CentreRight

The energy crisis

The Renewable Energy Foundation are one of the most important organisations in politics today.  Their work sets out the scale of the challenge for energy policy clearly, no one has any excuse not to appreciate the trouble we're in.  How a decade of believing in the fantasy that a combination of gas and renewables can reliably deliver the power we need has created a serious danger of the lights going out.  A good introduction is an article (PDF) by their Director of Policy and Research, John Constable for Power UK.

Their Chief Executive, Campbell Dunford, has put out a response to Gordon Brown's speech to the CBI which sums up the political situation well:

"Campbell Dunford, a former international energy banker, now Chief Executive of the Renewable Energy Foundation, said:

“There are two parallel debates here. On the one hand the energy experts tearing their hair out with anxiety, and on the other the bland Westminster discussion typified by the Prime Minister’s empty and trivial gestures. This must change. Only courageous leadership can prepare us for the gathering storm. Will Mr Cameron speak up and confront the realities, or will the realities get there first?”

Why is it that the term “middle class” has such different meanings in the US and the UK?

Alexander Belenky, writing today at Comment is Free about struggling Americans watching TV programmes about the pampered rich, uses the term “have-nots” and “middle class” pretty much interchangeably. The alternative to “middle class” in the American discourse is invariably “rich”. Both left and right appeal to the middle class as their economic and cultural heartland, respectively. The caricature is that the middle class are bitterly clinging to god and guns and struggling to maintain a comfortable lifestyle while the rich, arugula-munching (that pretentious leaf, generally known as ‘rocket’ here in the UK, is a big deal in American politics) coastal elite enjoy greater incomes and are increasingly secular in their outlook.

By contrast, here when people attack Radio 4 for being too middle class they are arguing that it appeals to well-off Home Counties families who own Labradors, fill the best schools and quietly sidestep the social problems that afflict the troubled cities. When someone suggests that a political party is trying to appeal to the middle classes, they are suggesting that it wants to help the well-off. The alternative to being middle class is generally expected to be becoming part of the downtrodden poor underclass. The exceptions to this dichotomy are the numerically tiny but politically powerful urban elite – the closest analogy to America’s arugula class.

I think what the two middle classes have in common is that both the American and British middle classes are thought of as the backbones of their respective countries. The unassuming middle class in both countries gets on with things while the underclass is debilitated by social and economic ills. Also, in both countries the middle class are seen as culturally sensible or old-fashioned (depending on your perspective) compared with the urban/coastal elites.

Are the robust families that are the backbone of American society really poorer than their British counterparts?

More on the Green Taxes report

While plenty of CentreRight readers have voiced their support for our report (PDF), others have criticisms or questions.  I'll try and address those here.

Is Fuel Duty a 'green tax'?

Peter Franklin argues that Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty should not be considered green taxes as they predate concern about climate change.  That is both irrelevant and misrepresents the history. Fuel Duty may have been conceived in the global cooling era but it is a big tax, raising lots of revenue, because of the fuel duty escalator.  Remember that we have subtracted road spending from our total green taxes estimate, that is clearly the major item of spending that pre-escalator Fuel Duty is designed to cover.  When the escalator was introduced by Ken Clarke - as a 5 per cent, real terms annual increase - in a 1993 statement to the Commons he framed it explicitly as a measure to address climate change.  He described it as completing "Britain's strategy for meeting our Rio commitment".

Of course, that might have been as much of a con as Darling's recent increases in Vehicle Excise Duty.  Maybe it was just another device to raise revenue.  However, it is a premium charged on top of the rate of tax that is judged fair on other goods and services, VAT is charged on motor fuel.  Even if that premium had been imposed entirely at random it still makes the polluter pay; it still does all the things, in terms of creating an incentive to change behaviour, that green taxes are supposed to.

It is a green tax, whether it was intended to be one or not.  It's just that it imposes far too large a burden.  Whether you call that an excessive green tax or just an arbitrary imposition on motorists because they're an easy target is really just a matter of semantics.  Either way it is an unfair burden and politicians who try to pass off increasing Fuel Duty, or maintaining it at its current level, as a 'green' measure are attempting to con the public.

