A good friend of mine and fellow blogger, Andrew Ian Dodge, who is also an occasional commenter here, writes about his father, who died this week after an illness. Rest in peace.
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In the current crisis, there is a lot of wisdom in the idea that the best thing for politicians and their appointed central bankers right now is to do absolutely nothing. Nada, zip, the square root of zero. To do nothing would be the gutsiest option of all. Of course, Mr “Hope and Change” Obama is unlikely to show that sort of courage, nor will Gordon Brown or, heaven help us, David Cameron. I actually have a theory, that the amount of time that a politician talks about courage, audacity, vision, etc, is inversely related to the actual possession of those qualities. Not even Mrs Thatcher went on about her courage all the time: the most we ever got was the “resolute approach”. And she delivered by taking genuinely brave stands on issues in the teeth of furious opposition from the chattering classes and the media establishments of the time. And in terms of telling folk what they did not want to hear and sticking to a tough policy, politicians such as former UK finance minister Geoffrey Howe in the early 1980s, wiped the floor with today’s lot. February 13th, 2009 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
 It is the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. I came across this powerfully argued article stating what a great man he was. I strongly recommend it, particularly as it wrestles directly with the accusation, made by some writers in the libertarian camp, that Lincoln was some sort of demon. The author, David Mayer, argues that with some exceptions, the accusations made against Lincoln were and are unjustified. Update: Well that was a bracing set of mostly hostile responses about Lincoln! A question that I would put to those who claim that the secessionists were justified and Lincoln was a monster is why are some libertarians so willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a group of men who kept slaves and defended the practice? Several commenters argue that slavery was never what the civil war was about, but that is a bit like saying that the English Civil War was never about religion. Plainly it was a factor. Not necessarily as big as the Unionist defenders always claimed, but a factor nonetheless. February 12th, 2009 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
“We are ruled by people who have achieved the remarkable distinction of being both dull and frivolous.” Theodore Dalrymple. The problem is the idea that we need “rulers” at all. February 10th, 2009 | 74 comments - (Comments are closed)
Over at Devil’s Kitchen, the blogger subjects Guardian columnist and socialist Polly Toynbee to a thorough take-down. One thing that struck me about this piece is how obviously rattled advocates of Big Government now are by the activities of the Taxpayers’ Alliance. The TPA has been one of the most effective organisations in recent years for pointing to the waste of public sector spending and highlighting where taxpayers’ money ends up. It is, of course, a statement on the still-feeble nature of the Tory opposition that this sort of work is not being done by members of the opposition in Parliament. So the TPA has filled a void. It is now drawing the rage of the left that sees power slipping away. In the case of any columnist for the Guardian, of course, the rage is matched by economic fear: the fear that in any possible cull of public sector spending, many of the public jobs that are advertised in the Guardian’s pages will disappear, causing a mighty blow to the Guardian’s finances, not to mention a serious reduction in Labour’s client class. Meanwhile, the Guardian has been running a noisy campaign against so-called tax havens – which on some definitions are just places that operate low or no taxes. The horror. And yet the Guardian is structured within a highly tax efficient trust, meaning that its tax bills are low. How conveeenient, as they used to say on Saturday Night Live. February 10th, 2009 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you want evidence of management ruthlessness, never mind Wall Street, the City or for that matter, politics, then check out the English Premier League. Scolari, the Gene Hackman lookalike who was once the manager of a World Cup winning side with Brazil, no less, has been sacked as manager of Chelsea by its Russian owner. Chelsea are only a few points adrift of Manchester United, the leaders. Tony Adams has been fired as manager of Portsmouth, which is near the bottom end of the table. A few weeks ago, Paul Ince, a former midfielder with Manchester United and West Ham, was sacked from his job. At Tottenham, they have been through about three managers in as many years. The same merry-go-round operates at such febrile clubs as Manchester City, Newcastle, Bolton or West Ham. In the latter case, you can bet the cries will go up that its current, relatively new manager, Zola, should be headed for Chelsea, where he is rightly adored as a legend. Against all this, it seems mildly incredible that Arsene Wenger has lasted so long at Arsenal, and of course that Sir Alex Ferguson has reigned for more than two decades at Manchester United. It is as if the credit crunch has barely begun to make itself felt at the world of English football. Some time ago I wrote about the wrangles between players and clubs over contracts. As far as the sackings of managers go, the world of football looks more cut-throat than ever. February 9th, 2009 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Last night I heard an argument used in relation to the climate change argument and Man’s alleged role in driving it, that went along the following lines: We have a responsibility to ensuing generations, maybe even those around 1,000 years or so hence, which means we should do X or Y to curb CO2 emissions etc to ensure that these future generations’ lives are not blighted. Now of course nothing is more likely to get your humble blogger annoyed than the “Do it for the children” line. The precautionary principle: do nothing if you