Splitting Hairs

New Labour Minister Stephen Byers lied to parliament over nationalising Railtrack. He has, almost, admitted such already. But it is alright and he didn't actually lie to parliament because what he actually did was tell an untruth. Perhaps I could shoot the bastard and get away with it by saying that I did not murder him as he is not dead but rather un-alive?

Religous hatred bill watered down

No need for the unelected toffs and cronies this time. The commons appears to be evolving a backbone! The tired tyrant, blair, has been defeated over the Religious Hatred Bill. A good thing too, but only one blow for freedom when so many are needed. It will take decades to undo the damage that New Labour have done, if it is ever fully reversed.

This bill has not been withdrawn and so will still make it into law, but it is marginally less awful now than it could have been. Now you have to use words that are "threatening" rather than "critical", but saying that Islam will consider anything that is remotely critical to be of upmost threat so not really much comfort.

The Religious Hatred Bill was a bill designed specifically to plicate the Religion of Peace, so it could avoid people telling the truth about it. They claimed it was a response to Christianity still being theoretically protected by the now never used blasphemy laws. the real reason was the New Labour was worried about losing Muslim votes because of it's war in Iraq and so needed something to buy them off with. The blasphemy laws are completely redundant unused laws that would be struck sown where anybody to every try and use them. The obvious answer to gain equality, to anybody but New Labour, would have been to remove them from the statutes. But removing laws is not the New Labour Way, especially if it gives them a chance to burn some more of our freedoms.

Italy to leave the Euro?

Via Tim Worstall, an economists view on why Italy might have to leave EMU and the results.

Last bastion of Socialism

I don't like Socialism. Much like every other collectivist ideology (such as fascism or religious fanaticism) it is immoral. It kills, mains, causes pain and suffering detracting massively from the total sum of happiness. What Socialism has actually done (and it's collectivist religous forbears) should be remembered rather than the nice things that it's proponents claimed it was trying (but always failing) to achieve. The Adam Smith Institute has a nice image for what Socialism actually did achieve.

Imagine a row of 100 people, nearly 40 deep, being bulldozed over a cliff. Almost 4,000 people killed. The communist regimes did that to their own people every day of every year throughout the 72 years of their sway.

And what did these tens of millions of deaths acheive, a few (million) broken eggs to make an omlette? No, a few (million) broken eggs to make nothing what so ever. Centralised planning does not work on the scale of a state or anything approaching that scale. The basic formulae of jealousy that sums up Socialism "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" leaves no incentive to work up to your ability, other than the salt mines, since it will just all get taken away from you leaving you with only what the State thinks is enough to satisfy your needs. Capitalism works, Socialism doesn't.

So it should come as no surprise that the last bastion of Socialism in the UK is in difficulties. It is cutting services, while it's bloated corpse creaks under the strain of the fetid gasses of putrification trying to escape. One day like the Socialist states behind the Iron Curtain the NHS will collapse. But like the collapse of the Socialist states there will be large mess to clean up.

If we try to calculate how many people in Britain depend on the NHS, with its 1.3 million employees and all their families, GPs and their staff included, plus suppliers and outsourced services, we may well be talking of up to seven million people. In relation to the whole population this comes to roughly 12% – close to the ratio between the population of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) and that of Western Germany.

Well, to melt away the Cold War bureaucracy of the NHS and absorb the whole workforce under efficient management into the rest of Britain may be as big a task as German Unification turned out to be.

Fixing the mess that is the National Health Service is going to take time and money, but the longer it is put off the more difficult it will be. Better to bury it now and replace with a French style social (note the small s) insurance system than spend yet more money trying to heal an institution that is already dead.

Polly gets it right shock

You won't hear this often from a blogger, for once Polly is talking sense about the horrific Religous Hatred Bill

In this inquisition of a bill, religion will become a minefield, a no-go area in the world of ideas. Before you speak or write, ask yourself not only if you intend to abuse and insult, but if you are "reckless" about any insult that may unwittingly be caused to someone somewhere? Expect the degree of insult people feel to tighten a little more each year under case law. It is already happening under employment law with certain kinds of harassment: if someone says they feel harassed, then lawyers warn no other evidence is required.

Thought crime in other words. So it is hard for any thinking person to be for this particular bill, even Christian fanatics of the Evangelical Alliance are against it which says something.

Crime and liberty

An article by Libby Purves in the times is on the crime figures that New Labour and the police would rather not be talked about

statistically speaking we are now safer than before in our houses and cars — largely because of sophisticated new alarm technologies that we pay for ourselves — and less safe out on the street, which it is their job to police.

