The current tax rate as a proportion of net national income (according to the Adam Smith Institute) is 44%. See if you can guess what it was in
a) 1924 and
b) 1913.
Answer below the fold.
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It looks like Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system and Arrow anti-ballistic missiles have mostly succeeded in intercepting the missiles sent by Iran. The Iranian regime did not send drones this time because having them shot down by the Jordanians last time was embarrassing. I saw this quote by John Podhoretz on Twitter:
To which Dan McLaughlin added,
October 1st, 2024 | 7 comments
– Charles Moore in the Telegraph. Sue Gray was the civil servant, at the time much lauded for her impartiality, who wrote the “Partygate” report that brought down Boris Johnson. If she had then retired, or stayed in the civil service, or got any other private sector job than the one she did, her place in history as a minor avenging angel would have been secure. But what she actually did was leave the civil service to become Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. Her failure to declare that she had been in communication with Labour over this job offer while still a civil servant was a breach of civil service rules. Even if it had been within the letter of the rules, it was an obvious breach of their spirit, as more than one angry civil servant has said to me. Of course her salary is up for debate. She did not pass out of politics by going to work for the Labour Party, she passed into it. And her salary in her current position of Downing Street Chief of Staff is paid by the taxpayer. September 28th, 2024 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
“When in a hole, stop digging,” the saying goes. They dug a lot of holes at Kamloops Indian Residential school but, as described in 2022 by Professor Jacques Rouillard, professor emeritus in the Department of History at the Université de Montréal, they have not found a single one of the 215 bodies allegedly buried there. Nor have they found any since. They did not stop digging, though. They simply announced that “their investigation was proceeding but would remain confidential to preserve its integrity.” (That Wikipedia article is quite something. In its current form it is full of talk about “denialists”. Wikipedia was not always like this.) Some people might be glad to discover that, despite extensive investigation, there is no evidence to support rumours of the secret mass burial of hundreds of children. Not Leah Gazan, an MP with the New Democratic Party, though. As reported by the National Post:
September 26th, 2024 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
I did not expect to see anything like this on a fairly mainstream site like “Conservative Woman”: “Mystery of Andrew Bridgen’s vanishing votes” (Via Sara Hoyt on Instapundit.) Andrew Bridgen, for those not familiar with him, is the former MP for North West Leicestershire. He has had a chequered career. He was expelled from the Conservative Party after criticising the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. He then joined the Reclaim Party but resigned from it a few months later. He then lost his seat in the 2024 election – which in itself was no surprise, but the spectacular scale of his loss, dropping from 63% of the vote to 3.2%, was unusual. I said I did not expect to see this piece on the CW website. I would not be entirely surprised if I am soon unable to see it anywhere but Twitter/X. After the US election of 2020, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter (before it was owned by Elon Musk) had a policy of deleting any discussion whatsoever of the possibility of electoral fraud. Even arguments that fraud had not been significant were censored. Most of the UK media followed suit, as it usually does. If anyone reading this has power or influence over the censorship policies of British media organisations, I humbly beg you not to repeat that mistake. My argument does not depend on taking any view on how many votes Andrew Bridgen got in the UK election of 2024. When “Stop the Steal” and similar Facebook groups with hundreds of thousands of members were deleted overnight after the American election of 2020, what effect do you think it had on the beliefs of members of those groups? Do you think they concluded that since they could no longer discuss their suspicions, those suspicions must be groundless? Of course it had the opposite effect. A majority of US voters think it is “likely” that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 election. That includes 45% of Democrats. The censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story and of the hypothesis that the Covid-19 virus leaked from a laboratory (the first of which is no longer contested and the second of which is accepted as a probable hypothesis by the US and UK governments) only reinforced this. Censorship destroys trust, and the loss of trust is not limited to the subject being censored. Once people know they are being censored in one thing, they inevitably ask, “What else aren’t they telling us?” And they can work out that if all accusations of a particular crime are censored, it makes it more likely that that crime will be committed in future. Related posts here, here and here. In fact, that entire category of “Deleted by the Woke Media” is related. Edit 25th September: The man who replaced Andrew Bridgen as Conservative candidate in North West Leicestershire, Craig Smith, has responded strongly to the Conservative Woman piece:
