Opt-out organ donation expands the state’s power over the individual. There may be a shortage of donors, and doing more to encourage people to sign up is no bad thing. But a person should never have to opt out of state control. It is individual rights and choice that should always be the default position.
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It’s as if the Conservative Party no longer believes in itself. Or better still, it no longer knows what there is to believe in. No market-based economics; no law-and-order ideal; no sense of tradition. And it is this ideological lack and its accompaniment — complete political incoherence — that fuel the open, petty infighting we have witnessed over the past few months, with every over-promoted non-entity loyally lining up behind May, knife in hand. After all, who can blame them? In the modern Tory Party, there’s nothing – no idea, no principle – to be loyal to, apart from one’s own career. Hence the endless interventions from foreign secretary and leader-always-in-waiting Boris Johnson. As the Stupid Party is all that stands between us and the Evil Party, the Tories desperately need to get rid of Theresa May, a woman who should not be a member of the party, let alone leading it. This needs to happen without delay. October 6th, 2017 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Frances Ryan’s Guardian article, “Period poverty is leaving women such as Kerry isolated and ashamed” started off with a call for sympathy which I can answer. It described how a woman called Kerry, bringing up three children (two of them autistic) alone and unwaged, sometimes found herself without even £2 for a box of tampons, and could not bring herself to ask the people at the food bank for them. That is sad. Let us be aware that women can find themselves in this position, and help them in a sensitive way. Then it got stupid.
The “pads and tampons” link takes you to that well known scientific journal, the Huffington Post. It claimed that respondents to a survey (I saw no mention of who carried it out or how the sample was selected) on average spent the following “on different areas relating to their period”: · Pads/tampons/panty-liners/menstrual cups – £13 · New underwear (due to spillages) -£8 · Pain relief – £4.50 · Chocolate/sweets/crisps – £8.50 · Other (magazines/toiletries/DVDs etc.) – £7 Honestly, I could have filled up the remainder of this post without moving my finger from the ? key. “Research shows”?? Chocolates?????? Yeah, I do kinda see that a new DVD, a glossy magazine and a box of choccies can be a comfort when suffering from period pain, but really, we are not talking about desperately needed sanitary essentials here. I also fail to see exactly why one needs new underwear every time there is a spillage. Every time and every month? I mean, sorry to be icky, but things can be washed. Even if there is a substantial group of women who find it unbearable to do anything other than bin bloodstained underwear (heaven knows how they toilet train their kids) they don’t have to spend £8. Tesco sells four pairs of knickers for £4.50. That’s just over a quid a pair. While we are at Tesco’s, let us look at some of those other prices. Pain relief £4? Pain relief thirty pence, actually. Pads/tampons/panty-liners/menstrual cups £13? A “Feminesse” menstrual cup was fairly pricy at £17.10, but the whole point is that it is reusable and lasts for years. When it came to the tampons and pads or towels most women use, and for which Tesco sell their own-brand products, the prices were as follows: Tesco regular tampons 20-pack: 95p. (A pack of twenty is usually enough for one period.) Tesco super tampons 20-pack: also 95p. Maxi regular sanitary towels 10-pack: 23p. Twenty-three pence. Cheap as chips, as the saying goes. Cheaper. Tesco is not uniquely benevolent. The other major supermarkets and chains like Superdrug are much the same, or even cheaper. Frances Ryan is supposed to be the Guardian‘s expert on the deprived, the disabled, those failed by the system. I am not one to demand that politicians or journalists know the price of everything in a shopping basket, but you would think she of all people would have looked at that claim of £13 per month as an average for sanitary products and £4.50 for pain relief, and thought, that’s obviously wrong. Never mind. The average prices claimed for period products in some silly survey and silly Guardian writers believing them are not my point; the actual prices in the