... governments and huge corporatist multinationals? No, nor do I.



PIPA and SOPA are stupid, dangerous acts that threaten the internet. And this comes from someone who, by and large, supports Intellectual Property rights...

Labels: business, really astonishing stupidity, t'internet, technology

Oh look! Yet more evidence that students—even those commenting on a topic that they are supposed to be commenting on—are completely fucking ignorant...

And this, of course, simply builds adds more fuel to the fire of The Devil's Second Law of Economics, i.e. that if a student says that something is so, the opposite is true.

Thus, naturally, feeding into the general law that there is not a single social sector on this planet so ill-informed, self-righteous and pig-ignorant as a student.

And then they join UKUncut—after passing an entrance exam to prove their idiocy—and become even more comprehensively fuck-witted.

Students: ignore them—you know it makes sense.

Labels: economy, education, really astonishing stupidity, taxes

A recent report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that the 50p top tax rate is—from the point of view of raising money—worse than useless.

The 50p rate of income tax is costing the Treasury up to £500 million a year as high earners shelter their money abroad, a leading think tank has warned.

Yes, the Laffer Curve really does exist. Naturally, Timmy elaborates...

The argument is that this rate is increasing the use of (entirely legal) tax mitigation strategies plus some people are buggering off.

Yes, I know, there are those who insist that we should just make it illegal for people to bugger off out of the tax system but we’ve signed a number of international treaties that say we cannot do that.

But here we have it, at least some independent and non-politically partisan experts state that 50 p on income tax is over the peak of the Laffer Curve: even in this short term.

Not much point in having it then really, is there?

Quite so. The 50p tax rate decreases the amount of money that the Treasury gets and—as an extra special Fuck-up The Country bonus—it drives capital abroad rather than it being spent or invested in the British economy.

All of the above was reported on the 14^th September: so, as a follow-up, what was reported today (the 17^th September)? Yes, that's right...

Nick Clegg has said axing the 50p top income tax rate too early could "destroy" public support, as the Lib Dems gather for their conference.

So, despite the fact that the 50p rate of tax is costing the Treasury some half a billion quid a year, Nick Clegg supports it because he thinks the British people are entirely motivated by spite. Well, he may be right but...

The coalition agreement drawn up between the Conservatives and Mr Clegg's party says the government will work towards increasing the tax-free personal allowance to £10,000 - a Lib Dem policy - and that would be prioritised "over other tax cuts".

Yes, fine. Except that if you abolished the 50p rate of tax, you fucking moron, you would have another half a billion quid to put towards your—admittedly, very worthy and entirely correct—policy of letting the poor keep a little more of their cash.

Casting himself more and more in the role of the Patron Politician of Lost Causes, Nick Clegg really is a silly sod, is he not...?

UPDATE: JohnB presents an alternative view (or, rather, an additional view)...

The Telegraph piece is bullshit laundering, and it's at least as bad as anything you've had a go at climate journalists for.

Here's some digging into the source of the data—the new IFS report says nothing about effects of the 50p rate at all. Rather, the Telegraph has dug up the IFS's *projections* about the effects of the 50p rate *from before it was introduced*, and presented them as if they were an assessment of what's actually happened.

Which is shoddy journalism. It'll be an interesting test of the IFS's integrity to see whether it complains to the Telegraph about being misrepresented in this way...

Labels: economy, LibDems, rampant idiocy, really astonishing stupidity, stupid MPs, tax, think-tanks

One of the chief architects of our destruction: "I don't care about energy bills, because I don't pay mine—you do, you fuckin' mooks."

Christopher Booker's latest piece in the Telegraph should have every person in Britain gnashing their teeth at the rampant stupidity of this Coalition's energy policy—specifically the utter lunacy that is embodied in off-shore wind farms.

Last week, the BBC ran a series of reports by its science correspondent, David Shukman, on the Government’s plan to ring our coasts with vast offshore wind farms.
The nearest thing allowed to criticism of this policy came in an interview with the Oxford academic Dieter Helm, who we were told had “done the sums”. What, Shukman asked, had he come up with? The only figures Helm gave were that the Government’s offshore wind farm plans would, by 2020, cost £100 billion—scarcely a state secret, since the Government itself announced this three years ago—plus £40 billion more to connect these windmills to the grid, a figure given us by the National Grid last year.
Helm did not tell us that this £140 billion equates to £5,600 for every household in the country. But he did admit that the plan was “staggeringly expensive”, and that, given the current extent of “fuel poverty” and the state of our economy, he doubted “if it can in fact be afforded”.

Even shorter on hard facts, however, was Shukman’s report on a monster new wind farm off the coast of Cumbria, where a Swedish firm, Vattenfall, has spent £500 million on building 30 five‑megawatt turbines with a total “capacity” of 150MW. What Shukman did not tell us, because the BBC never does, is that, thanks to the vagaries of the wind, these machines will only produce a fraction of their capacity (30 per cent was the offshore average in the past two years). So their actual output is only likely to average 45MW, or £11 million per MW.

Compare this with the figures for Britain’s newest gas-fired power station, recently opened in Plymouth. This is capable of generating 882MW at a capital cost of £400 million—just £500,000 for each megawatt. Thus the wind farm is 22 times more expensive, and could only be built because its owners will receive a 200 per cent subsidy: £40 million a year, on top of the £20 million they will get for the electricity itself. This we will all have to pay for through our electricity bills, whereas the unsubsidised cost of power from the gas plant, even including the price of the gas, will be a third as much.

Booker also points out—reinforcing what your humble Devil has been saying for years—that wind power is inherently unreliable and, as such, we would need to build a MW of conventional power for every MW of installed wind power.

Or, of course, the lights go out.

This would be stupid enough were we forced to duplicate our power capacity at gas- or coal-fired prices; that we must build wind farms at 22 times the cost of conventional power plus the gas- or coal-fired power stations is nothing short of insane.

And, ultimately, we are going to have to pay for all of this. And we are going to pay through the fucking nose.

The trouble is that the government knows damn well that people will not stand for massive rises on energy taxes; as such, the government and the EU have forced the power companies to carry much of the cost—thus making the energy companies out to be total fucking demons*.