The New Labour solution has always been to trade liberty for security, and we have traded away a lot of liberty.

Government keeps chipping away at it. CCTV watches us everywhere (though without actually reducing the muggings). We now know that 24,000 children never charged with a crime have their DNA kept on permanent record in case the police ever want it, without any decision by Parliament that we should all be on a DNA database

Benjamin Franklin said

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety

and thanks to New Labour's fascist instincts forever prompting it to destroy more and more of our libertes we have tried the experiment of exchanging liberty for security. The result is we have got what we deserve, neither.

drinking

A quick comparison guide to the legal drinking age in various countries where it is legal. The actual drinking age will almost certainly be a lot lower in many of them, it certainly is in the UK and US.

Sonofusion

Sonofusion has been confirmed as a real phenomina. The experiment has been performed without using neutrons to create seed bubbles, and there where still neutrons recorded coming out of the device. So there must be some nucleur reaction going on to create them, which pretty well means that there must be fusion happening. However this system, like all other fusion reactors, produces far less energy than it consumes.

China's growth

Some jaw dropping statistics on China's growth. Everybody knows that China is growing fast and using a lot of resources. But how much is simply amazing. Here is a graph of relative user of concrete, with one country sticking out like a sore thumb. Is this really sustainable long term? Or the result of a bubble?

Council Tax

Council Tax is set to rise. Council Tax is set to rise at above the rate of inflation. Council Tax is set to rise above the rate of growth in the economy. Should we really be surprised by this? No, not really. It has been rising faster than the rate of growth in the economy every single year. What shall we be getting to account for these massive increases, overall we shall be getting less. Every year taxes rise at above the rate that the economy grows to pay for them, and still that is not enough to feed the hungry mouths in Town Hall so they will cut the amount that they decide to give to us the people that pays for it all. They cannot really say that it is because the money that tax payers give through central government is not enough since that has been going up fast as well:

A government spokesman said councils had enjoyed above-inflation grant increases for almost a decade, enough to deliver effective services at an affordable cost.

With that excuse dead they need another one. So what better to turn turn than Education. You cannot resent money spent on the poor little kiddies can you? Well I can. Particually, as despite these constant increases in funding the quality is actually going down.

New research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and conducted by Michael Shayer, professor of applied psychology at King's College, University of London, concludes that 11- and 12-year-old children in year 7 are "now on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago", in terms of cognitive and conceptual development.

We where told that all was needed was more money to get results, since the only thing on offer as an option was spending more money. Well, we spent the money. Now where are the results? They didn't happen. So you need more money? Sorry, no deal.

Or could it be that the increases are due to money having to go elsewhere. Another excuse will be that this money will be going to pay for the increasing number of elderly. Not of course the elderly that worked their lives producing wealth, no these people commited the cardinal sin of planning for getting old and saved into pensions. There is no greater sin for the Big Government than the sin of foresight. People should not plan for their own futures. That is the job of government commitees, of five year plans and fact finding missions. To commit such a heinous sin as to try and be self reliant it is only right and proper for Big Government to take away all that they have saved though tax increases. And it they cannot pay and get thown into prison? So be it for having the gall to want to make their own way in life. No it is not these unworthy private pensioners that this money is going to. There is a far more worthy group than the insignificant elders that spent their lives creating wealth, the inflation proof pensions enjoyed by all government workers are a far more worthy cause:

"We calculate some 26 per cent of council tax receipts go towards public sector pensions. There's every possibility this figure will rise over the next five years as age-related costs continue to feed in."

Who's the daddy?

Looks like sharks have lost their crown as the biggest baddest predator under the sea. Giant Octopi can have them any day. And there is video proof.

Palestine

Helen of EU Referendum has a good post on the consequences of the election of Islamofascist nutters Hamas to power in Palestine.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is shit*

Since DK decided to change his permalink breaking my last link back here is another one to his post now detailing why The Royal Bank of Scotland is shit, I don't know try to help a google bomb and they going and change all the links around.

Sexual Monsters Inc.

An interesting article investigating the reasons that people in government might want to censor porn. There is one weird little comment about libertarians wanting to censor the net. Who exactly? Censorship of anything is rarely a libertarian pursuit. Just the opposite in fact.

The reasons he suspects for the latest attacks on porn, namely the attempts to get Google to had over search logs, are not the warm and fluffy excuses normally given, it's all to protect the poor exploited performers etc., but the darker motives that might lie behind the rhetoric.

We all know that, for many people, fear is part of their sex drive. Whether it’s fear of discovery or the ability to instill fear in others, it’s real. And both these fantasies are threatened in an open sexual environment.

