El socialismo es contra la prosperidad.
– Instapundit flags up an aspect of the Tea Party that doesn’t fit the one party media narrative.
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Soooo…when Ken Loach makes a movie about Islam? – Commenter Lucklucky October 16th, 2010 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Ken Loach made a good film in 1969. I gather he has made other films since. A Contemporary Case for Common Ownership, for instance, and something about a Glaswegian alcoholic. My opinion of Loach as a human being was decided when I read this:
Loach felt that the ordinary moral rules against causing someone (particularly a child) intense suffering through a cruel deception did not apply so long as his deception was carried out in the service of his art. The old Independent article I linked to above goes on:
His “pokes at authority” seem not to be incompatible with a not-very-surprising yearning to wiggle his way to a bit more power himself, the power, at least, to “do something” about all these people watching what they want instead of what is good for them. And him. And his friends. Here he is in yesterday’s Guardian:
It is not quite clear from the article whether Loach is proposing that these municipal cinemas programmed by people who care should wholly replace the commercial cinemas and films that nobody cares about, except the millions who pay to watch them. Since he is a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party, which describes itself as a revolutionary anti-capitalist party, it is reasonable to assume that would be his ultimate goal. He continues,
Not that having you and your protegés decide what films the taxpayer will have available in the cinema he pays for would make you part of the establishment, or in any way compromise your independence, of course. October 16th, 2010 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Quangos and the rest are instruments of government. To get rid of them, you have to get rid of their functions. October 15th, 2010 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
In the UK edition of Wired magazine is an article on the use of environmental markets in which, for instance, property developers or industrial users of water pay others, such as owners of wetlands or somesuch, if they want to make a development. The way the article is written gives the impression – at least in my eyes – of this being a great example of how capitalism and the Greens can work together. I am not so sure. For instance, take the idea of “banks” of wetlands. Typically, what happens is that a government, such as the US one acting under legislation, will decree that there can be no net loss of wetland in given geographical area A, so if any area of wetland is destroyed, then the destroyers must offset this by paying to create another area of wetland somewhere. I immediately see a problem here: someone in authority has decreed that whatever happens to be the area of wetland at the time the new system is introduced is the area that must be maintained ad infinitum; but why not say that the area should be twice as big, or three times, or four times, or half as big? Also, the supposed “market” for such development permit trading depends on the existence of government regulations of certain areas, like wetlands, which might clearly go against the property rights of the folk who have owned those wetlands in the past and might have wanted to turn them into golf courses or whatever. To be fair, though, the article does address the fact that property rights or markets of some sort represent a smarter way of addressing issues such as conservation, pollution and so on than traditional “lets just ban it” approaches used in the past. The article contains a great example of how the French mineral water industry did a deal with farmers over the latters’ use of fertilizer and pesticides in order to protect the water and keep the farmers happy. That is the kind of market transaction that works, and probably could have worked without government getting involved. My worry, though, is that a lot of such artificial markets in things such as environmental resources can become prey to corruption and mission creep of all kinds. Nigel Lawson, for instance, wrote dammingly about carbon trading in his recent book on the global warming controversy. October 15th, 2010 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Victor Davis Hanson homes in on one of the big themes of the forthcoming USA elections, which is just how many of the candidates are not life long politicians, but people who have got seriously stuck into doing other things. Not stuck in to other things so as to have a better story to tell when they eventually make that first dash for political office that they all along had planned, but seriously stuck into other things as in seriously stuck in, as in it not occurring to them that they would ever be running for any political office:
Not having a “political resume” seems to be just what the voters are now looking for. Every time the regular politicians accuse one of these political amateurs of having said or done something amateurish, the above impression, of not being a regular politician, is reinforced. I get the feeling that the present political class in the USA contains hardly anyone who could mend a roof or build a car or program a computer or fly a helicopter, but that in among the next bunch, there will be quite a few who can do such things. There will be more “life skills” (think of the Harrison Ford character in Six Days and Seven Nights) in American politics than there are now. Not that I think this matters very much. The crucial thing is: will these people have the right political ideas and do the right political things? You can do something very well but then come an almighty cropper when you switch careers, just as you can be undone by a mere promotion out of what you did well to telling others how to do what you did well. If this next generation of US politicians, many of whom are now professional-at-other-things, prove to be as amateurish in a bad way as the present lot of politicians, then they won’t last long as politicians, and heaven help America. October 15th, 2010 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
