drinking and tax

Because of the unique way that the NHS is funded through taxation as a free at the point of need service it provides the perfect excuse for people to bansturbate over their favorite moral hobby horses. I would expect that drinking as a recurring example will be coming up again soon as it does every year along with the early spring flowers as something over which "something must be done". As pointed out by Tim Worstall drinking costs the NHS £32 million a year. Unfortunately for the moralists there are £10.86 billion of total duty and VAT receipts collected on alcohol, so any tax needed to offset the cost needed to make up for the lack of incentives not to damage yourself through alcohol because of the NHS is more than made up for through duty.

New years predictions

With the coming new year time for the tradition of getting drunk and making some wild predictions in the hope that they will be forgotten in an alcoholic haze. Unless they come true that is. So I might as well get in first with these:

1. There will be more bansturbation, a lot more, as the One Eyed Kilt Snake tries to win back his ever decreasing poll ratings with by ever more populist authoritarianism.

2. There will be increased sniping from Dr Demento and Charley the Safety Elephant, but neither will be strong enough to do much more than stoke Brown Trousers' paranoia.

3. Part of the reason for this will be because there will be an economic slow down. In itself it might not be that disastrous, but it is going to look a hell of a lot worse than it is because of the whining coming from the public sector. Gordon isn't going to be able to extort yet greater sums from the exhausted wealth creators so There will be no money for yet more pay increases in the public sector this year and that is going to hurt. Having become used to large pay increases on their already large salaries the public sector is going to be whining even more than they are now. Not that they are going to get any sympathy at all. I'd expect the only bright side economically will be that the UK will continue to do better than those suckered into the Euro.

4. There will be more extensions to the amount of time that people can be held without charge. This will probably be compromised to around 40 days in the bill that is currently going though parliament, but the next one (and there will be another) will use this as the starting point.

5. There will be no referendum on the EU Constitution, despite it being promised, nor will there be a general election. Bottler Brown is going to cling on till the very last moment before calling one.

6. Polly Toynbee will continue to claim that because they wear red rosettes this government is not one of the most repressive of all time. She will continue to be wrong on this and many other subjects.

Truth to power

Papers please

It looks like Labour's "British jobs for british workers" programme (now where have I heard that slogan before? Ah yes, its one from the BNP) is going to become reason de jour for the ID cards as well. Government officials wondering around demanding that foreign looking people produce work permits, could make their authoritarian tendencies any more obvious?

It won't work of course, but then ID Cards won't work for any of the problems that they have been claimed to cure. The only time that it could work is when everybody has to have a card and has to have them at all times to be produced on demand. Should the country ever end up in that state then that could solve the problem of people wanting to come here, not because of the NIR and ID Cards (they would just be hacked and forged) but because nobody would want to come here.

Not that this is a problem that even needs a solution. If somebody wants to come to this country and work where exactly is the problem? Your average polish worker will have done far more actual good through their work than the people that comprise our political elites. As for Byrne? Perhaps we should introduce him to the historical wonders of the people that he seeks to restrict, such as the Romanians. By slowly impaling him and then leaving the dieing corpse as a message that we are not the governments property to be tagged, and numbered, and catalogued for their convenience. The state is our servant not our master.

Scratching the crack

I was in London over Christmas and went to the Tate Modern, and that is certainly a nice collection that they have there. I was rather less impressed by the latest large piece in the turbine hall, a giant crack running from one end to the other. Asthetically it just did nothing for me, though I did like the irony of in the leaflet that they handed out to explain its meaning.

Not any intended irony you understand. Who ever wrote it was obviously achingly sincere as they wrote how it symbolized how the growing gap between the rich countries and the poor ones of the Global South was tearing the world apart. It was obvious that this was how the learned author really saw the meaning of the work, amongst other right-on anti-capitalist clich&eaccute;s that could have come strait out of such corporation bashing books as No Logo. No, the irony came on the final page which wasn't detailing the meaning of the piece at all. This page while also fulsome in its praise about the piece and the artist and was by the sponsor, Unilever.

Yes an anti-capitalist rant, the production of which would only have been possible thanks to the multinational corporations that many anti-capitalists regard as the embodiment of evil. Who said post-modern irony was dead?

Liberty

A nice article in the Guardian of all places about Labour's assault on liberty, and the approach of Labour's apologists (a certain Mr Harding springs to mind).

