Hannan's First Law, it seems, is as robust as ever: no party is ever Eurosceptic while in office.
Why not? Mainly because of what Milton Friedman called 'the tyranny of the status quo'.
Um, maybe. But, there is a better word to describe this tendency.
I left the following as a comment on this post by the Very British Dude—I said that I understood the thrust of his argument, but that I thought that his assessment of UKIP's policies left rather a lot to be desired.
First, the British people are worried about a particular sort of immigrant—those that they see as "foreign". This is a loose term, but essentially includes people who don't speak English—almost nobody that I have spoken to has any problem with New Zealand, Australian or US immigrants, for instance.
UKIP can pledge to target the immigrants that people fear because their policy is to leave the EU: the Tories cannot do the same because, even with the promise of the referendum—which will only happen if the Tories are re-elected with a majority and if Mars is in the House of Ares when a pig flies across the Thames in a dirigible, or something—their stated position is that they think we should stay in.
Second, UKIP believe that lower taxes will bring higher growth—not surprising when you consider that their fiscal policy was largely written by Tim Worstall (with contributions from other libertarian/minarchist bloggers). The Coalition is shifting the burden of tax away from the poor (good) but not actually changing the total tax take (bad).
UKIP also have a credible energy policy (again, much of it originally drafted by libertarian/minarchist bloggers (hem hem)): whilst most people may not realise that we are in severe danger of rolling power cuts next year, they do understand that their energy bills have soared. UKIP have a credible answer for this—the government should stop artificially forcing up energy prices.
Unfortunately, much of the legislation doing so comes from the EU (although successive governments of the last 20 years have added their own price-raising policies too—Osbourne's carbon floor price, for instance, is utterly, industry-fuckingly insane).
There are quite a few other differences too; however, one of them is that people can see themselves having a drink and a bit of a giggle with Nigel Farage.
And that's not simply because he likes to be interviewed in pubs; it is because he comes across as a guy who enjoys himself, and who genuinely thinks that the people of Britain should, in the end, also enjoy themselves.
This philosophy is miles away from the pinch-faced, high-voiced, bigoted, boring, public-health fascists and shrieking snobs of the Islington set—of which Cameron is perceived to be a member (alongside most other politicians).
Farage wears pretty much everything lightly, from blazers to budgetary black holes. And this, one can't help feeling, is his deadliest weapon. He does possess a genuine political superpower: the ability to make it look as though his critics are taking things far too seriously.
Yup. I've had a good few pints (and a fag or two) with Farage, and he's highly entertaining. Furthermore, he always stands his round...
No, Mrs Thatcher was not a libertarian. But she at least understood that the money that governments' spend is sweated from the toil of the individuals who earn it.
And no, Mrs Thatcher was no infallible goddess. But compared to what came before and (most especially) after, she may as well have been.
And no, Mrs Thatcher did not do everything right: but she had a vision that rose above that of merely lining her own pockets, and she had the balls to see it through.
Of course, the Bedroom Tax is not a tax: it is the removal of a subsidy, which is not the same thing at all.
However...
The point of the Bedroom Tax is not to address the housing shortage in this country (because a shortage of physical buildings does not really exist); the point is to address the shortage of suitable housing.
There are various organisations—Local Councils and Housing Associations, essentially—who have a legal obligation to provide housing for people. However, it is often very difficult to house these people (whilst complying with the other laws governing what is suitable): this is largely because tenancies, once awarded, are not only for life but can actually be passed on as an inheritance (although only once).
As such, a woman with four kids can be awarded a large house; once those kids have grown up and moved on (probably to other subsidised tenancies), the mother is still allowed to live in the four bedroom house. And then to pass it on to one of her children.
What this means is that there are many people living in subsidised houses that have lots more rooms than they need—whilst down the road, there might be another mother with four kids who is forced to live in a two bedroom flat.
As I said above, there is a shortage of suitable housing—not an absolute shortage.
I have spoken to housing providers who are cautiously in favour of the Bedroom Tax. This is because it will allow them a fighting chance to comply with their legal obligations to provide suitable homes for the homeless.
