CentreRight

Democratic control over the police is an absolute necessity

Sir Hugh Orde of the Association of Chief Police Officers has warned that police chief constables may resign if the police are brought under political control, as proposed by the Conservative Party.  He says that operational independence is essential and that political influence over how our streets are policed is undesirable.

Is it not normal that the public has a say over how they are policed? Do citizens not pay the salaries of police officers?  Do citizens not suffer the consequences of crime? Do citizens not vote for political representatives to run public services?  Why should the police be an exception?

At the moment policing is divorced from the priorities of citizens.  The priorities are politically imposed from very high above.  For the last ten years or so the priority seems to have been political correctness.

I am a ward councillor for Hyde Park Ward in Westminster, which include the west side of the Edgware Road.  The Edgware Road is of course a centre for citizens of Middle Eastern origin.  Virtualy all are hard working law abiding citizens.  But time and time again I have seen how the police adopt a very peculiar style of policing whenever there is trouble on the Edgware Road.  The trouble is almost always caused by outsiders.  On the Edgware Road far more is allowed than elsewhere. 

Policing is systematically done in an über-sensitive way – presumably to shield the police from any possible spurious allegation of discrimination or racism.  Political correctness rules at the expense of protecting the public.  What the residents living around it – of whatever origin - have to suffer is apparently quite irrelevant.  Typical is the non-intervention by the police when there are for example noisy celebrations for whatever Middle Eastern event.  Often these result in disorder on the streets.  Often the police just stands by and watches. There are exceptions.

As a ward councillor one is quite powerless.  The only thing you can do is to beg the police to maintain law and order.  The only weapon you have is their goodwill.

Some progress was made when the Metropolitan Police introduced ward panels: regular meetings between local police and local citizens to set priorities.  But this suffers from the usual non-representative nature of (often self-styled) community representatives.  Councillors elected by all are put on an equal footing with individuals who often do not represent anyone but themselves.

Boris and GLA Member Kit Malthouse (responsible for the Metropolitan Police) are trying to introduce democratic control over the Metropolitan Police.  The Conservative Party wants locally elected leaders to be in charge of the police.  Frankly, if police chief constables are unhappy about this, I wish them good luck and goodbye.  I’m sure we can find replacements. Real cops who make our streets safe again.

How capitalist is China?

I visited China twenty years ago, as a backpacker.  I had an awful time: everything was grubby, people were rude, food was poor.  But on every pavement men and women in blue mao suits were trading.  Day and night.  Their wares were often exhibited on not much more than a handkerchief.  A few lighters.  Five cabbages.  There was private banking, too.  Out of nowhere somebody would turn up to offer you a quick mutually beneficial illegal currency exchange in sign language. The hard currency allowed them to buy Western products.  Evidence of a strong mercantile instinct was everywhere.  I remember thinking that if they were ever allowed capitalism they would grow very rich, indeed.

A few weeks ago I went back: what a change.  Will they overtake us economically ? Many think so.  I don't.  At least not with their present  political system.  They are missing out in one vital aspect.  The People's Republic of China was a communist tyranny.  Now it is just a tyranny.  The growth in prosperity created by capitalism is seriously hampered by bureaucracy and bribes.

The lady who accuses the EU of Soviet-style practices should be EU President

Vaira Vike-Freiberga has compared the selection process of an EU President to the secrecy of the Soviet era. Indeed, Eurology is the new Kremlinology. Many months of guesswork by the media have resulted in the naming of the Seven Dwarfs - but what Snow White will look like we do not know.  The Public will of course have no say in the matter. This is now customary in the EU.  Why bother with democracy if Wise Men and Mandarins do it so much better ?  Ah. The D-word (disapproving glances from Eurocrats and statists) - the D-word is not to be mentioned. After all, we all know that if we'd had a democratic say, the EU would be a free trade zone and not much else.  The Wise Men and Mandarins would simply not have been there.

Quick highly scientific research on Wikipedia taught me that Ms. Vike-Freiberga's family fled Latvia after the communist takeover. She was a professor at Montreal University. She was Latvian president twice, with very high approval ratings. She apparently liked to meet her constituents in person (eyebrows go up in Brussels).  She is outspoken on moral values and democracy (eyebrows in Brussels go even higher, accompanied by frowning).  Like every female top politician abroad since The Original she has been called The (Latvian) Iron Lady. Of her views little is said though The Daily Telegraph reports that she is seen as centre right.

So yesterday she lamented the secrecy in Brussels... That lowers the odds of her getting the job to something like one million-to-one.  Even Brown may stand a greater chance.  I think her utterance shows that she is perfectly qualified for the job.  Personally I would of course prefer to remain a subject of Her Majesty the Queen, rather than a president.  But Labour and LibDems decided otherwise.