His [Jack Straw's] approach to Labour's programme against liberty is simply to deny that it ever existed - which is to say that water flows uphill. This is not a matter of interpretation, but calculated propaganda, and the readers knew it. In the hours following publication, he was taken apart on the Guardian's Comment is Free blog about his failure to mention such things as ID cards, the restrictions on protest and the building of the database state.

It also includes this paragraph on positive and negative liberty, something that briefly surfaced in the Bloggertarian spat a little while ago.

The key sentences come from a feline passage in the middle of his article. 'We have "freedoms to" do things in a free society,' he wrote, 'but "freedoms from" as well. Freedoms from fear, crime and terrorism.' It is this notion of 'freedoms from' that has enabled the attack on liberty. Because people's fears are infinite it follows that Labour's urge to legislate is inexhaustible.

Which was exactly the point that Isaiah Berlin was making when he defined positive and negative liberty, that the positive kind where the state intercedes to give freedom from something all to often ends up with the state freeing you from freedom itself. This is why positive liberty and state gifted positive rights are so often not liberty at all, merely electoral bribes.

Not more bans

Bansturbation, or perhaps its opposite; masturbation by government decree. The Harriet Harman wants to ban paying for sex. Congratulations this has to be pretty well the most ridiculous law out, I can see it now in a seedy bar somewhere downtown a haft cut guy slides up to girl by the bar:
"You look fantastic," he slurs, "Fancy me getting you a drink then?"
"Not at all love," she replies, "I'm an undercover cop and your nicked for trying to buy sex. I just need a couple more and I've got my quota."
"Handcuffs already? Fantastic, and we only just met!"

This isn't going to make prostitution go away, it will just push it further underground where the women that sell sex will be in even greater danger. It will not make people trafficking for sex go away, it will just mean that the traffickers will treat their women even worse in order to make more money so as to offset the risks that they are taking. If they really wanted to help prostitutes then they would be trying to get them to work out in the open where they would be in less danger, both physical danger and of exploitation.

One of the earliest examples of a knee jerk ban from this government was the ban on hand guns. They logic was simple. Stop people being able to legally get guns and they would not be able to get guns, ergo less people would be killed with them. The result was rather different; the number of gun deaths got steadily worse because if you are already that far removed from social constraint that you are willing to kill possession of an illegal firearm isn't really that big a deal. Exactly as was predicted the ban on guns had a bad effect on those that used to use their weapons carefully and peacefully while having precisely no effect what so ever on the criminals who would use their (normally already illegal) weapons to harm others.

Desktop Meme

DK Sorry to disappoint you but I must have pretty well the most boring desktop out there. The default OS X picture and a small clutter of folders and a borrowed DVD of a fairly mediocre film. It would have been a much larger clutter of stuff a few weeks ago before I had one of my periodic clean outs.



After that encounter with the banal I'm going to tag:

David Cameron
Nick Clegg
Boris Johnson

and of course ... President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran

The government Bansturbating again

On Samizdata Johnathan Pearce has a post on the "quiet revolution" in the way in which the UK is governed that has taken place since 1997. In it he enumerates some of Labour's achievements over the last 10 years.

* Emasculation of the House of Lords
* Erosion of the right to trial by jury
* Removal of the double-jeopardy protection in court trials
* Extension of blasphemy laws
* Law enabling the creation of a centralised state database and ID card system
* Anti-social behaviour orders - many of which can be imposed without full due process of law
* Civil Contingencies Act, giving sweeping powers in the case of "national emergencies"
* Erosion of right to hold public demonstrations
* Erosion of rights of private property owners to use their premises as they seek fit: bans on smoking in pubs and restaurants, for example
* European Arrest Warrant

And of course:

The passing of more than 3,000 criminal offences

Which is rather timely given that the government has been found Bansturbating again. Didn't Gordon's mother ever tell him that Bansturbation could make you go blind?

This time wanting to control what ornaments people can buy. This because they lead to a whole 5 deaths in recent years. That is 75 less than died from the incredibly rare Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in 2005, or 101 less than died in police custody in 2004/5. If five deaths is such a massive tragedy that it absolutely has to lead to a ban then perhaps it would be better to reduce the amount of time people spent in Police Custody? But no, this Labour government loves to lock people up. It finds more and more reasons to do so. This government loves the clink of chains so much that since coming to power even when the state can show no evidence people are being locked up for longer and longer.