As Matthew Sinclair points out in this superb rant to the Freedom Society (whilst promoting his book, Let Them Eat Carbon), most people are simply not aware of the vast costs being imposed on the power companies by our Lords and Masters in the name of the discredited Climate Change scam.



It does appear that the energy companies are, however, protesting somewhat. Bishop Hill recently submitted a Freedom of Information request on a meeting between the government and the Electricity Retailers Association (ERA).

Here's an odd thing. Some weeks back I noticed that Gregory Barker, the Climate Change minister, had met with representatives of the Electricity Retailers Association to discuss "information on consumers' bills".

To me this seemed rather odd - why would electricity retailers need to discuss the information on bills with ministers? Perhaps Mr Barker wanted to insist that some information was passed on to consumers?

An FOI request later, I discover that the meeting was at the request of ERA itself—it appears that they asked to speak to ministers about a number of issues—Fuel Poverty, the Green Deal, the Community Energy Saving Programme and the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target. Putting this together with DECC's record that "information on consumers' bills" was discussed, I conclude that ERA wanted to make the costs of these government programmes transparent.

Unfortunately, I can only infer this because according to DECC, no record was kept of the meeting.

The Grauniad recently ran a fucking ludicrous story about how climate change might lead aliens to eliminate us because our carbon emissions would lead them to assume that the human race was "out of control".

Personally, I think that these self-same aliens might well kill us all.

But only because they would look at the fucking colossal idiocy enacted by our governments (and the rampant apathy of their citizens) and decide that the human race is too fucking stupid to be allowed to live.

* Alright—worse demons than they actually are.

Labels: catastrophic anthropogenic climate change, cunts, economy, energy, idiocy, lunacy, really astonishing stupidity

Katharine Birbalsingh has been doing the media rounds recently...

Next, I’m being interviewed by a Russian journalist who is fascinated by these riots. I explain that I believe our culture of moral relativism is to blame, that no one believes in right and wrong anymore, that everything is subjective, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, that we don’t believe in an objective morality. She frowns.

“So you believe in God, then?”

I shake my head. “No. But I do believe in an objective morality.”

She nods. “Ah. So you believe in the state then?”

Because, obviously, the only way that you can derive an objective morality is to rely on the church or the state: there are absolutely no other philosophies out there, are there?

For fuck's sake.

Labels: libertarianism, media, really astonishing stupidity

As a man who, for a few brief articles, looked like he might not be a total moron, one might have hoped that George Monbiot might not have been an utter arsehole about the current travails of the press—but no...

So what can be done?

I don't know, George—why don't you tell us...? Oh, wait, you're going to aren't you? This had better be good...

Because of the peculiar threat they present to democracy...

Um... I think that there are rather bigger threats to democracy, George. The European Union springs to mind, as does our own derisory system of "representative democracy".

But, OK, I'll humour you. What's your solution...?

... there’s a case to be made for breaking up all majority interests in media companies, and for a board of governors, appointed perhaps by Commons committee, to act as a counterweight to the shareholders’ business interests.

Aaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha! Aaaahaha!

You fucking what? This is a joke, right?

You think that the press should be—indeed, most definitely is (so much so that the shareholders' property should be appropriated)—a brake on the excesses of our lords and masters, and the people that you think should control the press are the fucking politicians?

Are you completely fucking INSANE...?

I would like to state this plainly, George: you seriously think that the people who should control what is published about our politicians should be our politicians?

I thought that you were on your way to some kind of Damascene conversion: it seems, instead, that all your recent articles were actually a slow-burning descent into raving lunacy.

So sad...

Labels: corruption, media, MSM, really astonishing stupidity

Neil Clark's bullshit encomium to a "less greedy" Britain is ripped to shreds by Timmy in typically terse fashion.

What interested me—in the context of Scottish Power raising their prices by 19% for gas and 10% for electricity—was the figure for the rise in electricity prices under the nationalised company, as recorded in Hansard.

Gas and Electricity Prices

HC Deb 22 March 1976 vol 908 cc11-3

Mr. Peter Morrison asked the Secretary of State for Energy what is the percentage increase in the cost of electricity since 28th February 1974.

Mr. Eadie: I am informed by the Electricity Council that it is about 86 per cent. overall in England and Wales.

Mr. Morrison: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that that is a horrifying figure? Perhaps he will explain why the prices of the goods and services supplied by nationalised industries seem to rise much faster than the prices of those supplied by the private sector.

Yes, that figure is correct: under the benign state management of the national electricity company, over two years the price of electricity rose by 86%! Eighty-six percent!

No doubt that arsehole Huhne would say that this was because people just weren't shopping around enough.

As concern grows that the other five major energy companies are preparing to follow Scottish Power and announce big rises within weeks, the energy secretary, Chris Huhne, told the Observer that consumers should not accept the increases "lying down" but "hurt" their supplier by finding cheaper alternatives.

"Consumers don't have to take price increases lying down," he said. "If an energy company hits you with a price increase, you can hit them back where it hurts—by shopping around and voting with your feet."

Given that a great part of these price rises are caused by the fucking government—both the EU and our pretendy local government in Westminster—slapping taxes and alternative fuel contributions onto the energy companies, I think that Chris Huhne's witterings are somewhat cunting cheeky, frankly.

"Right now, only one in five people switch suppliers. I want to see more switching, more competition and more companies in the market," Huhne said. "The big six only have a few minnows snapping at them, who are kept artificially small. By scrapping red tape for small players they can become serious challengers and help keep bills down."

Yeah? And what will happen when those companies start getting big? We all know—you'll slap a massive fucking windfall tax on them, or just put more taxes onto their suppliers* so that the "minnows" cannot even compete on price.

Seriously, why don't you fuck off, you total fucking Huhne.

* In fact, they'll probably do something really fucking stupid like linking both gas and oil taxes to the oil price. Oh, wait, that's precisely what Osborne did, the stupid fucknuts.

Labels: economy, energy, environmentalism, really astonishing stupidity, stinking hypocrisy, taxes

A few days ago, there were various reports—such as this one in The Grauniad (natch)—predicting that household debt was going to increase massively...

