Liberal Vision

It’s global warming wot done it - part 1

In today’s debut edition of It’s global warming wot done it, we bring you:

• Sex changes!
• Alien invasions!
• Killer cornflakes!

More to come, in this exciting new series.

Lord Layard on the cause of long-term unemployment

Here is Labour peer and happiness economist Lord Layard on the cause of long-term unemployment in Europe:

Europe has a notorious unemployment problem. But if you break down unemployment into short-term (under a year) and long-term, you find that short-term unemployment is almost the same in Europe as in the U.S. – around 4% of the workforce. But in Europe there are another 4% who have been out of work for over a year, compared with almost none in the United States. The most obvious explanation for this is that in the U.S. unemployment benefits run out after 6 months, while in most of Europe they continue for many years or indefinitely.

Hat tip to the Tim Worstall at the Adam Smith Institute.

Bullingdon vs Beckenham boys. Who will win?

The Tories are revolting.

And before Bunny drops me a line ticking me off - I should say that I don’t mean that pejoratively. I mean it literally.

Inspired by the success - or perhaps undeterred by the failure - of the “Turnip Taliban” in Norfolk, the grassroots Conservatives of Beckenham (a Tory seat if ever there was one) are now up in arms. Why? Pretty much for the same reason as the Turnip boys - they clearly don’t like being pushed around by Tory high command. This particular row is - well, it’s about women again. They clearly don’t like their leaders’ edict that there must be at least three women on the shortlist for the seat. Many snorts of derision from the boys from Beckenham - one local Tory stating that the calibre of women candidates was “very poor” (would that be the cancer research scientist or the acclaimed author I wonder?). No, they want Col Bob Stewart DSO - former commander of UN forces in Bosnia. He’s English, white, in his 50’s (ish) and all-round action man. That’ll do nicely.

Goodness only knows how Mr Cameron is going to get women-only shortlists through - which is his declared aim (mumblings of “when hell freezes over” can doubtless be heard across English rural pastures).

But I don’t think this actually about “women”, though doubtless many think we should “know our place”. Over in Orpington another (not so old) Tory duffer - this one a Mr Peter Hobbins - (shortlisted to run in the London Mayoral election no less) threw another grenade at the besieged Tory leader. After failing to reach the local shortlist of local parliamentary candidates, he went on an email rant to his mates complaining about the lack of “normal English names” on the list, and suggesting that he should perhaps change his name to “Petrado Indiano Hobbinso”. He might as well have confessed to completing a “how sexy am i” survey online and then posting his results on facebook.  

What does this tell us ? Well sadly it tells us that however hard Mr Cameron might try to convince us the Conservatives have changed, they haven’t. The cracks are definitely showing through the beautifully crafted Osbourne and Little wallpaper. The Tory party of old is still alive and thriving in the English counties - yearning for the good old days when foreigners were things you saw on holiday, women wanted nothing more than to cook you dinner, raise your children and warm your slippers and the poor had a role to play as long as they kept in their place.

One has to feel sorry for David. He must be sitting there pulling out his nicely coloured coiffured hair crying “don’t these bloody people get it ?” The answer would appear to be NO. The assumption that the Tories are so hungry for power that they will bury their differences and show a united front - at least until they get into power - would appear to be an incorrect one. I don’t know if this is madness or arrogance or both.

In spite of the current insurgence however, my suspicion is that the Bullingdon boys will indeed see off the Beckenham boys and any others that stand in their way.  But If the trade unions couldn’t stop Tony Blair, I see no reason to believe that grassroots Conservatives will be any more successful. Cameron is (like Mr Blair was prior to waging an illegal war on Iraq) an unstoppable force. He has the media slavering at his feet. It’s his brand of Toryism that millions of voters see on their TV sets every other night. He has the infrastructure, the contacts, the money and well, frankly, the power to push through pretty much anything he wants.

And let me say, liberal Conservatives and the “get out of Europe” Conservatives take heed. Over recent weeks I have been told by articulate supporters of both camps (libo’s and sceptics) that once David Cameron comes to power they will ensure that the party puts into practice their particular standpoints. They will “keep their powder dry for now” ….but come the glorious day……Yeah right. There is every reason to believe that with an adequate majority he will listen to his grassroots and backbench MPs just about as much as Tony Blair did. Yes Mr Cameron might talk about rolling back Labour laws - reinstating our freedoms - but we can see all the small print on that every time Chris Grayling open’s his mouth. As for Europe… well don’t make me laugh.