A good post by the Longrider on a company deciding that its customers are stupid cretins that cannot be trusted. I'm in the market for a hard drive at the moment, but it certainly won't be coming from them.

Never believe what you read on the web ... mostly

Anybody know if this is true?

Shortly before he died in January 2003, aged a ripe 82, Roy Jenkins, Labour Home Secretary in the Wilson Government of the 1960s and reputedly the most liberal and compassionate holder of that office in the entire century, confessed to a reporter that if he had known then what he knew now, he would never have permitted the same scale of Muslim immigration into the United Kingdom.

Ahistorical blogertarian

Do you think that the demands for ID cards in particular, and ‘statism’ in general are the product of the totalitarian instincts of ‘socialist’ politicians

In which case you are an ahistorical bloggertarian or

the dynamic between representative democracy (regardless of the political colouring at any given moment) and budget-maximising bureaucrats

In which case you are not. Now Paulie's explanation for the increase in the size of the state is this:

I have argued that – as the franchise expanded, and the demands that the state placed upon individuals increased the expectations individuals had of the state (wars, mass production, growing political de-alignment) that ‘the state’ increased in size to meet those demands. That’s Weber. That’s the Public Choice Theory cannon.

Seems very plausible, but not many budget-maximising bureaucrats in that are there? Franchise expanded and it gave a say to a whole lot of new voters that had never had it before. They voted for the politicians that wanted to give them what they wanted (normally some flavour of socialism). These politician implemented the policies that they had promised and believed would lead to a better country. The state was then expanded to deliver these policies.

Much more to do with a politicians with a different form of ideology gaining power to implement policies that they believed in than with a slow grind of budget-maximising bureaucrats ratchetting up the size of the state.

It also fits with the data from the 19th century. Then there where far fewer voters, and because of the franchise rules even fewer of those that where interested in socialist policies. In the 19th century there where ample opportunities for budget-maximising bureaucrats to find ways of increasing their domains and budgets. It could have been even easier than in the 20th because as there where fewer voters so the taxes suggested could be more easily tailored to affect them as little as possible. Perhaps via consumption taxes, which would affect the rich who could vote less than the poor that couldn't. Maybe via tariffs which help inefficient local capitalists, who could vote, and hurt consumers, who often couldn't. However this did not happen because there was no political will for an expansion the state.

Though if you look at the definition of a Libertarian being historical or ahistorical does not actually come into it at all. Nor does Paulie's jibe about the Longrider and myself being anti-democratic. Here are a selection of the definitions of Libertarianism:

Libertarianism is a political philosophy or a family of related political philosophies based on very strong support for individual liberty.
- Wikipedia

or

an ideological belief in freedom of thought and speech
- princeton wordnet

or

1. a person who advocates liberty, esp. with regard to thought or conduct.
2. a person who maintains the doctrine of free will (distinguished from a necessitarian).
-Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)

or

1. One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
2. One who believes in free will.
- American Heritage Dictionary

Libertarians want liberty, not necessarily democracy. As the Pedant General in Ordinary said in the comments to my previous post on the subject:

democracy IS NOT THE GOAL. LIBERTY is the goal. Democracy delivers liberty better than all the other forms of government that have been tried from time to time, but it stops being better than anything else at precisely the point that democracy becomes seen as the end point.

Democracy is the best system of governance yet discovered, but the tyranny of the majority is no less a tyranny.

• The majority might not like certain kinds of consensual sex, but they should not be able to dictate the way people love.
• The majority might not like people with different body characteristics, but it should not be able to remove peoples liberties because of how they where born.
• The majority might not like people of a certain 'class', but it should not oppress them because of this.
• The majority may at times not like certain religious practices (and I for one don't like any of the mainstream religions), but if nobody is harmed then they should not be suppressed.