The Office for Budget Responsibility has raised its prediction of total household debt in 2015 by a staggering £303bn since late last year, in the belief that families and individuals will respond to straitened times by extra borrowing. Average household debt based on the OBR figures is forecast to rise to £77,309 by 2015, rather than the £66,291 under previous projections.

Economists say the figures show that George Osborne's drive to slash the public deficit and his predictions on growth are based on assumptions that debt will switch from the government's books to private households – undermining his claims to be a debt-slashing chancellor.

Now, I am about to advance something of a radical idea, but hear me out... Are you ready?

When your household income drops, how about YOU DROP YOUR SPENDING TOO?

I mean, for fuck's sake, it's not a difficult concept. I know that, for the last 15 years or so, you have been watching financially incontinent governments piss money away like a drunken sailor who's just won the Lottery spending his way through the entire port—but emulating the government is just stupid.

If you haven't got the fucking cash, don't bloody spend it.

It's not difficult, seriously.

Labels: economy, government spending, Morons, really astonishing stupidity

There are some things—sorry, a great many things—that are seriously fucked up in this country, but surely one of the most urgent and pressing issues is that of responsibility.

Yes, sure, the Coalition is happy to bang on about "personal responsibility" and all of that, but that's not what I am talking about—what I am referring to is the majorly stupid way in which the law recognises personal responsibility.

My thoughts were sparked by this extraordinary story, which I found via JuliaM.

A social worker who had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl in his care has avoided being sent to jail.

Eh? What? I thought that was supposed to be THE big no-no, surely?

Well, no, incredible as it seems, it wasn't having sex with her that got him into trouble. It was taking pictures:

Richard Superville, 51, of Ceylon Road, Westcliff, was caught out after explicit photographs of the teenager were found on his laptop, a court heard.

Although Superville had not broken the law by his affair—because the girl was 16—he had committed a criminal offence by taking pictures of her topless.

OK, let us leave aside the issue of "care"—for we must assume that the law that applies to teachers in this situation does not apply to social workers. What a surprise!—and just imagine that this is two people having a sexual relationship.

In that context, it should be obvious that the story outlined above is utterly insane—it's OK to fuck a 16 year old but not OK to take topless photographs of her? Barking. Naturally, this sparked off some thoughts about the utterly loony laws surrounding "ages of consent".

And yes, I meant "ages" because we have several. Let's have a look, shall we?

• You must be 18 to: vote, sell naked pictures of your own body, buy cigarettes or buy alcohol (if you're lucky: I'm sick and tired of seeing signs proclaiming that such and such a place won't sell booze to anyone under 21. Or even 25).


• You must be 16 to: leave school (until the Coalition arseholes bring in Educational Conscription), get a job, join the army (and be trained to fucking kill people), get married, bring up a child and to fuck (or be fucked).


• You must be 10 to: be held responsible for a crime that you've committed (yes, yes, we all know that was brought in so that the politicians could appease those baying for the blood of the Bulger killers, but it wasn't much higher before—twelve, maybe?).

Now, can we please get this shit sorted out?

If you are responsible for crimes that you commit at the tender age of ten, then you should be responsible enough to do anything else, including buying booze and fucking people. If you aren't responsible enough to do those things with your own body, then you are not responsible enough to know that you've broken the law.

And if, at the age of sixteen, you are deemed responsible enough to fuck and be fucked, then you are most certainly responsible enough to know when you can allow your lover to take photos of your naked body. Damn it, if you want to earn money by selling pictures of your own body to whomever wants them: you are allowed to fuck and you're allowed to work—why the fuck shouldn't you be allowed to sell the pictures of you doing one or the other?

And if you are responsible enough to make love, and to get married, have a child and to hold down a job and get taxed on your bastard wages, then you are most certainly responsible enough to vote for the politicians who are stealing 50% of everything that you earn.

And yet these things are not put on the same level at all—and it's utterly insane. At what age are you responsible for yourself in law—is it 10, 16 or 18?

Successive governments—including the Coalition—quite obviously think that the age is 18: however, they have all lacked the balls to tell people that they cannot get married, they cannot get a job and they cannot screw each other at 16.

Personally, I think that the age of responsibility should be somewhere around the 16 mark—possibly lower. If there is a possibility that a crime has been committed—a very much older lover inveigling a young girl into sex, for instance—then that is for a court to decide.

Sticking with that theme, we could do what most other countries on the Continent do (and as Canada does), and make the law flexible dependent on the difference in ages between the two parties.

Whatever you personally think should happen, I personally think that a little consistency would be a really good idea—if only so that a man is not sent to jail for taking sexually-explicit photographs of the girl that he is perfectly legally allowed to have sex with.

Labels: barking insanity, idiocy, is this a joke?, law and order, really astonishing stupidity

The TPA's Matt Sinclair sticks it to Dave Prentis, head of UNISON.



Say, Dave: you ever thought of becoming a politician? After all, it takes a special kind of person to lie like an absolute bastard on television knowing that the proof of their lie is in the public domain...

Labels: good deeds, liars, really astonishing stupidity, stinking hypocrisy, unions

... and I was wondering—is Nick Clegg the stupidest man on the face of the planet?

In announcing a whole raft of "ideas" that are designed to punish bankers—but will, in actualité, punish anyone vaguely successful—this parasitical non-entity has spelled out just what a pathetic, vicious little cunt he is.

Your humble Devil has concentrated most of his fire on Labour and the Tories because they are the two largest collections of shits in the country.

This may have been unfair to the LibDims who might be, after all, kingmakers in hung Parliament.

I used to think that these cints were a harmless but mildly amusing irritant. But no more—it is ever more obvious that Clegg's LibDims are vicious, stupid, economically illiterate morons whose intentions and actions are just as evil and crap as those of NuLabour.

It's time to fuck the LibDims into the irrelevance that they so richly deserve.

Labels: banks, economy, LibDems, really astonishing stupidity, what the fuck?

Professor Philip Stott has an excellent piece questioning the wisdom in George Osborne's announcement that Nicholas Stern would be helping them to draft their environmental policy. Amongst other things, Professor Stott resurrects a particularly cutting quote about the Stern Review which I thought would be good to place here once again.