We’re already paying too much green tax

Last year the TaxPayers’ Alliance released ‘The Case Against Green Taxes’.  We compared how much we are being asked to pay with estimates of the social cost of Britain’s carbon footprint and found that green taxes were already excessive.  Now, we’ve updated the numbers from 2005-06 to 2006-07 and 2007-08, included the increasingly expensive Renewables Obligation and produced estimates showing how every local authority area across the country is affected.  These are contained in the new report 'The Burden of Green Taxes' (PDF).

The new report’s results paint a stark picture of the extent of excessive green taxes.  In 2007-08 Britons paid between £7.9 billion and £21.8 billion in excess green taxes, between £316 and £872 per household.  That is a substantial rise on the between £6.8 billion and £20.4 billion of excess green taxes in 2006-07.  Of course, the ranges are large which shows how much uncertainty there still is over the social cost of emitting greenhouse gases, but our results show that no mainstream estimate can provide effective intellectual support for green taxes at the level they are currently set in the UK.

When our last report was released there were criticisms from the Treasury, who accused us of being “doubly dangerous” for having the temerity to question both their logic and their revenue stream.  The Liberal Democrats insisted that it is only older estimates of social cost that suggest British green taxes are too high – despite an IPCC principal author having noted that the average estimate across the academic and official literature is falling over time – and that we hadn’t included all the externalities associated with road transport – ignoring that we had already discussed that argument in our study and shown how it meant double-correcting externalities already controlled by regulations.  There is a more detailed discussion of this issue in the new report.

Are cities limited?

The recent instalment (PDF) of the Policy Exchange 'Cities Unlimited' series has provoked quite a reaction.  There has been predictable fury from Northerners who don't take kindly to being told that we should accept their cities' decline.  Southerners don't exactly see further expansion of the towns in their densely populated region as much of a reward for their economic success.  Some of them rather dislike the idea of a deluge of Northerners.  Those two reactions left little doubt about what the political response would be and sure enough both Conservative and Labour politicians have condemned the report in colourful terms.

Cities Unlimited deserves a more thoughtful reception.  None of the 'rebuttals' offered by various politicians and commentators really stand up to scrutiny.

Kagan on Russia and Georgia

Robert Kagan writes for the Washington Post on the situation in Georgia:

"Putin's aggression against Georgia should not be traced only to its NATO aspirations or his pique at Kosovo's independence. It is primarily a response to the "color revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia in 2003 and 2004, when pro-Western governments replaced pro-Russian ones. What the West celebrated as a flowering of democracy the autocratic Putin saw as geopolitical and ideological encirclement.

Ever since, Putin has been determined to stop and, if possible, reverse the pro-Western trend on his borders. He seeks not only to prevent Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO but also to bring them under Russian control. Beyond that, he seeks to carve out a zone of influence within NATO, with a lesser security status for countries along Russia's strategic flanks. That is the primary motive behind Moscow's opposition to U.S. missile defense programs in Poland and the Czech Republic.

His war against Georgia is part of this grand strategy. Putin cares no more about a few thousand South Ossetians than he does about Kosovo's Serbs. Claims of pan-Slavic sympathy are pretexts designed to fan Russian great-power nationalism at home and to expand Russia's power abroad."

The boot on Georgia's neck

Georgia is part of that grand sphere the Kremlin feels it has a right to control.  South Ossetia and Abkhazia are the mechanism to exert that control.  The two Georgian regions are being maintained in a permanent state of limbo, nominally still a part of Georgia but effectively controlled by a combination of militant separatists and the Russian military.  That permanent instability makes it incredibly difficult for Georgia to engage independently with the outside world as Western nations with perilously little spine left are scared off engaging.

There have been steady attacks on Georgia from separatists, from the Washington Post:

“Georgia, meanwhile, said that its troops entered the South Ossetian "capital" in response to escalating attacks, which have been intensifying for a week -- and have been taking place for years, really -- as well as the Russian aerial bombardment of Georgian territory.”

The majority of Russian passport holders that we keep hearing about are no accident, from the Wall Street Journal:

“Russia in recent years has also granted citizenship to the separatists. That looks like premeditation now: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged yesterday to “protect the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, no matter where they are located."

Republican petrol price heroism

The Republicans are refusing to accept attempts by Democrats to avoid even debating proposals for drilling in a tiny corner of the vast Alaskan wilderness, which could increase America's energy security, or other measures to ease the impact of worldwide shortages on hard-pressed American consumers.  Democrats voted for a five week recess without having taken action on the issue and tried to shut down the debate.  The Republicans just kept on talking, making a powerful point about the failure of the Democratic majority to show any initiative on this issue.