So could the self declared moral crusaders that seek to save us from ourselves harbouring something rather darker than a wish to help exploited porn stars? Well the various Christian churches always end up at the forefront of any attempt to crack down on porn. The Catholics being partially hard line on the alleged sins of love. And we all know the little secrets they where covering up.

This is the dark side of sexual repression, and it crosses religious boundaries. Muslim men hide the sexuality of Muslim women because they fear even the sight of a face will drive them mad. Christians are sometimes no better. Jews the same. It’s not everyone, but it’s a dominant theme in the “conservative” strain of all these religions, forcing sex into the shadows, yet somehow the babies come. Lots of ‘em.

Of course religions need to breed new little devotees. To many women taking control of their bodies and the pews will not be haft as full as they once where. Look at what happened to Anglicanism.

The Ant & The Grasshopper

A good joke by Attempting Escape, or rather a fable of thrift and foresightedness

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

Now read the British version

When heroin was legal

The conventional wisdom is that Heroin, one of the hardest of hard drugs, is an evil menace. That to stop people becoming addicts, and all the problems that that brings, it must be illegal so that people can be protected from themselves. For if it where legal and you could buy it over the counter at Boots then the whole country would inevitably fall under it's grip, and be reduced to a seething mass of skeletal addicts, like a scene out of Dawn of the Dead, tearing each other apart to try and desperately scape together enough body parts to sell to get their next fix.

Well that is the conventional wisdom. The reality is rather different, you see Heroin was legal in the UK up until 1955. The name, Heroin, does not originate in some strange slang, it is the brand name that it was marketed under. There where not the seething mass of addicts, in fact there where only 317 addicts to 'manufactured drugs' in the entire country. This despite the fact that since the country was still just recovering from the second world war the levels of real hardship and poverty, the usual reasons given for addiction, where far higher then than they are now.

So yet again prohibition didn't work and in reality made the problem worse. Legalise all drugs, and the sooner the better.

The Road to Serfdom

The Road to Serfdom in cartoon form

transport

Alice Miles in The Times has an opinion on transport. Apparently

drivers in Britain have it miles easier than other travellers — car driving is cheaper, more convenient and usually faster

OK so far, but in the very next phrase:

and still motorists get incessantly pandered to by the Government.

Wrong! But thank you for playing. Driving is a large net revenue raiser for government. Trains are a revenue loser. It is the drivers proping up trains via subsidy that stops them being even more expensive and less convenient. She continues with this 'poor little highly subsidised London train user' drivel including

What has Mr Darling done for the rail user recently?

other than subsidising, obviously

Fares went up by 4.5 per cent at the new year; up by 9 per cent on some tickets.

So think how much they would have gone up by had it not been for the money piled into the system from central government, some of which is coming from the revenue raised from cars.

“Strip search” X-ray machines are being installed at mainline stations to humiliate passengers and disrupt journeys further.

Yep that's new Labour for you. Why settle for intrusive CCTV when you can have a far more expensive, intrusive, humiliating, and pointless way of stamping your authority on the peons. They would be putting these things up everywhere if they got their way.

And Sir Rod Eddington has been appointed to “assess the long-term transport needs of the economy” — without taking environmental considerations into account. (Shame on you, Gordon Brown, who set up the terms of the inquiry.) I wonder which form of transport the former head of British Airways is going to favour.

Probably aircraft, but even if they included enviromental considerations trains would still come in lower than the motor car, since modern motor cars are less poluting than trains.

Commuters by rail get it bad enough, with extra penalties for needing to take a train that gets them to work before 10.30am. But it is the non-business traveller who is treated with the utmost contempt.

perhaps because they are not the real customers since they are not where the money comes from, the money comes from government so why should they care about those people that insist on travelling in their trains and making them untidy? Private transport beats public, everytime, and in practically every way.

The Devil's Kitchen: The Royal Bank of Scotland are shit

Apparently the Royal Bank of Scotland are shit, according to Devil's Kitchen.

bye bye ID Cards

As ID cards once again get hammered by the Lords, breaking the link with passports so they actually will be voluntary (which will kill them stone dead), Longrider comments on the people that want to implement them

Only a power crazed control freak or a fool would think these things are a good idea. Which description pretty much sums up all of the home secretaries in living memory

another self test thing

find out if you are being persecuted, or are just a whinning twat unable to come to terms with modernity and the fact that you are nolonger able to persecute anyone you disagree with.