"If a student of mine were to hand in this report [the ‘Stern Review’] as a Masters thesis, perhaps if I were in a good mood I would give him a 'D' for diligence; but more likely I would give him an 'F' for fail. There is a whole range of very basic economics mistakes that somebody who claims to be a Professor of Economics simply should not make. [...] Stern consistently picks the most pessimistic for every choice that one can make. He overestimates through cherry-picking, he double counts particularly the risks and he underestimates what development and adaptation will do to impacts.”

[The environmental economist, Dr. Richard S. J. Tol, Research Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), Dublin, Professor at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and Associate at Hamburg University.

James Delingpole headlined the news that the Tories were consulting Lord Stern in the following manner:

Cameron and his suicidal eco-rats clamber aboard sinking ship

Hardly a ringing endorsement, is it? Similarly disbelieving ejaculations came from EUReferendum, and Professor Stott opines...

Has Lord Snooty’s Sidekick Gone Stark Raving Bonkers, Readers?

So, what has happened to the Tories? Have they taken leave of their senses? Why on earth was Osborne even approaching Lord Stern in the first place?

Well, quite possibly they have.

But Osborne’s lack of political judgment and timing go even deeper. One cannot believe that the Shadow Chancellor has been so stupid as to make this now seemingly-unfounded pronouncement at the very moment when the Global Warming Narrative is collapsing on every front, political, economic, and scientific; when, in the US, even President Obama is retreating from from the cap-trade bill; when most of his own Tory party are highly critical of the whole ‘global warming’ scenario; when polls show that the public everywhere is increasing in its scepticism; and, when The Sun is once again flaring forth ...

On February 1, that Old Tory trooper, Lord Tebbit of Chingford, writing in the Conservative house rag, The Daily Telegraph, warned that “'Camp Cameron' should worry about the steady erosion of the Tory lead in the polls” - the latest YouGov product has the Conservatives on 38 per cent, down two points on last month. I am sure Tebbit is correct, and I can further warn Boy George that this latest nonsense over Lord Stern will not have helped one iota.

Indeed, Britain is now screaming out for a leading political party that will begin to talk real economic sense on climate change. That way, there might actually be some votes in the topic.

This is an argument echoed today by Burning Our Money; but as Wat Tyler also points out, there really isn't a credible alternative.

It's very difficult all this, isn't it. The horrible fact is, there isn't actually anyone we can vote for who will stop this happening. Sure, there are people we can vote for who will promise to stop it, but that's a different thing - under our grotesquely unfair first-past-the-post Westminster system of government, such people will never get the chance to actually implement their promises. Tyler's constitutional reform package includes separation of the powers and a directly elected President, but absent that, our real world choices are indeed very limited.

Which is why we will be out campaigning for the Tories again this time. They sure ain't perfect, and we share many of the Major's concerns, but in terms of forming a government to replace Brown's disaster, they're all we've got.

This is, of course, a damning indictment of our electoral system—but also of the people in this country. The simple fact is, in a weird fucking conundrum, that the only thing that keeps the major parties in power is the fact that people think that the major parties are the only ones capable of gaining power.

So, whilst Jackart may maintain that the Tories are simply the "shit that stinks least", do not be under any illusions that the Tories will, nevertheless, be utterly shit.

Labels: climate, environmentalism, lunacy, really astonishing stupidity, Tories

Ah, well, no. That won't work, you see, as Timmy explains over at the Adam Smith Institute blog.

But the truly gargantuan problem is the supposition that inflation would eat away at the debt burden. Firstly, of course, what this really means is a hidden default on that debt. You know, sort of a "Tee hee...we'll pay you your money back but it won't be worth anything by then. Aren't we clever!". Well, no actually, this isn't big and it's not clever. Those gilts largely exist in the pension funds of us out here in the general population so that suggestion is really that you'll steal from us in our old age in order to fund your fiscal incontinence now.

Worse than that though is that it won't actually work. For markets have been stung by that inflation ruse once already and so matters are now different. Some 25% (so I'm told) of long term gilts are now inflation linked. Inflation does nothing to reduce that burden then. Short term gilts will of course need to be refinanced at the new, higher, (nominal) interest rates that inflation will bring. And the largest parts of government debt, things like the PFI exposures and the public sector pension plans are all inflation indexed. So inflation would be both a default upon those who are not inflation protected and wouldn't solve the debt problem either.

So, the solutions that we are left with are...?

Inflation simply won't cure the debt problem. We're back to either raising taxes so as to choke off new economic activity or firing some portion of the army of wastrels who consume the current tax take. Given my language choices there you can probably guess which course I regard as sensible...

Quite.

Labels: economy, general hilarity, peddlers of misery, really astonishing stupidity, thieving bastards, whoops

As I have pointed out a number of times, education is a bug-bear of mine. As such, I have been watching the massively-foreheaded Cameron's plans for this sector with some interest.

It's a depressing exercise, frankly. In some ways, it is almost more depressing than watching Labour's pathetic flailing about. I mean, we know that NuLabour are crap and intellectually bankrupt; we know that those fuckers are more interested in everyone being equally mediocre than allowing bright kids to shine: we expect them to propose stupid ideas and ludicrously illiberal bollocks.

With Cameron, it is rather more of a roller-coaster of emotions—one feels a bit like a manic-depressive who's stopped taking the Prozac. Because, you see, every now and again, the Tories come out with a good piece of rhetoric—such as a voucher system for schools—and then, in the next breath, they wheel out a colossal load of old knackers which makes you realise that they still haven't grasped the fundamentals.

As a case in point, Conservative education policy seems to be inspired by Swedish free schools and the voucher systems that have been tried there (since 1994) and in the US; similarly, the accompanying rhetoric is all about setting schools free, giving Head Teachers more power over their schools and other good things.

On the other hand, the Tories' actual proposals are arse—they are little more than tinkering at the edges.

"Yes, we will free schools," they cry. "But only in really poor areas!"

"Yes, parents and other private entities can start their own schools, but they will not be allowed to be both owner and operator of the schools and make a profit."

"Yes, we will give Head Teachers more control, but we'll maintain the Local Education Authorities."

"Yes, we will free up teachers to educate, but we'll keep the National Curriculum."

