The welfare state

Devils Kitchen has a fine piece attacking Kerron Cross today. Do read the whole article but the bit that spoke to me clearest was DK's attack on the National Minimum Wage, here's an extract:

"Some people are never going to be worth paying at all and will thus remain unemployed (unless they retrain, for instance, thus adding to their human capital worth). If you introduce a Minimum Wage of, say, £4, anyone who's labour is worth less than £4 an hour will never have a job.

As you raise that Minimum Wage (especially if you do so above the level of natural wage inflation) then you increase the number of people who labour is not worth that amount. As such, you increase the number of people who will never be able to get a job.

The consequences of this are fairly plain. That person will, for starters, never have the chance to better themselves at the expense of their employer, through in-job training, etc. They are left very poor and so their chances of being able to go and study to improve their human capital, and therefore their labour rent value, is also reduced.

So, you contribute to an ever-increasing underclass, an üntermensch, who will never get a job. As such, you propagate an increase in the number of people who will always be living solely off benefits. As you increase those benefits, you make it even less likely that getting a low paid job will be more profitable, given the time outlay involved in working, and thus further reduce the probability that these people will ever work again.

If you then introduce Child Benefits, your unemployed person can afford to have children (they become, in fact, an investment), and you end up with children being brought up in a home where no one has ever worked. And so, you increase the number of people who, in turn, will probably never work.

And the stupid thing is that you don't have to take my word for it: we have seen this happen over the last sixty years. We now have a reported 3 million households in Britain that are entirely dependent on benefits.

And as Labour ramps up the Minimum Wage, the number of households will only increase as you increase the number of people whose labour is not worth the wage that you have insisted must be paid."

The BBC encourage thuggery

Read the story here.

Please remember the people of Tibet in your thoughts

Tibet was occupied by the brutal Chinese regime in 1950 and the Tibetan people have been brutally treated ever since, thousands being killed in 1959 following which the Chinese government followed a policy of forced land redistribution. Most of the world ignored these events, maybe they will take notice of what is happening in Tibet now, but I fear they won't.

Conservative party has a 16 point lead in the latest YouGov opinion poll

YouGov's latest poll which will appear in tomorrow's Sunday Times puts the Conservatives on 43%, Labour on 27% for Labour and the Lib Dems on just 16%

To put this in context, Gordon Brown has now taken Labour to its lowest poll rating since 1983, when Michael Foot was the party’s leader.

If the results were repeated at a general election, Cameron would lead his party to a Commons majority of around 120.


So far not a sniff of any coverage of this story on the BBC news. Although I seem to remember they were very keen to cover a poll a few months back that showed Labour were cutting the Conservative party's lead.

Labour cuts

The next time Yvette Cooper or Ed Balls or Alistair Darling or the big snot gobbler himself warn the public of planned "Tory Cuts", maybe someone should remind them that the Red Book (containing the detail behind this year's Budget) shows that spending on health has just been cut by £1.3 billion and spending on health by £1.9 billion.

"The protocol is not an opt-out from the charter"

The House of Lords European Union Committee yesterday concluded with reference to Gordon Brown's claimed protocol opt-out on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, that "The protocol is not an opt-out from the charter. The charter will apply in the UK, even if its interpretation may be affected by the terms of the protocol."

I do not expect the BBC to report this news...

Maternity leave

I was about to write an attack on the provision of maternity leave and the adverse effects this has on small business but then I found that Trixy has already done it. So go and read her article here whilst I go for a drink.

Six or seven years?

I do not understand the length of sentences handed down to Mark Masters and Sean Thompson who were found guilty of beating to death Gavin Waterhouse. The judge said the three teenagers who beat Mr Waterhouse to death were typical of the "young, drunken, violent yobs who hunt in packs, and of whom the public are sick and tired.". Judge James Stewart described the attack as "revolting, gratuitous...degrading."

This seems like murder to me, but the two youths were found guilty of manslaughter - one receiving a sentence of seven years in a young offenders institution, Thompson six years. Could someone explain why they were found guilty of manslaughter not murder and why these sentences are thought adequate.

