I've been thinking a lot about this minimum pricing lark and I've reached a conclusion; I like it. I fact I like it so much I can think of a number of other area we could apply it to:
- Receding hairline matt varnish. - Vaseline intensive care eye-lid moisturiser. - Cocaine and related products. - Samuri swords.
For as you know a minimum price will have the following effects:
- it dissuades frivolous uses of those products it's applied to, leading to a much snazzier kind of user. - it leads to better quality product as providers of poorer versions quickly go under.
Examples:
Receding hairline matt varnish
Ye gods the light! It burns!
VIC eye-lid moisturiser
Moisture. SO MUCH MOISTURE!
And clearly the last 2 examples never saw anything crop up as a consequence of raising the minimum price to, say, ooh 5 years in jail minimum.
Oh.
Well never mind that I have a rather elegant proposal we could apply minimum pricing too which would kill 2 (fat) birds with one stone.
We legalise prostitution and apply a minimum price for services rendered by sex workers; I can see it now (or hypothesise on the impact as my wife doesn't let me out after dark; it's scary out there) - beautiful, scantily clad maidens fair wandering the darker reaches of Leeds' Red Light District scanning for work, Roxanne will put on her red light tonight.
But wait Tom it just won't be that way you say? Why not - surely higher quality poontang will be in the offing if we raise the minimum price Bertha charges versus some lithe eastern European competition; it'll be safer too - the bottom-dwelling echelons of the market for sex will no longer have the cash to partake, prostitutes will be cleaner and safer as their violent cheapo-stinko punters disappear.
What do you mean that will put Bertha on the dole? She was on there already - why does it matter if she can't afford that Sky TV anymore? She was already finding it difficult to attract punters as it was, particularly since you banned smoking in her work place.
And wait your telling me those violent, dirty disease riddled punters just found other ways of getting rowdy, assaulting folks, drinking alcohol hand gel and sniffing glue? What - they managed to shack up with one another?
Then,
For what reason do you think pricing the violent, unwashed masses out of the drinking market will have an impact on their behaviour?
And even if it did why would you allow the purveyors of alcohol to keep the artificially raised profit from this activity?
There is no economic justification for creating a minimum price; there is no legitimate moral argument ultimately - your just spreading the misery on the lowest earners from the top.
But, by forcing the revenue onto the industry, which will see some companies who went for premium product not affected by minimum pricing, whilst killing other groups who sold alcohol to the lowest paid (and I believe we would be lucky to see this be neutral in aggregate on the alcohol industry) you create the least good, most destructive justification of them all: a political one.
Raising taxes is always unpopular, artificially raising prices further along the supply chain (whether it be money, booze, fags...) mitigates the effects of that unpopularity, moving it onto other groups (read big alcohol/tobacco/finance etc.)
But Lib Dem leader and Deputy Prime Minister Mr Clegg said on Tuesday he was a "strong supporter" of the cap, as were the "vast majority" of people, because it was "fair to say you can't receive more in benefits than if you were to earn £35,000 before tax".
Still when all is said and done the question I will be asking to my mp Rachel Reeves and what I urge you to ask your own mp and assorted lefties will be this:
If £26,000 is not enough in take-home benefits to support those on welfare then why is it more than ample for a taxpaying worker?
Divvy up that figure into 2 people working and you get a minimum £13k income untaxed that Labour and associated peers say is desperately not enough to support a household; current standard tax free allowance is ~£6.5k for most folk.
So why is it ok to tax twice as much income from a hardworking taxpayer as it is to cap double that in benefits to someone who isn't working?
Blogging light for the foreseeable future; work heavy. Will try to get more in but money and patience in short supply. Stay safe and eyes open!
It seems everybody is doing it these days; my wife did it yesterday; it seems highly likely my work colleagues will be doing it next Friday and it is not entirely out of the question that my wife may be called to do it again in the very near future without resolution: I am of course talking about having some sort of naughty intercourse with a loved one despite the thrill being long gone.
