Expensives

Caught you, you thieving toe rags

Glad to see a member of the MSM doing something right for once, but do not think this is entirely down to their efforts; Guido offered some money to the chap who had the uncut expenses data which has no doubt led to the telegraph's "poop or get off the pot" actions, neither would it have been possible were it not for a few independent journalists hounding them, expecting answers as to how they spent other peoples money; our money.

I cant help but wonder what it is that most bothers me about this; for what we are paying MP's, ministers and their associated hangers on it must be tiring work - no decent employer would expect slave hours for slave wages, nor would they expect them to be transported hundreds of miles for long periods of time without sufficient compensation and provisions. No - what I think annoys me most is the lack of honesty in their dealings with their employers; and Young Mr. Brown appears to agree with me on this. Few employers would agree to such terms - "hand over this money for "expenses", no questions asked" - we are not given this ultimatum on such "civil" terms - "you will hand over this money for "expenses" and you will not ask questions or we will put you in chokey"...Now we've found out what they are spending our money on and you can be sure many of them will lose their job over this, come the election; there is only so many times that people will vote for the rosette when they are (finally) paying attention to the turd that it is attached to.

Many of these same MP's will use the other defence of "not being paid enough for the job" - I, as would most people say when they catch an employee with their hand in the till "supplementing" their wages, would tell them to seek alternative employment where there wage requirements can be realised.

They do have a point here though and this is what happens when you fix the price of something so that it doesn't follow the natural cost of that item; Wat Tyler covered this some time ago in relation to national pay scales and its consequences*. Which is why I offer the following idea up for scrutiny: in an ideal world wages would be set by the market in which they operate - teachers in education, nurses/doctors in healthcare, fruits scones in baking etc - MPs operate likewise in another type of market - the general election market - as such they should name their price (wages would henceforth be paid out of council tax) and terms of contract alongside their policy interests and CV; this would have the double blessing of focusing the MP's mind on local issues throughout the year and focusing the minds of the electorate on the true cost of their representative an thus worth. Better MP's who are shown to be consistently good at their jobs would be able to negotiate higher wages whilst moderate ones would be open to haggling and improving their behaviour in parliament and their contact with their constituents. Ministers would be paid a stipend on top of this to ensure compensation for additional work which would be fixed and paid out of central funds. Combined with a robust and open expenses scheme identical to private industry you would ensure competition thrived.

A worker deserves his wages, but let them examine their own self-worth.

There was a time...

This is what passports used to be for

...when your passport was primarily not a document used to identify you, lest you try to enter a country or plane under false pretences and commit a criminal act, but a document that illustrated your right to seek refuge, assistance or protection against injustice. Then, somehow, once Labour had cheapened the entire fiasco that was getting one, an event in which you were vetted fully, and allowed anyone and everyone to get one in the name of "inclusion" (read= vote buying, or worse, gaining political pull), the document was deemed useless, in fact, suddenly you could no longer rely on it being enough that security services could do their job in tracking down criminals or monitoring their movements; they had to pin your identity to a piece of paper, in the name of security.

Now they are pinning it down to plastic; do not be fooled for a minute - the scheme is being rolled out as "voluntary". Remember that word "voluntary" when they come to fine you over your non-conformance or ask why you haven't dont your "mandatory voluntary" work without a single hint of irony in how those 2 words just do not fit in the same sentence.

What is more sickening is the way that the media, especially the BBC have treated this story; radio 4's morning and afternoon presenters (and I normally quite like Eddie Mair) completely evaded the point regarding this huge slap in the face of our civil liberties, instead pointing out that the cost of the scheme is mainly rolled into the cost of the new biometric passport system - the "you've will pay for it one way or another" defence just doesn't wash.

It is a common theme for the left to turn the meaning of things on their head; to downright distortions if not complete inversions of the truth of things - journalists should remember that when they next ask a labour minister what a passport or ID card are for - our protection or theirs?

Compare & Contrast...

This*...

"Local government officials in China have been ordered to smoke nearly a quarter of a million packs of cigarettes in a move to boost the local economy during the global financial crisis....

...China has 350 million smokers, about a million of whom die each year from smoking-related illnesses. Despite anti-smoking campaigns, cigarette taxes form a major component of China's annual tax-take at local level."

with this....