If you want liberty then you must be against a democracy unlimited by a framework of constitutional liberties because of the very real danger, amply demonstrated over the years, that it would soon start to destroy liberty.

not 'the white stuff'

Adam Smith famously stated in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

A group of dairy processors and retailers have just been found guilty of exactly that and fined a total of £116m. Good, perhaps it should have been more pour encourager les autres. A free market economy is the best way so far discovered of distributing resources, but cartels and monopolies are by their nature insulated from the free market and able to set prices that are overall worse for everybody than they could be. This is overall a bad thing no matter if they give excuses that they are just doing it to protect the downtrodden, as has been claimed by all those involved in this case such as Sainsbury's and Wiseman Dairies:

Sainsbury's, which has agreed to pay £26m, said its price initiatives in 2002 and 2003 "were designed to help British dairy farmers at a time of considerable economic pressure and public debate about whether farmers were getting a fair price for their products".

...

Wiseman Dairies, which faces a £6.1m bill, said that "every penny of additional revenues paid to Wiseman was passed directly to our suppliers".

and Dairy Crest, who helped the competition commission and therefore escaped a fine, which has a press release in which they state:

The milk price initiatives in 2002 and 2003 were aimed at supporting farmers through this difficult period by returning higher prices to them for their milk. The implementation of these initiatives was very well publicised at the time and received widespread support including strong political backing.

The period when this price fixing happened was a very bad time for farming which had just had the Foot and Mouth Crisis (the first one). At the time supermarkets where under preasure in terms of public relations and politics to try and do more for their suppliers, for example in 2003:

Mr Blair said: "I think we need to sit down with the industry and really work out what is the basis on which we want sustainable farming for the long-term.

"And in a sense, what price are we all prepared to pay for that as well."

It would appear that according to them some firms went and took him at his word and attempted to form a cartel to do just this, to the detrement of all their customers. Which brings me back to Adam Smith, as when you expand on the quote from Wealth of Nations you find this:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

The bloggertarian question

Paulie asked a question so here is my attempt at an answer.

At the bottom of it all, I’d ask the same question to you as I’d ask generic bloggertarians: Do you think that the demands for ID cards in particular, and ‘statism’ in general are the product of the totalitarian instincts of ‘socialist’ politicians, or the dynamic between representative democracy (regardless of the political colouring at any given moment) and budget-maximising bureaucrats?

So two competing theories to explain the way that we got into the state we are in.

a. The theory of historical development.
The changes to the state are driven by a dialectic between empire building bureaucrats and the poor tax payers that have to pay for them.

b. The bloggertarian approach.
Its all the politicians fault, hang them all.

My answer is, a bit of both but maybe more the latter than the former but niether exclusively. Its just that I don't see choosing one or the other is particularly useful. If I had to choose one or the other I would go for the latter. I guess this makes me ahistorical.

Here is why I don't think a theory of historical development is needed to choose a waypoint to aim at.

a. If Statism comes primarily from empire building bureaucrats then the best way to curb it would be to get rid of as many bureaucrats as possible. The only way to do this is reducing the need for bureaucrats by reducing the number of functions that they carry out by handing these back to competing non-state bodies and individuals.

b. If Statism comes primarily from the Statist instincts of certain groups of politicians once they gain power, then the best way to curb it is by removing the levers of power that they can use to put their instincts into practice from their grasp. By handing these functions back to competing non-state bodies and individuals, so they cannot be turned to authoritarian purposes.

Not having a big robust theory I prefer to try and argue with evidence rather than theory where possible, so here is a bit of data.



This is a simple graph to give some indicative trends so as to find whether the historical theory or the bloggertarian approach fits better. It was created by using the data from British Historical Statistics by B. R, Mitchell (ISBN 0 521 33008 4): table Public Finance 3. Gross Public Income - United Kingdom 1801-1980 for the total government income and table National Accounts 5. Gross National Product and National Income by Category of Expenditure at Current Prices - United Kingdom 1830 -1980 to get the Gross Domestic Product at Market Prices. Have a look at some of the features on the graph.

a. If the theory of historical development that Paulie outlined was correct then you would expect to see a slow but steady increase in the state's appetite for tax payers money as the bureaucratic empires grew, punctuated by the two world wars as spikes and a few tax payer revolts as troughs. There is a small problem here, that trend does not exist. In the early period of the graph there is a steady reduction in the size of the government compared to the rest of the economy. The graph is flat or falling more often than when it goes upwards however when it goes up it goes up fast.

b. As for his anti-thesis, the supposed Bloggertarian explanation that Socialist politicians have a lot to do with it, that would indicate that when a set of Socialist politicians gained a measure of power then there would be a spike. This phenomena can be seen several times. The post World War 1 strike period, the way the Atlee years form a high plateau which falls away once they loose power, and most obviously with the first election of Harold Wilson.