I had this e-mail from a friend who works in Washington:

"I was siting on the floor for this with a bunch of House members. was a revolutionary spirit. People were cheering, pizza being given out. And now they're inviting tourists down from the gallery onto the floor so they don't get kicked out!"

It's great to see such fight in Republican representatives.  They have public opinion behind them and will get a lot of credit for this.  Mark Hemingway, writing at The Corner, says:

"The atmosphere is positively electric in the House. It's a good thing for Democrats this isn't on C-SPAN because they'd look awful. Still, I get the sense Republicans in Congress aren't there to put on a show.  They've seized on an issue they have conviction in and the American people agree with. They're fed up with Pelosi and Reid's incompetence and bad faith. For the first time in years, House Republicans look like they're in it to win it. It's too early to say if Congressional Republicans can carry this momentum forward, but this is the stuff turning points are made of."

Don't impose a windfall tax on energy companies

I've written a post for the TPA blog making the case against a windfall tax.  Chris Dillow does the same, from a more left wing perspective, over at his blog, Stumbling and Mumbling.  A windfall tax would hurt the incentive to invest in really important energy infrastructure and is an awful, awful idea.

energywatch

energywatch have been in the news a lot in recent days.  Castigating electricity companies, Ofgem and anyone else they hold responsible for rising energy prices.

The reason gas prices are going up is complex but, basically, the main issue is this one:

Right now oil production isn't keeping up with rising demand.  That doesn't mean we need to go off ranting and raving about peak oil.  It just means that right now we don't have enough of the stuff coming out of the ground.  The market is sending a signal for everyone to cut down their use of oil but, unfortunately, there aren't many good alternatives so demand for oil is highly inelastic and doesn't fall much when the price goes up.  It is also sending a signal to increase production but supply takes a while to respond.

Gas prices are linked to oil prices on the European market.  As such, the rising price of oil is pushing up gas prices.  Electricity prices rise in turn because our generation is incredibly dependent upon gas as a fuel.  No one is really directly to blame for price rises.  As Ofgem have shown (PDF) the UK gas price is pretty much the same as the EU average.

There is another factor significantly pushing up energy prices, particularly electricity: climate change policies.  The Renewable Energy Foundation sets out the numbers:

• "Climate change policies make up around 14% of the average domestic electricity bill and 3% of the average domestic gas bill.
• Climate change policies also make up 21% of the average business electricity bill and 4% of the average business gas bill (i).
• By 2020 the burden of green policies will have risen to 18% of the average domestic electricity bill and 55% of the average business electricity bill(ii).

Despite this substantial bill the Renewables Obligation will decrease emissions by just 1.6% by 2010, at an exorbitant subsidy cost of around £400 per tonne of carbon (iii)."

So, we have two major causes of energy price rises:  the structure of the European gas market and government climate change policies.  One isn't really under anyone's immediate control.  In the medium term we can invest in coal and nuclear power to reduce our dependence on gas but that's a project that would take years.  By contrast, so long as the Government were prepared to ignore lunatic EU targets they could bring down the price of energy by scrapping useless policies tomorrow.  That's how hard-pressed consumers of energy could really be given a break.

What are energywatch focussed on then?  Bashing energy companies, of course.  Mike Denham, writing at the TaxPayers' Alliance blog sets out why:

"Except that energywatch is not independent. It is a tax-funded quango which costs us £15m pa (2006-07 Report and Accounts). Its rants are entirely dependent on us taxpayers for their funding.

It gets better. In 2006-07, Campaign Director Adam Scorer got paid no less than £75,000 (including pension accrual). His boss Allan Assher got paid c £125,000 (including pension). Of our money."

So, the Government forces us all to pay for a quango to bash energy companies and distract from their own complicity in high energy prices.  The media don't ask any questions.  The cost to ordinary people of massive subsidies to renewable industries that provide little useful capacity needs to be exposed and energywatch should be shut, so that it can be replaced by a campaign that really has the interests of energy consumers, rather than pleasing its political masters, at heart.

Eco-socialism's advertising budget

Last month, Birmingham City Council ran a £200,000 climate change festival:

"Birmingham City Council had hoped to attract crowds and promote green issues with the nine-day event last month.