It's time to privatise the Royal Mail

In the last ten working days the Royal Mail has delivered letters to my house twice.  On those two occasions I received my large piles of snail mail in the late afternoon.  I also receive, on average, two letters a week addressed to another house in my street.  In that same period two CDs and one DVD, addressed to me, “were lost in the post”.  They say this is due to regional strikes – but I only receive a pile of post twice or three times a week at most times.

Occasionally I have to queue at my local post office.  This may take from anything between fifteen and thirty minutes.  At many times of the day and in any weather the queues continue outside on the street.  And am I the only one who notices that the counter staff seems to work in slow motion ?  And that they use every opportunity to disappear from their post, or to chat with their colleagues, or to lean over their colleagues shoulder (at another counter) to assist or to witness what is happening?

Consulting with "stakeholders" is collectivist in its purest sense and denies the value of individuality

One of the most successful neo-collectivist inventions of recent years is that of “The Stakeholder”.  Theoretically a "stakeholder" is anyone with an interest in a political project. He could be one single individual.  But "stakeholders" are almost always understood as a group: residents’ associations, employees, consumers, etc. Government, especially local government, will consult "stakeholders" on virtually every decision.  It is politically incorrect not to do so.  Unsound Tory councils all over the land have happily bought into the system.

Consulting "stakeholders" bypasses the individual.  As such it is collectivist in its purest sense.  For the collectivist individual desire, ambition and choice is subservient to the group’s desires, ambitions and choices.  It denies the value of individuality.  As such it is de-humanising: to the collectivist the world consists of herds.

For the authoritarian politician, consulting "stakeholders" rather than individuals is a winner.  Groups are easier to reach and are easier to contain.  Appeasing groups ensures greater political success than appeasing individuals – the groups can organise support and praise for the politician.  Meeting and pleasing groups is more visible than doing something for anonymous individuals at home.

Consultation of "stakeholders" will give legitimacy to a politician’s decision.  Cynics will say that the high-profile public consultation of "stakeholders" is more often than not window-dressing.  The politician is seen as “listening” when more often than not he will go back to his department and decide himself what he wanted to do all along.

"Stakeholders" would not be a problem, if only they represented every single view of every single member of their group.  But they never do.

UKIP's flaw

UKIP’s flaw is the belief that EU countries will be queuing up to give us free trade access to their markets if we pull out.  I believe they would do quite the opposite. If we pull out they are very likely to start posturing and to refuse us free access.  Finding an enemy – perfidious Albion – would be a perfect deflection from their own economic failure.

The usual reply to this argument is that “it is in the EU countries’ own interest” to have free trade relations with us.  Their balance of trade with us is positive.  But that reply omits one crucial fact: continental Europe has not acted in the best economic interest of its citizens for the last fifty years.  Why would they start doing so now?  Because we ask them to?   

No, posturing against us would be the logical outcome of us pulling out.  Look at how they reacted to the Lisbon Treaty referenda.  Look at how they react to the Conservatives’ pulling out of the EPP.  Not conciliatory.  Not in their own economic interest.  For them unlike for us, the EU is a political project, not an economical one.

The Conservative position is a far more effective one than UKIP’s – while not risking to lose free trade if we achieve it.  If we can force a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, we all know how it will go.  That would stop the European superstate in its tracks.  Then we have the leverage to demand the repatriation of powers – such as social and employment legislation.  This has never been tried before.  Why risk 50% of our exports if we can achieve our goals in a much saner way?

The Government is chasing the golden geese off the farm as it milks the middle classes

New Labour famously came to power by telling the middle classes that old style socialism was dead.  After twelve years we know that it was deceit all along.  We saw the size of the state grow and grow.  We saw ever larger parts of the population being pushed into state dependency.  We saw state employment going up and up.  Taxes going up by stealth, so we wouldn’t notice.  All of this resulting in the economic crash.  Caused by Labour’s policies; yet used to attack capitalism and used to increase the size of the state even further.

It was die-hard socialism all along.

Yesterday the masks came down.  Now even class struggle is back.  50% tax for the rich will make the Socialist Worker’s readers swoon.

The rich will be off soon,  if they haven’t moved already.  The rich never pay tax: they pay tax experts.

It's the same with companies. Many companies have moved abroad: Shell, Hiscox, Beazley, Omega, Shire Pharmaceuticals, Henderson, Charter, Rhodes, Experian and Invesco all have escaped Brown’s British Dream.

United Business Media, WPP, Astra Zeneca, Diageo, Amlin, Smith & Nephew, International Power, BP, BAE Systems, Brit Insurance, Vodafone, ITV, Aegis, and GlaxoSmithKline have either expressed concern or have threatened to leave. These lists are non-exhaustive.  Many banks have contingency plans to move departments to Switzerland .