I don't have to statistical tools to prove anything, but Paulie's theory of historical development actually seems to fit the available data less well than its Bloggertarian anti-thesis. Not that that is a perfect fit either.

So there you go. The outlined theories of historical development is not needed to decide political waypoint for steering towards a more liberal society. Trying to get a much smaller state forms a good waypoint whether you have one or not. Nor does the proposed system of historical development seem to actually fit the past data very well, which throws doubt on it having much power for predicting a correct course in future. Not that I have data which is good enough to prove anything either way making fence sitting still the best course of (in-)action.

Public Choice Theory and other aspects of economics are certainly useful, but so is understanding the importance of individuals and their ideologies. I do not think that any of these chaotic systems are understood well enough to form a theory of general historical development with much predictive power beyond some, potentially useful, rules of thumb. We certainly don't have enough data to actually run the model even if we had one. So I think that I shall remain ahistorical for the time being. Pointing to all the bad stuff the state does and the large amount of evidence that monopolies don't do things very well, but competition makes things evolve to be better, will have to do for the time being.

Lyrical Terrorism

The Lyrical Terrorist, Samina Malik, has been found guilty. I would have prefered that the case be laughed out of court, as to claim that bad poetry is terrorism is laughable. I am not happy that she was convicted. I am certainly not happy that a law that leads to cases like this exists at all. But it could have been worse, at least she is not going to prison. Though the prospect of being sent to prison does still hang over her should her muse strike again. Should she end up in jail over this anyway I would sign a petition for her release as was suggest in the comments to my previous post on the subject.

As part of the punishment for writing down her naughty thoughts she must do 12 months community service, one can only hope that it will not be giving poetry classes. If she does then perhaps she should direct students to Clattery Machinery which challanges everybody to challange these thought crimes by terrorizing your lyrics. So here is my bad poetry in honour of The Lyrical Terrorist:

Black and Decker drill,
vice, saw, rope, knife, translator.
Are they but mere tools?

Extention to detention

So Labour have decided not to go all the way for another doubling of the length people can be held without charge, a mere 42 days is the aim this time. Up from 28 days, up from 14 days, up from 7 days, up from 2 days plus the possibility of an extra five with special permission of the Home Secaretary which is where it was when they entered office at the end of the IRA's campaign of terror. A campaign which had seen IRA mortars falling on downing street a mere 6 years before, while the later stages of First Gulf War where in progress.

Once again we are told that this is a measure that will only be used in exceptional circumstances, just as we where told during every other extention. Once again we are told that it will be rarely used, but that they really really need it, just as we where told during every other extention. This is haft true, going near the 28 day limit has only been very rarely used however there is still little evidence that even that is really needed.

The Tories are against the extention. The Liberal Democrats are against the extention. It is likely that any Labour back benchers remaining from the opposition years would be at least privately against it too. During that time Labour had taken to a policy of abstention every time the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Measures) Act was renewed to continue 2 days detention without trial. Not that I expect McStalin to have that much trouble whipping it through like all the other deeply illiberal legislation that has come onto the statute books the same way.

Three stripes and your out

Heard this on the wireless this morning and not found any links to the story itself yet. Adidas, The world's second-largest sporting goods maker, is suing one of their competitors for copyright infringement at the ECJ, with the judgement coming today. This other company apparently had the audacity to put two stripes on their clothes, which Adidas claims people would mistake for the tree stripes that they use on theirs to echo the three stripes on the Adidas brand logo.

To me it would appear obvious that all Adidas are trying to do is use the power of government (this time our supra-national government in Brussels) to squeeze a competitor, without their having to actually produce a better product. They should not be allowed to do this.

Adidas have tried this on before and where denied that time. They should be stopped again this time. If Adidas thinks they have a better product then they should tell people about that product and how to recognise it. If the other company thinks theirs is better they should tell people about that. The public can then decide on what they want through the markets, not have things decided for them by the judges in the ECJ.

Bloggertarians and the CBI

In the little spat that has blown up in the blogosphere over the last few weeks over so called Bloggertarians one of the better arguments relates to the Citizens Basic Income (CBI) and ID Cards with their National Identity Register (NIR).