And, ultimately, this is what the Welfare State was envisioned to be—a safety net for those reduced to penury on the streets, not a lifestyle choice for those who want a nice life paid for by everyone else.
Like many causes celebre of the Left, the actual situation is not so cut and dried—especially as regards the earnings of the man who initiated the question.
The first reference that I saw was to a paragraph in this BBC story...
Market trader David Bennett, 51, who works between 50 and 70 hours a week and earned around £2,700 last year, said his housing benefit had been cut from £75 a week to £57. His income works out at around £53 per week.
This paragraph raised some general questions in my mind...
If Bennett really is only earning £2,700 whilst working 50 to 70 hours a week, then perhaps market trading is not the job for him? Perhaps he should find a job that doesn't force other people to subsidise him?
Personally, it boggles my mind that anyone would work such long hours for so little money: perhaps the Inland Revenue ought to have a long, hard look at Mr Bennett's accounts to ensure that he is declaring his full income?
However, the paragraph also raised some rather more specific questions too...
Bennett's declared income of £2,700 equates to £51.92 per week (£2,700 ÷ 52): in fact, 52 × £53 = £2,756. So is this, in fact, what the BBC means by "his income"?
Mr Bennett gained more money from his Housing Benefit (£75 × 52 = £3,900) than he supposedly did from his market trading activities. And this is still true even after his benefit was cut (£57 × 52 = £2,964).
Assuming that Bennett's rent is £75 per week (the amount of his previous HB payments) then, after the cut, he has to find an extra £28 from his £53 per week earnings—leaving him with only £25 per week. This does seem somewhat tricky to live on.
So, given that the BBC's paragraph was ambiguous at best, I went to visit this Telegraph article cited in the petition mentioned above. And what do we find there...?
David Bennett said he earned around £2,700 last year - around £50 a week - and has had to borrow money after his housing benefit was cut to £57 a week. It later emerged that Mr Bennett also gets tax credits, which can be worth between £37 and £50 from the Government. However, he is left with just £53 a week after paying rent and bills.
Right. So Mr Bennett was being slightly economical with the truth; as are the BBC—who have not altered their story as of 10pm today. There is, I think that you will agree, a considerable difference between these three options:
having £53 per week to pay for everything—including rent and bills;
having £53 per week to pay for everything except rent;
having £53 per week left after paying rent and bills.
The petition calls for Iain Duncan-Smith to go for Option 1—that is, to pay for everything with £53 per week.
Whereas the man who inspired the whole thing—David Bennett—actually lives on Option 3, i.e. that he has £53 per week after paying rent and bills (and what, exactly, is covered in "bills", e.g. is travel included?).
These are two very different propositions.
I have, in my working life, lived on considerably less than £53 per week (or £212 per month) after paying rent and bills. Even in 2008, having done the calculations, I was living on just under £60 per week (after rent and bills)—not much more than Bennett.
As some people have pointed out, the real issue is that David Bennett might feel totally helpless because he might be on that kind of income for the foreseeable future.
However, that point simply comes back to whether Mr Bennett should be working as a market trader—given that he earns only £2,700 per year doing so. After all, if the money is that important to him, even MacDonald's would pay him the minimum wage. If Mr Bennett chooses not to do that—which he might, for all manner of reasons—then that is his choice.
But that is no reason why everyone else should be forced to subsidise that choice.
It’s a classic wedge tactic, designed to inveigle the state into yet another area of our life where it has no goddamned business being, in the full knowledge that once there it will be all but impossible to dislodge, like one of those little fish in the Amazon that swim into your cock and then deploy barbs to prevent you winkling it out. That’s what Andy Burnham is like. He’s like a Brazilian cock-fish.
Nice to see the Angry Baby parlaying off one of my favourite Kitchen tags: candiru fish craziness...
A New Hampshire lawyer who works with a virulently anti-gay Christian-right organization has been found guilty of child pornography charges after videotaping her own daughter having sex with two men on multiple occasions.
Lisa Biron, 43, of Manchester faces a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison after a jury convicted her yesterday. The jury deliberated for less than an hour.