50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005

Having been nominated as a Bloody Devil myself I love gratuitous insults, so enjoyed a list of plenty in a countdown of the 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005 with the number 2 on their list sentensed to:

Strapped to chair; eyes removed with melon baller. Nursed back to health. Lips sewn to a rubber hose connecting him to a 500 gallon nutrition shake. Nursed back to health. Fingers, hands, toes, feet, nose and genitals devoured by hungry pigs. Nursed back to health. Legs and arms ground to stubs with belt sander. Nursed back to health. Fitted with earphones that play only Christina Aguilera songs, and left alone to think about what he has done.

Christina Aguilera? These people clearly have no mercy.

catholic scientology

Are the Roman Catholics taking advise from the Church of Scientology? Could be, since like the Scientologists they are now copywriting their pronouncements. Guess it's a shame that they didn't think of this sooner and copywrite the Bible. They would be getting cash from it, but nobody else would have heard of the thing and we would all still be happy pagans and, since the industrial revolution would have happened anyway, atheists.

Iranian Oil in Euro ... big deal or not?

The Iranian Oil Borse, this exchange could be the biggest thing to hit the world economy in a while. Or it could be nothing. Oil has already been traded in Euro, Saddam demanded to be paid that way in 2000. But his exports where limited as they all had to pass through, the deeply corrupt, the Oil For Food programme. This time the only limits are the limits of the Iranian oil wells.First a couple of articles on why it matters a lot, the first from Energy Bulletin detailing how this could upset the US economy by economist Krassimir Petrov, the second is by Soj at The Daily Kos on evidence that the US government knows that this could upset the US economy and has already begun to put in place efforts to disguise the effects from the markets and so slow them in there corrections. It should be noted that Soj (fairly obviously since he is writing at The Daily Kos) and Petrov do seem to have an anti-Bush slant from what I have read so far. There is a more hopeful article at Energy Bulletin as well by James D. Hamilton saying that it might be nothing and critiques Krassimir Petrov.

UPDATE

Looks like James D. Hamilton is an economist as well, Professor of Economics at University of California, San Diego. Which goes to show the truth in the saying, "if you line up all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion".

China to build world's first fusion reactor

This story comes from People's Daily, that is the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda rag, but it still could be interesting0. According to them China to build "artificial sun" experimental device. They claim that it is the first such machine, obviously wrong since people have been building fusion reactors since the 1950's, and Tokamak style devices since only a little later. Which they even admit later in the article

The new device will be an upgrade of China's first superconducting Tokamak device, dubbed HT-7, which was also built by the plasma physics institute, in partnership with Russia, in the early 1990s. HT-7 made China the fourth country in the world, after Russia, France and Japan, to have such a device.

Nor do they say anything about how close it will get to breakeven. They say it will generate "infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy" with the world infinite meaning that the author is clearly clueless. Nothing in the universe is infinite. Even the universe itself is not infinite! There may be enough deuterium in the earths oceans to provide current power needs for longer you can reasonably expect the human race to last but it is still not infinite. Hence I am going to take the generate energy bit with a pinch of salt as well since nobody has ever been able to get more energy out, in any form, of a fusion reactor than they put in. The closest was JET and that can only manage to just about break even. And we are talking total energy output here, not usable energy that can be harnessed. The main thing about this reactor is really how cheap it is, Iter is going to cost about £6billion this thing is a mere £21million almost three hundred times cheaper.

In Google vs Government

More on In Google vs Government.

It’s interesting to see how many news sources mistakenly report that the current government vs Google case is about child porn. It’s not. If anything, it’s about children looking at pornography

Red tape

"Europe's most successful companies are turning their backs on EU markets because of red tape, a high-level report said yesterday."

It then went on to confirm that things fall when you drop them, the sky looks blue, and water is wet.

Iran to trade in Euro

United Press International is reporting that Iran intends to open a bourse for trading in oil, it's own oil principally but companies from other countries are said to be looking at it as well. All well and good, but it plans to trade in Euro. This could have a major effect on the economy.

With oil being traded in Euro as well there will be less need for Dollars to buy oil and more for Euro, so unless China increases it's appetite for US debt (and there is a limit to how much it will buy) the laws of supply and demand will mean that the value of the Dollar will fall and the Euro rise. Good bye Germany's export driven recovery.

Self healing material

Self healing material

Algorithm detects Canadian politicians' spin

Algorithm detects Canadian politicians' spin based on

a psychological model constructed by James Pennebaker at the University of Texas, Austin, US. While studying the lying and truth-telling of hundreds of test subjects, he uncovered patterns linked to deception, such as the decreased use of personal pronouns – such as I, we, me, us – and exception words, such as “however” and “unless".

the results where Martin received a ranking of 124, while Harper and Layton scored 73 and 88, respectively.

Used against Tony Blair I wonder if it would be able to handle numbers big enough?