Or striking due to pensions; I cant remember which as I have had very little sleep in the past few days.
In both cases my view on the subject has changed little (my feelings on the content of the arguement on both sides are a different matter): the government has been keen to kick this particular ball into the long grass well into the future for decades and a considerable ratcheting up of the public sector liabilities in terms of wages, pensions and perks is now being challenged by a massive financial crisis in major part caused by the kind of intervention perpetrated by those self-same civil servants. However, those civil servants did sign a contract in good faith with their paymasters with a view to getting a particular benefit in return for the sweat of their brow; if there paymasters wanted to change the terms of their pay for new employees then that would be fine but that is not what is being offered: as this BBC Q&A on the pension strikes shows what we actually have is an attempt to change the goal-posts midway through.
Irrespective of what libertarians think of the public sector pay, scope and conditions (here is an excellent example) I cant help but think we should see this from a contractual point of view - they offered a service for which the expected returns are now being renegotiated; however you feel about the supposed fore-knowledge of those self-same unions and workers about the likelihood of their fields continued expansion and the ability to meet the ever increasing wage and pension bill, the coercive autocracy that Labour became (ever was?) that perpetrated this massive expansion knowing full well that history would regard them as heroes and the incoming conservatives as monsters stealing milk and pensions and stuff and would forget about the actual detail such as the former government having no credible plan to pay for any of it or the actions of a few rogue bankers intent on derailing the whole socialist utopian exercise by employing cutting-edge financial instruments that mainly focused on the financial powerhouses of black men in string vests' - for the record I think it's a combination of all 3 of the above (the bankers in question being central bankers, not, as is obviously assumed, entirely at the doorway to commercial banks, though undoubtedly not helped); you need just look at the asinine suggestions of union leaders over the last few years - government has Ponzi'd all our pension contributions away on Cherie Blair's human rights law firm and Gordon Brown vanity projects? Pension fund has been scuttled by poor pension investment vehicles? I know! Soak the rich! shut down global trade! charge people for sending/receiving spam! To me that sounds like a good reason to linch your paymasters, not rob the productive and successful.
Anyway, coming back off tangent, how do we solve the problem? I have a 3-point plan on how to deal with the problem that is both elegant, simple, non-fattening and would prove almost universally popular by all but the most left-wing, swivel-eyed sociopathic, diversity mung-bean, poy-dance coordinator (so am guessing about half of them): it would enable:
The public sector by and large to get a pay increase.
Enable them to also afford the new pension contributions being asked for.
Reduce the overall headcount of some of the British public's least favourite aspects of the public sector with little or no fuss from the remainder.
My idea?
The public sector pay average as of January this year out-stripped the private sector at £23,660 compared to £21,528 (and I am certain this figure doesn't take into account the other perks such as the final salary pension schemes etc. so the difference has some ancillary factors pushing this even higher); this means that net an average public sector employee takes home approximately £17,470 according to my shiny Listen to Taxman app on my iPhone; just short of £1500 a month spare. To give them a "happy" pay rise lets assume we match inflation - call it a 5% pay rise + 3% for the additional requested pension contributions for simplicity: that would mean the take home pay increase should be ~£1575 a month or an extra £1400 extra a year.
So again Tom get to your point - what's your idea?
Simple: immeadiately reduce public sector pay by 6-8% and make the remaining income-tax free (NICs, student loans and pension contributions etc. remain).
The difference in the cut wage bill and the increased take home pay + pension contributions would be more than enough to keep the workers happy; you could then renegotiate new and recent starters' pension schemes with less fuss kicked up by those lucky enough to have a final salary pension, perhaps by ending national pay scales and paying new recruits weighted against their predecessor.
This also carries the advantage of making the public sector the most vocal group on the reserve to argue against increasing income taxation and high NICs - it would not be tolerated for long were the public sector wage bill to rise again and the issue of "fairness" would be thoroughly abandoned by those self-same groups with their massive advantage over taxation.
