates. Characters between whom there are conflicts are brought together in situations which amuse. One of the secrets of good situation comedy is that the writers know when to stop. The time to stop is when the natural situations that can arise between the characters have been exhausted. If they do not stop at that stage there are only two ways the show can go; it can repeat situations which have already been exploited or it can descend into the absurd and become a parody of itself. Either course results in damage to the brand.

It was desperately sad to see Steptoe & Son extended beyond its natural life by the use of increasingly far-fetched scenarios. When it started it had a point, it exposed the relationship of the two main characters and made clever and incisive observations about both the characters and the situation in which they found themselves. In later series we found Albert and Harold dressing up in silly costumes and getting involved in situations which simply could not happen in real life. It was still amusing, but it was not its old brilliant self. Like watching a favourite aunt succumb to Alzheimer's disease we saw a slow and irreversible decline. Much though we loved her we hoped she will soon be put out of her misery because we knew there was no way back. Those who never enjoyed the show might have taken pleasure from the decline but for those who relied on it for their entertainment the hurt ran deep.

Today we learn that a House of Commons committee is to propose a nationwide 9pm curfew for children with a whole series of penalties available to be used against the children themselves and their parents. The reasoning behind it is that a spate of stabbings of teenagers by teenagers has occurred during the evening and at night in public places, so to prevent this happening again all teenagers must be kept off the street. It seems to have received a warm reception from the government and we can expect a ministerial announcement imminently. Curfews are for true emergencies, to be imposed for a short time to combat the risk of looting or the spread of disease. They have no part to play in normal everyday life and are fundamentally inconsistent with government and policing by consent.

It is the type of authoritarian knee-jerk reaction we can expect from a government which has run out of steam. No longer able to inspire confidence through sensible measures it is donning fruit-adorned hats, flowery taffeta frocks and pink handbags and is mincing down the road hoping to raise a giggle. And let us not forget that this is not the first sign of terminal decline. We had a Prime Ministerial decree against plastic carrier bags (on goes the fruity hat), the u-turn over the 10p tax rate (zip-up the flowery frock), £100billion is to be spent on windmills (pick-up the pink handbag), Harriet Harman introduces a law to allow employers to do something they can do already (are my stocking seams straight?), the Prime Minister says we must not waste food (look, I'm wearing suspenders) and now a curfew (whoops dear, see how I walk ... mince, mince mince).

I hate to think what they will come up with next but it won't be The Office or Frasier, it will be Mr Humphreys dressed as Mrs Slocombe's pussy.