The festival featured the erection of a 30ft nickel-plated pylon in the city centre, while £38,000 was spent on “street theatre, waste sculpture, and litter performance activities”."

Fiona McEvoy, Campaign Agent for the West Midlands TaxPayers' Alliance, told the Sunday Mercury:

"The general public are finding it difficult to pay their household bills at the moment, so the council spending thousands of pounds on ‘litter based street performance’ on their behalf is not only indulgent, but insulting to those who really could do with a council tax cut to relieve the burden."

Fiona has written more about the problems with the festival here.  In answer to a parliamentary question from Andrew Tyrie the Government have revealed that the Act on CO2 campaign costs £5.5 million a year.  Friends of the Earth and Green Peace are also working with seven-figure budgets.  Eco-socialism has a huge advertising budget.

Coal power, clean or not, is now essential

This quote, from Peter Huber, should be printed on a placard and used to beat some sense into people who just will not accept the realities of energy policy:

"If you're 40 or older, you're going to spend the rest of your life powered by carbon or uranium. Take your pick. Forget about "none of the above" or "less of both." For the next several decades at least, alternative energy sources aren't serious choices; they are pork barrels, delusions, demonstration plants and daydreams."

Of course, it isn't quite as simple as that.  New technology might deliver something new more quickly and allow us a third option.  That's one of those possibilities that you can take small steps to encourage but definitely shouldn't plan on.  If some marvellous new renewable, or fusion, quickly becomes able to reliably and affordably provide substantial quantities of power then take that as a bonus.  In the meantime, we need to make sure we can keep a secure and reliable supply of energy available.

This excellent article by John Constable, from the Renewable Energy Foundation, sets out how the Government have been enjoying energy daydreams for ten years and have left the future of UK electricity dark, dirty and and costly.

The green movement have encouraged the Government in their delusional belief that growth in renewables could stop Britain becoming dangerously dependent on gas.  To see the greens protesting at the building of coal power plants, when they did so much to block cleaner options such as nuclear power, is infuriating.  Yes, carbon capture and storage (CCS) might not be installed on an industrial scale for some time but the dichotomy can't be coal power plants and CCS or letting the lights go out half way through the next government's term.

With supplies of gas unstable Britain needs a more diverse mix of fuels.  10 years of delay mean that the only way of doing that is now to build coal power plants.

Pierre Manent and Direct Democracy

Pierre Manent is a pretty important figure in France.  Wikipedia describes him as "a key figure of the contemporary French political philosophy [whose] work has helped the rediscovery of the French Liberal tradition."  As such, this interview is fascinating:

"With the European Union we seem to have reached an ulterior stage of democracy, liberated from its old glittering finery, mutated into pure governance, and not connected to any people, to any territory, to any particular mores. With the May 29, 2005 referendum, we were able to see the fracture between official political action and the real feelings of European citizens, who have the feeling that they are being carried away in a movement that no one can control."

[...]

"True, but the American system, because it is still truly national and representative, is capable of correcting, however brutally, its direction. If Americans vote for President Bush and the Republican Party it is because, rightly or wrongly, they believe those candidates are better able than the Democrats to confront the challenges of the times. Not that the United States enjoys moral and social health in every test it is put to, but their political system reacts to the fluctuations of American opinion and to the vision, accurate or erroneous, that Americans have of what is good for the United States."

[...]

"The problem in Europe, particularly in France, is that our politics, though obviously bad, are not correctible, whatever the orientation of the electorate. Even though opinion is hostile to the indefinite extension of the European Union, even though the citizens of two founding countries voted against the constitutional treaty, everything proceeds as before and it is being suggested that the treaty will slip in through the window."

The whole interview is interesting but these sections, in particular, illustrate that some influential old European conservatives share the concern common among British conservatives; that popular democracy will die by drowning in a supranational and bureaucratic mush.

Al Gore loses his mind

We already knew Al Gore was wrong.  That pretty much everything that made his film distinctive and emotionally compelling couldn't be justified by the evidence.

Now, it appears he's lost touch with reality entirely.  He has challenged Americans to entirely end the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity within a decade (without an expansion of nuclear power).  This is utter insanity.  The research of the excellent Renewable Energy Foundation shows pretty conclusively that large scale renewable energy is currently unrealistic.  Wind power is far too unreliable and has a nasty tendency to cut out when you need it most.  Other technologies just cost too much per KWh to be remotely practical as a large part of our energy mix.