"...Gordon Brown has said he wants to create around 100,000 new jobs through a programme of public works with echoes of the 1930s US New Deal.

School rebuilds will help struggling construction companies while investment in superfast broadband will be the modern-age equivalent of 1930s America's focus on road and rail links.

"I want to show how we will be able, through public investments and public works, to create probably 100,000 additional jobs over the next period of time in our capital investment programme - schools, hospitals, environmental work and infrastructure, transport," the prime minister told the Observer newspaper..."

What am I driving at? This. In both cases you have soft totalitarians taking money from the productive class and giving it to the unproductive; you think one penny spent on those 100000 new jobs will be for anything useful? Expect more "diversity coordinators" (read "bribed labour voters") and crumbling infrastructure.

Heed this warning; for every pound the government spends on public services it has taken £3 of yours to pay for it - actually its no longer spending your 3£, but your child's.

* I'm aware that the chinese authorities have "stubbed out" this rather elaborate means of burning money; let us hope that Gordo will do something, anything, likewise.

Booze Me Up, Buttercup...

To:HM Treasury
Subject: Tax on drinks

I would ask you to protect ordinary people like myself, who are already struggling with rising prices in this downturn. Also, I would ask for your support in protecting businesses in Britain, many of which may suffer unnecessarily if drink prices are raised further.

All of us are aware that there are a small minority who misuse alcohol but it is not fair if all of us are punished. I would ask you to put pressure on other Government departments to ensure that existing laws to crack down on problem drinkers are enforced. This is far better than pushing through a blanket measure that will only sting ordinary drinkers and do nothing to tackle alcohol misuse.

(*and my own personal addition*)

Additionally I want an answer to the following: by what right do you take this money? Your ministers and civil servants tell us it is "a good revenue stream" like that is a legitimate reason, but then a burgler or common pickpocket could use the exact same phrase to describe his criminal actions - what are you giving us in return for taking money and threatening us with jail if we refuse to give it to you?

I look forward to your reply. 

Thank you.

Send your own here

Want to ask a question...

...If individual freedom to control your own life, your own liberty and your own property, is not something we should give people completely and wholy, with governments only task being to protect those infringements on those rights from within and ouside of the country, then what is the point of voting? 

How can a socialist government (for that is what Labour is) be so intent on securing the right of the great unwashed that it has so intently dehumanised, infantilised and disenfranchised elsewhere?

Ask yourself that at the next general election when someone tells you we need to curb the behaviour of benefit scroungers or fat cats, yet considers their right to vote sacrosanct.

Champion of the Mini-Looters Makes Shock Comment "Save Some For Us!"

On my way home from work today I was listening to the Radio 4 PM programme; aside from President Ahmoud Ahminibiliniarbijhad saying that Israel was racist for "not lying down and being annihilated (I may be paraphrasing), some political correspondant telling us that MPs are worried about showing "perfectly innocent" expense claims in case they give the wrong impression (hint: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, you grubbing barstewards...) then came Eddie telling us that the General Secretary of Unison was warning the government "to do more for their core supporters or risk losing them" (you can hear it yourself here for the next week). Dave Prentis said on PM:

"Quite clearly the government has spent an awful lot of time bailing out the banks, bailing out rich people..and there is a massive cost involved and from our point of view the real victims are working people, the vulnerable people..."

Couldn't agree more.

"...we've got a government that appeals to big business, doesn't like imposing taxes on the rich..."

Most certainly agree - it likes gouging all of us.

"...which we think he should do - so where's he going to get the money from?"

I cannot possibly know where your going with this Dave but prey tell what you think...

"He'll get it, we think, from reducing public expenditure...at completely the wrong time."

And now here follows a not so thinly veiled threat:

"If the government isn't careful it will pay the price at the next election."

...what is most telling is the interchangability in David Prentis' mind between public sector employment and the more general threat to "workers"; Eddie never got round to really addressing this which left him to tie the 2 synonymously together - they aren't the same thing.

What is also interesting about this piece is the open threat to labour, that if they decide to go down the necessary route of cutting the public sector down to size they will face destruction at the next election. Such a threat will most certainly stop anything of real value being done; see here for reasons why.

