The Closing Of The Economy

 On Radio 4's "The World At One" they had a discussion about childcare which it was agreed is too expensive. On one side of the discussion they had Nick Pearce from the IPPR who was arguing for having even more highly qualified child minders, who rebutted an argument for deregulation by pointing out:

"The child minders' own professional body says they don't want deregulation, they want high standard professional child minders"

This is of course a fatuous point, all professional bodies oppose deregulation and support credentialising- because that keeps out entrants to the market and enables their members to make more money. If anyone can find a single example of an organisation representing established people in a profession that lobbies for barriers to entry to be loosened then I will tip my hat to them, but I doubt anyone could.

Credentialising and occupational licensing make jobs harder to get without actually improving the standard of service being provided.

The two jobs that I did when I was a student- working as a security guard in various warehouses and offices and on building sites putting up ceilings- both now require the possession of formal qualifications in those fields so that I would not be able to do either job today.

This was only just over a decade ago. Similar barriers to entry have been placed in other lines of work. This of modest importance to current and future students but is a serious barrier for the long term unemployed and for anyone who uses the services of industries that are insulated from competition and innovation in this way.


Update: As proof that quoting the childminder's professional body is a fatuous and moronic argument- Polly Toynbee repeats it today:

The National Childminding Association protests against Truss's deregulation plan: it wants to keep inspections. Nor does it want higher staff-child ratios, saying it fears childminders becoming deprofessionalised

Art: Then & Then.

I am currently watching "Cave of Forgotten Dreams", Werner Herzog's documentary about the incredible cave paintings in Chauvet, France.

On thing which is notable to me is that despite being painted tens of thousands of years ago the quality of the pictures in very good. In face the depictions of some animals seem far more realistic than those of medieval artists who were thousands of years more technologically advanced.

Compare cavemen depiction of horses:

Now look at the horses in the Bayeux Tapestry:

Which are frankly a bit crap.

Top Ten Non Winners Of The Nobel Peace Prize

1. The United States Military. Has used it's hegemonic status over the last 65 years to give an unprecedented level of national security to countries throughout the world, especially in Europe. Is also a major provider of international aid during disasters.
2. Mahatma Gandhi- pretty ,much pioneered the principle of non violent resistance to oppression. He didn't get a prize, but Yasser Arafat did.
3. The Manhattan Project: Nuclear weapons have pretty much made full scale war between great powers unthinkable.
4. Mobile phone companies: have massively advanced development throughout Africa by allowing communication that does not rely on government infrastructure.
5. Winston Churchill- the disarmament campaigners of the 1930s received many prizes even though their policies led to war. The rearmament campaigners are never described as peace campaigns though.
6. Pharmaceutical companies- have taken the lead in eliminating and reducing the impact of so many devastating diseases.
7. Paul Kagame- Rwanda's president. Very autocratic but did end the Rwanda genocide by leading a counter attack against the Hutu militias.
8. Konrad Adenaeur- Germany's first post war leader who took over a country responsible for some of the worst atrocities in history and led it to being a model global citizen.
9. Television:- makes excessive brutality much harder to hush up which has to contribute to peace.
10. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee- although they probably will do soon.

The Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize ought to be of no real importance judging by the motley crew of previous winners the award of the prize to the European Union is not absurd.

One of the reasons why membership of the Euro is still the majority opinion in Spain, Greece and Portugal is because the EU is strongly associated with the move away from dictatorship. Many Eastern European countries have made reforms in order to enter the EU. One of the reasons the Serbs eventually handed Karadic and Mladic over to face trial is to make themselves eligible to join the EU.

The European Union has not been beneficial to the UK- with our long tradition of pluralistic democracy we don't associate the EU with freedom- but for the countries that have thrown off dictatorship the desire to join has been a positive influence.

If I lived somwhere like Hungary with an increasingly authoritarian government, I would be glad of the moderating effect of EU membership upon what the government can do.These benefits are threatened by the destabilisation brought on by the drive for "ever closer union" and for the increased acquisition of powers by Brussels.

As An Inadequate...

John Kampfner writes:

Sickipedia, the site where the young Lancashire man Matthew Woods found inspiration to post "jokes" about the missing child April Jones on his Facebook page was "down for maintenance" when I tried to check it out this morning, though I managed to get a glimpse of the kind of content it publishes courtesy of Twitter.

I'll reproduce just one, which should come with the equivalent of one of those taste and decency disclaimers you get on TV: "My dick is a lot like Marmite. My wife hates it when I rub it on her toast". That was from May. That alone should allow you to conclude, if you hadn't already realised from its name, that this site is for the seriously sad and inadequate. That should be the end of the story. The decision of Woods, however, to reproduce "jokes" about April Jones and Madeleine McCann has led him to be sent for 12 weeks to a young offenders' institution. Prior to that he had been taken into protective custody to prevent him being lynched.

Firstly I agree that it is outrageous for someone to be jailed for reposting jokes on Facebook. Attempted Hilarity is not a crime.