This also just makes sense; why on earth do we think it's a good idea to pay our employees only to take a portion of the cash back in order to pay other employees? Why not just pay them less, code them differently in the tax system and remove them altogether?
But what about the higher paid local council millionaires Tomrat I hear (myself?) scream? Fair enough - charge them a high rate of national insurance and/or remove any upper maximum take; failing that stop voting for spineless politicians and ask for real, bloody reform of the system that allows the mass looting of public finances. Similar rant but this time about QuANGOs? They aren't public sector bodies or the tax code doesn't apply - as such they are subject to whatever rules for taxation the rest of us put up with but would find themselves with all the problems of a rapidly reducing pension pot; the pressure will be on the government to fold them back in and reform/remove their role.
The only people who should be out of work at the end of this exercise should be a couple of thousand HMRC admin staff who are surplus to requirements as a large number of tax returns, PAYE forms and ancillary documentation will simply cease to be processed.
As far as I can see this government has missed a vital opportunity to argue for reform of the public sector by instead focusing on reduction of the bill they will always lose the latter arguement because without addressing the former civil servants will reduce at the coalface, not the back offices and executive suites; the managers are not going to vote for less management. All that is left to this current government if they want to make an impact is elegant, unarguable changes to the system that are both exercises in reform and compromises on the subject of money; a subject the state seems constantly fixated on.
At work I now enter the period of the year when I'm trying to make sense of the ongoing chaos: what has been spent, what has been ordered and what has been requested and present it to all the people who pay my wages and decide if the whole thing is worth doing next year or not.
And I just had my laptop stolen from my car.
And as a security measure I've had IT account access suspended until a new one arrives; I've got to request desktop access in the interim.
My Christian patience is being tested this morning.
David Cameron has said increasing UK contributions to the International Monetary Fund "does not put Britain's taxpayers' money at risk".
The PM said it was "in our interests" to support the IMF but stressed again that the money would not support a eurozone bailout.
Riiii'ght. So he can absolutely guarantee that te ex-French Finance Minister now head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, halining from the very country up to it's eyeballs in Greek-debt, will not be dipping her hands in the till to shore up her countries precarious financial failings?
And how, might I add are you going to stop this? You seem to be pretty sure of yourself that you can convince the G20 but the IMF is a transnational entity; it doesn't have to listen to a word you say - it is beyond your feeble control CastPig-Iron Dave, and what will you do when it hands the cash over to French banks? Reduce our contributions next time?
He also suggested any increase would not be put to a vote in the Commons.
So you know you are going to lose so you have decided mp's don't get a say? How very Blairesque of you.
When I asked my MP to vote for a plebiscite on our Eurozone membership the other week and was promptly told no I had promised her that I would make it a hobby, nay, a favourite past time to bring it to everyones attention in her constituency just how much she has cost us by her towing the party line, greasy-pole climbing actions and see if her less than 25% of the electorate will keep her in power.
What makes you think Mr. Cameron that I will any less easy on any of your candidates in Leeds? Most are in precarious positions as it is and I will see them lose to a Labour'ious candidate before I allow you to circumvent parliament.
You will pay for your promise breaking to the electorate in small cuts and I promise I will contribute to that humiliation.
You and Osbo the Clown started out mediocre at best but at least in the right direction; you have now sold off all the savings made from your cuts for international recognition and praise by players who wouldn't sooner wipe their dog-shit stained shoes on you.
Have just finished watching Thursday's BBC Question Time in which Mark Littlewood from the IEA gave an impassioned defence of free market economics in a hall of question time's usual swivel-eyed left-wing lunatics.
What was particularly interesting was the rousing debate on the future of the NHS - it doesn't take much to raise the ire of the assembled state-paid paper shufflers, diversity coordinators & 5-a-day managers.
