Mr Rogers Has Ideas Above His Station

Clameur de Haro was, to say the least, unimpressed by the both astonishing and disturbing exhibition of presumption, going beyond the remit of one’s office, and straying into the political arena by a supposedly impartial public servant, provided recently by Mr John Rogers, the Acting Head of TTS.

According to this report from BBC Radio Jersey (not always, it has to be said, the most accurate of media outlets), Mr Rogers has taken it upon himself to pronounce it “essential” that an environmental tax is introduced, and has also proposed the levying of taxes on fuel or (did he mean “and”? wonders CdeH) vehicle emissions.

Mr Rogers is clearly a devoted adherent to the Green Religion and its CO2 articles of faith, at one philosophically with the enviro-authoritarians who wish to either police us or tax us into behaving as they think we should, rather than persuading us.

He should perhaps be reminded that a unified set of policy prescriptions stemming from all-pervading Greenism have not been explicitly approved by either the States or the general public, and that candidates who have stood for election on an overtly Greenist platform have been roundly rejected by the electorate.

Were he, moreover, to pause for a few moments’ reflection in his crusade to direct us all how to live our lives, two things might just occur to him. Firstly, that adding further costs to travel and distribution in a island with poor public transport is both ineffective, inflationary, and fiscally regressive: and secondly, that positive, market-driven incentives to recycle are much more desirable socially, and much more likely to succeed practically, than illiberal coercion. A system of tax relief vouchers for regular recycling, for example, might well be far more effective, and should not cost upwards of the quoted £0.5m (plus no doubt an additional clerical “resource”) to administer.

In recent exchanges with Clameur de Haro, one senior States’ Member has unequivocally asserted to him that, contrary to popular opinion and concern, public policy in these challenging times is not made by unelected and unaccountable civil servants, but is exclusively the preserve of ministers and politicians answerable to the electorate at the ballot-box. That this should be axiomatic especially in the case of new taxes, should go without saying.

Mr Rogers however appears not have heard this, or to have unilaterally decided that this need not and does not apply to him. Perhaps his political masters can enlighten him – and ensure that his Acting status remains precisely that, and that only.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

EU Tax Hypocrisy – Hopefully The Fightback Begins.…

Clameur de Haro notes from the website of The Adam Smith Institute that Jersey Finance’s Geoff Cook will be one of the key speakers participating in an ASI seminar on 4 November on the subject of “Tax Competition: Economic Freedom and National Sovereignty”.

This is good news, for one of the other key speakers is Richard Teather. Apart from his role as Senior Lecturer in Tax Law at Bournemouth University Business School, Mr Teather is also the author of the much acclaimed “The Benefits of Tax Competition”, probably one of the seminal works on the economic justification for, and benefits arising from, the competition provided to high-tax jurisdictions by their relatively low-tax counterparts. CdeH’s own copy is much read, and extensively bookmarked. Mr Teather, thankfully, is also an adviser to the States of Jersey scrutiny functions on tax policy and tax matters.

Mr Cook himself has sound views on the futility and hypocrisy of the attempts by high-tax jurisdictions to deflect attention from their own macro-economic and fiscal deficiencies by attempting to coerce low-tax jurisdictions into emulating them, and Clameur de Haro makes no apology for repeating them.

If through the populism of voter appeal or through some systematic ideology the means of wealth creation are overburdened, the incentive to create wealth is diminished, and governments consume a greater and greater proportion of the total economic value available. Eventually the economic engine becomes too dependent on an inverted pyramid of wealth creators. The creators become disincentivised and go elsewhere, or simply down tools.

Free markets, globalisation and tax competition have all combined to produce stellar growth in world GDP over the last thirty years pulling countless millions out of poverty.

An unlikely alliance of tax hobbyists, left wing newspapers, trades unions, and development agencies has catalysed around calls for greater concentration of the means of wealth creation in the hands of governments, and implicitly greater taxation of business and wealthy individuals through the outlawing of wealth structuring and planning, together with restrictions on cross border capital flows. They hope that their own constituencies will be beneficiaries of this new ‘contract’, with the authors, the tax hobbyists, gaining fame and funding, and their supporters feeling validated in their enduring distrust of the wealthy and their advisers.

Moves are in train to stigmatise wealth structuring and planning; to restrict capital movement through attacks on the use of international finance centre:, and to undermine transfer pricing arrangements. If successful the combined effects of these protectionist measures will be to trap capital within borders, significantly reducing overall economic activity.

Such measures will restrict wealth creating activity and encourage growth in central government expenditure. The net effect will be a constriction of wealth, a reduction in tax bases and a loss of global prosperity, driven by a short sighted grab for tax, all delivered through the Trojan horse of transparency.

