“ One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them”Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
Quote of the day
Why Gordon axed the 10p tax rate
The current fuss and hot air generated by Gordon Brown’s axing of the 10p tax rate is truly amazing.
The New-Labour rebellion over it for one. These are the same planks that were making like performing seals with much clapping and ‘hear hear’s when their master and then leader in waiting, Gordon Brown, actually did the dirty deed in his last budget as chancellor.
What is also amazing is that most of the pundits and commentators only get half the picture. Gordon Brown may lack bottle to do stuff in the light of day, but he has considerable animal cunning and likes complex double and triple bluffs concealing much of what he does in the hope no one will ever notice, let alone call him on it.
A number of them have noted that the changes coincidentally leave those on low incomes with no children much worse off. They have all the pieces but seem to fail to fit all the pieces of the jigsaw together.
It also shows how few pundits read this blog ;-) as I pointed what follows out at the time.
So - let's set the picture and go over it again. Cue wobbly fade…
Before Gordo’s last budget there was much rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth over ‘Child Poverty’. New Labour had foolishly promised (though why breaking some promises should bother them more than others is not clear) to halve child poverty in Britain by 2010 - and there was no way they were going to meet that target.
Now New-labour were presumably too stupid to realise this is effectively impossible when they set this target. But because of the way the formula is calculated ‘Child Poverty’ is defined by a moving set of goalposts. If you were to somehow magically increase the household incomes of all families, every single one, who fall within the definition at midnight on Sunday - and then re run the figures the poverty line would have increased and you would still have children living in ‘poverty’. You can do the sums for yourself if you care to.
So what has this to do with the abolition of the 10p tax band? Well there is one way of getting a temporary boost to the child poverty figures. It is a matter of percentages. If you take from the really poor who it would take a lot of cash to lift out of actual poverty and give that to those who are not so badly off just below the ‘poverty’ line and only need a little to lift them out, then you can keep the goal posts more-or-less where they are and improve the figures no end. It works especially well if you mostly just take from those poor who have no children.
One suspects it is far from a coincidence that Gordon Brown, knowing he would be judged on New Labour's rash promises on ‘Child Poverty’ decided to do the one thing that could easily improve his figures and might be made to look like a tax cut. Rather like a magician drawing your attention to his right hand whist his left does the real trick.
So it looks suspiciously like just another, albeit particularly dodgy, case of New Labour manipulating figures to pretend to be accomplishing something.
If it is true then it shows the his truly cynical nature, the true depths to which he is willing to sink and puts the lie to any claims he may make to actually care about the poor.
The New-Labour rebellion over it for one. These are the same planks that were making like performing seals with much clapping and ‘hear hear’s when their master and then leader in waiting, Gordon Brown, actually did the dirty deed in his last budget as chancellor.
What is also amazing is that most of the pundits and commentators only get half the picture. Gordon Brown may lack bottle to do stuff in the light of day, but he has considerable animal cunning and likes complex double and triple bluffs concealing much of what he does in the hope no one will ever notice, let alone call him on it.
A number of them have noted that the changes coincidentally leave those on low incomes with no children much worse off. They have all the pieces but seem to fail to fit all the pieces of the jigsaw together.
It also shows how few pundits read this blog ;-) as I pointed what follows out at the time.
So - let's set the picture and go over it again. Cue wobbly fade…
Before Gordo’s last budget there was much rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth over ‘Child Poverty’. New Labour had foolishly promised (though why breaking some promises should bother them more than others is not clear) to halve child poverty in Britain by 2010 - and there was no way they were going to meet that target.
Now New-labour were presumably too stupid to realise this is effectively impossible when they set this target. But because of the way the formula is calculated ‘Child Poverty’ is defined by a moving set of goalposts. If you were to somehow magically increase the household incomes of all families, every single one, who fall within the definition at midnight on Sunday - and then re run the figures the poverty line would have increased and you would still have children living in ‘poverty’. You can do the sums for yourself if you care to.