Mr Smith goes on to say that of course he was not happy with the result – he lost to Labour – but he is convinced it was fair. He then makes some quite detailed observations about electoral procedures, both in general and specifically for that constituency. I thought he came across well. His use of Simon Danczuk in Rochdale as a comparator for assessing whether it is credible for an MP expelled from their party to have such a large drop in votes was reasonable. That is how it should be done. That is how it should have been done in the US. Don’t forbid discussion, contribute to it. I repeat my plea for there to be no censorship of the claim that the election was rigged against Mr Bridgen. September 24th, 2024 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
In my second country of Malta, which I visit regularly, it is hard to miss the fact that the island’s national flag bears the George Cross. The GC was awarded, collectively, to the island during the Second World War by the British government because of how Malta had withstood the bombardments of Italian and German air forces. The bombing of the island from 1941-43 was greater in total than the ordnance hurled at London during the Blitz. Malta was a major British naval base: it was able to intercept and destroy Axis shipping to North Africa and hence was key in tipping the scales against Rommel’s Afrika Korps in its attempted invasion of Egypt. Malta mattered. It appears today, in these “decolonisation” times, that some of the citizens of Malta – a country sadly tainted by issues such as corruption and the murder of an investigative journalist in 2017 – want the GC symbol to be removed. On a Facebook page that I follow, a person (who will remain nameless), put up this comment: If we really and truly want to celebrate this important milestone [Maltese independence], all we need to do is remove that stain from our national flag and send that bloodstained cross to Buckingham Palace. I will volunteer to act as a courier pro bono. I was glad to see that the vast majority of responses from the locals were hostile to this person, if not enlightening. I tried to raise the tone a bit, because the person concerned might be stupid as a bag of rocks, but it is good to put these points into places where someone might pick up on them:
I can recommend Sir Max Hastings’ book about the Operation Pedestal convoy as a good study about what was at stake in the Mediterranean campaign. Here is a decent history of Malta for those who are interested. September 21st, 2024 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Cambridgeshire council admits to discrimination after a woman was labelled transphobic for criticism of a ‘gender-fluid’ dachshund”, reports the Telegraph, with relish. Tim Sigsworth’s report says that:
I am glad that Ms Pitt won her case, but how did we get to a state of affairs where a county council actually believed that one of their employees taking a less than respectful view of another employee putting a dress on his wee dog and declaring it to be “gender-fluid” had had a “detrimental impact on the mental health and well-being of the complainants”? When I read this account, I was surprised to find out that it happened as late as January 2023. Poor old Cambridgeshire County Council, puffing to keep up with trends that more with-it London bodies like the Royal Academy of Arts dropped in 2021. But the greater question is how and why this particular form of absurdity swept round the developed world so quickly. The wave is receding now, less quickly than it arose, but still very fast in historical terms. The “dropped in 2021” link describes how the Royal Academy of Arts abruptly withdrew the work of the textile artist Jess de Wahls from sale in its gift shop because she said “humans can not change sex”. After bad publicity, it backtracked. There is a certain irony about the way that progressive artists such as Ms de Wahls (“Her work is part of a movement to depict vagina and vulva in art”) spent their whole lives changing cultural norms with such success that their vulva-themed embroideries ended up in the Royal Academy gift shop, a development which might have surprised Sir Joshua Reynolds, only to see the wind change against them in an instant. Why did that particular memo go around in 2020? It wasn’t directly related to Black Lives Matter, but maybe that movement had something to do with it. September 18th, 2024 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
The big political story in Britain at the moment is the Labour Prime Minister accepting free clothes on behalf of his wife from a benefactor – an act that the cruel – and cruelly funny it must be said – have thought worthy of ridicule. But would you know it! A hundred years ago (where I live) the big story is also the Labour Prime Minister accepting free stuff from a benefactor. In James Ramsay MacDonald’s case the free stuff is a car (a Daimler no less) and the means to maintain it. At this point things take a turn for the better for Keir Starmer’s predecessor. The benefactor, a Sir Alexander Grant happens to be an old friend of MacDonald’s and also happens to be a biscuit millionaire. Sir Alexander claims that he was moved to his act of unbidden generosity when he heard that MacDonald was travelling around London by Underground Railway which he felt was tiring him out and undermining his efficiency. I suppose the equivalent today would be if his modern-day counterpart had discovered that Sir Keir and Lady Starmer were wandering about in garments made of sack cloth. By the way, I am not sure what travelling around on the London Underground says about Ramsay MacDonald but I can’t help feeling that it says a lot about the society of the time.  Hello Jim, got a new motor? September 17th, 2024 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have just returned from a holiday in Switzerland, where I often go to do deplorable things. While visiting a country, I try to keep an eye on which news stories are trending there. The almighty algorithm has observed my interest in things Swiss and even after my return keeps sending stories from the “swissinfo.ch” website my way. I am sure you can guess what it was about the following story that struck me as odd:
If it were not for the way that every museum in the Western world has scrubbed out and re-written the labels on its displays to be “anti-colonialist”, I might consider this exhibition to be a welcome corrective. The Swiss are an admirable people, but they do have a slight tendency to think that their neutrality and their benign absence from the indexes of history books are entirely the results of virtue rather than geography. As the exhibition points out, many Swiss were happy to profit from slavery. Then I read further:
Why are traders in colonial commodities, missionaries and migrants lumped in with slavers, as if trading with other peoples, trying to persuade them to believe in the same things you do, or moving to a place you thought was uninhabited were evils in themselves? It looks to me as if this exhibition is less about telling the stories of the forgotten victims of Swiss oppressors than about classifying the Swiss as an oppressor people, or, to be more exact, about making sure the Swiss know that little things like never having had any colonies are not enough to acquit them of being members of a colonialist race. * Related post: “N star star star star, not N star star star star star”. September 13th, 2024 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Given the complaints recently about “two-tier” policing of crime and disorder in the UK, I thought it worthwhile to set out this summary of the principles of policing as set out by former Home Secretary and reforming British statesman, Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), also renowned as founder of the modern Conservative Party (Tamworth Manifesto of 1834), remover of Corn Law tariffs, reformer of banking (with some remaining issues), and general all-round good guy of British history: 1, To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment. 2, To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect. 3, To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws. 4, To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives. 5, To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life. 6, To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective. 7, To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. 8, To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty. 9, To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them. August 29th, 2024 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have read that in the days when newspapers still used metal type, the compositors used to keep commonly used headlines ready-formed. The Bloomberg headline below would require only the substitution of the appropriate country name to work for anywhere in the world in any decade since governments came to vex mankind:
Emphasis added. That’ll go down well with the PVV, currently the largest party in the Dutch House of Representatives. August 28th, 2024 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
A young cosmopolitan such as I did not need the foreign terms explained. When well-meaning people tried to tell me that the “Cookie Monster” was equivalent to a “Biscuit Monster”, or that the “trash can” in which Oscar the Grouch resided was the same as a dustbin, I responded, with some hauteur, that I already knew these things. There was, however, one thing that I did not understand about Sesame Street, and that was why on earth at some point in every episode the announcer would say something along the lines of, “Today’s show is brought to you by the letter P and the number 6”. Oh well. I liked the puppets. I remain a fan of the letter P and the number 6. But when it comes to the American media I consume nowadays, I no longer like the puppets. Oh, I can sympathise a little with the American newspapers for dutifully hastening to parrot every Word of the Week that the Harris campaign gives them. It is human nature to follow the herd. Although, as Glenn Greenwald put it in this tweet, “Not even herd animals are this flagrant about it. You tell me how and why corporate media constantly speaks from the same exact script this way, verbatim.” “Not happiness, not glee, not delight, not jubilation.” The cue card says JOY. Until Kamala’s JOY expires and the next card comes up. The next card is Donald Trump’s dress sense, or lack of it. As I said, I can understand, if not admire, the obedience of the American press. But why do British newspapers feel the need to immediately follow suit in complying with the “TRUMP’S SUITS” order? Cue the Telegraph: The meaning behind Trump’s ill-fitting suits Cue the Guardian: Donald Trump’s weird clothes: from shoulder pads to extremely long ties, what do they mean? August 15th, 2024 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
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