To accuse banks, or companies, or individuals, of illicit or immoral behaviour because they plan their international affairs in perfectly legal ways simply raises the spectre of wrongdoing in a misleading and mischievous manner. Paid for ‘research’, produced by the tax hobbyists, supported by self interested union groups, and trumpeted by sympathetic bugles, claims that billions is being misappropriated through international finance centres. These claims have no credible evidence underpinning them, demonstrating an opacity which these same sources would find intolerable were it postulated by others.

Hopefully Mr Teather and Mr Cook will be both inclined, and able, to convince the Chief and Treasury Ministers of the need for a robust response to the EU and HMG – particularly as the current HMG has a future lifespan measurable in months at most.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

Does The Anglosphere’s Libertarian Capitalism Produce More Creative Freedom?

Sometimes all of us, including not least Clameur de Haro, need a little lightening up and R&R at the end of a distinctly average week. And with that malignant pipsqueak Stuart Syvret purporting to decide for himself which aspects of legal process should or shouldn’t apply to him, the continuing myopia of Jersey’s public sector employees to economic reality, and an EU tax bombshell blowing a hole through an already questionable fiscal policy, this week has certainly fallen into that category.

So on this grey-ish, adjectival October Friday, here’s a classic from CdeH’s not too outrageously mis-spent youth – the great, great, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s legendary performance of Sweet Home Alabama for The Old Grey Whistle Test on (CdeH thinks) 11 April 1975.

Clameur de Haro remembers his youthful self, in those far-off days possessed of long-ish and blond-ish locks and always an aficionado of Whistle Test rather than TOTP, watching the performance, mesmerised. It was one of those moderately seminal experiences we can all recall in our lives, in CdeH's case a Damascene conversion to the blazing vibrancy and musical integrity of Southern Rock that’s lasted now for 34 years.

But looking it again after all this time got CdeH thinking - why is it that the greatest and most successful rock bands of the past 40 years have come predominantly, not just from the democracies of libertarian capitalism, but specifically from their Anglosphere countries?

Is it just the superficially obvious answer of commonality of language and culture? Well, maybe, but that doesn’t quite feel like the whole story.

Or could it somehow be more than this - a subtle consequence of the systems that regulate the Anglosphere societies being based on common law with the presumption that we are all free to do anything we like which is not actually prohibited, rather than the Continental tradition of codifed law that restricts citizens' freedom to only that which is specifically permitted?

So that a bunch of music-mad teenagers in Jacksonville, Florida in 1964 could just go ahead and get together to express themselves without needing 27 separate permissions plus elf'n'safety and risk assessments from state, county and municipal bureaucracies? And in the process create, out of nothing, an artistic and commercial product that millions have exercised their freedom of choice to buy for 30 or 40 years, and still do.

And perhaps that’s a handy reminder also to the dirigiste leftists who argue that libertarian capitalism is a zero-sum game, that there exists by definition only a fixed total of wealth, which requires activist governmental intervention to re-distribute it “fairly”. The amount of wealth isn’t fixed – it can be created out of apparently nothing, provided that individuals and entrepreneurs are allowed the freedom to create it.

Is it really that fanciful to wonder whether, if the enviro-militant Greenists get their way, in five years time, 50 years after Skynyrd was formed, the local jobsworths of the Barack Obamania Federal Energy Use Control & Allocation Agency will tell another bunch of music-mad teenagers in Jacksonville, Florida that they’re not allowed the obligatory licence to just get together for a band practice and jam session in a friend's garage, because the power requirement would represent an irresponsibly unnecessary and frivolous use of the planet's precious resources?

What a lot of enjoyment future Clameurs de Haro would miss. And what an unrelievedly dreary and joyless world it would be. We have to stop it happening, and with the wheels slowly but inexorably starting to come off the Great Anthropogenic Climate Change Scam wagon, we will. But in the meantime, and just for 5 minutes and 41 seconds, click the video clip to full screen, turn up the volume on your speakers, sit back, and enjoy those classic riffs.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

Into The Lion’s Den With Daniel

Reluctant though Clameur de Haro is to compete with Daniel in the confines of the Lion’s Den, on examining more closely Mr Wimberley’s comments on some of the Greenism issues aired in CdeH’s recent post On Epithets, Labels, Beliefs, and Definitions ………, it does strike CdeH that Mr Wimberley’s response is, interestingly, equally significant for what he doesn’t say, rather than what he does.

Looking at some of these in more detail (with the original post in blue and Mr Wimberley’s comments in green) -

"The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen" –

which uses exactly the same techniques as he accuses Nick Palmer of using.