Biron, arrested by the FBI last November, was accused of eight felony counts involving the videotaping of men having sex with a 14-year-old girl who was identified by the Associated Press as her daughter. She also allegedly made a cellphone video of herself having sex with her daughter.
For those readers who are of a technical bent, your humble Devil also writes about such issues over at The Devil's Repose, and I'd like to highlight a couple of articles that might be of interest.
The second ties together a few comments on proposals for being able to serve optimised web resources by using bandwidth media queries.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible...
UPDATE: I am currently looking for two Web Designers / Front-end Developers to join my team. If anyone is interested, they might find my article about cultural fit entertaining...
The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:
The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
The Administration does not support blowing up planets. [*]
Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?
Controversionally, the entire response rather suggests that not only do White House staffers have a sense of humour but, crucially, the Administration lets them demonstrate it in public.
Wouldn't it be nice if all politicians and companies issued such informative and yet fundamentally light-hearted pronouncements...?
* Only a cynic would opine at this point that, whilst planets might be beyond the ambitions of the US government, other countries are not.
Were someone to do that, of course, they would also need to concede that our own Parliamentarians are also not averse to bombing the shit out of foreigners.
When I first adopted Steve Baker MP as my blog mascot, I knew that he was a pretty sound chap. The more I hear him speak—whether in person or in the media—the more sound he seems to get.
Via Samizdata, here's an interview with Steve in which he pretty much articulates everything that I have been talking about for the last few years.
In my day job, I usually describe myself as a web software designer. Trying to describe what that means is usually a little tricky: there are, of course, aspects of User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)** design in there; I also bring in some Information Architecture, a degree of HTML and CSS mastery (though, alas, my Javascript is pretty basic) and a great deal of market knowledge.
However, there is one passage from Hixie's interview—in a context not entirely unrelated—which pretty much sums up the nitty-gritty of what I do.
Often when people send feedback (not just authors, pretty much anyone who hasn’t been in the process for a long time starts this way) they send feedback along the lines of “I want to add feature X” or “I want feature X to be extended in manner Y”. But when we drill down, ask them “what problem are you trying to solve”, or “what’s your use case” (same question but phrased differently), we often find that either (a) they actually don’t have a real problem, they just thought that it would be a good idea, or (b) their solution wouldn’t actually solve their problem. Often we’re able to come up with much simpler solutions (or point to already-existing solutions), which is quite satisfying.
Like Hixie, I am working within an existing framework—our Enterprise Content Management Framework—and, when a customer requires some new piece of functionality, I need to take into account what others have fed back and how to best solve their problem within our existing framework.
Luckily, we designed and developed the framework fairly recently—and in response to existing customer requirements—so often we can point the customer to an existing function that solves their issue.
However, when that isn't the case, I never rely on our salesmen or, indeed, the customer's own specification. Whenever faced with a development request, my first question is "what is the driver", i.e. what is the problem that they are trying to solve.
Being able to solve those problems in the most elegant way is what gives me the most pleasure in my job.
* Otherwise known as HTML5.
** There's a school of thought that maintains that there is no difference between the two; indeed, many hold the opinion that any way in which customers interact with your company or its products is, in fact, UX.
And whilst said meme is not being followed by everyone, the thought seems to be entering the tiny wee brains of many Tory commentators.
And even if they are not actively contemplating a pact, there seems to be a large increase—no doubt boosted by UKIP's ever-growingpollratings and recent by-election successes—in articles by Tories advising Cameron to at least stop dismissing UKIP as a bunch of "fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists" (always an unwise phrase for Cameron to use, given the make-up of much of his own party).
Today, both Iain Dale and Paul Goodman have articles whose theme could be very well be adapted by Noel Coward (were he alive) into a little ditty called Don't Let's Be Beastly To The UKIP.
First, like all journalists, he seems to think—just because Nigel Farage is the most visible UKIP spokesman—that the party leadership is Nigel Farage. It isn't.
Surveys by YouGov and Lord Ashcroft have separately established that the EU is not the top issue for Mr Farage’s voters (which is why he has astutely sought to abandon the party’s longer title and pound-symbol badge).
