Quote of Today*

"If there are two foci of power, then those of us who are without either can play at the game of balancing one off against the other, allowingneither to become overly strong. Buy when the same set of hands that controls the police and the military also controls the money and means of production, then tyranny is as absolute as human inefficiency will allow."

Rev. Edmund A Opitz
A survey of the social action literature.

*all the quotes of late are from a collection of essays from by the above author, primarily because married life, job hunting and fatherhood have absorbed nigh on all my time; this flagrant lazy bit of blogging is brought to you by the wonder which is the iPhone.

For the love of God is there nothing they won't stick there nose into?

I don't smoke, I don't drink much and I don't use drugs; heck, I try to avoid curse words unless it's really really funny, but when I read things like this on something I do do, gaming, I get a bit more vitriolic than normal.

Do you trust a Labour MP to have a reasoned discussion on gaming? Do we honestly think this'll be where it ends if their public consultation reveals people are fine with it? Hah!

If you can be there go, they've intentionally not held it within runnin distance of me otherwise i'd be all over it.

How long before the bansturbation calls and mass disc burning do we reckon?

The Sky is Blue

Excerpts of a blog post's comment roll that may or may not have occurred in my head:

...
Trotsky needs his head examining wrote:

"What a ridiculous arguement!!! Of course the sky is blue! Looked outside this morning - definately blue!"

K Boatang wrote:

TNHHE or whatever you call yourself,

Fuck you. Where do you get off coming onto my blog telling me something is so clear cut.

My point was that variances in the upper atmosphere's chemical makeup, plus a hundred other factors such as incidence of the sun to our atmosphere all play a part and can vary from place to place meaning the sky colour can change even over time and season. Oh, but if you ask me and my giant brain the sky is clearly a light greeny blue."

JustSomeNewGuy wrote,

"Hang on Mr Boatang I though you said there was opportunity for variation so a definite answer is impossible? And what does it matter anyway what colour the sky is?"

K Boatang wrote,

"JustSomePooGuy,

You can take a full reund and fuck off also matey; I don't want to get into specifics at the moment but I have made my opinion on sky colour clear to the aforementioned unmentionable political party (hint: LPUK, the bastards) and don't have to take this sort of questioning because I'm way more important than you. so neugh."

Old Holborn wrote,

"A thought experiment: what colour is the sky? Blue, what colour is the star of David? Blue - what does this tell us? FILFEE JOOS ARE CONDUCTING A PROPOGANDA EXERCISE BY ALTERING SKY COLOUR!!! there 5th dimensional lizard people don'tcha know."

JustSomeNewGuy wrote,

"KB You just is a second ago!

OH,

Wait, what?"

Obnoxio the Clown wrote,

"This post is so rich it's fattening luvvies. (mutters some Saxon profanities then leaves)"

Bella Gerens wrote,

"Echoing JustSomeNewGuy and putting in a defence of LPUK his second point is really the only valid one here; what does it matter what colour the sky is? The only thing really important is that it stops air leaving the earth so we don't die. Simples.

As for LPUK we allow forums to debate such things as sky colour; most of the time this isn't really a problem as the forum users tend to discussing important, life altering things they can change, not chunter inanely about conspiracy theories or things they can't."

Old Holborn wrote,

"FILFEE JOOS!

Don't believe me? Check out this YouTube, source of all credible evidence on everything, video, clearly demonstrating Joos stealing my shreddies."

J Demetriou wrote,

Bella,

You can fuck of as well; I have first. hand. experience. of how LPUK treats divergent view points. And as you will clearly be able to see in a forthcoming post I will demonstrate how sky colour is responsible for all life on earth, why it means you are wrong and why myself and the mighty KB are right and why LPUK smells faintly of kippers. If you can't wait till then I will forward the slides and PowerPoint presentation I did on the subject to you."

FabledCityofArkansas wrote,

"boy I wos a reeder of yoo lot but now ill stick with surfing for porn thanks. Boring an no boobs or anything heer."

Old Holborn wrote,

"JOOS! Grrr."

Devils Kitchen wrote,

What are you cretins going on about? Honestly surely there are better conversations and debates to be having? LPUK policy is a reflection on how we get from the shit tip we are in now to the place we want to be in a freer more just United Kingdom. After an initial policy formulation we put it to forum and they tweekes and changed as was necessary to get a more amicable libertarian solution to the problems we face, and how beat to implement them as we move forward."