"scare" –

errr well no, actually thousands of peer-reviewed articles written by scientists who are each of them would just love, wouldn't they, to become famous by DISPROVING or throwing at least a little spanner in the theory of anthropogenic global warming

"industry" –

Oh, since when were Exxon paying Hansen et al to do their work? On no, sorry, silly me, "industry" refers to the support given by those industrialists who cannot put the common interest above their own narrowly defined interest, to people who can be paid to spread doubt, the key weapon, (exactly as was done by the tobacco giants, which is why I am justified in talking about "industry" and about "weapon")

"Godfather" –

well we know who that was. . .

These are eminently fair points in response to normal journalistic knockabout, but Mr Wimberley did not attempt any rebuttal of CdeH’s salient point, which was the castigation of Hansen’s demand that any who merely question the claims of catastrophic warming should be put on trial.

Mr Wimberley did not rebut CdeH’s condemnation of the 2006 proposal of David Marxiband Millband that we should all be forced to carry a personal carbon footprint use swipe card.

He did not deny the proliferating use of CCTV surveillance cameras, originally justified and installed for counter-terrorism purposes, to spy on householders’ recycling habits.

He did not question, or attempt to justify, the use of children by local councils for enviro-enforcement espionage.

He did not actually deny or rebut the similarities between current Greenist policy prescriptions and those of the 1970s hard-left marxists.

"authoritarian restriction on private behaviour "

= green taxation or taxes on carbon or a carbon rationing system. Perhaps Clameur thinks it is more rational to tax labour when what we have is a surplus of people needing things to do which are paid, and what we do not need is to consume more. I rather think that ANY tax is seen as some kind of restriction by CdeH

Indeed - but only “Up to a point, Lord Copper”. Any kind of tax, being the state’s self-legitimated appropriation to itself of a private citizen’s legally-acquired wealth, is by definition a restriction on the citizen’s freedom to dispose his wealth as he sees fit. But that does not mean that CdeH advocates no taxation – on the contrary, he readily acknowledges that there are economic goods and public services needed by some or all of the population which only the state can or will fund, and that taxation is both an acceptable and the most practical way of raising the revenue needed.

The problems arise, and CdeH’s objections kick in, when states over-reach their remit or fail to control adequately their own spending, and use increased taxation as a prop – or when taxes are cloaked in a supposedly more acceptable colour conveniently to conceal their underlying purpose.

Mr Wimberley did not however deny the co-incidence of the impetus in vehement environmentalism with the collapse of communism.

He did not attempt to refute the explicit support of hard-left marxist Socialist Unity offshoot Green Left for an electoral pact with the Green Party.

"Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party," –

well no actually, there is no such thing. Poor old Clameur, it never does to check your facts, might get in the way of a nice sneer. The Green Party has a male speaker and a female speaker - or did until they voted recently to go for a single party leader, like the other parties, not sure what they have decided to call this person.

Again a fair point about the precise designation of Mr Wall – but what Mr Wimberley does not rebut is the more serious point about Mr Walls’ enthusiastic advocacy of growing collaboration between hard-left socialism and the Green movement, in the interests of both.

Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

Clameur De Haro's Political Compass

With fellow bloggers St Ouennais and Nick Palmer both having been kind enough to reveal their positions after taking the assessment questionnaire on The Political Compass, Clameur de Haro can hardly refrain from showing his own.

Attempting reverse analysis here is an inexact science, because the answers do not have corresponding scores on each of the axes, but for what it's worth, CdeH guesses that on the Authoritarian - Libertarian scale, the scoring from his antipathy to excessive state power and legislative restrictions on personal freedom is probably pulled back a little by the scoring from his support for a robust stance on both defence and the protection of the family as the principal societal unit.

But - wouldn't it be interesting and revealing if we could persuade all States' Members to take the test - and then publish the results so that we can all see exactly where they stand? Do any of them have the cojones to take up the challenge?

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

On Epithets, Labels, Beliefs, and Definitions ………

Clameur de Haro is prompted by recent comments on his posts to muse at length on the potential for confusion stemming from the epithets and labels applied to beliefs, and the benefits of more precise definitions.

Mr Frank Binney (a new commenter, and most welcome) raises the issue of how accurate, or otherwise, it is to apply the “left” or “right” label to the Greenists? Tony The Prof, in his courteous and erudite way as always, highlights the undesirability of debating climate issues with ad hominem arguments. Both comments, and the reasoned, courteous tone of them, merit a full response.