Back in the mists of time, when I was first a member of the party, in 2005 (I think), I had fairly constant contact with the leadership of UKIP. Not just with Nigel and the other MEPs, but I also used to hang out with the researchers and strategists who work in the background.
Dropping the pound logo and the party's longer title were discussed at around this time, so that a new image might be formed in order to support the party's emerging strategy of creating a broader, country-wide manifesto.
As it happens, it was decided that the time was not right for any kind of formal change, although the party has been known as UKIP for some time.
However, this broader manifesto was urged forward—and its thematic principles largely devised by—a group of people who were, broadly speaking, libertarian-leaning and, in many cases, bloggers. Regular readers might remember such characters as England Expects, Trixy and Vindico; Timmy, of course, is still around (and even I played a small part).
What does this have to do with Goodman's article?
The point is that there are some clever strategists in UKIP—people who are driven by principle and theory, but this group is also bolstered by people who have some idea of political strategy.
Most people cite "immigration" as one of UKIP's main bug-bears, but they fail to understand the nuances of this area—as Goodman so ably demonstrates here... [Emphasis mine.]
The Prime Minister’s best chance of squeezing Mr Farage’s support is thus to avoid being drawn too deep into the EU quagmire and keep hold of the strategic high ground – in other words, to deliver policy success. This entails George Osborne reducing the structural deficit further, Michael Gove pressing on with his schools revolution, Theresa May reducing immigration to the tens of thousands and Iain Duncan Smith introducing the universal credit and bearing down on welfare fraud and error – plus much of the programme of further reform that Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg will outline tomorrow.
It is in that highlighted section that Goodman makes a classic mistake (there are others in the article, but this one will serve amply to illustrate my point): it shows is that Goodman has not understood the UKIP strategy here and, in fact, this suggestion risks alienating UKIP voters further. Let me explain...
The UKIP leadership and strategists have, for some years, been pushing the "Anglosphere" and "our own kith and kin in the Commonwealth" as part of the trade solution on Britain removing itself from the EU.
As a result, UKIPpers tend to be well-disposed towards such nations, and their people. And the older UKIPpers (particularly, but not exclusively) revile Ted Heath for selling the Commonwealth down the river when we joined the EU.
And it is for this reason that UKIP's main focus when talking about immigration has been heavily weighted against unfettered EU immigration. And since Cameron and his merry band cannot reduce EU immigration (indeed, we are facing a new wave from Eastern Europe this year), the Conservatives cannot win this point.
As such, it doesn't matter whether Theresa May reduces immigration from outside the EU to one man and his gerbil—it will not make the blindest bit of difference to most UKIP voters.
Except, of course, in that allowing immigrants from Bulgaria but increasingly turning away, as Nigel put it, "our own kith and kin" from the Anglosphere and Commonwealth countries, she will further alienate UKIPpers.
I believe that it simply hasn't occurred to the Tories that UKIP's rallying cries might have some subtleties to them. And, largely, I lay the fault for this blindness at David Cameron's door.
After all, if the Conservative leader designates an entire party as "fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists" then it is hardly suprsing that his planners should write off UKIP's strategists as simplistic and guileless.
Which is why I think that the Tories might be in for a shock.
It's an hour long, but features the stories of people who got addicted to drugs and became criminals on the back of it. Many of them had had horrific childhoods—is anyone surprised when someone states that they were sexually abused whilst in "Care" these days?—and many of them had been in prison for decades (whether consistently, or on and off).
Inevitably, many of them had become crack or heroin addicts whilst in prison—where, apparently, anything drug-wise is easily available (another state failure).
The point is that the approach taken by Acorn appears to be very successful—counsellors are former drug-addicts and criminals, support is provided as a package and over time. Critically, though, the offenders are treated as individuals—not as statistics or a lumped together group—which proves, to my libertarian mind, that it is the individual approach to support that is important.
How many fewer people might become offenders in the first place if society's solution to their problems was to help individuals, rather than salving their consciences' through their tax payments to an uncaring state?