So what has this to do with the abolition of the 10p tax band? Well there is one way of getting a temporary boost to the child poverty figures. It is a matter of percentages. If you take from the really poor who it would take a lot of cash to lift out of actual poverty and give that to those who are not so badly off just below the ‘poverty’ line and only need a little to lift them out, then you can keep the goal posts more-or-less where they are and improve the figures no end. It works especially well if you mostly just take from those poor who have no children.
One suspects it is far from a coincidence that Gordon Brown, knowing he would be judged on New Labour's rash promises on ‘Child Poverty’ decided to do the one thing that could easily improve his figures and might be made to look like a tax cut. Rather like a magician drawing your attention to his right hand whist his left does the real trick.
So it looks suspiciously like just another, albeit particularly dodgy, case of New Labour manipulating figures to pretend to be accomplishing something.
If it is true then it shows the his truly cynical nature, the true depths to which he is willing to sink and puts the lie to any claims he may make to actually care about the poor.
Monday, 21 April 2008
Study claims millions of the UK’s working class ‘wrongly’ think they are middle class
There is some absolute drivel written about ‘class’ in the UK. Today the Telegraph adds some more horse manure to the compost.
They are reporting moneysupermarket.com claim that around 15 million people - a quarter of the population - are in denial of their true working class status. They apparently base this on income alone.
They probably didn’t notice that virtually everyone works these days (except for the State’s Welfare clients). So by certain definitions that would make virtually all of us ‘working class’.
If you are talking in terms of aspirations and outlook then things probably tend to flip the other way, though many who like to think of themselves as ‘working class’ would hotly deny it. One suspects that by this measure then much of the population is firmly middle class.
In any event, historically speaking, when the classes really still existed, Britain had always been relatively open to mobility between the classes.
Moneysupermarket.com‘s study seems to be largely based on income alone and puts the average income of a ‘working-class’ household at £23,000 a year and a ‘middle-class’ household at £33,000 for middle-class homes. To be ‘upper middle class’ you need a household income averaging around £52,000 a year.
This is, to put it kindly, twaddle. There will be many who see themselves as working class who money-supermarket.com might regard as ‘upper middle class’ and many who see themselves as middle class the study would claim were working class.
Who appointed money-supermarket.com as the arbiters of the UK’s fading class system. Just a new version of U and non-U speech. Or maybe reading entrails…
They are reporting moneysupermarket.com claim that around 15 million people - a quarter of the population - are in denial of their true working class status. They apparently base this on income alone.
They probably didn’t notice that virtually everyone works these days (except for the State’s Welfare clients). So by certain definitions that would make virtually all of us ‘working class’.
If you are talking in terms of aspirations and outlook then things probably tend to flip the other way, though many who like to think of themselves as ‘working class’ would hotly deny it. One suspects that by this measure then much of the population is firmly middle class.
In any event, historically speaking, when the classes really still existed, Britain had always been relatively open to mobility between the classes.
Moneysupermarket.com‘s study seems to be largely based on income alone and puts the average income of a ‘working-class’ household at £23,000 a year and a ‘middle-class’ household at £33,000 for middle-class homes. To be ‘upper middle class’ you need a household income averaging around £52,000 a year.
This is, to put it kindly, twaddle. There will be many who see themselves as working class who money-supermarket.com might regard as ‘upper middle class’ and many who see themselves as middle class the study would claim were working class.
Who appointed money-supermarket.com as the arbiters of the UK’s fading class system. Just a new version of U and non-U speech. Or maybe reading entrails…
Friday, 18 April 2008
Quote of the day
“ I want for our country enough laws to restrain me from injuring others, so that these laws will also restrain others from injuring me. I want enough government, with enough constitutional safeguards, so that this necessary minimum of laws will be applied equitably to everybody, and will be binding on the rulers as well as those ruled.