What was particular interesting was the widespread detachment from reality about the state of our healthcare; it soon degenerated into "no, the NHS's outcomes are better than [insert evil private/any other healthcare system]'s".
He pointed out that he was not going to bite into the usual canard of "you just want the NHS to be the US healthcare system" and pointed to other systems like Singapore's, only to be shouted down saying it was even worse.
Emotionalism aside how about we go for reductionist's approach: we simply copy what the WHO's #1 healthcare system is doing: France.
So how does this system work then (note: links wikipedia, emboldened/underlined text my own)?
France has a system ofuniversal health care largely financed by government national health insurance. In its 2000 assessment of world health care systems, the World Health Organization found that France provided the "best overall health care" in the world.[1] In 2005, France spent 11.2% of GDP on health care, or US$3,926 per capita, a figure much higher than the average spent by countries in Europe but less than in the US. Approximately 77% of health expenditures are covered by government funded agencies.[2]
Great so let's spend more money on healthcare! A chorus of praise for this action goes up amongst of Britains established medical monopoly!
Oh wait:
Most general physicians are in private practice but draw their income from the public insurance funds. These funds, unlike their German counterparts, have never gained self-management responsibility. Instead, the government has taken responsibility for the financial and operational management of health insurance (by setting premium levels related to income and determining the prices of goods and services refunded).[1]
So the government operates a virtual monopsony on healthcare spending just not on healthcare provision("we are willing to pay this for that treatment"). It also garners the costs back from people in a manner in which they only pay what they can afford, very progressive.
The French National Health Service generally refunds patients 70% of most health care costs, and 100% in case of costly or long-term ailments. Supplemental coverage may be bought from private insurers, most of them nonprofit, mutual insurers. Until recently, coverage was restricted to those who contributed to social security (generally, workers or retirees), excluding some poor segments of the population; the government of Lionel Jospin put into place "universal health coverage" and extended the coverage to all those legally resident in France. Only about 3.7% of hospital treatment costs are reimbursed through private insurance, but a much higher share of the cost of spectacles and prostheses (21.9%), drugs (18.6%) and dental care (35.9%) (Figures from the year 2000). There are public hospitals, non-profit independent hospitals (which are linked to the public system), as well as private for-profit hospitals. Average life expectancy in France at birth is 81 years.[3][4]
The average, reasonably healthy health consumer has to pay some of their costs, ensuring that that consumer is at least sensitive to the price of it, either in noticing which way their health premiums are going or how it hits the wallet if they have to pay the difference, and as we know human beings are very sensitive creatures - they want to command the maximum number of high quality goods or services they can with the resource available to them (this is actually the real definition of wealth - getting something more valuable in return for something less; in this case lower healthcare costs for same/better healthcare). Those who can't pay or will have chronic long term costs are fully covered.
And the state doesn't massive intervene in who provides the healthcare.
I think we could with that level of choice too; let's hope that Lansley's tome goes some of the way to providing that. Not holding my breath.
Profit margins at the ‘big six’ energy firms have leapt more than 700 per cent as millions worry about keeping warm this winter.
Those fiends! they are casting our elderly, our infirm and our poor into the oblivion of an icy, cold winter freeze, doomed to die.
The average amount of profit per customer has risen from £15 a year to £125 in just a few months, according to the industry regulator Ofgem.
Wait wait wait - so before a few months ago the blood, sweat and tears of business men in the energy sector only roped them £15 profit for every piece of business? Wait - it was even worse before?
via The Daily Mail - why are we getting so mad at this?
Up to Aug 2009 the margin on energy prices were negative; energy companies were losing money versus rising costs, particularly in wholesale energy costs and "other" costs.