In Defence of Wanking

masturbation, don't knock it it is sex with someone you truly love.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledging the best Acknowledgements page ... ever.

overheard

Wiretapping, it was New Labour's first major reversal of the burden of proof, all the way back in 2000 with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. But as Robert X. Cringely points out wiretapping has a very long history. Big government always wants an eye on it's citizens. It is just that the tyrant Blair loves to play the voyeur on other people conversations more than others before him, but unlike Bush across the pond can do so legally with great ease. Basically whomever he finds interesting, and all their friends, are likely to get tapped. This is after all the government that has constructed a database of the DNA of 24,000 juveniles who have never been cautioned, charged or convicted of an offence. If they are not tapped already. He even wants to remove the privilege that MP's where supposed to have of not getting their phones tapped, a privilege honoured more in the breach than the execution according to Stephen Pollard.

But surely if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear? The cry will go, an argument neatly skewered by Dr richard North at EU Referendum. And that is in what is despite New Labour's best efforts still a fairly liberal country. It holds even less weight when applied to a totalitarian dictatorship like China where you can be arrested and imprisoned for sending an email and Yahoo, the email provider, will be only to happy to shop you to the police. Google is under pressure to do the same, to release it's search records to the police to go fishing in from anything interesting. At the moment they are standing by their commitment to not be Evil. But that is unlikely to last forever.

Stephen Pollard on the Political Compass

Stephen Pollard takes the Political Compass test, and comes out a Capitalist.

Social Liberal
(61% permissive)

and an...
Economic Conservative
(81% permissive)

My own result was raving loony minarchist Libertarian, which also pretty much nails me.

I'm a Bloody Devil

I have been awarded the Bloody Devil by The Devil's Kitchen. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. [sniff] I'm sorry. This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Google, and Blogger, and Firefox. It's for the writers of AL Guardian for being so extraordinarily and unremittingly bad. And it's for every nameless, faceless blogger that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened. Thank you. I'm so honored. I'm so honored. And I thank the Kitchen for choosing me to be the vessel for which His blessing might flow. Thank you.

Well did you think I was going to let such a perfect opportunity to take the piss out of Halle Berry slip by did you?

stupidity of religion

A very good site on the stupidity of religion from Brighton Regency Loony. Yes that is what he has changed the site name to. I won't give Mr Harding much credit, at all, ever, about anything, but at least he's got a sense of humour.

UPDATE
just remember God Hates Shrimp

Wake up Polly

Polly is still trapped in the 1970's. She just doesn't get it. Wake up Polly! The political landscape is changing dramatically. Her article is on the Lib-Dems, and their trying to fine a leader to replace Charles Kennedy. They need a leader for the twenty-first century but she is still obsessing about the political battles of the twentieth.

Splitting the left, eh? But wait a moment; that is exactly where we still are: Labour 36%, Lib Dems 22% at the last election.

New Labour is a broad alliance of authoritarians, and the Lib-Dems a broad alliance of liberals. It would be more accurate to say that it is the Conservative that are the splitters, containing as they do both liberals and authoritarians as a broad alliance on the economic right.

The angry Labour MP John Spellar, who most loudly denounced SDP splitters at this meeting, also, like many of his party, just as ferociously denounced any attempt to reunite the left now. He would permit no plurality, refusing to consider introducing PR or any accommodation with the Lib Dems. "Who says the Lib Dems are of the left?" Spellar demanded. In many councils - indeed in my own Lambeth - Lib Dems now hold power with Tories to keep Labour out.

The Lib-Dems are not principly of the old 'left' they are liberals. Perhaps someone should point this out to him. The name offers a bit of a clue. The liberal Lib-Dems have joined up with liberal leaning Tories to keep out the authoritarian New Labour Party. That New Labour is authoritarian can be seen by the fact that John Spellar "would permit no plurality", you can have any view you like. So long as it is New Labour approved.

It may maximise their vote to dance about saying "neither right nor left", but what is the point of merely existing in nothingness?

Polly shows here that she too shows that she just doesn't get it. They are neither right nor left, they are liberal. The old left/right divide is no longer particually relivant since the collapse of communism showed that big S Socialism doesn't work. This turned large chunks of the old left/right divide uninhabitable by anyone that actually looks at evidence to make their judgements. The important distinction is not left or right it is authoritarian or liberal. The Lib-Dems are liberal, New Labour is authoriatrian and the Tories are dancing around saying neither liberal nor authoritarian.