We are not killing the golden goose: we are chasing it off the farm.  What remains is the middle class cow: to be milked.  And milked.  And milked.

Brown and the EU must be blamed for the increasing number of jobs going abroad

Gordon Brown and the European Union have decided to continue their policy of exporting jobs out of Europe. No reason was given, but previously they said that companies should pay their fair share of tax and that European workers deserve a high level of social protection. This results in fewer jobs and less tax revenue. Less is more for Brown and the EU.

Brit Insurance (a Lloyds of London insurer) announced yesterday that it will move its headquarters to the Netherlands. In 2007 BI paid £36 million in taxes and believes that the move to Holland will reduce its bill to £6 million.

Brown’s persistent haziness about his plans for companies’ foreign profits has disastrous effects. It is feared that a change in those tax rules will result in a dramatic rise in taxes.

In defence of social climbing

I recently heard Telegraph columnist Janet Daley express her amazement at the peculiar notion of “living above one’s station”. I remember being equally surprised when it was used to attack Peter Mandelson a few years ago. When he borrowed money to buy a big expensive house, he was not only attacked for the loan’s questionable origin, but also because he had dared to aspire to such accommodation. How odd, I thought. Surely when somebody does well for himself, one ought to congratulate him?

“He lives above his station” is used to shame people who want to improve their social situation. A successful upstart is often sniggered at for being a social climber.

On the right it is the language of those who think the world has gone to the dogs since indented tenure became obsolete. The eighteenth century equivalent was moral opprobrium for becoming wealthy through commerce rather than to live of dwindling land holdings. Left wing intellectuals snigger at social climbing too: they portray it as petit bourgeois ambition. Imagine the monstrosity of the working classes aspiring to become middle class – the hallowed principles of class war would be no more!

Attacking social ambition is the enemy of contemporary Conservatism which, since Thatcher, has been the driving force behind social mobility. The Great Lady was sniggered at, too, for being a grocer’s daughter. Social mobility was what John Major defended when he spoke up for a classless society.

There is a great deal of jealousy behind the denigration of successful people of humble origin. It is unpleasant for impoverished old (or, more often than not, not so old) money to see their cleaner’s son rise to riches. It is a stark reminder of their own ineptness at earning the income needed to fund a lifestyle to which their ancestors became accustomed. So the unpleasant fact is sniggered at, as they cannot think of any other avenue to put the successful upstart back in his place. There is jealousy from the left wing intellectual, too. He cannot deal with the fact that a working class person could become financially more successful than him – without any state aid, collective bargaining or class solidarity. The self-reliant individual is profoundly unsettling for the socialist dogmatic.

Today's Childhood Inquiry is crypto socialist rubbish

Today’s children are FINE.  It is commonplace to rant about how children are being treated and how they behave more badly than ever before.  There are 2,000 year old records of the same complaints.  Imagine the hell we would be living in if it had been true; if every new generation had been worse off or behaved more badly than the previous one!

According to The Good Childhood Inquiry, commissioned by the Children’s Society, and endorsed by The Archbishop of Canterbury, children had it much better in the olden days.  Individualism (read: capitalism) is to blame.  What else is new from those quarters?

Let’s go through a few of the assertions, as widely quoted on the BBC today:

• Excessive individualism by parents who seek private advantage is blamed for children’s problems.  It does not seem to occur to the writers that the parents’ material welfare might be shared with the children.  However prosaic self-made toys, or making do, may sound in the ears of your average champagne socialist, I distinctly remember how toy cars or (heaven forbid!) toy guns from the shop had a far greater appeal and receiving them caused substantially more happiness than the non-commercial variety.  I was thrilled when my parents sought private advantage because it meant I had it better.

• Income inequality is said to do damage to children.  Really?  Income inequality is a market method to show which behaviour leads to improving one’s situation, and which doesn’t.  Somebody staying in bed all day will be worse off than somebody working ten hours a day.   It is income inequality which creates growth.  Arguably, it is thanks to income inequality that health, material welfare, and happiness of children has substantially improved over the last millennia.

With its 45p tax plans, New Labour is as dead as a dodo

Brown’s proposal to increase the top rate of income tax from 40 to 45% shows that he is retrenching into class warfare. As the severity of his self-induced economic crisis kicks in he realises that come the next general election the best he can hope for is his core vote. That motley lot now consists of the dogmatic extreme left and the scroungers who think it just that hardworking families pay for their lifestyle on benefits and TV. 

Brown wants to make the rich pay. He does not hesitate to ditch his previous claims to be the party of aspiration. If aspiration is helped and results in social mobility – the aim of Conservative policies – then everybody would be a potential top rate tax payer. Not so under Brown whose policies keep the little man firmly in place. Social mobility has substantially decreased under the socialists.