Of course, that's not to say that massive adoption of renewable power won't happen.  It is possible, though unlikely within a decade, that new technological developments will achieve something remarkable.  Perhaps solar power really will become too cheap to meter.  There are steps that can be taken to encourage technological advance in that direction.  Jim Manzi, writing in the National Review, proposed prizes that could encourage technological advance at low cost and without too much risk of interest group capture.

However, to start trying to tax people into avoiding fossil fuels now, when there isn't a practical alternative, will just push up the cost of energy.  It would cost ordinary families, and particularly the poor and vulnerable elderly, a fortune and do lasting damage to industry.  To try and force a switch away from fossil fuels on the timescale and scale Gore is proposing would be insanity.

How badly would HMRC have to screw up for its Chairman not to get a bonus?

This morning the TaxPayers' Alliance has uncovered the details of the extraordinary financial package that HMRC's ex-Chairman, who resigned over the loss of child benefit data, has received.  "Doing the honourable thing" is rarely so lucrative.

"HMRC's annual accounts, which have just been published on 14 July 2008, reveal that Mr Gray:

• Earned £120,000 in salary in 2007-08.
• Received a lump sum pay-off of £137,591 on resigning.
• Is currently being paid over £7,000 a month until his retirement on 2 August 2008 - in seven monthly payments totaling £49,292 this year.
• Has a pension pot totalling over £2 million."

This hardly creates much of an incentive for senior Civil Servants to avoid similar mistakes being made in the future.  If the public sector were a company the shareholders would be right to revolt.  It is taxpayers' money at stake in the public sector - we need to stop accepting such low standards and unjustified generosity to senior staff.

Here is Mark Wallace, TPA Campaign Director, discussing the issue:

60%, 80%, -1.6%

There was a surreal quality watching Hillary Benn being interviewed on the Politics Show this morning.  The host was quizzing him on the Climate Change Bill, and the commitment to cut emissions by 60% from 1990 levels.  She was asking why the Government weren't going further, and targetting an 80% reduction.  What exactly a 60%, not to mention 80%, cut means in the real world was entirely ignored.

To the right is the pattern of UK carbon dioxide emissions since 1990 so far. Between 1990 and about 1993-94 there are significant cuts.  This is almost certainly connected to the recession at the time.  Carbon dioxide emissions are so intimately connected to economic growth that recessions often lead to reductions.  The collapse of Eastern Europe's manufacturing base probably brought emissions down more than any other global phenomenon of the past few decades.  We may see emissions reductions right now, when the data comes through in a couple of years time, connected to the current slowdown.  The early nineties reduction was also, more importantly, driven by the shift to gas, something that can only be done once and might need to reversed if gas imports are imperilled.  One more reason why ensuring energy security and cutting emissions don't necessarily go together.

We haven't cut emissions since 1995.  Since 1997 emissions have actually increased by 1.6%.  All this fuss over targets, whether binding or not, is pretty meaningless.  The actual policies that have been put in place over the last ten years have increased the price of electricity (Ofgem estimate (PDF) that they make up 8% of the average household energy bill), pushed up the cost of motoring, increased the price of family holidays and otherwise cost taxpayers a fortune.  Petrol prices have almost doubled since 1995 and, at the same time, emissions have kept on rising suggesting that the elasticities involved are incredibly low.

At last the Government admits that the Vehicle Excise Duty changes are going to cost ordinary motorists dear

Chris DeMuth, head of the American Enterprise Institute, has a think tank slogan: "No one knows when the Berlin Wall will come down."  Think tanks attempting to get a message across, and affect the political discourse, might have to labour away for days, months, years or decades.  You just have to trust that your position is the right one and can be politically salient.

In our immediate response to the budget, on Sky News, I noted how Darling's changes to the Vehicle Excise Duty, supposedly designed to stop people buying gas-guzzlers, were going to hit cars as humble as the Ford Focus 1.4 that they had brought along as a prop.  The next day we released our "What's My Car Tax" database using VCA emissions data to set out how fuel duty was set to change for all of the thousands of car models currently on sale in the UK.  It showed that nine out of ten cars would see an increase and suggested that Darling's rhetoric was deeply misleading.  It emerged from the database, thanks to an eagle-eyed commenter on Guido Fawkes' blog, that some models of Nissan Micra would see a larger percentage rise than a Hummer.  All this hit the media and people started to learn the truth about this cynical tax grab.

