The Last Ditch

Hysteria. His or ours?

How do we escape the hysteria that threatens to erode public debate? | Peter Beaumont | Comment is free | The Observer.

The linked article by Peter Beaumont cheered me up immensely. If the control-freaks of the left-wing press, so intent on setting every possible parameter of public debate, fear that;

The blogosphere, increasingly fuelled by toxic language, is hindering honest engagement rather than encouraging it

then we political bloggers are doing well. To quote (as I have not done in such style since my misguided Communist youth) from Chairman Mao:

It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear dividing line between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear dividing line between the enemy and ourselves but have achieved spectacular successes in our work.

The truth is that the elite Beaumont calls "opinion formers" feel threatened by electronic democracy. They had long ago managed to infiltrate and subvert the old media to present a consistent statist view that has been acquiesced to, but never truly accepted, by what Mao would have called "the masses" and I just think of as "us." We express this division of reality by the term "politically correct". If it wasn't different from that which is merely "correct", there would be no need for the qualifying adjective.

Beaumont considers any view that is not politically-correct as "hysterical", but I think the only hysteria here is his. True democrats seek to serve the people, not mould them. They certainly don't despise them, fear them and regard their use of language as "toxic". I only wish I could be as optimistic as he is pessimistic that his game is up.

"Opinion formers" everywhere are seeking to manage the internet. Communist China employs legions of trolls to contradict every anti-government view expressed online in an advanced form of electronic agitprop. The corrupt elites of the world will fight to keep their thieving hands on the levers of power. They will seek every possible way to hinder the resistance of those they regard as their lawful prey.

Government "savings" in perspective

Government savings infographic in perspective | Burning Our Money | The TaxPayers' Alliance.

This (click to enlarge) is the tool we need in our everyday conversations with the Thoughtless. The method to show them, in terms they can understand, that there are no cuts. No austerity. Just a fractional slowing in the rate at which the government spends the money it takes by force from the productive - or their posterity.


Surely they must understand it now? Mustn't they?

Inequality causes stabbings. Really?!

Chinese teenager stabs 8 people to death - Telegraph.

Almost everything good, encouraging and promising about modern China can be traced to Deng Xiaoping's unleashing of market forces. Almost everything bad, distressing and depressing about it can be traced to the totalitarian rule of the Communist Party.

Yet the Daily Telegraph glosses its report of the stabbing by a teenager of eight people with an implied leftist narrative that inequality is one (if not the only) cause of crime.

Violent crime has been on the rise in China in recent decades as the nation's economy has boomed and the gap between rich and poor has expanded.

In what sense, precisely, is this now a "Conservative" newspaper? What kind of "Conservative" journalist makes such egregious use of the post hoc fallacy in his writing to serve such a clearly leftist analysis? Does Mr Philips perhaps imagine that China in the days of the Cultural Revolution knew no violence? Or is he at least intellectually consistent enough to suggest that enormous inequality between the political elite of those days and the oppressed masses "caused" the airplanings and other atrocities?

Oh but wait. To a former Guardian correspondent, those acts of violence were probably not crimes but the righteous dictatorship of the proletariat. Which just leaves the question, why is a "Conservative" newspaper recruiting from the ranks of the Guardianisti?

Is Suzanne Moore's thought maturing?

On social media the new religion is sharing. Some of that sharing may not be very nice | Suzanne Moore | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Ms Moore is one of my least favourite writers. She is of the militant busybody tendency. To put it politely (and I don't think it ever advances one's cause to be rude) she is generally (although probably a delightful friend and family member in everyday life) the sort of woolly-thinking person who got us into our current mess.

Much about the linked article is vintage Moore, but am I just indulging in pre-holiday optimism when I think I detect some positive development? Have a look and tell me what you think. There should be more joy among us, after all, over one Guardianista repenting than over a thousand of us who always knew the state is not our friend.

Is the internet as addictive as tobacco?