Beyond that I want neither laws nor government to be imposed on our people as a means or with the excuse of protecting us from catching cold, or of seeing that we raise the right kind of crops, or of forcing us to live in the right kind of houses or neighbourhoods, or of compelling us to save money or to spend it, or of telling us when or whether we can pray.
I do not want government or laws designed for any other form of welfarism or paternalism, based on the premise that government knows best and can run our lives better than we can run them ourselves. And my concept of freedom, and of its overwhelming importance, is implicit in these aspirations and ideals.”Robert Welch
WHO seeks to persecute law abiding drinkers
“A New world authoritarian order?” He types, from his secret, heavily armed bunker, somewhere in Texas ;-)
Sounds rather like what ‘they’ would like to brand as the stuff of paranoid right wing survivalist imagination – but is it really?
Consider the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) Who say: “health is a shared responsibility, involving equitable access to essential care and collective defence against transnational threats.”
One suspects they would have used the word ‘collective’ in place of shared if they hadn’t used it later in the sentence.
Their ‘commissar’ of substance abuse is one Dr Vladimir Pozniak, Coordinator of the Psychoactive Substance Abuse programme.
They have produced a report published in the magazine New Scientist.
Basically the report argues that because of the bad effects produced by alcohol on non-drinkers (third party damage), i.e. Drunks occasionally becoming violent, destructive or noisy. That these effects of over indulgence in alcohol should be vilified like the so-called ‘dangers’ of passive smoking. Presumably with the aim of creating similar draconian legal controls.
The last time I looked drink driving was illegal in much of the world. As is criminal damage and assault.
That law abiding people should be effectively punished for drinking because of the mere possibility of it impacting on someone else. They emote about violence and damage to unborn children, the latter presumably from pregnant women drinking excessive alcohol.
This smacks of the Fascist-Lite, excessive authoritarian legislation for something that is already covered by law approach, so beloved of New-Labour.
WHO’s proposed solution? Why penalising everyone who dares to want to have an alcoholic drink. The wider “medical community” allegedly backs this.
Effectively nothing less than punitive taxation, artificial price controls and state restrictions on availability - on a global scale.
Who pays for this organisation? The taxpayer that’s who…
Sounds rather like what ‘they’ would like to brand as the stuff of paranoid right wing survivalist imagination – but is it really?
Consider the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) Who say: “health is a shared responsibility, involving equitable access to essential care and collective defence against transnational threats.”
One suspects they would have used the word ‘collective’ in place of shared if they hadn’t used it later in the sentence.
Their ‘commissar’ of substance abuse is one Dr Vladimir Pozniak, Coordinator of the Psychoactive Substance Abuse programme.
They have produced a report published in the magazine New Scientist.
Basically the report argues that because of the bad effects produced by alcohol on non-drinkers (third party damage), i.e. Drunks occasionally becoming violent, destructive or noisy. That these effects of over indulgence in alcohol should be vilified like the so-called ‘dangers’ of passive smoking. Presumably with the aim of creating similar draconian legal controls.
The last time I looked drink driving was illegal in much of the world. As is criminal damage and assault.
That law abiding people should be effectively punished for drinking because of the mere possibility of it impacting on someone else. They emote about violence and damage to unborn children, the latter presumably from pregnant women drinking excessive alcohol.
This smacks of the Fascist-Lite, excessive authoritarian legislation for something that is already covered by law approach, so beloved of New-Labour.
WHO’s proposed solution? Why penalising everyone who dares to want to have an alcoholic drink. The wider “medical community” allegedly backs this.
Effectively nothing less than punitive taxation, artificial price controls and state restrictions on availability - on a global scale.
Who pays for this organisation? The taxpayer that’s who…
Thursday, 17 April 2008
Mental health connection to girls ethnic clothing
A new study by Queen Mary University of London has raised some interesting questions. It suggests that in the UK Bangladeshi girls who wear ‘traditional’ clothes suffer from fewer behavioural and emotional problems than ones who wear more mainstream clothes.