J Demetriou wrote,

DK,

Don't try to tell me what I know?Everyone knows you are constructing an army of drones to sing the party lines of illiberal rubbish! I have the slides to prove it!!"

Devils Kitchen wrote,

"Wait, say what now?"

Obnoxio the Clown wrote,

"Ooh handbags at dawn c**ts."

Old Holborn wrote,

"A Joo once poo'd in my wife's handbag. True story."

Devils Kitchen wrote,

"So you guys know about my clone army do you? Too bad your not in time to stop me BWA HA HA HA HA HRGH! oh wait you are? Crap - DAMN THE INTERNET AND THE EROSION OF THE INNER MONOLOGUE IT ENCOURAGES!"
...
(and it goes on like this for a very long time - Ed)

Earth Needs Extremists

Leg-Iron has a piece on Jamjar Chutney's silencing. He rightly points out that as far as hegelian synthesis go this one has started to take hold:

1. Thesis: want everyone to sound the same.

2. Antithesis: have voices crying out in dissent from accepted normative crud.

Sythesis of 1 + 2 = ban the former to push it underground (as it will - no view point is ever silenced, it is merely made an island for the lost and a path of least resistance for the weak willed and foolish to go; look at the labour party) which eventually pushes a "third way" view which is acceptable to precisely noone = no one is happy.

The problem with politicians on either side of the "divide" (it took me awhile to figure out this "divide" itself is artificial) is that they frequently get the dividing lines between thesis and antithesis wrong - as a result they lose ground and credibility on the grounds on what they originally represented because the synthesis merely strips some of the veneer away from themselves alone.

An example: can anyone truly say the Labour party is still the party of the working man? For all of Nu & Old Labours struggle to create their brave new world all they have really succeeded in doing is stripping away more of the mask they presented as their creed, and removed the people who represented the least dishonest side of their party; as wrong as the likes of Benn the elder is we can at least have respect for his adherence to his viewpoint. 

How can they claim this when every action has been to strip working men of money and property to replace it with privilege at the behest of a (supposedly) benevolent state? When we have income tax returns that are now dwarfed by the cost of welfare they no longer hold any credibility to these claims.

No it is because of this falsehood - that 2 opposing views can be synthesised into a middle ground in any meaningful and long lasting way - that we need groups like Choudray's; however odious this little scared man gets, however wrong his views are, they are colliding against reality and the natural righteousness of things. We glibly use terms like "you cant buck the market" or "you have no right" far too often without realising their true power - no matter how much interference their is in the natural justice of things their is always a reckoning.

The right will out - the more extremists we have the more clearly this comes into view, not because Hegel was right, but because he was so very wrong.

If libertarianism is anything it is not that we represent this greater righteousness; it is simply that we understand that it exists and is immutable; one of the reasons why I can proudly claim to be a Christian libertarian methinks.

Peace.

Before I Fall Asleep

Have had graveyard shift for babywatch, am full of chesty coughiness and have been beside myself with money worries, but I am now calm.

We have mad Muslims practicing their right to free speech by saying we should lose ours, the holy church of AlGoreism telling us the brass monkey weather, the thousands already dead and billions lost worldwide as a result of it, have nuffink to do with the pattern of rising despite 3 paltry summers and 3 worsening winters (climate change being cyclical; skating on the Thames in Victorian times or vineyards in the highlands in the middle ages) still insist the sky is falling unless we prop it up with paper with the queens face on it, not realising that as a fiat currency that is really all the pound is anymore - paper with the queens face on it; you are the currency Brown is trading in, when he sells bonds he is selling you offspring into bonded slavery for a few measly pence for some new shibboleth he hopes will keep him in power. Labour are no longer the party of the working man anymore than the Borys are the groomsmen of government; the former being a vessel by which union bosses, their cronies and the Orren Boyles of this world get rich without effort, the latter a confused bunch of public schools boys - the product of too much weed, hazings and inbreeding.

Despite all this I am calm, because the answer has always been simple, and can begin with us all individually and lies in these words by one of the good guys:

"In every country where man is free to think and to speak, differences of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason; but these differences when permitted, as in this happy country, to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing clouds overspreading our land transiently and leaving our horizon more bright and serene. - Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waring, 1801."

With that I leave you tonight to ask yourself just where you think that country surely exists.

Genuine Yougov Survey Question

Seriously survey is here, seefor yourself.