most widely used supermarkets are. Period poverty is not worth bothering about. Capitalism has already solved it. When forty sanitary pads can already be purchased for a pound, the money the government would have to spend to make them widely available for free is wasted. Worse than wasted; the salaries of umpteen Period Poverty Support Workers will come out of budgets that could – conceivably – have been used to help the poor. Let me put it another way: someone who cannot afford to pay for sanitary towels also cannot afford food. They do need help, urgently. However passing laws and setting up programmes to supply only that small fraction of the help they need that relates to a couple of packs of tampons is incredibly inefficient. If women in crisis need to be given sanitary products, don’t campaign for the government to launch an initiative, take the initiative yourself. There are charities who specialise in exactly that form of aid and will accept donations in kind or in cash. As a matter of fact although most of the stories I have read on this subject, including the BBC link from Ryan’s article, have headlines that talk as if the problem is period poverty, when I read the stories below the headlines, the real problem far more often seems to be period ignorance or period embarrassment. But the steps needed to help women and girls with these issues do not generate column inches for journalists, photo opportunities for politicians, or outrage for activists. October 5th, 2017 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Guardian‘s Owen Jones asked the following question on Twitter:
October 4th, 2017 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
The satire writes itself these days. For the past 16 months, ever since voters said No to the EU, the supposed liberal set has been signalling its virtue over migrant workers. These Remainer types have filled newspaper columns and dinner-party chatter with sad talk about foreigners losing the right to travel to and work in Britain. Yet now these same people have chortled as London mayor Sadiq Khan and his pen-pushers at Transport for London (TfL) have refused to renew Uber’s licence in the capital. Which means 30,000 people will lose work. Many of them migrants. They cry over migrant workers one day, and laugh as they lose their livelihoods the next. September 25th, 2017 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
The #SaveYourUber petition has, as of 10:45 pm in London, attracted 600,000+ names, and one of them is mine. Of course the best way to save Uber is to get rid of Sadiq Khan and make the issue politically radioactive. September 23rd, 2017 | 52 comments - (Comments are closed)
This may seem a rather strange proposition, but in terms of ‘housekeeping’, there are various aspects to running a ‘household’, and I am comparing the financial discipline and general acumen of the First Lord of the Treasury (aka Mrs May) making the analogy to running the national ‘house’ to the practical but non-monetary skills of a badger, or rather, some badgers local to me. The other day I found a badgers’ latrine on my morning walk, it was rather obvious, a ‘not-quite steaming’ pile and I immediately thought of the Prime Minister. I was struck by how careful the badger is to look after his household (or rather, his sett) and not to dump in it, instead using a carefully-dug latrine. This one was unusual in that it was very close to the roadside and highly visible.  Whereas it seems that the Prime Minister is quite happy to dump on the country a €20,000,000,000 bill for the privilege of leaving the EU and letting the UK run a trade deficit with them, and also dump a load of regulations on the UK. If you are going to make a payment, at the bloody least make it in Sterling, so the Bank of England can QE the money out of thin air (if this has to be done at all, which it doesn’t) and they can spend their nice pounds rather than HMG buy Euros. The good folk at Lawyers for Britain have debunked the case for any payment to be made for leaving. How about telling the EU that if your income falls, you cut costs, so that there are fewer than 10,000 in the EU earning more than the UK’s Prime Minister (which ought not to be an ‘office of profit’ under the Crown anyway). The plan to graft into UK law all EU Regulations has at least the attraction of providing certainty, but why not plan a bonfire ‘On Day 1‘ to quote the Donald (yeah, it still hasn’t happened). So if I have to choose between the two?