This apparently only applies to females and nothing equivalent could be seen in the mainstream community.
It is extremely doubtful that the actual clothes make any the difference, and the report does not claim it does. There is likely to be some indirect link.
One of the authors of the study, Professor Kam Bhui, , felt the result was "surprising", having expected the reverse. He conjectured the reason could be:
"Traditional clothing represents a tighter family unit, and this may offer some protection against some of the pressures that young people face.
"What it suggests is that we need to assist people who are moving from traditional cultures and becoming integrated into Western societies, as they may be more vulnerable to mental health problems."
One wonders if it has occurred to the reports authors that yes traditional clothing does indeed indicate a tighter less integrated family with more ‘traditional’ attitudes towards females and all that that implies.
Bangladeshi girls that don’t resist this come under less pressure from their families. They are often resident in effectively ghettoised areas, where this is the prevailing attitude and may well attend schools containing a significant number of girls from similar backgrounds.
Girls from traditional families under these circumstances that choose to step outside the somewhat narrow confines of this, to embrace a more mainstream ‘western’ lifestyle are surely more likely to come under increased pressure from the family, face the possibility of disapproval, loosing family support in some cases - and in some extreme cases even the possible threat of honour killing.
These factors are bound to undermine their equilibrium.
A comparison with girls of more mainstream integrated Indian decent might prove instructive.
This apparently only applies to females and nothing equivalent could be seen in the mainstream community.
It is extremely doubtful that the actual clothes make any the difference, and the report does not claim it does. There is likely to be some indirect link.
One of the authors of the study, Professor Kam Bhui, , felt the result was "surprising", having expected the reverse. He conjectured the reason could be:
"Traditional clothing represents a tighter family unit, and this may offer some protection against some of the pressures that young people face.
"What it suggests is that we need to assist people who are moving from traditional cultures and becoming integrated into Western societies, as they may be more vulnerable to mental health problems."
One wonders if it has occurred to the reports authors that yes traditional clothing does indeed indicate a tighter less integrated family with more ‘traditional’ attitudes towards females and all that that implies.
Bangladeshi girls that don’t resist this come under less pressure from their families. They are often resident in effectively ghettoised areas, where this is the prevailing attitude and may well attend schools containing a significant number of girls from similar backgrounds.
Girls from traditional families under these circumstances that choose to step outside the somewhat narrow confines of this, to embrace a more mainstream ‘western’ lifestyle are surely more likely to come under increased pressure from the family, face the possibility of disapproval, loosing family support in some cases - and in some extreme cases even the possible threat of honour killing.
These factors are bound to undermine their equilibrium.
A comparison with girls of more mainstream integrated Indian decent might prove instructive.
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Alarmist predictions of 5 foot rise in sea level
According to a report from a UK/Finnish group sea levels could rise by up to almost 5 ft (4 ft 11 ½ inches) by the end of the century.
But ‘up to’ clearly includes any figure below that, including no discernable difference at all.
Apparently the team has built a computer model that can reflect the relationship between temperatures and sea level over the past 2000 years.
For the model’s predictions outside normal parameters to work it has to be accurate outside the parameters. It is simply not possible to test it against reality without data and many a model that accurately reflects relatively chaotic behaviour within certain bounds fails singularly when taken outside them.
It is an fact that global temperatures were significantly higher than current levels, between the 9th and 14th centuries. A period of some 500 years when temperatures were warmer than those today, what does the model say about sea level and ice cover during that period?
There is also the fact that the data on temperature predictions fed into such a model has to be accurate for it to be accurate. GIGO as they say.
The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 was statistically the same as 2006 and 2005 and every year since 2001. Unless the IPCC does a Robert Mugabe on the figures ‘global warming’ appears to have, for the moment at least, halted .
What happens next is anybody's guess - and that’s really what it is, a guess.