I see on Guido Fawkes that arch-Europhile Denis MacShane is to be investigated by the police. He has had the Labour Whip withdrawn. To give him credit, he did once call Hugo Chavez a “ranting, populist demagogue”. On the other hand he was once Minister of State for Europe. This article gives a sample of his thought. Commenters are requested to bear in mind the principle that a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yes, even a man who said:
October 14th, 2010 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Whatever pious comments George Osborne, UK finance minister, or David Cameron might make about encouraging savings for the long term and less reliance on borrowing, blah, blah, blah, this sort of policy, assuming it is true, shows that this government does not give a rat’s arse about encouraging savings. Coupled with the new top tax rate of 50 per cent, reduced tax-free allowances and other adjustments, the enterprising class of those who work to build up pension pots for themselves just got a serious setback. At a time when there is so much talk about a pensions “time-bomb”, this sort of announcement is also disheartening since it sends out the message that pension schemes are a contrick. My own managing director at the firm at which I am now a small partner does not bother with pensions and intends to rely on his own business/properties to pay for his old age. When announcements like this come out, who is to say he is really wrong? October 14th, 2010 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tim Congdon has thrown his hat in the ring to become the next leader of UKIP and that means UKIP could possibly end up with a leader whom I dislike even more than David Cameron (hard to believe, eh?). I have disliked Tim Congdon long before I knew who David Cameron was. I remember him at a conference long ago – his reply to my suggestion that lending should be from real savings, and that governments should not subsidize or bailout banks (via such methods as the Bank of England lending them money) was to suggest that I supported a ban on overseas trade that (he stated) the Ming dynasty in China had imposed. “Paul only you could hold a grudge over something like this” – not if the man had changed his opinions, but he has not (it is still corporate welfare all the way with him). Nor has he changed his manner – he does not debate, he just claims that foes do not understand banking. If he means do not understand how to get paid lots of money for being an apologist for subsidies to the banks then he is right – although “understand” is not the correct word. October 13th, 2010 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
Rand Simberg makes a subtly profound little point, in an email to Instapundit, as reported by Instapundit in an addendum to this posting, which links to a piece about newspapers that provide a spew of complicated reasons for not printing stuff that Muslims might be offended by, omitting only the real reason, which is that they’re scared.
The point being that the Islamophobes are clearly not those who publicly defy Islam’s threats and attacks and who just go ahead and publicly criticise it anyway and publicly mock it anyway. Where’s the “phobia” in that? No, the phobia – the fear – is being shown by those who refrain from such criticism and such mockery, because they are afraid, and are afraid even to admit that they are afraid (because that too might be interpreted as an implied criticism of the thuggishness of that which they are refraining from criticising or mocking). Although I have long been irritated by the suggestion that to fear Islam is in any way irrational, I had truly never thought of this particular point. Next time you dare to criticise Islam for being, oh, I don’t know, evil, or something along those lines, and somebody says you are an Islamophobe, say: “Well, yes, I am a little bit scared of Islam because it is indeed scary. But you are even more scared of it, so scared that you dare not admit the truth of what I am saying. You are even more of an Islamophobe than I am.” This is a meme that deserves to get around. With apologies to all those who had worked this particular thing out years ago. October 13th, 2010 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
The European Union has paid out vast sums since 2001 to improve Sicily’s infrastructure. What has Sicily to show for it? Nothing. No, less than nothing:
The quote is from a translation of an article in the Italian daily La Stampa and I found it via Jim Miller On Politics. Jim Miller himself comments:
The European Union, corrupt as it is, is on average less corrupt than Sicily. Idealistic Sicilians possibly hoped that getting their state largesse via the EU would result in less theft and waste. A vain hope, as Mr Miller or Professor Friedman could have told them. October 13th, 2010 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today’s Times has the headline:
The story is behind a paywall. It does not matter. I am only interested in the headline and whoever wrote it. Do these people have any idea at all of what life-or-death fighting is actually like? I do not demand that they have actually done any before writing about it; little would ever be reported about war if that were the test. But they could at least have read a few memoirs, or talked to their grandfathers. Reading about the Dieppe Raid might put things in perspective. Hint: it is not like planning a dinner party. With that sort of thing if you make a careful list of Things To Do and do them all in good time you generally can be reasonably confident that it will work out OK and if it does not work out OK, say the soufflé does not rise or the wine was too sweet, it probably was because someone bungled. Military small group operations – by which I mean small group killings of people who can also kill you – are not like that. They always hang on a knife edge. The most skilled soldiers in the world frequently die young and frequently fail. A hand is a fraction of a second too slow on the trigger – a human mind is a fraction of a second slower than another, hostile, human mind to make sense of the confusion – and a comrade dies, or a hostage dies, and a lifetime of agonized mental replaying of that moment of failure begins. Six hours later a headline writer in an office far away expresses his displeasure. October 12th, 2010 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
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