"Other" costs is a little disengenuous - if wholesale costs are approx 45%, then we add in the costs that you cannot drop - i.e. operating and network costs - this comes in at 29% (74%) then you add in the net margin for the company: 9%. 9. per. cent.; so 83% of the bill isn't up for negotiation and is intrinsic to the cost (and let's be fair if you know a plumber who would work on a margin at 9% give me his number - I have a few jobs I'd like him to do around Tomrat Towers) then 17%, or ~£230 of the highest domestic bill recorded, is going to these guys:
That's right; you are giving a collective £6.7Bn of your energy bills to these smoes.
It is only right that the energy companies should be hitting back; it is long overdue (and not just for the energy companies) - it is not an unfair that a company providing a service should expect a decent profit; when you consider that 9% of the bill goes to the company in profit is paltry compared to double that figure taken in taxation/government and "green" initiatives, not to mention the very likely additional efficiency losses due to the monopoly on transmission that the National Grid, a de facto state monopoly, has.
The subject of the first e-petition to prompt a Parliamentary debate has been ignored by MPs when the debate took place.The online petition - signed by more than 240,000 people - called for those convicted of involvement in the summer riots to be stripped of their benefits. The three-hour debate in Westminster Hall covered the wider response to the riots, but did not touch on benefits.
To me this is less about ignoring the issue and more about confusing it; the prediliction for public outcries to incite "something-must-be-doneism" in our politicians has probably done more to allowing the destructive behaviour of the last 15 years than anything else; if it wasn't Diana shrines popping up to appease Daily Fail readers it was Blair's law-a-minute approach whilst ignoring perfectly good but unenforced laws or Brown's purple banana's.
During the hearing, MPs shared their views on the causes of the riots, the police response and the impact on their constituencies
.... Nick Raynsford, Labour MP, said eviction should not be used as a secondary means to punish people who should have already been punished by the law.
Conservative MP Gavin Barwell said when one person in a family was repeatedly antisocial, this could be considered a proportionate response.
And both are right - in general it is unlikely that many of the rioters were not indulging in their first offence and fewer still are probably recidivists who belong in jail; it is these few that add nothing to society who need their benefits stopping and the largesse of an increasingly pressed and tired society curbing, preferably following a period in jail.
Do not get me wrong - the e-petitions website is a good thing but it is not, should not, be there so that the public at large dictate the nitty gritty of the law making process - that is what we pay MP's for; remember: Blair's pandering to the masses allowed him to bypass in a multitude not only the rule of law for himself and his crony capitalist buddies but also damage the spirit of the law too: we have judges who rule against parliamentary law in favour of alien authorities like the EU, statutory instruments designed to fine tune ancient acts of parliament steam-rolling over it's mechanisms of introducing new laws or putting them in front of elected representatives and a political clique so disconnected from the boring job of ensuring a simple, enforcable system of law is suitable for it's time that it concerns itself with trivialities.
We need to keep pushing for e-petitions like this, don't get me wrong; but more importantly if we feel we are capable of writing the law we should be standing for parliament - at the very least asking our elected representative for their views on this and making it known that without their support for reform of our dessicated government, the state and the systems we have for "dealing" with these kinds of problems they will not see our votes or that of anyone else we will be actively convincing.
Incidentally if you want to support a petition I think we can all believe in click here.
Remember how the media was rejoicing at the rise of protests across the Arabian peninsula and uprisings in Egypt which ultimately led to Mubarrak's downfall, and how this was to usher in a new era of brotherly love?
Apparently not:
At least 23 people have been killed and scores injured in the worst violence since Egypt's former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February.
Clashes broke out after a protest in Cairo against an attack on a church in Aswan province last week which Coptic Christians blame on Muslim radicals.
What the media doesn't report is the ongoing persecution of Christian minorities across Africa and Asia by Muslim groups, particularly in places like Nigeria - one group we were supporting build a school finished only to have a governor-backed Muslim protest group raze it to the ground.
As vicious as the last lot were in T'gypt they weren't down with widespread beatdowns of minorities.
No doubt though Old Holborn will justify this as perfectly acceptable considering the persecution of Arabs in Palestine, or some other faux-victim group.