What FIVE things can you do with a brick?

And my totally genuine answers:

First idea
Build with it.

Second idea
Throw it.

Third idea
Ground it down to make a street class excipient for several recreational drugs.

Fourth idea
Use as a forge base for my manufacture of samuri and tanto blades.

Fifth idea
Ground down to use as a light frosting for a tesco value tiramisu

Equality, Diversity & Democracy

Full of cold, hopped up on cough drops and painkillers and arriving at work to find your pc is kaput is not the best way to read this on your twerp-deck in the morning.

Seriously, my apologies for the Anglo-Saxon, but this is starting to become fucked up beyond belief now. Discrimination laws, racial, sexual or otherwise, were introduced in this country by Labour governments. We now have a Labour minister for "equality" who is more than happy to discriminate against groups to create "diversity".

Labour appear to have screwed up again - not in their intent here you understand; I'm certain Harriet Hormone is actively trying to undermine democracy by collecting minorities and people lacking a Y chromosome and that is here full intention, no - I believed they have screwed up the operative in her title: it shouldn't be Minister for Equality, it should be Minister against Equality.

A question to all the knuckle dragging, swivel eyed leftist buffoons out there - why is it not ok for a predominately Asian/black/lady populace to select a white guy to represent them in parliament?

Quote of the Day

"I do not like to see the clergy, who were monarchists under a strong monarchy, and oligarchs under the oligarchy, tumbling over each other in their eagerness to become court chaplains to King Demos. The black coated advocates of spoliation are not a nice lot."

- Dean William R. Inge
St. Paul's Cathedral, London


-- Post From My iPhone

Preparing For The Right Eventuality

Via EU Referendum comes this piece from some jobsworth at the department of transport about why they've not prepared for the possibility of economy stopping snow such as this, pointing out no doubt the millions spent on the Knutian belief that we can revert the sipher of global warming by turning our lights off and not filling our kettle to the top; I nominate this idiot to not breath as often by packing himself in a vaccuum chamber.

To any civil engineers who may randomly read this blog - how much would it cost to encase every main road in a perspex canopy? Sound insane? We built thousands of miles of railway lines in the early Victorian era and maintain them to this day; why not prevent snow from reaching major road surfaces?

Marriage and Tax: Spreading the Misery

Whilst searching my tweet-deck this morning after the drudgery that was walking through a several inches of snow I came across this cross post from a blog called "LabourMatters" talking about this piece in the financial times by Chris Giles decrying the Boiled New Potatoe's tax plans for married people and junk.

From what I've been able to gather Cambo's basic plan is to reintroduce the transferable tax allowance for married peoples to encourage them - you know, to get married and stuff; the basic idea of transferable tax allowances is one I discussed in this post in a highly liberalised form as a bridge to yet greater liberty from the state, putting everyone in direct control of their finances and welfare whilst encouraging voluntary collectivism; all good things.

As a result the FT piece is pretty much a proto-fisk of my idea so let's break it down for posterity, particularly as, like Friedman, I'm in favour of tax cuts whenever we can get them:

British politics is obsessed with a silly row over whether the Conservative policy of “recognising marriage in the tax system” is affordable. This is an idiotic question. Anything is affordable if you are willing to raise taxes elsewhere or borrow to fund it.

Or, you coul not fund the particular activities that put government spending up needing higher taxes.

The only relevant issue is whether a transferable tax allowance (or other tax breaks for marriage) are a good idea. This important debate has been forgotten. Here are some reasons why transferable tax allowances are a terrible idea:

- Simplicity. Transferable tax allowance further complicate the income tax system.

Further. complicate. the. tax. system? You know, he's right - the last thing we need is one extra page of legislation in the tax rule book which is already the size of the bloody phone book.

Independence. Recognising marriage in the tax system undermines a woman’s (or a man’s) ability to keep her income separate from that of her spouse. Women’s legitimate irritation at being treated by the state as an appendage to their husbands was one of the main reasons the tax system became increasingly blind to marriage under the last Conservative government in the 1980s and 1990s.

Cept that, even the original transferable tax credit was transferable both ways.

Besides couldn't the same arguement be applied to the institution of marriage? The loss of (some) independance? The purpose of the tax credit itself enables one partner not to work so they devote more time to their family; from personal experience my wife has expressed a desire to go part time or even quit altogether so she could do just that. Could we finally put this pseudo-feminist rubbish to rest?