It could warm up to something more like it was back in the middle ages, it could remain stable, conceivably it could drop. Whatever happens it will sooner or later change, one way or the other.
That’s what climate does - and has done since long before humans learned to harness fire.
Maybe politicians on the AGW bandwagon should think twice about bio fuels and punitive taxes before they cause a crisis of their own, a food crisis.
Mind that’s no reason not to cut pollution, or build nuclear power stations, or develop compressed air or hydrogen powered transport. That makes sense anyway.
But ‘up to’ clearly includes any figure below that, including no discernable difference at all.
Apparently the team has built a computer model that can reflect the relationship between temperatures and sea level over the past 2000 years.
For the model’s predictions outside normal parameters to work it has to be accurate outside the parameters. It is simply not possible to test it against reality without data and many a model that accurately reflects relatively chaotic behaviour within certain bounds fails singularly when taken outside them.
It is an fact that global temperatures were significantly higher than current levels, between the 9th and 14th centuries. A period of some 500 years when temperatures were warmer than those today, what does the model say about sea level and ice cover during that period?
There is also the fact that the data on temperature predictions fed into such a model has to be accurate for it to be accurate. GIGO as they say.
The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 was statistically the same as 2006 and 2005 and every year since 2001. Unless the IPCC does a Robert Mugabe on the figures ‘global warming’ appears to have, for the moment at least, halted .
What happens next is anybody's guess - and that’s really what it is, a guess.
It could warm up to something more like it was back in the middle ages, it could remain stable, conceivably it could drop. Whatever happens it will sooner or later change, one way or the other.
That’s what climate does - and has done since long before humans learned to harness fire.
Maybe politicians on the AGW bandwagon should think twice about bio fuels and punitive taxes before they cause a crisis of their own, a food crisis.
Mind that’s no reason not to cut pollution, or build nuclear power stations, or develop compressed air or hydrogen powered transport. That makes sense anyway.
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
Quote of the day
" The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
" Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism."Paul-Henri, baron d'Holbach (1723-1789)
Suspect attempted mass murderer’s self justification full of holes
I happened to catch the confused pathetic inept and juvenile attempt at self justification of the would be mass murderer Ahmed Abdulla Ali’s so-called ‘martyrdom’ video on TV yesterday.
I noted he was careful to try to address certain points. He was for instance anxious to point out that he had not been ‘brainwashed’ and was "educated to a high standard" and "old enough" to make his own decisions. Though age and education are no bars to ideological blindness and confused, illogical thinking.
Brainwashed? Certainly there is something peculiar, or out of the ordinary in the way strong belief can, in certain individuals, often combined with prejudice, hatred or racism, allow them to justify terrible crimes against others to themselves, that normal decent people would baulk at.
I thought it telling when he said that: ”"This the opportunity to punish and humiliate the kuffar (all non Moslems), to teach them a lesson they will never forget.” this would appear to indicate a deep religiously based hatred of all who do not share his particular beliefs, or surely he would not have used those particular terms. It is reasonable to conclude he felt that Kuffars needed to be taught a damned good lesson, simply for the crime of being Kuffars.
The thing that really struck me as undermining his whole house mental of cards was that he justified the evil he planned on the basis that the public had collectively voted for the government who were apparently oppressing his people’s lands.
His peoples lands? He lived and had made a home in the UK. He had benefited from this. He no doubt expected to enjoy and in fact did and still does benefit from the rights and protections that come with that. Among other things it allows him to plead not guilty in the face of what amounts to his own self made recorded confession.
He complained that the public hadn’t protested sufficiently against, presumably the removal of Saddam Hussein, or possibly the situation in Israel.
That they were willing to pressure the government over fox hunting, but not over his perceived persecution of Moslems. "You don't care about the Muslims that are being killed."
This sounds rather like a set piece of anti Western Democracy rhetoric circulated by hate mongers that he was not bright enough to see through. It is paranoia to suppose that bad things that happen to people who also happen to be Muslims take place because they are Muslims.