Already the Lib Dems alone own civil liberties, and they are the pluralists who would rebuild council and Commons chambers in horseshoe shape under proportional representation

They own civil liberties be cause they are LIBERAL, somebody please clue the bitch in. IT IS IN THE NAME POLLY.

why bother to propose creating a host of health-insurance providers competing for the custom of NHS patients?

Because it works? France for example has the best health care system in the world. It is a social insurance system which poeple top up with their own insurance and then simply buy the services they need from private providers. Competition works, the market is the best way of distributing scarce resources we know. Big centralised state provision doesn't, as has been obvious since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There is no future in this middling stuff in the present landscape. But a sharp prod from the left could force the old Labour tribe to abandon its insistence on total power, total control, obliging it to open and share with others.

No future Polly? This is the future! The left/right battles over economics are over. The right won. The future is the 'middling stuff' of the fight for liberty against the authoritarians, who at least she is willing to admit exist within the Labour Party and want 'total power, total control'. Over everything.

we're winning

It would appear that Islamofascism is being hurt, the prime proponent al-Qaida has said it is willing to agree a long-term truce (that is a truce until they break it) with the Great Satan in Iraq and Afganistan. If true this is a rather dramatic development, since any truce would mean leaving US and other infidel troops in both places and it was the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia following the first Gulf War that was the reason for bin Ladens hatred of the US. So his alleged willingness for there remaining in Muslim lands marks a major climbdown.

NHS still in crisis

There is currently an unprecedented amount of money being pumped into the NHS, New Labour proudly boasts that it has given the NHS the biggest sustained increase in funding since it was founded. Why is it then that it still does not have enough money at the front line? Why with all this cash is there a cash crisis?

Two-thirds of acute trusts had had to close wards, the survey of 117 acute, primary care and mental health trusts in the Health Service Journal said.

The government predicts a £620m deficit in the NHS for the 2005-6 financial year, and the Royal College of Nursing says 400 nursing posts could be lost.

The NHS managers faced with the problems of running the thing know the reason for this,

Seven out of 10 said the NHS would not be facing such problems if it were not for "inflexible government targets".

And 99% said NHS reforms and changes to consultants' and GPs' contracts had had a big impact as they had not been costed effectively.

knock me down with a feather. Micromanagement from Whitehall is crap and the government did properly cost a contract. Now that has never happened before. Not.

EU Tax

Austria is encouraging the EU to raise funding via a direct EU tax, rather than the current more indirect methods of creaming a slice off of VAT reciepts and the money from import tarrifs (which kind of shows why the EU as a whole seems so protectionist against the outside world, if it where more free market then the EU Eurocrats would get less cash to waste).

The areas that are proposed for this tax are short-term financial transactions or international aviation. Nicely invisible to normal voters, except when they try to get a cheap flight and can't (assuming that the Delayed Boarding regulations hasn't killed off all no frills airlines already), or see the value they get from banking suddenly drop.

What do they have against aviation? There where the Delayed Boarding regulations that mean a no frills airline could end up paying a delayed passenger several hundred pounds when there ticket only cost a few tens of pounds (or less). The Gallileo stealth tax, forcing airlines to use the commercial Gallileo signal for navigation. Even though by the time the Gallileo constelation is all up (having cost far more to get there than was first thought) the free US GPS signal will be just as accurate. And now perhaps a direct tax on aviation. Don't they understand that cheap airfares have done more to unite the peoples of Europe and let them explore the glorious diversity of this continent than the EU ever has. Or perhaps they do, and don't like being reminded so want to kill off this irritation that you can acheive the purported goals of the EU with simple free markets better than regulation and centralised planning. Or perhaps they are just money grubbing incompetents. Yes that sounds more like it.

identities stolen from databases

Last time it was Job Centre workers that had their identities stolen from a database for use in theft and fraud. This time it is rail workers

Losses already identified exceed £15 million, but that figure is expected to get much higher

Yet New Labour still wants everybody in the country to have their details stored in a single giant database. And they think this will help to reduce fraud.

Abolish the Welfare State and restore some Respect

Samizdata has a long and thoughtful post on the dangers of the Welfare State. The supposed collapse of civil society that are politicians are currently in such a state about was predicted long ago as a consequence of the Welfare State:

during the nineteen fifties, I recall, there was a debate, at any rate in Britain, engaged in by diehard free-marketeers, about the long term consequences of the Welfare State. The name of Anthony LeJeune springs to mind, but most of his recent writing nowadays seems to have been reviews of crime stories. Anyway, these diehard free-marketeers said that the Welfare State would corrupt the working class and turn then from the upstanding citizens that they then mostly were into barbarians. Diehard non-free-marketeers genuinely could not imagine this happening, and dismissed such fears as absurd. Most politicians, similarly unable to imagine that times might seriously change, concurred with the diehard non-free-marketeers.