It's a hideous mish-mash of crap showing that Cameron doesn't understand the fundamental reasons why the free schools work: it isn't because they are free at the point of use—because they aren't—it is because they are free to set their own entry requirements, free to set their fees, free to discipline children as they wish, free to set differing salaries for their teachers, free to reward work well done as well as to punish those who are useless: in short, they are called "free schools" because they are free to compete in the marketplace of educational attainment.

With every fresh utterance, Cameron shows us ever more clearly that he doesn't understand this at all; he doesn't understand that it is the state provision of schooling that skews priorities so badly.

Cameron needs to abolish the LEAs—they take about one third of the entire schools budget and deliver... what? No one seems to know. They certainly do not add value to a child's education—remove them and free up the money for the schools.

Then comes the abolition of the National Pay Deal for teachers. It is insane that a teacher in the wilds of Yorkshire can command the same salary as a teacher in vastly more expensive areas. For the same reason, automatic pay rises based on length of service must be abolished. These measures would also allow Head Teachers to pay good teachers more money, thus providing incentives to be... well, a good teacher—and attract better calibre people into the profession.

Having done that, Cameron should introduce a voucher system and remove of catchment areas—this will allow parents to elect to get children into the school of their choice. In terms of pure electoral strategy, this would prove popular amongst the working class who cannot afford to buy large houses in nice neighbourhoods simply to get their child into the local Good School's catchment area.

The next crucial step is to allow schools to make a profit, and to be operated by anyone. There may need to be safeguards in place to stop rapacious property developers, etc., e.g. any school so transferred must be operated as a school.

Finally, the National Curriculum should be abolished—or, at the very least, slimmed down to include reading, writing and basic arithmetic only. (This would provide the impetus to start making inroads into the abolition of Examination Authorities—but we'll leave that particular topic for another post...)

All of these would free the provision of education from the dead hand of the state, and of the unions; schools would be forced to compete against each other for pupils, and they would be able to teach as they saw fit.

So, in summary, David Cameron and His Merry Men need to make schools more free and more responsive to the market. So, does today's announcement about better teaching—reproduced, and for some inexplicable reason, praised by Iain Dale—do that?

No, of course it fucking doesn't.

Nope, what David Cameron wants to do is to make it more difficult for people to get into teaching. Worse, he wants to base the suitability of potential teachers on the basis of how many pieces of paper they have to their names.

The result will be an even greater shortage of teachers than there currently is, and thus it will be even harder to sack bad teachers because there will be no one to replace them with, you fucking moron.

And besides, just as having ten billion A*s does not make you a good doctor, nor does having a 2:1 make you a good teacher. It's about more than academic prowess, for crying out loud.

Perhaps, at this point, I should hand over to the lovely Bella who—being a teacher—has some insights that the Massively-Foreheaded Cunt™ might care to take on board.

Anyway. This is all just to reiterate my point: restricting teacher training to people with good degrees will simply worsen the teacher shortage, because most academically successful people (‘best brains’) don’t want to become teachers. It’s an unattractive profession to people who value creativity, resourcefulness, and freedom to innovate. And even if the best brains did become teachers, there’s no guarantee they’d be good. Many academically gifted people have trouble communicating the subject of their expertise at a level that is accessible to schoolchildren anyway; and probably the core skill involved in teaching is being able to synthesise patiently, to simplify complex ideas, to keep what you’re saying on a level kids can understand and in a way they can tune into.

Finally, I will say this. I teach Latin. I am not an expert in the subject, nor do I have a degree in it, nor do I have the faintest clue where my American university degree would fall on the degree-class scale used in the UK. I do not have a teaching qualification. And yet every time I apply for a teaching position, the school falls all over itself to hire me and to pay me well above the going rate for my services. I can’t be the only teacher like that. David Cameron’s plans will, by and large, make it harder for people like me to get teaching jobs. And for what? So that a bunch of smarty-pants graduates with 2:2s or better can have a ‘high-prestige’ career.

Camerhoon, school is not about teachers. It’s about children. And anyone who wants to teach, and can demonstrate that they do it well, should be encouraged to do so, whether they have fancy papers to qualify them or not, and whether they have the biggest brain in Britain or just a mediocre brain that happens to be full of passion and love of learning and dedication to showing kids how amazing the world they live in is.

Quite—it's really worth reading the whole of the wife's post. And this is an attitude that I am sure that Miss Snuffleupagus would also embrace (memo to Cameron: she too is a teacher, and she too cares about the children. Perhaps you should try treading her blog, you fucking Hoon).

What gets my goat about this is that Cameron has pinched my line: I had a good education and, knowing what a good education looks like—as well as the benefits that it brings—I would like to ensure that everyone gets that chance.

Unfortunately, my fat-headed fellow OE and party leader completely misses the point—again. Call Me Dave keeps banging on about making teaching "unashamedly elitist": no, you fuckwit—we need to make education unashamedly elitist. What matters is the quality of the education, the quality of the children coming out—not the quality of the teachers going in.

And having a First in Biochemistry does not necessarily make you a good teacher. Look, you idiot, you even admit that yourself!

Everyone remembers a teacher that made a difference – who through sheer force of personality and infectious enthusiasm sparked an interest, instilled a love of learning and set a life on its course. And the evidence backs that up.

Yes! Do you see? Do you see, Dave? Those teachers made a difference "through sheer force of personality and infectious enthusiasm", not because they had a fucking 2:1 in Gobshite Studies.

For fuck's sake, you are a product of the private school system—a system which, unlike the state one, does not insist that teachers have any kind of teaching qualification: don't you think that there might be some sort of a link there?

Yes, there are other issues—private schools can set teachers' salaries, can set their fees, can (to a large extent) control their own curriculum, and a myriad other things—but encouraging those who want to teach, rather than merely taking those who can think of nothing better to do, is a big reason for the success of the private sector.

The steps that I laid out above would go a good long way towards ensuring that every child in this country can get, at the very least, a decent education—if not an excellent one.

All that your measures will achieve is a colossal shortage of teachers and more highly qualified cohorts of crap.

Labels: education, idiocy, patronising fuckwits, pompous demagogues, really astonishing stupidity, staggering incompetence

There is a quite extraordinary leader in The Grauniad today—how can one take seriously a major newspaper that publishes this kind of twaddle?

Politicians want us to believe that it is possible to make better-off people richer without making poor people poorer.