Is the internet as addictive as tobacco? | Anonymous | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Here we go. First tobacco. Then drink. Then food. Now the internet. There are literally no decisions about our own lives the true Guardianisti think we are adult enough to take. In their patronising world view we are all their children to be coddled, disciplined and protected from ideas unsafe for our childish minds.

Which leaves the question they never ask. How did they get to be the grown ups?

Unhappy Father's Day

Louis de Bernières: it'll be an unhappy Father's Day for some - Telegraph.

There was a moving article by auther Louis de Bernieres in The Telegraph for Fathers' Day yesterday. He condemns as "the biggest social scandal of our time" the way the family courts treat fathers and "the cruelty to which they and their children are routinely subjected." If it were not for the fact that a friend of mine is going through a divorce at present, I would have dismissed it as hyperbole. Sadly, it is soberly factual.

There seems to be a mad "women's studies" presumption in our modern system of family justice that women are all victims and all men aggressors. That mothers are saints and fathers sinners. That's not so surprising once you realise that social workers matter far more in the process now than judges. If you are unfortunate enough to go through a divorce, you will be lucky to see the same judge twice. As they dip in and out to suit court schedules they have to rely heavily on the social worker's reports rather than their own wisdom and judgement of the case and the parties. The results are really quite horrifying.

de Bernieres puts his finger on the root of this injustice when he writes;

Mr Cameron, I condemn feckless fathers as strongly as you do, but you appear unaware that by far the majority of relationships involving children are dissolved by mothers. A statistic I have read recently stated that it is 83 per cent. I look forward to your article next Mother’s Day.

And why would that be? Perhaps because women are so advantaged by the system that they do not face the consequences of their actions? They don't have to consider, as men do, that if they break up the marriage, they will almost certainly lose their children. They don't have to consider the financial consequences either, as those are mostly visited on the father. Nor do they suffer any opprobrium for depriving their children of the now much undervalued benefit of a father.

Justice can only be done at the individual level, case by sad case. The full spectrum of good and evil can be found in both sexes as it can in all classes, races and social groups. Whenever "social justice" - i.e. justice at the collective level based on assumptions as to the relative merits of groups - is attempted, it results in far worse ills than those it seeks to cure.

Have a thought for the lost fathers of Britain at their work today, saddened by bitter thoughts of how their Father's Day should have been.

What is marriage?

I am reluctant to join in the current brouhaha about the definition of marriage. Firstly, I regard it all as statist agitprop to trap us into conflicting positions that can only be 'resolved' by the very last thing we need; more state interference. Secondly, I suspect it is a ploy to flush out 'homophobia' so as to give a now entirely redundant 'gay rights' campaign a new lease of life.

There is no good reason for the state to be involved in defining marriage legally. It should not be so much a civil right as a civil rite. It is essentially a personal relationship that can only meaningfully be defined by its participants in the context of their own beliefs and values. The state's current involvement achieves, and its proposed future involvement will achieve, precisely nothing that could not be done better by a combination of civil contract (regulating property relations between the parties) and statute law setting out the responsibilities and rights of parents.

It is particularly amusing that gay people demand redefinition of the current legal institution of marriage under a banner of 'equal rights.' Marriage under English Law is a profoundly unequal institution. If people were as diligent about entering into a marriage contract as they are about buying a house, most men would be advised against and most women would be advised for. Not because the rights of a couple during a marriage are unequal but because of the way the law works on exit.

Be that as it may, as a libertarian I am happy for people to enter into personal relationships of whatever kind they like (and using whatever terminology they like) as long as they take responsibility for their offspring (if applicable) and each other and don't expect others to support their lifestyle choices. If 100 humans want to enter into a mass marriage in whatever combination of sexes and sexual orientations they please, that's fine by me. I only expect them to be able to afford a sufficiently large house and matrimonial bed without recourse to the public purse.