While the problems have been hyped way beyond what is actually happening for the political purpose of furthering the New Labour's authoritarian instincts there is a problem out there. There has been a degradation in the levels of self reliance and social cohesion. There is simply nolonger a need for such things when all that is needed is to not be self reliant and the State will provide with other peoples money. Society does exist but it is not the same thing as the state. Unfortunately for many of the people that cause the probems that King Tony has grouped under his respect agenda society does not matter. It can deny them nothing since all they need is provided by the State. As Mr Micklethwait says:

for a substantial minority, mostly the minority whose lives are dominated by the Welfare State, there is now no such thing as polite society to be shunned by. The remnants of such a society may still exist, but it no longer has power over the barbarians who prey upon it.

What Tony Blair is trying to do is to recreate a "modern" substitute for such informal social pressures with the force of the law and with the power of the state.

This reminds me of what Bertrand Russell said about the difference between civilisation and barbarians.

The civilized man is distinguished from the savage mainly by prudence, or, to use a slightly wider term, forethought. He is willing to endure present pains for the sake of future pleasures, even if the future pleasures are rather distant. This habit began to be important with the rise of agriculture; no animal and no savage would work in spring in order to have food next winter, except for a few purely instinctive forms of action, such as bees making honey or squirrels burying nuts.

[History of Western Philosophy page 35 - The Rise of Greek Civilization, emphasis in the original]

The Welfare State has turned prudence from a virtue to a sin, rewarding the imprudent with the wealth of the people willing to work for their own futures. So it is no wonder that the savages are thriving at the expense of the civilised.

prostitution

Here is another post on prostitution and the stupidity of the current proposal by New Labour to clamp down on it. He agrees that

The issues with prostitution as I see them are ones far more readily tackled with a professionalisation of the oldest profession.

Then taking on some of the myths of the trade

the issue I've seen prostitutes face isn't poverty, in fact, the opposite. I know guys who want out of the game but just couldn't face the transition from £80-£120ph to £8-£12ph which is the likely outcome of any move to legal work.

Read it all, it really is worth it.

Great Britain, not little England: Why Preferential systems beat run-off ballots

Ever wanted to know exactly how the crook wound up as French President? Great Britain, not little England explains. The socialists fragmented, including several Trotskyist parties, while the conservatives had less fragmentation. Mainly a choice of bad (Chirac) or worse (Le Pen). But still with his recalculated numbers reconstructing alliances of parties that are broadly around Chirac or Jospin as if they had not splintered so much Le Pen does very well, far far better than any Far Right party would do in Britain:

Final tally, Le Pen 19.20% Chirac 36.05%, Jospin 42.01%

ID Cards defeat

ID cards have been knocked back by the Lords, yay for the unelected toffs and cronies. New Labour considers their recomendations so draconian and unworkable, demanding that we be told how much this thing will cost for example, that they will be removed as soon as the Bill reaches the commons again. And there is still another days debate in the Lords, they might even go as far as to make ID Cards voluntary, something which New Labour will never be able to stand. Even Cameron is against ID Cards

Conservative leader David Cameron vowed on Sunday to oppose the ID card plans, calling them "un-British".

"I don't like the idea that you have to have this bit of paper just for existing," he told BBC's Sunday AM.

which shows which way the momentum of the issue is going.

Gay horse case dropped

In imfamous case of a student being arrested for calling a horse gay has been dropped. He refused to pay the fine and told them to take him to court, at which point they dropped the case for being utterly ridiculous.

Zombie law

A crap EU law has risen from the grave. The EU Commission wants software patents. Again. On the same day that Sir Robin Jacob, a judge at the U.K.'s Court of Appeal who specializes in intellectual-property law, questioned whether software patents are needed at all.

Many claimed that this directive could lead to the widespread patenting of software, as is the case in the U.S.

"The United States takes the view that anything made by man, under the sun, can be patented. And they have granted patents for business methods, mainly computer business methods. But as far as I can see, it would cover a new and improved method of stacking oranges on a barrel," Jacob said.

Jacob said that IP rights are often justified on the "pragmatic grounds" that they encourage research and development, but that people have "got to look at all IP rights critically and say, 'Do we need them?'"

Compared to some of the US Patents an improved way of stacking oranges would seem the hight of sanity.

Software Patents where rejected by 648 votes to 14 last time by the democratic fig leaf that is the EU Parliament. But why let a little thing like democracy get in your way.

fun time

Sex Drive Daily has a little post about a toy that you can record messages onto from the loved one that you wished was there. But there is also a list of things that the author thinks that us men would probably want to hear:

“You’re right ALL the time!”
“Oh no, let ME pay.”
“You can come home as late as you want to.”
“Of course you aren’t getting fat.”