Childbirth is painful - shock horror report

A report from researchers at Newcastle University reveals that New mothers are often shocked at the "intensity" of the agony they experience in Labour. Apparently "unrealistic" expectations led many women to believe that they wouldn't need pain relief.

I am amazed that this is news to researchers; I have been reading for many years that new mothers think that there was a "conspiracy of silence" between the medical profession and existing mothers over the sheer agony of giving birth. As one mother of just the one baby said to me, if women knew how painful it was going to be they wouldn't get pregnant.

At last a good idea from a Lib Dem

I have only just heard that last week Nick Clegg called for the number of MPs to be reduced by 150. This is a great idea, they have much less to do than in the past as now around 80% of legislation is sourced in Europe and most MPs just vote the way the Whips tell them to. I suggest that the reduction is carried out by making all constituencies the same size - taking into account the numbers who vote in each constituency. The first factor explains why we still have more Scottish MPs, even after devolution, than we should. The second factor explains why the Conservatives need at least an eight point victory in votes cast at a General Election to stand a chance of forming a majority government, whilst the Labour party can win a landslide election with less than 40% of votes cast.

Human shields

The BBC and much of the rest of the West's media are always delighted to report that the nasty Israelis have killed x women and y children in their latest "incursion" into Gaza. The media will report the Israelis claim that they were targeting terrorists, of course the media will use the word activists or militants rather than terrorists, but will cast aspersions upon these claims. The Israelis will claim that they cannot just go after the terrorists because Hamas use women and children as human shields and to recover rocket launchers after they have been fired, knowing that the Israelis target their response to rocket attacks onn the launchers.

Now we have a statement by a Hamas MP that backs up Israel's line. MEMRI TV report that (my emphasis):

"Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Hamas MP Fathi Hammad, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 29, 2008.

Fathi Hammad: [The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: "We desire death like you desire life."


This line about loving death like the Israelis love life is something that has been said many times before, here are a few examples:

Golda Meir, when Prime Minister of Israel, said, "Israel will have peace when the Arabs love their children more than they hate Israel."

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah said "We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death."

Osama bin Laden "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."

Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah - "The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death,"

Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid."

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."

Golda Meir again "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."

Equal rights for women

Not a controversial title for an article on a blog, well not in the UK, but in Bangladesh that would be another matter. Bangladesh has a secular system of law but a population that being 90% Muslim follows sharia law for matters related to inheritance and marriage. Now the military-backed government has backed down from a policy to ensure equal property rights to women amid angry protests by Muslim clerics that the move would override Islamic law. Sharia law as practised in Bangladesh means that a girl inherits half of what her brother gets.

Bangladesh's law minister, Hasan Arif, said that the government "does not have any plan to enact any laws that goes against the Koran and the traditions of Prophet Mohammad,". Arif gave the assurance to top Islamic clerics and scholars late on Tuesday, after Islamic groups warned of nationwide protests, saying they would not tolerate any law that went against sharia, the Islamic law code.

Making the news

Dutch NIS News are running the following story:

"THE HAGUE, 07/03/08 - Public broadcaster BNN deliberately misled viewers in a film clip about a woman in a burqa, the all-covering Muslim garment.

In a mini-film on 101tv, BNN's digital youth channel, a woman is seen who is helped immediately when she drops her bag of oranges. The same woman in a burqa however gets no help when the same thing happens to her. The journalist said she felt discriminated against when wearing the burqa.

But Amsterdam broadcaster AT5 discovered deception. AT5 cameras that recorded the BNN filming show that many passers-by wanted to help the woman in the burqa. When they did so, the makers called out to them to walk on."


Western media making up news so as to show "Islamophobia" where there is none, who'd have thought it.

Bodes well for the National Identity Register, doesn't it?

From The Mail comes news of a report by the British Computer Society that informs us that:

"DNA database - ...contains more than half a million inaccurate entries"

"Research by IT specialists found 4 per cent of the population - almost two million people - had discovered incorrect information stored under their name by Whitehall or local authorities.

The total climbs even higher when partial or incomplete information is included.

The British Computer Society said this left different departments holding conflicting pieces of information about a person.