So my advice to all Conservatives out there right now is to pray for a slim majority or a hung parliament. That way the Tory backbenchers might just have a say. If however, Mr Cameron does “sweep to power” you can forget it. A large majority will give Cameron the mandate and the ability to do what the hell he wants and he shows every sign of doing just that. Yep, I reckon the Bullingdon boys have it pretty much sewn up.

Finally….a proper debate on climate change

Congratulations to the BBC . I dont say that often, so I will say it again. Congratulations to the BBC. Today on The Daily Politics show I finally got to see a proper discussion on climate change - and between two scientists no less! Prof Fred Singer ( Founder and President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project and Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia) and Prof Bob Watson (the chief scientific advisor at the department of the environment) met with Andrew Neil for a rattlingly good discussion.

I will put up the highlights of the programme up here later today or you can go to BBCiplayer to see the full programme.

This debate comes shortly ahead of the Copenhagen summit and, I am told, a debate being held tonight entitled ”The Copenhagen Summit: Do Science and Economics Support Government Action on Climate Change” . Judging by the discussion on air today it promises to be a must see event. Full marks IEA and can we have more of this on the BBC please, so that more of us can listen to the arguments from all sides, not just the spin.

UPDATE: Apologies for the delay. You can now see the climate change part of the programme here… or you can go to BBCiplayer to see the full programme.

Time running out to sign the letter opposing PCC regulation of blogs

If you hadn’t noticed already, Unity over at Liberal Conspiracy has composed an open letter to the PCC objecting to the idea of encompassing blogs under the body’s remit.

If you sign up in the comment section, you’ll be added to the (hundreds of) signatories on the letter.

Click here to do just this.

Or tell me why I’m wrong in the comments below.

The Queen’s speech in 90 seconds

For those of you who missed it, or couldn’t bear to watch the full 7 minutes, here’s the edited highlights from yesterday’s “Queen’s Peach” as my 5 year old niece called it.

JOSEPH SCHUMPETER (1883-1950), CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1942)

Schumpeter was an Austrian born in Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic, then part of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire.  He studied economics and law in Vienna, attending the economics classes of Eugen Böhm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser.

Böhm-Bawerk was a major critic of Marx and together with Wieser was a major figure in the Austrian School of Economics, which produced Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek and therefore a major component of classical liberal and libertarian thinking.  Schumpeter was not a real member of the school, but had affinities with, and influence on it.

An extraordinarily complicated life led him from Vienna to a career at Harvard.  On the way he practised law in Britain and Egypt, became an economics professor back in Austria-Hungary, advised the Emperor during World War One, was briefly Minister of Finance after the war, participated in the socialisation committee set up in Germany after the war (which did very little socialisation in practise), headed a bank which collapsed in 1924, taught economics in Germany, Japan and the USA.

In economics his best known contributions are the ideas of creative destruction and entrepreneurship.  Creative destruction refers to the way that market economies constantly destroy the old in the economy so that new could emerge, and that connected with his theories of economic cycles.

In his theory of entrepreneurship he filled a gap in economic theory with regard to the role of individual initiative and innovation in founding economic enterprises.  His interests in the behavioural and innovative sides of economic activity are where he influenced the development of Austrian School.

His best know book is Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, which is not a work of economic theory, but rather combines observations on the sociological aspects of economics with thoughts about politics.  The book argues that socialism was possible and even inevitable, but not very welcome.

His account of the feasibility of socialism makes him an unlikely liberal hero in one respect, but the book does argue for the superiority of capitalism to socialism and looks at the socialist future with foreboding, hoping to influence it to be as tolerable as possible.  He looks at Marx’s theories with great empathy but also great critical insight, he offers an example of how the best criticism rests on the greatest understanding of the object of criticism, and a willingness to explain the stronger aspects of what is being criticised.

Schumpter argues for the success of capitalism in delivering constantly higher living standards to everyone, and in its civilising tendencies with regard to law, liberty and equality of respect.  What he also argues is that capitalism has self-destructive tendencies.  These tendencies include its respects for the rights of those who are against it, the creation of a group of intellectuals who cannot find employment as intellectuals at high salaries and then react against capitalism, monopolisation and decline of entrepreneurial spirit in capitalism.  That last point refers to the growing size of capitalist enterprises which insulates them from short term economic problems, and turns them into institutions living off the innovation of the past.  This builds up into the tendency of the whole of society to move away from entrepreneurial capitalism to statist socialism.