Look, you fucking moron, economics is not a zero sum game: there isn't a finite amount of wealth in this country, that just gets shared around. The wealth increases: and we measure it using something called GDP—the value added to the economy (usually over a year). In Britain's case, this value added comes to roughly £1.5 trillion every year.

Or, let's use Timmy's illustration...

Just as one example. Way back when, around the time of the start of the Industrial Revolution, the gini (a measure of the inequality of the society) was about 0.50 for the UK.

The unchanged gini (ie, before we consider the effects of the tax and benefits system) for the UK now is about 0.50.

Are the rich better off now than they were in 1750? I think the answer to that is obviously yes. Are the poor better off now than they were in 1750? I think the answer to that is similarly and equally obviously yes.

So, we’ve got unchanged inequality of market incomes over the 259 years, the better-off are better-off (umm, obviously, making adjustments for the fact that no one at all is 259 years old) and the poor are not poorer.

It is therefore possible to make the better-off better-off without making the poor people poorer.

The mechanism is called economic growth.

So, that's a colossal economics Fail in the Grauniad leader.

Fucking hellski.

Labels: economy, really astonishing stupidity, staggering incompetence, whoops

As someone pointed out on the last post, booze consumption in this country is slightly over-egged. Luckily, John B has looked at a report on the whole situation.

The BBC has an article based on an interesting House of Commons report on alcohol consumption… well, more accurately, it’s a very bad report on alcohol consumption with some interesting data.

The data shows that, before the global descent into miserable puritanism around World War I that led to prohibition in the US and draconian licensing rules in the UK, alcohol consumption was around its current level.

It then spiked after the war ended, fell during the Depression, rose slightly during the mid-late 1930s and WWII, fell in the austerity period, and then rose fairly consistently from 1950 onwards—accelerating slightly since 1995 due to increased wine consumption. We’re now at about 9 litres of pure alcohol per head per year, compared to 11 litres in 1900.

The obvious conclusion to draw is that, with miserable busybodies out of the equation, 10ish litres per head is the natural level that Brits want to drink, that this is all well and good, and that the puritans should be deported to America on pain of pain, as we did in the good old days.

The House of Commons report instead draws the conclusion that OMG FFS AAAGH the sky is falling. Particular stupidity lies in:

Ten million adults drink more than the recommended limits and between them knock back 75% of all alcohol consumed in the country. More than two-and-a-half million adults (8% of men and 6% of women) drink above the higher-risk levels – more than double the government’s daily guidelines.

… but we know that the daily and weekly guidelines are based on *nothing at all*. And we know that, on aggregate, the only people who show a greater risk of mortality or morbidity from alcohol than teetotallers are those who drink more than 30 units a week, which is equivalent to 17 litres of pure alcohol a year. So we can crank up our national drinking by another 70% before we need to start worrying about health impacts.

Exactly. I hope that the above has cleared up this issue.

Please note that none of this is going to stop the temperance crusaders from attempting to make booze a lot more expensive with the aim, eventually, of banning it.

And we all know what a success banning alcohol and other drugs has been. I, for one, welcome our new Puritan overlords and will happily toil soberly in the brave new Utopia that our lords and masters are building for us—whether we like it or not...

Labels: blimey a blogger actually doing some research, drinking, drugs, rationing, really astonishing stupidity, thieving bastards

The New Scientist: starting to wake up...?

The New Scientist is often an interesting read, but the magazine's slavish devotion to the climate change religion has put me off buying it on a number of occasions. I also find that some people's faith in what is, in the end, a bunch of hacks recycling scientific press releases somewhat worrying, e.g. @dnotice: "... but articles in @newscientist are based on peer-rev'd articles...".

Now, it seems, The New Scientist hacks are horrified to find that maybe the AGW alarmist sources aren't quite as honest—or, indeed, "peer-reviewed"—as that magazine's naive hacks might have hoped. [Emphasis mine.]

Sifting climate facts from speculation

It was a dramatic declaration: glaciers across much of the Himalayas may be gone by 2035. When New Scientist heard this comment from a leading Indian glaciologist, we reported it. That was in 1999. The claim later appeared in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent report—and it turns out that our article is the primary published source.

The glaciologist has never submitted what he says was a speculative comment for peer review—and most of his peers strongly dispute it. So how could such speculation have become an IPCC "finding" which has, moreover, recently been defended by the panel's chairman[*]. We are entitled to an explanation, before rumour and doubt compound the damage to the image of climate science already inflicted by the leaked "climategate" emails.

As His Ecclesiastical Eminence points out, maybe The New Scientist might now try looking beyond the press releases...

This sudden burst of inquiry from Britain's premier science magazine is certainly welcome. We've had twenty-odd years of, at best dumb acquiescence and at worst dumber cheerleading. What have the New Scientists been thinking of these last two decades?

We are entitled to an explanation too.

Indeed.

Perhaps that is why a former editor of The New Scientist gave Bishop Hill's forthcoming book—The Hockey Stick Illusion—such a good review.

This is a thriller about codebreaking—not Napoleon's or Hitler's codes, but computer codes that generated a false signal to the world about runaway global warming. Like most codebreaking it was painfully slow but Montford keeps the drama pacy as the years pass, while he explains the intricacies in the plainest possible language. By military codebreaking, the likes of Scovell and Turing helped to change the course of history, and McIntyre and McKitrick should soon do the same, when the statistical fudges that misled the politicians become more widely known.

Nigel Calder
Former editor, New Scientist
co-author, The Chilling Stars

Over the last few years, The New Scientist's unquestioning acceptance of catastrophic AGW has formed the basis of belief for many of its readers: the events that are about to unfold over the next few years, when juxtaposed with that magazine's near-religious zeal, will do extraordinary damage to The New Scientist's reputation.

Good.

None of us should accept even scientists' views unquestioningly—something that the CRU documents have amply demonstrated—let alone the reportage of a bunch of hacks posing as scientists.

* That chairman being, of course, multimillionaire businessman and all round dodgy, compromised fucker, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

Labels: ClimateGate, corruption, CRU emails, media, really astonishing stupidity, science, wild speculation

Those who support AGW alarmism always make the appeal to authority when backed into a corner—this goes along the lines of "well, 205,000,000,000,000 climate scientists say that it's happening, so it must be true."