And the best one

“Oh I don’t care. It wasn’t your night. That happens from time to time.”

Jesus and Mo

A nice cartoon on about Jesus and Mo, and moral absolutes.

bugging MP's

Tony wants to bug MP's. Why exactly are they surprised? New Labour has repeatedly extended survence powers over everybody else, or did they think this was another case of one law for the rulers and another for the ruled. Perhaps is it just the stress of work overcoming Tony (after all doesn't he look tired?) and his parnoia has finally got the better of him, as Longrider says:

This has the delicious tang of paranoia about it. The paranoia of a fascist megalomaniac who is clinging to power despite everyone else just wishing he would do the decent thing and go - and go quickly.

EU police

The EU is getting a police force. Europol previously just system for sharing information and co-ordinating certain things at a EU level is being expanded to become a real operational police force that can conduct it's own investigations. The usual excuse of counter terrorism was used, which seems to come up whenever anything to do with law and order is proposed that no actual reason suitable for general consumption can be found.

taxed to the hilt

From the governments own statistics for Average total income and average income tax payable there are only two groups in the entire country that have incomes higher than the average level of debt of £27,700, an number which does not include mortgages, males in the South East at £28,900 and London at £33,100.

on average the country's 25 million households had total borrowings of seven times their quarterly disposable income. At the height of the 1980s boom, the figure was five times.

The entire economy is currently supported by consumer spending, the same spending that is racking up the debt. Manufacturing is actually in resession.

One reason for is that the Bank of England has reduced interest rates to an unprecedented level in an effort to keep the economy going, based on consumer debt.

The other is the massive chunk stolen by the government by their extortionate taxes. So much so that for the first time in a generation the amount stolen by the british government is larger than the amount stolen by Germany from her citizens (via Raw Carrot). It should come as no suprise that our growth rate has also slowed to a more continental pace.

knowing me knowing you ... in praise of anonymity

Security Guru Bruce Schneier has an article in Wired on anonymity, how useful it is, and how safe it is. The key point is that you cannot judge anyone with any accuracy based one their name alone, you must have some idea of their actions.

The problem isn't anonymity; it's accountability. If someone isn't accountable, then knowing his name doesn't help. If you have someone who is completely anonymous, yet just as completely accountable, then -- heck, just call him Fred.

History is filled with bandits and pirates who amass reputations without anyone knowing their real names.

EBay's feedback system doesn't work because there's a traceable identity behind that anonymous nickname. EBay's feedback system works because each anonymous nickname comes with a record of previous transactions attached, and if someone cheats someone else then everybody knows it.

Not only that there are very good reasons for not releasing your real name, The Religion of Peace for example blogs anonymously for the simple reason that to do otherwise would endanger their life. That does not stop you from being able to judge the trustworthiness of their output, however any critique must be delivered by email or in your own blog. Rather than the prefered Islamist way of pinned to the chest of your dead opponent with a dagger.

compare and contrast

Blood and Treasure does a nice compare and contrast between Tony's vision of Britain and that wonderland of liberty China. They are scarily similar, with one exception

namely in direction: China partially abolished some of its administrative punishment laws in 2005.

Canada's oil supply could top Saudi Arabia

Bad news for the Islamofascists.

Alberta's oilsands could become the single biggest contributor to the world's supply within 10 years, says a report released Wednesday by CIBC World Markets.

That would mean a global shift in oil dominance from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East to Canada.

With it less important to maintain stability in the number one oil producer I suspect we be in for quite a bit more 'Regime Change'. Iran next I hope.

Islamofascism

Remeber after 7/7 how quick many lefties was to say that a bunch of Islamic nutters, murdering innocents with a method that is only used outside of Sri Lanka by Islamists, in the name of Islam, was in fact nothing to do with the Religion of Peace? That they where in fact oppressed and driven to it due to their poverty and lack of prospects? Well Blognor Regis found out a few days ago that the lead Islamic nutcase left an estate worth £121,000 net even though he was just 22 when he met Allah on the tube. Doesn't exactly sound poverty striken to me.

Tin Foil Pants

Forget the Tin Foil Hat the must have fashion accessory for for this season is a pair of Tin Foil Pants to stop the underpaid security guards at Paddington Station from seeing absolutely everything with their see through your clothes scanner. It takes 80 seconds minimum per scan, and something makes me think that it will probably be the more attractive people that take longer. Interestingly SpyBlog points out