The 45% income tax would raise very little money - as even Denis Healey admitted in The Telegraph.  It proves that Brown’s intention has nothing to do with funding state coffers but everything with declaring class warfare. The rich rarely pay the top rate – because the amounts involved justify paying tax experts to reduce their tax bill. The only ones who will pay Brown’s 45% income tax are the middle classes. So Conservatives should feel encouraged: Brown’s tax promise proves that he has given up hope to win the middle class vote. New Labour is as dead as a dodo.

While Brown harks back to a nasty past Conservatives fight for a better future. Socialist re-distribute the pie; Conservatives make the pie grow. Tax cuts, reducing the size of government, cutting red tape, and re-introducing the free market will make everybody better off – as it has done in all times and in all places. Mass prosperity in peace instead of mass poverty in class warfare. The politics of aspiration versus the politics of envy.

One penny spent by the state is one penny not spent by you

Are you tired of world economy experts popping out of the woodwork all over the place, in particular at Christmas parties?  Dying to tell you what caused the crisis and how to solve it?

In fact the remedies for an economic crisis are distinctly old hat.  F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman told us how to tackle it.  Their principles are of a baffling simplicity – yet for the last months we have utterly failed to explain them.

Labour still believes that money grows on trees.  We know that it comes out of our pockets: a penny spent by the state is a penny we can’t spend.  State spending makes the economy grow, but at the same time contracts it as private spending is reduced.   As Milton Friedman said: “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”.  A job created by the state is a job that will not be created in the private sector.  Over time Labour’s increased state spending results in a net loss of jobs.

Individuals are said to hide their savings under the mattress whereas we need a boost right now. Tomorrow’s tax rises will pay for today’s state spending.  Individuals do not save in order to exhibit coffers with bullion at their funeral.  Saving is postponed spending.  Individuals may hoard their pennies now, but will spend when trust returns.  Brown’s future tax rise promise will make them leave it under the mattress for longer.  Thanks to Brown the crisis will be prolonged.

Lads' mags and cigarettes: New Labour, new tyranny

Claire Curtis-Thomas MP (Labour) wants to ban teenagers from buying lads’ mags.   The Department of Health wants cigarettes to be sold under the counter.  According to Labour, the state knows best: you need to be protected from yourself.  The state must tell you what you can eat, smoke and read.

Lads’ mags sell more copies if a scantily dressed lady occupies the cover.  Less is more for the sales figures.  So age restrictions are proposed.  This may seem reasonable (= electorally beneficial) and this is why Lads’ Mags are targeted this time around.  But think about what would happen if we extended the logic.  Will Ms. Curtis-Tomas want to impose age restrictions on The Sun?  Are we really saying that whenever a breast is exposed for a bathroom advert the state censor should investigate with his magnifying glass to decide whether to issue a certificate 18 or PG?  House and Garden on the top shelf?

Restricting nudity is often done for the best of reasons:  some individuals might get ideas into their heads and go on to rape etc.  But actually, how many convictions have there been where the fact that the criminal in question bought lads’ mags was a material factor?  In the unlikely event where there were a few, that still doesn’t mean that the millions of others who never went on to commit any crime of that nature should be punished?  I could see the point of restricting some very extreme pornography, but lads’ mags?  Some tabloids’ comments may have fuelled some deranged individuals to commit homophobic or racist crimes.  But should we therefore have an age limit or a ban on tabloids?

The longitudinal axis of aubergines

Why should politics be dull? For a good laugh, I suggest you read European Union Commission Regulation 1292/81 of 12 May 1981.  It lays down the marketing standards for aubergines. You can find it here.

Allow me to wet your appetite. Thanks to the EU Regulation aubergines cannot have sun-scorching covering more than 4 cm2. I couldn’t ascertain whether British food inspectors have been issued with European rulers (satisfying the European Regulation on Rulers) to catch evil market traders who sell aubergines which transgress the threshold.

In addition, the allowed size of aubergines is measured by either the maximum diameter of the equatorial section on the longitudinal axis. The minimum diameter is fixed at 40 mm for elongated aubergines and 70 mm for globus aubergines. Aren’t we blessed with European civil servants who in examples like this show how much they have our best interests at heart? Not in our part of the world, undersized aubergines!

Some in Brussels have come to their senses and have proudly announced that for certain produce the exacting standards will be scrapped. Not to their full senses though: regulations for citrus fruit, apples, pears, strawberries, tomatoes etc. will remain in place. We have been reassured that bananas will have to remain “free from abnormal curvature” as no complaints have been received.  Do they read the press in Brussels?