Equally, when someone produces evidence that goes against the grain of AGW, the alarmists' argument goes along the lines of "well, that person isn't a climate scientist: he's a chemist/physicist/biologist/statistician, etc. [delete as appropriate]."

To which, of course, I reply that the first reference to a degree in climatology that I can find is in 2001*, so it's doubtful that any of their heroes are accredited climatologists either.

But what they really mean is that "these guys are scientists: they can think and join together the evidence, y'all.**"

So, courtesy of Bishop Hill, here's how climate scientists really think.

Most of the scientists responsible for creating the delusion still believe global warming is man-made and will be a crisis. We know this from an international survey conducted in 2008 by Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch. They surveyed 373 scientists who work for climate research institutes and appear in the climate journals that are controlled by the now-notorious Climategate gang.

Thirty-five percent responded “very much” when asked the following question: “How convinced are you that most of recent or near future climate change is, or will be, a result of anthropogenic causes?” On a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 being “not at all” and 7 being “very much,” 83 percent answered 5, 6, or 7. Only 1 percent said “not at all” and only 11 percent answered 1, 2, or 3. Answers to the question “How convinced are you that climate change poses a very serious and dangerous threat to humanity?” were similar.

Pretty scary, huh? I mean, all of these scientists are convinced that man-made climate change—not just any old, run-of-the-mill natural climate change: man-made climate change—is going to kill us all.

OK? Have you absorbed that? It's pretty crucial.

"What?" I hear you cry. "Are you changing your mind, Devil?" Hold on, hold on...

However, the Bray and von Storch survey also reveals that very few of these scientists trust climate models—which form the basis of claims that human activity could have a dangerous effect on the global climate. Fewer than 3 or 4 percent said they “strongly agree” that computer models produce reliable predictions of future temperatures, precipitation, or other weather events. More scientists rated climate models “very poor” than “very good” on a long list of important matters, including the ability to model temperatures, precipitation, sea level, and extreme weather events.

Is that an anti-climax? Sorry. It's not meant to be. Let's explain...

The reliability of climate models is important because actual global temperature records show very little warming or changes in long-term weather events — such as the frequency or severity of hurricanes — that could be attributed to human activity.

Computer models are practically the only “proof” that global warming alarmists have to support their theory and forecasts. How can scientists know that global warming is man-made and will be a crisis, while at the same time express deep skepticism towards the computer models that might support such beliefs?

The answer is that they don’t actually “know” global warming is man-made or will be a disaster; they “believe” this to be true.

In other words, these climatologists have answered a survey that illustrates that they are full of shit. Don't believe me? Try answering these questions...

1. Do you believe that man-made global warming is going to kill us all?


2. As a scientist, you will know that the only evidence that man-made global warming is going to kill us all comes from computer climate models.
   Do you believe that climate models are totally shit and not worth the code they are written in (do feel free to answer with reference to the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file)?

If you have answered "yes" to the both of these questions, you are either a moron or a liar. In which case, the only thing that can be verified is that you are a climate scientist.

To win your prize, please enter the actual subject of your degree into the box below.

In the meantime, as we labour under the terrible heat of the midday sun [Is this right?—Ed.], here's news of a paper showing that the proportion of CO₂ in the atmosphere has not risen over the last 150 years.

To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.

In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

Which would rather scupper the proposition that rising temperatures are caused by the rising proportion of CO₂ in the atmosphere over the last 150 years.

It might be prudent to start asking what qualifications these climate scientists actually have: it seems that they cannot have a degree in climatology and they certainly do not seem to have any kind of ability—let alone degree—in anything approaching logical thinking.

I tell you what: let's ask them about the dead people instead...

* If anyone can find me a link to the earliest verified Climatology degree, I'd be grateful.
** Blame my wife.

Labels: climate, CRU emails, disingenuous cunts, environmentalism, fucking stupid little wankstains, really astonishing stupidity

Just to round off the... er... discussion that Sunny Hundal and I were having the other day, Chris Dillow adds his thoughts on the matter—asking whether the concept of "desert" should have any role in distributive justice.

The thing is, two of the most important books on this subject in recent years - Roemer’s Theories of Distributive Justice and Kolm’s Modern Theories of Justice—almost entirely neglect the notions of desert or merit.

There are, I think, two reasons for this.

One is that it’s impossible to tell what any individual really deserves. Do I, for example, deserve to earn more than the average worker? In one sense, no: my work is much less onerous or unpleasant than the average. But on the other hand, this pleasant outcome could be a just reward for years of effort earlier.

I don’t know which it is—or at least, I don‘t if I slough off the self-serving bias!—so I’m blowed if I can judge anyone else’s income. For this reason, I share the Devil’s consternation at the idea that public opinion should adjudicate.

Secondly, it’s possible that none of us deserve anything. This isn’t just the traditional Christian position that we are all miserable sinners. It’s also the Rawlsian one, that the distribution of talents—which include an appetite for hard work—is “arbitrary from a moral point of view.” And of course, none of us “deserves” the enormous good fortune of having been born into a liberal democracy in the late 20th century.

For me, these reasons suffice to disregard “desert” as a macro principle colouring our views about the distribution of income—though we might use it in other contexts, as when we say “he deserved that goal” or “he deserves to go to prison for that.”

This is not, in itself, a particularly leftist position. Intelligent libertarians share it. Hayek was wary of the idea of desert, and Nozick wrote of entitlements, not desert; there’s a difference.

Chris acknowledges that there are differences amongst the rich—though he draws only the easy distinction between the "talented footballer or musician or the innovative entrepreneur" and the "rent-seeking exploiter" (what about plain, old hard work? Or luck, e.g. Lottery winner?)—but opines, correctly, that our tax system probably cannot distinguish the difference between them.

Of course, what would really help to make this distinction is if the state were not so easily able to indulge in policies that lead to rent-seeking through, for instance, establishment of barriers to market entry.

Rent seeking generally implies the extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity, such as by gaining control of land and other pre-existing natural resources, or by imposing burdensome regulations or other government decisions that may affect consumers or businesses.