Having had to negotiate with a badger at 3 am one winter morning to get him to leave my garden, in my pyjamas and armed with only a garden fork for self-defence (this is England), I can testify that they do not give up a position easily, but my bluff worked. To be fair to Mrs May, the badger seems to know instinctively not to foul its home, however, this is a skill that some of our politicians have yet to learn, and they are so very busy doing the opposite, it may take some time for them to lose their habits, but why? Photo credits: Per Wikipedia, The Rt. Hon. T May MP, per Controller of HMSO – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Badgerhero. September 22nd, 2017 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
Patrick Crozier has written his own thoughts on this just now, but I have some thoughts of my own. I cannot remember being so angry about a decision out of London for some time. Brian Micklethwait and others on this blog have written in the past about why Uber is such a big deal in how the case for capitalism and the free market can be made. And I have already seen evidence from people who are on the Left side of the spectrum that they are angry about this ban, in ways that are not always intellectually consistent, but also useful in showing how this could be a teachable moment about free enterprise. Consider that tens of thousands of Uber drivers will no longer be able to earn a living in this way; sure, some of them will work for other taxi firms as they try to fill the gap that is left, but that will take a certain amount of time. Established taxi firms such as Addison Lee are no doubt delighted. Car leasing firms will see drivers sell up, causing goodness-knows what troubles. Besides the drivers, there are also all those software and support service people who will be made redundant. Many of them are young and may not be all that political; some may even be quite leftist. What will they think of Labour now, I wonder? All those bearded hipsters dreaming of creating clever businesses have been told, in essence, to fuck off unless you do something that doesn’t challenge anyone too much. Great. For all that Mr Khan likes to strike poses as being more supposedly electable than Jeremy Corbyn, he shows that under all the different images, he is an advocate of rent-seeking socialism, happy to play to whatever unionised groups are around. He talks endlessly about the need for “more resources”, and has been remarkably useless as far as I can see in terms of making London safer overall. In fact, one safety casualty of banning Uber and similar entities is that it will once again be quite difficult at times for people to get a taxi, such as late at night and in bad weather, increasing the risks to people in certain situations. The Law of Unintended Consequences. Another effect of this ban is the message it broadcasts to the wider world and those of business: make sure you pay politicians lots of money and creep up to them, otherwise we could find fault and ban you. If you disrupt unionised, regulated business models you are unwelcome, and will be punished. And the kicker is that the current mayor is a Remainer, a man who has, fatuously, claimed that our exit from the Single Market is a disaster because of the loss of trading opportunities. Well, it appears that his enthusiasm for such things is limited when practical, actual cases of competition arise. Anyway, here is a press statement from the Institute of Economic Affairs, which neatly summarises the issues. It comes from Mark Littlewood, Director General at the IEA: “Transport for London’s decision to not renew Uber’s license strikes a huge blow to competition and innovation within London’s transport market. If this ruling is upheld, it will ruin flexible working opportunities for the 40,000 city drivers who use the app – many for their livelihood, and many to top-up low wages. “The ruling also inconveniences the 3.5 million Londoners who regularly use the service, and reasserts the dominance of the city’s taxi cartel, which only the wealthiest residents can afford to use with any sense of frequency. “Apps like Uber have a large role to play in our increasingly dynamic economy, and it is a mistake to cling onto out-dated views of working arrangements. Uber is not an ’employer’ – it is simply a platform that allows drivers and customers to meet and trade under a specific set of rules. “Banning Uber, and clamping down on the Gig Economy more generally, is a restriction upon freedom of choice, both for Uber’s drivers and passengers. In doing so, Transport for London has privileged the views of a powerful minority who wish to restrict consumer choice over the will of millions of ordinary Londoners.” “Today’s decision is an assault on drivers and customers alike, and a victory for protectionism.” September 22nd, 2017 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
Fuckers. Lots of people – including some Uber supporters – saying stupid things. Talking of which, I see Sargon of Akkad – he of This Week in Stupid – has been “unpublished” on Facebook. What a shit day. September 22nd, 2017 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