Ever since then the Government have been getting in huge trouble over the issue.  By that Sunday George Osborne was attacking the measure in the Sunday Telegraph.  Justine Greening established that the Government expected to more than double its Vehicle Excise Duty revenue.  The new Vehicle Excise Duty regime has become a "poll tax on wheels" as the extent of the rises becomes clearer and more people realise that cars like theirs are going to be hit by these measures.  Labour MPs are threatening a rebellion on the issue and things will only get worse for the Government if they have not executed a u-turn before people start having to turn up to the Post Office with unpleasantly large cheques in their hands or sell treasured family cars bought as far back as 2001.

The BBC's bias reaches new heights of absurdity

That's the Canadian trailer for Burn Up, a mini-series that the BBC will be bringing to the UK.  The trailer the BBC ran before Newsnight made it rather clearer that this is all actually about climate change and evil climate change deniers.

This, from the BBC press release, reads like satire:

"Neve Campbell plays his colleague Holly, whose covert collaboration with environmentalists puts her in great jeopardy, and Bradley Whitford plays Tom's best friend Mack, a charismatic yet unscrupulous oil industry lobbyist.

Burn Up follows the trio's lives and loves as they hurtle towards a global climate change summit."

Somehow, I think a fair portrayal of the global debate over climate change policy is a bit unlikely. Will the debate over what to do be cast as anything other than a black and white moral issue largely ignoring the human cost of pushing up the price of energy? Will the programme reflect the fact that 'green' campaigners are far better resourced than sceptics? Will anyone opposing climate change alarmism have any motive that isn't purely mercenary or malicious?

I can say, with just the tiniest margin of doubt, that the answer to almost all those questions is no.

Re: Pocket the difference (outside of CAP)

The Common Agricultural Policy is just one of the policies politicians have put in place that push up food prices.  Just like attacks on energy companies while green regulations alone add 8% to the average household electricity bill this is an attempt to avoid political responsibility for decisions that have increased the cost of living.  Over at the TaxPayers' Alliance blog I've listed five ways that politicians contribute to high prices:

1. "Biofuels.  A leaked World Bank report suggests that biofuels have increased food prices by up to 75%.  The United States is the biggest offender with its huge corn ethanol subsidies but our Government has just introduced the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation which will mean Britons are forced to burn large amounts of what could otherwise be food in their cars, driving up prices.
2. The Common Agricultural Policy.  High import tariffs keep out foreign competition and push up prices.
3. Motoring taxes.  Transporting food for production or to market is more costly when petrol prices are high.  Taxes constitute two thirds of the price of petrol and, therefore, have a significant impact on the cost of bringing food from the field to the plate.
4. Excessive food safety regulations.  Christopher Booker and Richard North, in their recent book, describe how many companies involved in producing food have been crippled by excessive or unjustified regulation.  This reduces competition and will push up prices.
5. Energy taxes and regulations.  At various stages in the process producing many foodstuffs uses substantial amounts of energy.  Government regulations, such as the Renewables Obligation, increase the price of energy and therefore further drive up the cost of food.  Ofgem estimate that green regulations make up 8% of the average household electricity bill and they will make a substantial contribution to industrial energy costs as well."

I'm sure there are more, any ideas?

Lord Phillips

Who are these grey men? These tired souls who occupy such senior positions in our establishment with nothing but relativist defeat in their hearts.

I seem to have my stages of grief all out of order. The Archbishop's call for Sharia drove me to rage. The Lord Chief Justice's comments are merely depressing. He has endorsed Williams' post-backpedal position that Sharia should be used as a form of mediation for financial and marital disputes. He makes many of the mistakes I described in my initial response to the Archbishop; giving heart to Islamists and failing to understand that offering 'Muslim' and British options to British Muslim women is, for far too many, not to offer a free choice at all.

The cost of crime

Mori’s Issues Index Poll for June shows crime is a serious concern for more people than any other issue.  We recoil at the tragedy of savage murders and other violent crime and the everyday grind of burglaries, thefts and vandalism.  Despite that, the problem is extremely difficult to get an empirical handle on.  There are measurement issues – how many shopliftings take place for every one that the police actually record?  There are also weighting issues – how many burglaries is a murder worth?