While there may be few people in modern industrialized countries who do not gain something, directly or indirectly, through some form or another of rent seeking, rent seeking in the aggregate can impose substantial losses on society.

Studies of rent seeking focus on efforts to capture special monopoly privileges such as government regulation of free enterprise competition.

The term "monopoly privilege rent seeking" is an often-used label for the former type of rent seeking. Often-cited examples include a farm lobby that seeks tariff protection or an entertainment lobby that seeks expansion of the scope of copyright. Other rent seeking is held to be associated with efforts to cause a redistribution of wealth by, for example, shifting the government tax burden or government spending allocation.

To a large extent, therefore, rent-seeking is, at best, severely exacerbated by "big government"—which is, itself, generally seen as necessary to achieve social justice.

To sum up, the reality of Sunny's position is that he wishes to achieve "social justice"; to do this requires a big state and income redistribution; both a big state and income redistribution lead to a substantial increase in rent-seeking; rent-seeking leads to a class of people whom Sunny would call "the undeserving rich".

Ironic, don't you think?

And this is the problem with all too many people on the Left, especially in this country: they simply don't understand—or will not accept—that the measures that they advocate will not achieve the endgame that they desire.

This is something that is highlighted by Tim Worstall's comment on Sunny's expansion of his "class war" term.

“Economic populism of the left has deep roots”

Aye, deep roots in stupidity.

This is the point about that leftish economic populism that so enrages people like me. Not that the goal is undesirable (for many of the goals are desirable) but that the methods chosen to reach said goals don’t in fact work. In many cases they are actually counter-productive.

Just as one example, take the taxation of corporate profits. You’ve got the economically illiterate like Polly and R. Murphy shouting that companies must pay “their fair share”. That taxes they don’t pay fall upon the shoulders of the workers.

Then you’ve got the literate like Larry Elliott (well, he is on a good day) and Vince Cable pointing out that companies don’t pay tax: people do. The tax incidence argument.

Now, when you take on board that (not very surprising and long known point about incidence) you start to realise that if you want both an ongoing increase in living standards and also a more progressive tax and benefit system then you have to do what the Nordic countries do. You want lower taxes on corporate profits and capital in general than we have now. Sure, you can also have higher income taxes, as they do (and to get the money you really need for a large redistributive State you need higher consumption taxes, VAT, as well).

Now note that I’m not a supporter of this sort of social democracy. But that isn’t my point here. It’s that if you do desire this then it would help if you took on board how those places actually do work.

Rather than simply appealing to the populist instincts….make the companies pay!

That’s what annoys: this economic populism ends up not delivering the results that are promised.

Not only does this "economic populism" not deliver the results desired, but it also delivers those that are not—so-called "unintended consequences", such as the rent-seeking that leads to Sunny's "undeserving rich".

And despite a century of fruitless tinkering—and, in many places, outright dictatorship—many on the Left still won't accept that attempts to fix these unintended consequences through yet more laws and regulations will simply lead to more unintended consequences and undesirable outcomes.

I think that it might be a form of insanity.

Labels: economy, general hilarity, good deeds, left-baiting, mischief-making, really astonishing stupidity, socialism, statements of the blindingly obvious

Via Iain Dale's round-up of "new" blogs, I stumbled across Tory Tavern. This is yet another blog written in the third person—presumably attempting to emulate the success of Tory Bear or Guido^*.

Most of the Tory Landlord's writing is the usual run-of-the-mill Tory fayre, i.e. not an awful lot to say and what is said is fairly arrogantly mundane. However, this post on electoral reform—praising Tom Harris's vicious and sinister bollocks about the BNP being elected to the House of Lords^**—contained this stunningly naive paragraph.

Tom favours a 100% appointed upper house – the landlord agrees entirely.

That is because the landlord is a fucking moron.

Hereditary peers should, of course, be no more – they have no part to play in a modern political system.

Um... Why? Tell you what, o landlord, how about you back up your assertions with some reasoning rather than taking it for granted that everyone agrees with your views? Still, let us take your stupid opinion as read and move on, shall we...?

But appointed lords (the landlord assumes they will still be called Lords. ‘Senators’ is very American.) are the best of both worlds – they are there by merit (as opposed to fortune at birth) but also need not fear an electoral backlash if they make decisions that are ‘right for society’ but perhaps unpopular in the short-term.

Aaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaahaha! Hahahaha! Haha! Ha! Fuck me, but that's hilarious!

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the Tory Landlord reckons that appointed lords are "there by merit"! That's brilliant—tell me another!

You haven't got one? Oh...

Well, in that case, let me spell it out for you: the appointed lords are not there on merit—they are appointed on the basis of fat wads of cash—and other favours—given to the ruling politicians.

An appointed House of Lords would be filled with the dregs of humanity—people so disgusting, duplicitous and self-loathing that they lowered themselves to fawn over politicians.

Further, since it is the ruling parties who get to choose the Lords, that would forever shut out the smaller parties and entrench the Big Three's as the permanent arbiters of our future.

Now, the Tory Landlord might like the idea of that, since his pointless, feckless, corrupt, authoritarian, economically-illiterate, piece-of-shit party would be one of those doing the choosing but it most certainly would not be good for democracy, for the "modern political system" that the Landlord professes such keenness for, or for the roughly 70% of people in this country who did not vote for the Big Three at the last general election.

But then—like the politicos that he worships—the Tory Landlord has no actual interest in what the people of this country might want: no, they are simply sheep to be herded and milked so that fuckwits like the landlord and his lickspittle masters can continue to keep themselves in subsidised beer.

^* Your humble Devil rarely refers to himself in the third person, and I almost never do it consistently throughout a post.

^** Harris's argument is that an elected House of Lords would mean that, in one way or another, the BNP would have some representation in government. My immediate reaction is "yeah. And. So. What?" Harris's reaction is that even the possibility of the BNP getting a representative in the Lords is so repugnant that such a change should never be contemplated.

This is because Tom Harris is a hysterical old woman who is simultaneously too pig-ignorant to realise that his party's policies are pretty close to those of the BNP—and, in many cases, actually rather worse.

Labels: blogging, elections, fucking stupid little wankstains, general hilarity, NuLabour, pompous demagogues, really astonishing stupidity, Tories