Secondly as someone who has put up about 500 jokes on Sickipedia I have to object to Kampfner's description of as being for the sad and inadequate. Obviously it is true in my case but even so he misses the point of the site.

It is user generated so anyone can put jokes up, this can lead to dire jokes, plagiarised jokes and offensive jokes devoid of comedic merit. However it can also lead to brilliant jokes of the kind that will be liked by 1000s of people. The site has a voting system so the good jokes get more exposure and the crap gets washed away. In the forums of the site there is a lot of ranting about and mocking of the terrible jokes that get posted- there is no one among the regular users who doesn't realise that there is a good deal of rubbish on site. (I odubt that Matthew Jones is a regular user as his efforts were abysmally unfunny).

Taking one shit joke which didn't score well as being indicitive of the site is as fair as taking one Beatrix Campbell article and concluding that the Guardian is crap.

Spot The Agenda!

There is a horrible story about a teenage girl who has had to have her stomach removed after drinking a cocktail containing liquid nitrogen (the nitrogen wasn't an ingredient in the cocktail, it got in there by mistake) at a bar.

Can you spot the the agenda of the spokesghoul/ shroud waver quoted by the Daily Mail?:

But last night Dr John Ashton, director of public health for Cumbria, said she was a victim of a dangerous gimmick used to sell more alcohol.
He said: 'This girl is the victim of an irresponsible alcohol industry that's now competing on gimmicks.
....

Dr Ashton said it was time the Government brought in better regulation of the drinks industry to stop such tragic incidents.
He said: 'It is shocking that a teenage girl goes out to celebrate her 18th birthday and ends up in intensive care with life-changing injuries.
'The alcohol industry uses these types of gimmicks to make alcoholic drinks more enticing - yet staff can use liquid nitrogen without any proper training.

....

'These things are allowed to continue in this country because of the Government's lack on control over the drinks industry.
'Essentially it amounts to a form of cowardice because there are drinks industry interests in every constituency and the Government is worried about repercussions.'

Enoch Powell Was Right.

About the treatment of Kenyan prisoners during the Mau Mau rebellion.

Two things the news reports don't mention about the Mau-Mau torture case currently winding its way through the legal system:

• The Mau Mau themselves were fairly nasty and hardly innocent victims (although many of the prisoners were wholly innocent).
• The leading voice in Britain denouncing the savage treatment of the Kenyan prisoners at the time was Enoch Powell, the supposed racist.

Jimmy Savile & Conspiracy Theories.

I have always been firmly opposed to long term, successful conspiracy theories, finding them both malevolent and implausible.

One of the main reasons I find them implausible is that the number of people who would need to cover up a conspiracy is so huge that it is simply crazy to think it could be done successfully.

However in the case of Jimmy Savile's probable abuse of young girls, it appears that his behavior was known by hundreds of people and no one went public. This is partly due to our libel laws, but no one would have been sued for tipping off the police, yet this does not seem to have occurred.

Should I therefore re-evaluate my contempt for conspiracy theories in general? Except the 9/11, Diana and JFK conspiracy theories of course, which are still retarded.

Labour Stupidity In Action

As the previous post demonstrated, Labour MPs are on average very stupid- yet very confident about their own ability despite any evidence to the contrary.

Their conference has thrown up many examples of this, but lets start with Ed Balls and his big idea- taking the money from the sale of 4G licences to mobile phone operators and using it to build 100000 homes and subsidise first time buyers.

It isn't exactly clear why widespread property ownership is such an obvious public good that it should be subsidised. Germany has far lower rates of home ownership than Britain, yet seems to have a more robust economy.

The problem of not enough homes being built is fundamentally about nimbyism and a lack of clear property rights. If neighbours are given too much say in what people can build on their own land, then building is going to be artificially depressed.

So after a crash caused to some extent by a housing bubble his solution is to reflate the bubble! And to squander 4-5 Billion pounds on benefiting a tiny, tiny minority of the country at everyone else's expense.

Whilst the national debt keeps rising ever higher.

MPs Thick, Labour MPs Especially

A total of 97 MPs were asked this probability problem: if you spin a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?

Among Conservative members, 47% gave the wrong answer, which is disappointing enough. But of the 44 Labour MPs who took part, 77% answered incorrectly.

77%!

It does explain a few things though- the basic innumeracy could be one of the reasons why Labour always propose spending bonanzas that are vastly greater than any real increase in wealth- and why Labour governments always leave economic catastrophes behind them.

I am being serious here- the inability to think past stage one is evident in a lot of Labour's previous actions and at the ideas on show at their conference this week- registering journalists, spending all the 4G money on one particular pet project etc, etc.

Humans use two mental methods for reaching conclusions- the one we use most often is intuitive and takes little effort. This means it is often wrong. The slower method uses reasoning and logic- this is hard work but tends to be right more often.

The Good Die Young

I see that the unrepentant Stalin Apologist, Eric Hobsbawm has died.