Trade unions, disaffected intellectuals and state bureaucrats have attitudes in common with monopolistic capitalists, attitudes favourable to planning and state control.  This state dominated model can succeed economically but only because of the previous successes of capitalism.  Only capitalism can move societies from widespread poverty to widespread prosperity.  Once prosperity is attained, a society can move towards socialism if it is willing to accept economic stasis with no future growth.  This can be achieved by evolutionary or revolutionary means, though the evolutionary approach tends to be more realistic about what can be achieved in socialism.

Socialism will not be able to achieve the purist egalitarian ends, and must accept some role for upper level ‘bourgeois’ managers and economic incentives.  Such a system is compatible with democracy, if we understand the non-ideal ways democracy already works in capitalism.  There can be no ‘will-of-the-people’ in practice, ideas of popular will emerge from struggle against monarchy and aristocracy, and have little application in practice.

Democracy is about selecting leadership, and there is no way that a leader can followed a unified will at all times; and even at any one moment public opinion is divided so that at most the leader can only apply the views of one part of the public.  Similar considerations apply to any claims to be following very objective forms of calculating the welfare of the whole of society.  This undermines any notion of ‘economic democracy’, or of the state being able to satisfy popular will by intervening everywhere.

Democracy tends to work as the maximisation of the economic interests of sections of the electorate, rather than as the formation of a unified rational will concerning the public interest.  Schumpeter’s suggestion that socialism can work and that it is inevitable, may be unsettling, but looked at closely, he proves very realistic analyses of why capitalism tends to develop in a socialistic direction, and therefore indications of what needs to be done in order to prevent that.  These factors make Capitalist, Socialism and Democracy essential reading for liberals in the original sense of the word, and a paradoxical classic of that kind of liberalism.

Walcome tae the Scottish Pairlament wabsite

Ok, we recently saw a rather good overhaul of the Lib Dem website. Take a look a bad one-  Scottish Pairlament wabsite . A friend of mine sent me a link to it and I had to visit the site three times before I was convinced it wasnt a hoax (not it’s not April 1st).

There is more joy to be had if you click on the link there…. Garrin the Scottish Pairlament Wark for You (1.59MB pdf) .

Lets not worry about the cost (probably a lot) - or whether Scotts is a proper language or a dialect or whatever. Just enjoy. And the picture here is mine not theirs - just to be clear.

A fisking of Labour Schmaltz by Sara Bedford

Jet lag still seems to leave me one step behind the rest of the world right now (but heh that’s  still four steps ahead of NO10) - but in case you have not seen it, there is a wonderful post by Sara Bedford you can read here about the latest Labour Party viral PPB doing the rounds. Great stuff.

Health & Safety inspectors to invade your home now..

The latest mad Government initiative I have come across is from the beloved Department of Health. 

Draft guidance from NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence..(hah!) ) is now urging councils and other public sector groups to start collecting data on properties where children are thought to be at risk of unintentional injury.

This data should then be used by Councils, it would seem, to oversee the installation of ”safety devices” (smoke alarms, safety gates, oven guards, window locks etc). 

Of course NICE’s suggestions include the creation of a “new government database” - naturally - so that health visitors, midwives etc can log health and safety concerns they spot. Swiftly followed, no doubt, by a visit from the Health and Safety men in black (as if they dont have enough to meddle with).

This is further evidence that the Government thinks all parents are idiots who should not really be in charge of their offspring, attempting to strip away another bit of parental responsibility to be handed over to the Nanny state.

Honestly! What happened to teaching your kids about risk and danger? I lived in a house that had a wood burning stove in the kitchen - I was taught it was HOT and didn’t go near it. I suppose my mother - who I have always thought of as a caring, responsibile parent - could have put a guard in front of it - but how would I have learned exactly?  I was likewise taught to keep away from saucepans on the cooker at all times and to come down the stairs safely on my bottom - not dignified - and I don’t still do that obviously.  (I won’t mention the shot gun in the wardrobe - it might give government people reading this post palpitations). But isn’t that how we all learnt ?

Of course there will be those that say that this is really aimed at poorer and/or idiot parents who dont know themselves about dangers in the home. But my answer to that is that “bad parents” (for want of a better phrase) will simply have someone else to shrug the responsibility onto. And insisting a child gate is installed doesn’t mean that it will be used. Putting in a smoke alarm won’t help anyone if the battery is taken out. Its not really solving the problem - just creating another load of snoops who have right of access to your house.  

The proposals are currently out to consultation with the plan to implement them if approved. Unfortunately we all know that “consultation” doesn’t actually mean that. Fortunately it looks like this Government won’t be around next year - so hopefully we will see this one knocked on the head some time soon after the General Election.

But really!…