David exemplifies the modern left - threatening, aggressive and all too familiar with power over others; he doesn't question the "requirement" for us to pour taxpayers money down the big gold plated hole that is the banking industry, only that the extent to which they are pouring the money down this hole is not being matched by a similar pouring down the public sector hole, whilst at the same time not realising that taking more money from the productive parts of the economy and giving it to the parasitical class that produces nothing is slowly killing the economy - the money has to come from somewhere, you tool, and the cupboards are empty!

As of 2006 the richest 30% of the economy pay 62% of the total tax contributions into government coffers - the middle 40% pay 32% whilst the poor pay the remainder, a meer 6%. This puts to bed his idiocy above methinks - there are only 2 travestie here in this statement in that the poorest pay anything at all, and the richest are paying for such poisonous rot as spoken by Dave here.

Darling will naturally fold - he likes his job, he think that the 25% of the populace they have bribed with non-jobs in the public sector will save him and his ilk - they wont. We need real change when it comes to taxation and our public services; let us hope for progressive changes - like these.

Why I Love My Wife

We are sitting on the sofa having just finished watching Yes Man.

My brother pops in to take the film back. He leaves. I turn onto Sky News.

We catch the beginnings of a news article and part of the sentence "...David Cameron is said to be demanding an apology over the whole thing..." or some nonsense.

This is the picture displayed throughout the article:

Mrs. Tomrat says "That David Cameron has let himself go."

I nearly fell of the couch.

Reader, politics is a dirty, smelly business, and I thank God in heaven he's given me a wife who wants as little to do with it as possible.

Libertarianism

Today Dougy-boy asks how you define a libertarian. Having been "accused" by several media outlets and a plethora of useful idiots; I'm gonna drop some knowledge on these guys - if Dougy Carswell isn't a libertarian he's the most confused conservative I know, along with his pal, Dan.

The wikipedia entry on the subject describes it thusly:

"Libertarianism is a term used by a broad spectrum of political philosophies which seek to maximize individual liberty and minimize or abolish the state. There are a number of libertarian view points, ranging from anarchist to small government, and from anti-property to pro-property. The word libertarian is an antonym of authoritarian."

Seems pretty clear; libertarians are against authoritarianism; the arguements start coming when you realise that authority can be exercised in so many ways as to legitimately overide independance that the arguements start coming - the differences between anarcho-libertarian and minarchism, for example.

Me? I recall promising in JuliaM's comments some time ago that I would extol the virtues of a party that champions libertarianism. This seems like a better time to identify my own philosphy on liberty.

My life, how I choose to conduct it and what I choose to acquire and dispense with is my own business; problems arise in the natural order of things when the consensus believes otherwise - we have had over a century of this now and it has reduced a glorious nation (with many faults I grant you) to near ruination.

I am not interested in reviving the empire - that would betray a desire to rule over man without consent; I am only interested in gaining control over my own life, and knowing how badly I have stewarded it in the past I have passed it on to a better steward: Christ. My life, my personal choice. Its sad to me that so many fellow libertarians reject this ultimate liberty, but I understand their choice and hope to be a good enough example to show them there's a better way; having struggled for years, backsliding I can no more feel angry about others decisions anymore than I can force them to "convert" (from what?). I just hope. And pray.

I dont share all of Mr. Ryan's views in the video above by a long shot; I do however believe that at its core libertarianism reflects the most important gift that God has given any of us: choice. People make bad choices, and there should be intervention when those choices wash over onto others lives and fortunes without consent. What makes up for the wrong choices are the right ones; one of the most insideous claims of the looter classes are that a libertarian government would leave people sick and dying on the street, would leave the poor to the wolves, children uneducated and brow-beaten - I hate to tell you this but we have those things now, and they are getting worse, with every step taken to remediate the problem by the looter class it gets worse. 

The problem has never been a lack of money or resources - it is a lack of personal input. Which brings me to my final thought on what libertarianism is; it is voluntary fraternity, it is friendly societies helping the unemployed, it is a stranger walking up to a man sick and dying in the street, picking them up and tending to them - all of their own volition.

So when someone tells you we need the NHS, the welfare state or a big government they are really saying:

"Cant someone else do it?"

I say in return:

"No - but you can".

The Enormous Power of Government

As long as these ideas prevail, it is clear that the responsibility of government is enormous. Good fortune and bad fortune, wealth and destitution, equality and inequality, virtue and vice-all depend upon political administration. It is burdened with everything, ot undertakes everything, it does everything; therefore it is responsible for everything.