Seriously, I don't care how many are involved. Bigamy would be one of the first crimes my libertarian govenment would repeal. I don't care what sex they are. I don't care what sex they have. My only legal requirement would be that they are of legal age and mental capacity to embark upon their adventure.

Let me hastily pacify shocked social conservatives and people of faith among my readers. I am happy for my religious friends to define marriage their way and for their church to teach that any other way is wicked. Provided, that is, they demand no earthly sanctions for breach of their rules. Given what they believe God has in store for sinners, earthly punishments anyway seem a bit de trop. It is the job of churches and the faithful to evangelise sinners and lead them to the right moral path. The law is (or should be) just there to stop us getting in each others' way. It should certainly not be there to tell us how or what to think.

You may protest (and with good reason) that the law needs to define marriage at present because so many laws discriminate between those married and those not. That problem is simply solved. Neither taxes nor 'benefits' nor legal rights should vary by reference to what is, ultimately, a personal choice. All humans should be equal before the law, regardless of their household arrangements.

So let me answer my own question before turning it over to you gentles to answer it better. Marriage is a personal matter which need not concern me unless it's one in which I am participating. Do what you like. Preach what you like. Accept or don't accept other peoples' definitions of marriage or lifestyle choices. Please take responsibility for your partner's (or partners') well-being and welfare, as well as for that of any children you have with anybody inside or outside your marriage. Please don't expect the rest of us to enforce your view on other - or to refrain from ridiculing yours if it strikes us as amusing.

I am finally old enough to know that the more right I feel I am about something, the more likely I am to be wrong. So please feel free to correct me in the comments.

"Can our fiscal austerity be economically justified?" Yes, rather.

Economy: Can our fiscal austerity be economically justified? | Speaker's Chair.

I recently signed up to the new politics site, "the Speaker's Chair" but I can't see myself sticking with it for long. Do I even need to fisk the following unutterable tosh by young "independent voter," advocate of "social mobility" and promoter of "social equity" (yeah right, he's not a Labourite) Ben Szreter?

Our budget deficit is extremely large, but directly removing money from the economy through fiscal austerity is not a way to stimulate and secure economic recovery. While the Government is spending less on employment through large scale public sector redundancy (around 710,000 public sector workers will have been made redundant by 2017), this doesn’t mean they are saving money. Removing these people from the workforce, albeit potentially temporarily, means that their consumption will fall, they will receive government benefits and they will not pay tax whilst unemployed.

The idea that money not spent by the state is "removed from the economy" is startlingly stupid. The only money the state has is that taken by force from the productive (or their descendants, in the case of state spending funded by debt). There are no productive state enterprises any more (not that the ones we used to have were ever very productive anyway). The state creates no wealth of any kind. The public sector is pure cost - some of it necessary cost - but cost nonetheless.

Removing non-essential workers from the public payroll liberates them for productive work. Of course, there's no guarantee they will get it, in an economy devastated by such idiotic thinking as Szreter's, but at least there's a chance. Some of them might even become desperate enough to start businesses; thus saving their souls and boosting the economy by creating wealth. The Blair/Brown regime created almost one million new 'jobs' in the public sector. Even if Szreter's numbers are right (and given the prevalence of the frankly corrupt practice of paying off public servants and then re-hiring them elsewhere in the state apparatus, I doubt it) the Coalition are not even coming close to scaling that back.

Unless the unemployment benefits of sacked public sector workers are greater than their salaries, there is a clear saving. As for the nonsense about the taxes they will not be paying, give me a break. They only ever "paid taxes" from money given to them by the only real taxpayers; i.e. those in the productive sector. Or, to put it another way, money they were given to pay taxes is also part of the saving achieved by sacking them, at least to the extent of the churn involved; i.e money lost on administration costs in paying out and taking back the part of their wages designated "tax"

PUBLIC SECTOR TAXES ARE A FICTION. If we can get nothing else into the statists' thick heads during these difficult times, please let it be that. And as for their lost purchasing power - it was taken by force from their fellow-citizens anyway. To the extent that it was not funded by debt, it will re-emerge elsewhere. To the extent it WAS funded by debt that's just us doing to our children and grandchildren what our welfarist grandparents and parents did to us.