It does not follow at all that simply because there were protests and because a fox hunting ban was imposed the British public does not care that Muslims, or anyone else, are being killed. It is a Non-Sequitur and is easily shown to be the lie it is by the outcry over the killing of Muslims in the Balkans when British troops, together with other western troops including American troops, were sent in specifically to prevent this. He conveniently chooses to ignore this, or perhaps never picked it up in the course of his vaunted ‘education’.
Any deaths in Iraq are squarely at the door of the insurgents many coming in from outside the country who seem to be doing to prevent it ever getting on it’s feet. Western troops would have been long gone by now if it were not for this. It is the insurgents who are deliberately slaughtering presumably fellow Muslims wholesale.
If he felt that further demonstrations (because there were demonstrations) might have helped he could have organised a pressure group, peaceful protests, lobbying. He chose not to do this.
He also fails to follow his own distorted logic to it’s conclusion. It is probable he would have had the opportunity to vote. By his own logic he is as ‘responsible’ as any other member of the electorate for the wrongs he apparently perceives. By his own logic he is just as deserving of ‘punishment’.
I noted he was careful to try to address certain points. He was for instance anxious to point out that he had not been ‘brainwashed’ and was "educated to a high standard" and "old enough" to make his own decisions. Though age and education are no bars to ideological blindness and confused, illogical thinking.
Brainwashed? Certainly there is something peculiar, or out of the ordinary in the way strong belief can, in certain individuals, often combined with prejudice, hatred or racism, allow them to justify terrible crimes against others to themselves, that normal decent people would baulk at.
I thought it telling when he said that: ”"This the opportunity to punish and humiliate the kuffar (all non Moslems), to teach them a lesson they will never forget.” this would appear to indicate a deep religiously based hatred of all who do not share his particular beliefs, or surely he would not have used those particular terms. It is reasonable to conclude he felt that Kuffars needed to be taught a damned good lesson, simply for the crime of being Kuffars.
The thing that really struck me as undermining his whole house mental of cards was that he justified the evil he planned on the basis that the public had collectively voted for the government who were apparently oppressing his people’s lands.
His peoples lands? He lived and had made a home in the UK. He had benefited from this. He no doubt expected to enjoy and in fact did and still does benefit from the rights and protections that come with that. Among other things it allows him to plead not guilty in the face of what amounts to his own self made recorded confession.
He complained that the public hadn’t protested sufficiently against, presumably the removal of Saddam Hussein, or possibly the situation in Israel.
That they were willing to pressure the government over fox hunting, but not over his perceived persecution of Moslems. "You don't care about the Muslims that are being killed."
This sounds rather like a set piece of anti Western Democracy rhetoric circulated by hate mongers that he was not bright enough to see through. It is paranoia to suppose that bad things that happen to people who also happen to be Muslims take place because they are Muslims.
It does not follow at all that simply because there were protests and because a fox hunting ban was imposed the British public does not care that Muslims, or anyone else, are being killed. It is a Non-Sequitur and is easily shown to be the lie it is by the outcry over the killing of Muslims in the Balkans when British troops, together with other western troops including American troops, were sent in specifically to prevent this. He conveniently chooses to ignore this, or perhaps never picked it up in the course of his vaunted ‘education’.
Any deaths in Iraq are squarely at the door of the insurgents many coming in from outside the country who seem to be doing to prevent it ever getting on it’s feet. Western troops would have been long gone by now if it were not for this. It is the insurgents who are deliberately slaughtering presumably fellow Muslims wholesale.
If he felt that further demonstrations (because there were demonstrations) might have helped he could have organised a pressure group, peaceful protests, lobbying. He chose not to do this.
He also fails to follow his own distorted logic to it’s conclusion. It is probable he would have had the opportunity to vote. By his own logic he is as ‘responsible’ as any other member of the electorate for the wrongs he apparently perceives. By his own logic he is just as deserving of ‘punishment’.
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