The only way of dealing with the first question is to compare recorded crime with British Crime Survey results and try to work out some ratios.   The best way of answering the second question is to use assessments of the economic and social cost of crime to work out the social implications of violent attacks, burglaries and the range of other crimes.  This might sound brutal, putting a price on people’s suffering, but it is absolutely essential to the task of truly understanding how crime differs over time and between different parts of the country.  If you don’t weight the results then you effectively treat one murder as equal to one theft, an approach that is clearly absurd.

Bob Ayling

I'm not sure if I have a clear answer to the question of whether Heathrow should expand.  There is a reasonable case to be made that Heathrow itself might not be the ideal place to expand.  However, I have no sympathy whatsoever for hysterical and joyless campaigns against flying itself and am well convinced that more capacity in the region is necessary.  As such, the proper question is whether you have a feasible alternative in mind.  Vague speculation about new airports in Kent just isn't good enough.  No responsible conservative should make the same mistake Labour made over energy and road building; using green politics as an excuse for failing to confront difficult questions until a crisis is at hand.

The coalition opposing the new runway is an uncomfortable one.  It is split between those wanting new airport capacity elsewhere so they do not have to face aircraft noise and those who want to inconvenience people into taking fewer flights.  If the Conservatives oppose the runway they will have to, if they form a government, dissapoint one of the two groups who will either resent poor service and delays at the airport or accuse them of green heresy.  Opposing the third runway without a clear alternative, set out in advance, is risky.

What really worries me is the possibility that the party is taking Bob Ayling's opinion on the matter seriously:

"The Conservatives have moved more firmly against a third runway after the former BA chief, Bob Ayling, came out against the big increase in transfer passenger[s] for causing "Heathrow hassle"."

The man responsible for the disastrous 'dirty tricks' campaign against Virgin, the ethnic tailfins which infuriated British and North American customers alike and a failed merger with American Airlines.  He was then forced to resign as head of the company running Millenium Dome because of a poor performance controlling costs.  He's the private sector's answer to Sir John Gieve.

Pork Invaders

A web game from the McCain campaign:

Why I do not want Obama to win

Douglas Carswell writes that he wants Obama to win.  I find the idea horrifying and think that McCain would make a far better President.  I'll try to set out why by going through Obama's positives, as set out by Douglas and, earlier, Dan Hannan and then briefly discussing McCain's negatives before describing what I see as the big divide between Obama and McCain.

Re: The Wisdom of Crowds

Two points on Peter and Peter's debate on whether the Observer poll suggests that crowds are wise.  First, on the philosophical debate, Peter Franklin says:

"I'm concerned that the wisdom of crowds meme, like some crowds, is getting out of control. Obviously, anyone who believes in democracy has to have trust in his or her fellow citizens; but surely, as Conservatives, we should also expect a degree of trust in those who, by virtue of merit, can speak with authority in certain fields of human endeavour." [emphasis mine]

Why?  That sounds like pretty much the opposite of what we should believe as conservatives.  Whether it is Burke calling for caution to those who would set our private stock of reason above age old traditions, Hayek describing the importance of dispersed information or the religious among us who prefer age old moral wisdom to contemporary theory.  Sometimes we might need to set conservatism to one side but it is not an ideology that should ever imply trusting experts and their 'authority'.

While science has a good record of delivering technological advances and pushing the boundaries of the human experience that does not mean that the opinions of scientists should always be taken at face value.  A fascinating report for the International Policy Network by Professor Jim Chin shows how the prevalence of AIDS was massively overstated by UNAIDS, leading to poor targetting of the response; a mistake they are only now, in the face of overwhelming evidence, accepting.  UNAIDS had a noble goal, trying to increase the resources available to combat AIDS, and their bias was probably not conscious but their errors clearly demonstrate how science can be distorted once it is enlisted to a political movement like environmentalism.  Of course, that doesn't mean we should discount scientific opinion, just that we cannot concede our judgement on such important matters to scientists alone.

One final point, I thought Mori's poll was desperately shoddy.  The proper question to test whether the public think the sceptics are a significant group isn't really whether they believe that "many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change".  That humans are making no contribution isn't the position of most scientific sceptics.  Also, the "still" is leading.  If you asked some variant of whether "many [or most] scientific experts argue that the amount of climate change we should expect human activities to cause will not be enough to constitute a 'crisis'" that might be more meaningful.