Somewhere a line has to be drawn, because the more delicate issue is this. What if the economy is beyond stimulating into recovery? What if we are seeing the chickens of the Welfare State finally coming to roost? How are we going to cut our coat according to our cloth if so many of our voters are as blind as young Ben Szreter? And how, as he is young enough to be saved, are we going to rescue him from this craziness and make an honest, productive fellow of him before it's too late?

Life is not fair to women: Discuss

CARPE DIEM: Women Have Less Political Ambition Than Men. So?

Why does this issue matter to a libertarian? Because special pleading by lobby groups is a primary cause of unnecessary legislation. As law is an evil to be avoided unless the alternative is a greater evil, unnecessary legislation saps liberty;

Like most gender differences in outcomes, there only ever seems to be concern when women are under-represented in fields like politics, and never any concern when men are under-represented for outcomes like bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, doctor's degrees, graduate school enrollment, biology degrees, veterinary degrees, optometry degrees, pharmacy degrees, etc.  The only exceptions are when the outcomes are negative like prison populations, learning disabilities, occupational injuries and fatalities, motorcycle injuries and fatalities, suicides and drug addiction and then there is no concern about female under-representation. 

I suspect this point could be made to most Single Issue Fanatic minorities claiming that stats show life is not fair to them. But let our lady readers have first go before we broaden the discussion please...

Public Drunkenness and Pomposity

Public Drunkenness Can Never Be a Social Norm - Iain Dale - Dale & Co..

Apropos of my previous post and the widespread delusion that candid photography is against the law, Iain Dale is busy digging himself deeper into a hole after an ill-advised photographic tweet on his way home last night (click to enlarge).

I defend his freedom of speech, of course, but I think he should be happy the lady cannot be identified as the publication is arguably libellous.

As a libertarian, I think the laws of defamation fall under the category of "de trop", but for so long as they exist (and they have been around a long time) Iain needs, particularly as a professional communicator, to bear them in mind. Fortunately for him, the first time anyone would have chance to consider the effect on her reputation would be if she were rash enough to identify herself by suing. So she won't. Before she even considers it, she ought to read about the role of an ill-judged defamation suit in Oscar Wilde's downfall.

It's a surprising lapse for Iain who is famous for his media skills and a highly accomplished communicator (usually of not very much). An amusing Twitterstorm has ensued, as the professionally-offended on the Left take up chivalric cudgels while calling him a c**t and a w*****r without any sense of irony. They are also ranting on about the breach of this anonymous lady's privacy, which is nonsense. Firstly, she's still anonymous and secondly she was in a public place. Anywhere you can lawfully be looked at, you can generally be photographed. People take photos on trains all the time, and - although usually incidentally - there are almost always strangers in the frame.

For what it's worth, I think Mr Dale is guilty of bad manners and a surprising, for him, lack of media savvy. He says she was behaving badly, but the picture doesn't illustrate his point in any way. She could just be depressed or tired. As it comes down to his word, he should probably have left it at words.

Iain is in danger of being seen as using the hammer of his influence to crack the nut of his irritation with a minor disturbance to his peace (allegedly) caused by this woman. Sadly he comes off looking like a pompous prat. In his own interests he should have apologised immediately but having rashly mounted his high horse he's having trouble getting off. His lines of defence look tortured and weak (can he really not have realised the sexual connotations of 'slapper?') and are doing him no good.

The only benefit to his not apologising is that the stream of gleefully sanctimonious responses show the British Left up for the insufferable prigs they mostly are. Ironically, if this tweet represented his true character, it would be a trait Iain had in common with them.