Misunderstanding history. It wasn’t nutty progressives who got rid of the married man’s allowance and undermined the married couples’ allowance in the tax system. It was a combination of those awful lefties (Nigel Lawson, John Major, Norman Lamont and Kenneth Clarke) who were Conservative chancellors between 1983 and 1997. Gordon Brown took the last bit of the married couples allowance and called it the children’s tax allowance in 2001. It now has a new and horrible name: ‘the family element of the child tax credit’ and it is assessed on joint family income.

I'm not entirely certain what this has to do with anything; Bory's got rid of it so they can no longer suggest it in the future.

Incoherence 1. George Osborne wants to get rid of the family element of the child tax credit - ie the one part of the tax system that is a remnant of the old married man’s allowance. In his 2009 Party Conference speech, he said: “We can no longer justify paying means-tested tax credits to families with incomes over £50,000.” This passage came just six paragraphs after he said: “That is why we are going to support marriage in the tax and benefit system.”

One of the current criticisms of the tax credit schemes is that as a means of supplying more money to "'ard up fam-il-ees" it does tend to give a awful lot of money to the middle classes - something that benefitted Blair in establishing the NuLabour dynasty which has screwed us all so royally.

Incoherence 2. The standard argument for a marriage tax break goes like this. Children of married parents have better and more stable lives, therefore marriage is good, therefore the tax system should support marriage. While the correlation is true, there is no evidence that proves the causality runs in this direction. Only the most bone-headed reject the possibility that stable, well-meaning couples are likely both to marry and to raise children well. This wilful confusion of correlation with causation is really worrying in politicians that seek to govern.

Yes correlation and causation, it's a pity that most of the media and elites tend to ignore this arguement in other areas - Global warming must be down to CO2; the current financial crisis is down to bankers bonuses.

Incoherence 3. Is the world really a better place if a couple who would have chosen not to marry decide to tie the knot because they would pay a little less tax? It strikes me as perhaps the most morally dubious reason possible for marriage.

Agreed; if only this logic would be applied to the benefits enjoyed by our burgeoning underclass of teen mothers, or the long term unemployed or sick, or even the terrorist apologist.

It probably won’t work 1. This is pure conjecture, but I don’t think the elasticity of marriage to a tax break is likely to be very high.

Of course! Because a few measly quid is what drives people to spend thousands on weddings. Idiot.

It probably won’t work 2. Politically, the Conservatives have already said that civil partnerships (between same-sex couples) will be eligible. Given this, it will be difficult to discriminate against cohabiting couples or even lone parents by excluding them from any tax break. The obvious unfairness that a married couple with two kids pays less tax than their stable cohabiting equivalent will cause a huge political stink.

My guess is that few cohabiting couples will care, being gouged for huge amounts of their income either way - all the more reason to completely liberate the system so everyone benefits.

Income distribution. The beneficiaries of transferable tax allowances are single-earner couples who tend to be at the upper end of the income distribution. The policy is therefore a straight-forward redistribution from poor to rich. There is nothing inherently wrong with this - it is a political choice - but anyone proposing such redistribution must be honest about the consequences.
Labour supply. A transferable tax allowance is a straight subsidy of single-earner couples compared with two-earner couples. So those in favour of it must also be in favour of reducing the potential labour force. It really is something when a political party is insistent on getting more disabled and sick people back into work, so that they can pay taxes to allow rich mothers to stay at home.

Ah you see there's that cause and effect thing, this time being inverted - mothers staying home give rise to more nurtured kids who become more successful adults who become higher earners enabling wifey to stay home breeding more successful kids...and so on. Also Cambo's TTA would enable poorer couples to act in the same way as richer couples - why wouldn't Giles want that?

Also note the Freudian slip near the middle of this comment - "reducing the work force"? Won't go into the obvious repurcussions in somehow saying a stay at home mums somehow don't contribute to the economy; if we take that logic to it's conclusion we could get rid of all the public sector, producing no profits, nor the apparent belief that we are somehow obligated to serve our brethrin in the pursuit of some fascolist wet dream.

As for the other point, about this being unfair - fine, let's raise the tax bracket and enable everyone to transfer it a they see fit; I'm tired of politicos picking winners; they aren't very good at it and it disenfranchises us all- it is not their money to redistribute as they see fit; married and unmarried couples would be wise to remember this before any other fact.