While his comments about being negativist or ahistorical (by which I think he means placing everything within the context of the Marxist materialistic dialetic of power relationships) can be safely ignored other comments by Paulie that a CBI would require an ID card and National Identity Register deserve more time. This is because otherwise people would end up finding ways of claiming it several times. He does not think that National Insurance numbers would cut it as they are given out like confetti (and they are). He is correct that anybody that wants to is able to collect as many as they want. This is used as an example of how the people he labels as bloggertarians are logically inconsistent because us Bloggertarians are against ID Cards and the NIR, but often in favour of the CBI.

As an argument this falls down because there is no need for the NIR for a CBI.

Exactly the same problem of people using multiple identities to claim the same handout multiple times happens now with the dozens of different handouts that the states gives away. Many people have many National Insurance numbers, but is there any reason to think that this will not happen with the NIR as well? Personally I doubt it. Give people the incentive of free money and they will find ways to game the system, any system, that is just human nature and no overpriced, insecure, unavailable, database of Stazi like proportions would make any difference to this at all. If anything the NIR would become the one stop shop for identity thieves to harvest information to be used in their scams.

As with the current benefits system, which also needs to know the identity of claimants so they don't claim twice but runs without the need for a NIR, the answer is not to try and use technology to try and solve an insolvable problem. You have to just accept that some fraud will happen, but make reasonable checks on claimants, investigate suspected fraud and prosecute those fraudsters found. The simplicity of the CBI gives it a huge advantage here over the current mess.

With the current mass of different hand outs first you have to find people that might be acting fraudulently out of a great mass of transactions with dozens of different frauds possible, and then pick your way through dozens of different means tested benefits all with different requirements to find out if they are trying to scam the system (either deliberately, or by accident on their part because they didn't understand the systems complexities, or by bureaucratic error because the people in charge of the system did not understand the systems complexities). With a CBI all you have to do is show one person is getting the cash from two cheques. Simple.

Simplicity is the attraction to the CBI:

• It is simple, and therefore fraud is much easier to discover and prosecute than the current system.
• It is simple, and therefore does not require a vast army of bureaucrats to administer.
• It is simple, so it will produce fewer strange distortions and unforeseen side effects.
• It is simple, it does not need the state to know anything else about you other than you exist (unlike the current array of means tested benefits where the state needs intimate details of your bank accounts, location, health, history, family situation etc.).
• It is simple, it does not care how you live your life: be single, be married, be in a complicated melange of wifelets and hublets, it makes no difference and so it cannot be used to try and force people to live in certain state approved ways.

The CBI is less intrusive on your life, because it requires the minimum disclosure of the details of your life if you claim, and it is less intrusive in your wallet, because it is simpler and cheaper to administer. So if you want a state that is as small and unobtrusive as possible then, because having some form handouts being an unfortunate political necessity, the CBI is your least worst option.

How NOT to deal with Climate Change

Personally I disagree with the devil on Climate Change. I am perfectly willing to go along with the idea that it exists, that we can do something to stop it, and that we should do something to stop it because the results will probably be bad for general human happiness. However I cannot disagree with his assessment that Mad Bunting is an ignorant cunt. The problem with climate change is that it will probably be bad for people. If the proposed solution is something that will be far worse (as rationing would be) then it is not a solution, you are just replacing one problem for a worse one.

I can see the results of Bunting's world all too well, and it is not a world of happy contented people running around immaculate lawns in silver jump suits. Her's is a world where every single action is monitored and controlled by the state, a world where pensioners end up staving because of a bureaucratic oversight, a world where criminal gangs machine gun each other in back alley turf wars over the black market bread trade. A world where all the while the political elite can still have everything they want, safely insulated from the chaos caused by the artificial shortages which they forced on everybody else.

Mad Bunting's nirvana is Socialism reborn, just under a green flag rather than a red one this time. Fuck you Bunting. 100,000,000+ people died because of that last century, but it would appear like the apologists for mass murder still won't want to admit that their dream becomes a nightmare whenever it is tried.

Another day another Labour funding scandal

Another day another labour funding scandal. Guido has the letter from Wendy Alexander thanking Paul Green for his donation, sent to his address in Jersey. This shows that proving that she knew that he was ineligible to actually give her money. The story has been confirmed by the BBC. Once again members of the Labour Party have been found to have broken the law that they themselves created.