On Monday I watched (via the wonders of television) the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mrs May, visiting the Prime Minister of Canada. Mrs May declared that what she had in common with the Prime Minister of Canada (the “shared values” between the United Kingdom and Canada) were a belief in the use of the power of international government to “empower women” (i.e. stupid Frankfurt School of Marxism stuff – which Mrs May is too ignorant to know is from the Frankfurt School of Marxism), and the desire to work with internet companies to stamp out “hateful” and “extreme” “opinions” – in short the same Fascist (and I mean the word “Fascist” literally – government getting private companies to help crush dissent) agenda Mrs May has had since she was Home Secretary. And if anyone things the target of this censorship campaign will be Islam they are a fool – the target is far more likely to be (indeed already is) people who OPPOSE Islam, which Mrs May (like the demented Prime Minister of Canada) thinks is a “religion of peace”, “distorted” by a few “extremists”. The one advantage of having Mrs May (this tin pot Fascist – who also takes on board Cultural Marxism stuff without even knowing what it is) as the unelected Leader of the Conservative Party was that, for some bizarre reason, she was supposed to be popular with the voters – the General Election exposed that spin as a lie, a massive lie. Mrs May barely held off the Marxist Labour Party (John McDonnell and co). and it is not astonishing that she failed so badly – as the Conservative Party Manifesto language exposed the fact that Mrs May has nothing but hatred and contempt for people who actually believe in LIBERTY. The lady, and her “bring the country together” allies, offered no alternative vision to Mr Jeremy Corbyn, just mental confusion and (to use her own favourite word) a “nasty” manner. Mr Corbyn, although I hate to admit it, has some personal charm – Mrs May has none, the person comes over as lecturing, arrogant, patronising and (above all) ignorant. Most ordinary voters can not stand the sight or sound of Mrs May – she sucks all the energy out of a room leaving everyone in despair at her failure to inspire them. I despise this person, Mrs May, and yet I am committed (by party loyalty) to not denounce her in public – although, as I am a nobody, it would not matter if I did denounce her – it would only harm me to do so, not her. Perhaps I am as a big a hypocrite as Mrs May herself – who uses the Times newspaper to attack her own Foreign Secretary for the terrible crime of saying we should stop giving the European Union money when we leave it. September 19th, 2017 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
Commenting on the case, Sue Hemming, head of the CPS’s special crime and counterterrorism division, said: ‘People should not assume they can hide on social media when stirring up hatred and violence.’ Evidently, they cannot. But to what end? What is the benefit to society of banning the expression of bad and hateful ideas? Surely we want these ideas out in the open so that we can combat them with better ideas and better arguments. Censorship won’t change anyone’s mind. September 17th, 2017 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some of you know that I work in the Parson’s Green area of Fulham, west London, which is mainly an affluent area from where people commute into the City and other parts of London. It has a significant population of people from places such as France, and many of the cafes around here might as well be in Paris or Lyons. Well, any such activity will not be happening today; there has been an attempted bomb explosion, so it appears, on a Tube train in the station. It looks as if the device did not fully detonate – but even so, people were burned, and several injured in the scramble to get out of the train. A suspect is, according to reports, on the run and a manhunt is under way. I am safe, and my colleagues are safe. But I cannot help thinking that in the first six months of 2017, 34 people have been killed in terrorist incidents. We are in danger of treating these horrors as some sort of normal, like rainy weather in August in the UK, yobbish footballers or naff UK television sitcoms. And that is the appalling thing. In 2005, I was on a Tube train on my way to the Guildhall in London, and I got off the train about 10 minutes before dozens were murdered by Islamic fanatics. Whether we are in the middle of a financial district, a suburb, beach resort, shopping mall, tourist site or concert venue, there is no escape from these nihilists, nor any quick solution. Oh well, let’s at least hope that the good folk of Fulham will be spared another fucking “candle-lit vigil”. It is almost certain that this was the act of some sort of Islamist terrorist, and the savage irony is that this attack occurred in a station that is a few yards away from a small mosque; on Fridays, as today, I often see Muslims off to, or depart from, their prayers, and I occasionally stop and chat to a few of them and this area has always seemed a friendly one. The maggots who carry out attacks are as dismissive of the lives of Muslims as they are of anyone else, let it not be forgotten. September 15th, 2017 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
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