Like many apologists for Communism of his era he later framed his support for the USSR as being anti-Nazi. This is of course twaddle as the Communist party of Germany was far more likely to collaborate with the Nazis than opponents on the democratic left and right.

An appalling man and an untrustworthy historian.

Tasteless Jokes Invalidate Elections Apparently

I heard a story on the radio about a Derbyshire councillor who has been sacked for making a joke about the two murdered police women last week.

He sounds like a dick, and I would not vote for him- but there's something very dodgy about the notion that elected representatives can be sacked for doing something completely legal.

Who has the power to overrule the electorate and invalidate the election just like that?

Denis MacShane Doesn't Like Wikipedia

It's an absolute disgrace apparently, asking a Justice Minister this question:

"What comment will the Minister make on the fact that Wikipedia publishes biographies of people that are then regularly amended to include untrue, defamatory and unpleasant language?

"Does he think that Wikipedia should inform those people whose biographies have been re-written in such a way that causes them damage and then allow a truthful statement to be made?
"At the moment, Wikipedia is an absolute disgrace, allowing the British National party, fascists, anti-Semites and other extremists to alter people's personal entries."

 Wikipedia should employ an army of staff to write to the subjects of articles every time it is edited?

There is some irony in Denis MacShameless complaining about defamation despite regularly smearing his opponents as Nazis, racists or supporters of human trafficking. It appears likely that he upset about some of the information contained in his Wiki-biography- the examples of lying, corruption and bullying are certainly unpleasant but I cannot see anything that is untrue.

Eternal Truths

There is a defence of Muhammad- the founder of Islam- in the Guardian, with regard to accusations that he was a paedophile for marrying a six year old girl.

A lot of effort is made to contextualise this by comparison with what was normal at the time- and it is true that taking very young wives was a lot more acceptable in earlier centuries than today. Various figures from ancient times to the late middle ages did this.

This kind of context matters in judging most historical figures but the problem is Muhammed is not most historical figures. If Mo had simply been a particularly successful warlord it would be tiresome to denounce his sexual morals or the fact he was a slaver. However he and his adherents have never claimed that he was simply a man of his time, but rather that he was the source of eternal truths, that are as true today as they were then.

It is similar to how the massacre of the Trojans by the Greeks is not a problem for modern admirers of ancient Greece whereas the massacre of the Canaanites by the Israelites is a problem for those who believe that the Bible or Torah are divine sources of truth.

Of course in the modern world most Christians and Jews don't endorse the worst aspects of their holy literature. This is not the case with Islam, when simply speculating that some passages may be allegorical is a death sentence in much of the Middle East.

Binge Drinking Parents

According to the Children's Commissar, Maggie Atkinson, 1 in 3 children live with a binge drinker.

Something Must Be Done!

Think of the Children!


I heard her being interviewed and she insisted this was what children were telling her- whilst parroting phrases that I've never heard anyone who is not a professional busybody utter. It turns out that these phrases were uttered by children in focus groups- given that even with adults focus groups tend to say what the person in charge wants them to say and the people in charge were professional busybodies, this isn't a surprise.

While I do not doubt that alcohol is the cause, or at least the catalyst, for a lot of social problems, it does not seem plausible that 1 in 3 children live with a binge drinker and that a ludicrously inflated figure is being used for the purpose of scaremongering. And sure enough the definition of binge drinking is men who have more than eight drinks on one session or women who have more than 6.

No definition of what a "drink" is, but I suspect that they are referring to units because the definition of binge drinking given by other bodies is 8 units for men and 6 for women. That is about three glasses of wine for a woman or three pints of beer for man. I often "binge" under this definition- having up to 12 units over the course of about 6 or 7 hours on a weekend day every so often. Yet I don't consider myself to be a binge drinker, as I drive home and beat my terrified family in an alcohol fueled rage..... or not.


The report does not say how often this one has to binge to be classified as a binge drinker either- is having three sherries over Christmas Day a danger?


Yet the Childrens' Commissioner uses figures derived from these kind of definitions to imply that scenarios like this are endemic in Britain:

‘“I need somewhere safe to go quickly when mum starts drinking and cutting herself but where can I go?”

That is a quote by a young person in the report. To which the only response is "Holy Shit! Your Mum has a problem". But it is not the kind of behaviour that is associated with three glasses of wine once in a while.


Either they should give honest statistics for the number of problem drinkers or illustrate the issue with examples that are more likely among "binge drinking" parents. But quotes like:

"Some times my Dad comes home with a takeaway before falling asleep for half an hour in the arm chair" 

 Would not generate much interest.

I'm Back

Well that was a nice break.

Hiatus

You've probably noticed this blog is on hiatus. There's no special reason it's just that with spending far less time by a computer I have less opportunity to.


I will probably resume it by the middle of September and will be commenting on other blogs etc in the mean time.

Ed Balls Needs To Work On His Interview Technique

Mehdi Hassan writes about the abuse he has to take because he is a Muslim:

A recent interview of mine with the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, elicited the following response: "Get out of my country, goatfucker." 

Racist bastard!