cannot prove it will not cause harm – would have killed the Industrial Revolution at birth, prevented any life-saving drug from having been brought to market, been used to shut down scientific speculation, space-faring, advanced dental surgery, modern medicine, the whole 9 yards of human endeavour. And the problem with the argument that says “We have a responsibility to generations yet unborn” is that it demands a great deal. How on earth can I or others evaluate the proper limits or scope of such a responsibility? What about the Law of Unintended Consequences? For instance, if we adopt the PP, and we severely curtail the pace of industrial development, scientific advance or economic growth, will we not bring about disastrous consequences for our children, grand-children and so on? In fact, if folk want to bring up the issue of “Do it for the kids”, I tend to respond that if we are to take this sort of multi-generational responsibility, then we should go for as much freedom and growth as possible, and not the other way around. Another way to think about this is from the position of scarcity, both in terms of time and resources. I only have so much time in my life to make the sort of adjustments that I might hope to benefit my kids, or my grandkids, or whatever. I also only have so many resources at my disposal. And with that in mind, I think that governments – which after all are only collections of persons – have only fixed resources and time at their disposal too, and that there are major tradeoffs to be considered in stifling a technology A to benefit a technology B. Simply repeating that we “owe it to our children” does not take us very far. All too often, in fact, the line about protecting future generations can easily descend into a form of argument by intimidation, a sort of moral bullying. When it comes to bad arguments used in conversations on topics like this, Jamie Whyte’s gem of a book repays a lot of reading for avoiding pitfalls. Of course, as a final point, the “Do it for the kids” argument frequently comes from those advocates of greater state controls who are blind to the damage that the state does, sometimes deliberately, to the institution of the family. The ironies abound. February 7th, 2009 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is a collection of good articles attacking the massive US stimulus plan. Fair play to Andrew Sullivan for linking to them. There’s hope for him yet. February 6th, 2009 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
The blogger Slugger O’Toole expresses a very sensible view, in my opinion, about the recent case of a NHS nurse who was disciplined for offering to pray for a patient. I am all in favour of the separation of church and state, but then would reflect that this case shows just what happens when hospitals are part of the state and not part of the non-state sector, where they can be run by secular or religious groups without such issues arising. If a hospital is run by a church or has an endowment froma religiously-minded gazillionaire, and staff want to pray with its patients and the patients are okay with that, what exactly is the problem? Many UK hospitals, as their names often suggest – such as St Thomas’s Hospital in London – were founded by churches and religious orders. For all that I am not a religious person, I can greatly admire the spirit of compassion that motivated many religious believers to work in or endow hospitals with funds. Many of Britain’s greatest hospitals were started by churches and their history goes back hundreds of years. February 6th, 2009 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
“…when things go wrong, we seek bogeymen rather than face up to our own shortcomings. We expect instant, painless solutions to self-inflicted problems. Britain’s booze culture is blamed on the slick advertisements of drinks companies and the cut-price tactics of supermarkets. Our obesity epidemic is the fault of junk-food outlets and confectionery suppliers. And our personal indebtedness, the highest it has ever been, is the result of a pernicious campaign by greedy banks to enslave their customers. Oh yes, and the crash was caused by beastly Americans.” Jeff Randall, economics columnist and broadcaster. February 6th, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Roger Thornhill, an occasional commenter here who also has his own blog, asks what is all the fuss about a foreign firm in the UK hiring foreign workers? He points out that if a UK firm operating in say, Germany, were to bring over some of its own staff, it might cause outrage among the locals, but then UK unions would protest at their members being banned from working abroad. The truth is that when Gordon Brown made his comment, “British jobs for British workers”, he stoked the flames of a protectionist labour force doctrine that is now threatening to get out of hand. The disgrace of it is that even when the UK economy was growing relatively strongly, millions of able-bodied UK adults were not working and living off benefits. The tax, benefit and education system conspire to keep large numbers of the indigenous population out of the workforce. So naturally, firms turn to other sources of labour if they feel they can get a better deal. In these tough times I feel sympathy for skilled workers who have felt themselves to be frozen out by a foreign employer doing business in the UK, but the brutal fact has to be faced that as far as many employers are concerned, some of the locals are just not as employable as foreigners. It is a terrible indictment of what has happened to the UK labour market under this administration. Untangling the mess is, or should be, a priority lest the situation fans the flames of protectionism, with disastrous consequences. Update: The always cool-headed Chris Dillow puts up a feast of links explaining the impact of such foreign labour on local markets. February 5th, 2009 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is excellent. Brew up a coffee, give yourself a break, and read the whole thing. February 4th, 2009 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
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