-The Law, Frederick Bastiat

Best 50+ pages I've read this year and 4 quid I've spent; ideas crystallised about why things are going the way they are. 

At election time people remember these words - spread them; if you elect Conservative it will be more of the same, albeit with moral authoritarianism rather than economic.

Your MP's are not Gods - would you trust this man to steward nigh-on every part of your life?

There is another way:

To find out more about our policy and get involved visit here.

Yes Mr. Stasi, here are my papers...

Every interaction I have ever had with the police has been a good one. Even in my halcyon days as a young teen with the obligatory drinking of awful cider in a dilapidated park, smoking Lord only knows what & generally acting silly I never once had a run in with the fuzz.

Before anyone attempts the straw-man that I must've grown up in some leafy little hamlet drinking scrumpy with my public-school friends this is one such image of my old stamping grounds:

The old stony castle-looking building is of course...Armley Prison. As a rule the estate next door to it houses most of the occupants immeadiate family. Nice.

What I'm driving at is that there are problems, and yes sometimes they can be bad.

But this doesn't help anyone.

What is wrong with you people?

Advertising the police?

Advertising to criminals as to what you would like to them?

Adwelly over at the Libertarian Party blog posted on seeing one of these adverts only last Sunday; I've since seen them everywhere I go - the back of buses, shelters, big advert boards...I know that the advertising industry is suffering in this downturn but seriously this?

Thats not even beginning to scratch the surface of how threatening this sounds, or how it steamroles over age old liberties in its prose; how are you going to stop us remaining silent, Mr. Policeman? Exactly how thorough will this talking to be? Will I have a lawyer present and be out of jail within the month before charging me or even telling me what I'm suspected of doing?

This is an over-reaction; I am not angry at the police and would find it very surprising if they themselves were particularly fond of this advert, or the policing "pledge" that goes with it - they probably think, as most of us do, that there would be no need to "promise" anything if only we could do our jobs with discretion, not record every little incident for fear of being sued or missing your targets or (rarely) missing some vital clue in crime prevention, instead this will only push the stigma that the police are not here for our protection; they are here to protect their political master ambitions.

How to stop this? firstly get rid of ACPO; it is a private institution that has been sucking at the taxpayer teat for too long. The best (and fairest) way of achieving this is to give a people a democratic say in who runs their police force; a police chief, or sheriff, chosen by the people he serves will be more receptive to their needs and less interested in Whitehall diktat. While were at it, make the local judiciary democratically accountable. In order to stop them being unequally yoked of course you would have to abolish targets for the police en masse; working in chemical distribution we have to strike up a balance of what we buy in to sell to our customers - we do this, not by top-down diktat, but by asking the customer what they want. The minute a police chief stops doing this when democratically elected is the minute recall votes start calling for there removal. Publish all criminal reports online minus names of suspect and arresting officers; use codes to relate to criminal cases so that complaints from police harassment can be dealt with in the public sphere if any of the involved peoples wants to bring it to that. Lastly fold social services into the police force, making it an arm of the law; in that most personal and destructive area of civic life, when children come into the equation, is it really wise to have several institutions all with overlapping aims, but no overall control or no person(s) directly responsible? Libertarians believe in that life, liberty and property are sacrosanct and that we form instutions to help protect these free aspects of our liberty; infringing on the rights of the vulnerable who cannot adequately exercise there rights should be a criminal matter for the police & judges we put in place, not a social one.

No police force will be perfect; I envisage the election of heads of our police force with powers to rearrange, fire and hire anyone they see fit to in their duties. This could include a deputised member of the child-services arm, their policing force being specialised to deal with social matters but with powers of arrest, balanced against accountability from the top down, the top being the public at large.

You would also have no need of ACPO (at least not in its present guise as an unelected, undemocratic, QUANGO.

We dont need pledges of action. We need action.

One of the most beautiful aspects of the Peelian principles, written in part and in spirit of the policing founder, Robert Peel, is that they rationally flow from the base understanding that we are all free men and that the police can only achieve their job effectively when they work towards these principles. Lets hope that people remember that in the coming months when this pledge tanks, ideas like these come to the fore and real change starts happening.

Alternatively, vote for a party that is the embodiement of this kind of liberty.