When they tried to share information, it led to "mismatches" in an alarming 20 per cent of cases."


Do you trust Government with your data? I don't.

Do they make it up as they go along?

A claim has been made by the president of the AA that when he had a meeting with the Treasury last week the new vehicle tax regime had not been drawn up. The news that the new regime would adversely affect 90% of drivers seems to have come as a surprise to the Treasury; there are claims that the Treasury rushed through the new road tax system without studying the implications of it.

Alistair and Gordon, as inept together as they were separately.

Slap on the wrist for Ed Balls

Naughty, naughty Ed Balls, it appears that The Statistics Commission, has ordered his department to explain why the high-profile disclosures about secondary admission rules being flouted were made at the same time as the very low-profile release of the news that nearly a fifth of pupils failed to get into their preferred school this year. The Statistics Commission has written to Mr Balls's department (whatever name it has this month) saying that the release of official figures should be "seen to be independent from policy comment" as a matter of "public trust". The chief executive of the Commission said "We would be concerned if ministerial statements, issued at the same time, distracted attention from new statistics."

Do I hear anyone saying "a good day to bury bad news"? How cynical some people are, do look here for some video of Ed Balls decrying cynicism.

Patricia Hewitt

I see that "Ex-cabinet minister Patricia Hewitt came under fire today for taking a third money-spinning job from a firm she dealt with while in government.

The former Trade Secretary is to be paid £60,000 as a part-time non-executive director of telecoms giant BT, the company announced...

During Ms Hewitt's time in government, telecoms regulator Ofcom carried out a major study of the structure of BT.

BT agreed that it had regular contact with ministers, including Ms Hewitt when she was Trade Secretary.

The company has contracts for telecommunications systems in government departments, including the Department of Health.

Ms Hewitt, who became Health Secretary after serving four years at the Department of Trade, has also been hired by Boots chemists and a private equity firm owning most of Britain's private hospitals. "


Obviously this is all above board (if you'll pardon the pun) as all of Tony Blair's government were whiter than white. Somehow I think Devils Kitchen may take a harder line on this if he chooses to comment!

The BBC just can't help themselves

The BBC have an article dating from 2005 about the island of "Tory, or Toraigh Island". Here are a few extracts "Tory Island is not, as you might expect, an isolated maritime community peopled by men in well-cut blazers with strong views on immigration." and "Tory clings not just to the edge of Europe but to the edge of viability too."

How they must have laughed getting in some digs at the hated Tories, what glee in the office as they squeezed those in.

Another piece of Darling misdirection

Did you spot Alistair Darling saying (my emphasis) "First, I propose a major reform of vehicle excise duty from 2009 to encourage manufacturers to produce cleaner cars with the introduction of new bands. There will be an incentive to encourage drivers to choose the least polluting car. As a second stage for new cars, from 2010 there will be a new first-year rate based on carbon dioxide emissions from the car. Cars that emit less than the proposed 130 g European standard will pay no car tax at all in the first year, but a higher first-year rate will be introduced for the most polluting cars. Cutting taxes for those who cut carbon emissions; but it is right that if people choose to buy a more polluting car, they should pay more in the first year to reflect the environmental cost. These changes will provide a real incentive for both manufacturers and motorists."


You will not be surprised to learn that this is a tax raising piece of legislation and that more people will pay more vehicle excise duty than will pay less.

The Tax Payers Alliance have produced a helpful guide, which you can see linked to this page.


Here is their summary:

"A heavy majority of the different car models in current production will face increased taxes under the new charging structure, even compared to the 2008-09 rates:

88 per cent of cars will pay more under Darling's new charging structure.
2 per cent of cars will pay the same under Darling's new charging structure.
9 per cent of cars will pay less under Darling's new charging structure.



The higher rate in the first year, the "showroom tax", will apply to most cars - with only a small number paying less in the first year:

72 per cent of cars will pay more in the first year than in subsequent years.
22 per cent of cars will pay the same in the first year as in subsequent years.
6 per cent of cars will pay less in the first year than in subsequent years."

Only Hungary, Pakistan and Egypt have worse deficits than Britain has today

Read the whole of Peter Oborne's article here.