CdeH subscribes to the view of The Political Compass that the traditional “left” and “right” label is no longer sufficiently adequate to describe positions on the political playing field, because the continuum is one-dimensional, and predominantly an indicator of economic position – ranging from communism or overwhelmingly statist collectivism (on the left), to unfettered, unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism (on the right). And that a more sophisticated and illuminating definition of politico-economic philosophy can be made by complementing location on the economic dimension with a statement of position on the social, authoritarian-to-libertarian continuum, ranging from ultimate authoritarian (fascism, in fact) to ultimate libertarian (virtually anarchy).

It should come as no surprise to Clameur de Haro’s more careful and perceptive readers that CdeH finds himself in the area of the 4-o’clock position in the bottom right-hand quadrant of Libertarian Right – being unequivocally in favour of small government, free trade, free markets, low taxes, but light-touch regulation on the economic continuum, and with a moderate libertarian slant on the social scale, believing as he does that the state aggregates too much power to itself and then often proceeds to exercise it illiberally, and has no business, for example, interfering in willingly-undertaken social transactions between competent, consenting adults, provided that others are not harmed thereby.

Not a million miles from the Hayekian and Friedmanite positions, it would appear, which probably accounts for CdeH’s intuitive listing of Friedman’s “Free to Choose” and “Capitalism and Freedom” as among the most influential formatives of his political / economic thinking.

CdeH frequently has the label “right-wing” hurled at him as an insult. On The Political Compass’ economic continuum, of course, this is, as far as it goes, a more correct than incorrect identification of his economic and fiscal philosophy (although quite why the belief that government is not per se automatically efficient and that taxpayers should be entitled to keep more of their own money, should be a cause for insult, is mystifying).

But on the social policy scale, and when hurled at a commentator who -

(1) naturally inclines to concern at the accretion and abuse of power by the authoritarian state and its agents;

(2) has been appalled at the implications for our liberty as citizens of Labour’s 12-year attack on habeas corpus, the right to jury trial, the right to silence, and the presumption of innocence, all on spurious grounds; and

(3) would choose La Moye rather than be forced to carry a show-on-demand ID card or render up his DNA without just cause, believing that it is his property and not that of the state,

the epithet “right-wing” as an insult is hilarious in its inaccuracy (as Clameur de Haro’s friends who know his views on privacy and personal freedom issues tell him), and betrays rather more about the insulter that it does about the criticised.

Where does this take us on the subject of applying labels in that area where politics and Greenism meet?

CdeH has good friends, occupying varying locations on the left-right economic-fiscal spectrum, who are very environmentally-minded but who equally accept that scepticism on green issues is valid, healthy, and should in a free society be widely aired, and that this is all very much a matter of private, personal choice, not public coercion. In no way could they be described as fundamentalist Greenists. On this specific point of socio-political philosophy, we would have to place them in the libertarian half on the authoritarian–libertarian scale.

But others – indeed, many others - appear, regrettably, to be much less tolerant. Consider just the following examples –

The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen, being on record as averring that anyone who even questions the postulate of catastrophic warming should be put on trial. Not positively counter-argues it – merely questions it;

The proposal of David Marxiband Milliband, when UK Energy Secretary in 2006, to force the entire population of the UK to carry a swipe card to be presented on every transaction, with every single person in the land being expected to render account for their carbon footprint and being allocated a personal annual carbon allowance – enthusiastically endorsed by the then environment correspondent of The Guardian (now there’s a surprise) in the following terms –

“The move marks the first serious step towards state-enforced limits on the carbon use of individuals……….extends the principle of carbon to consumers, with heavy carbon users forced to buy unused allowances from people with greener lifestyles” ;

The proliferating use of CTV surveillance cameras, originally justified and installed for counter-terrorism purposes, to spy on householders’ recycling habits;

The admission of Ealing Council in West London that “hundreds of Junior Streetwatchers, aged eight to 10, [have been] trained to identify and report enviro-crime issues” and that of Harlow Council in Essex which has said it has “25 ‘Street Scene Champions’, all aged between 11 and 14, who are encouraged to email or telephone the council if they suspect that an ‘enviro-crime’ has been committed” ;

The examples of prominent EU Greenists with hard-left, marxist, pasts: those of us of a certain age, (pace Tony The Prof) remember, for example, Joschka Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit propagating in the 1970s, revolutionary socialist prescriptions eerily precursory of much of both the authoritarian restriction on private behaviour and freedom, and the “for-the-sake-of-the-environment-and-the-planet” taxation that the Greenists espouse today. Is it really just a coincidence that aggressive environmentalism really started to take off in the early 1990s when communism was finally consigned to the scrapheap?

The rallying call of Green Left - an offshoot of hard-left marxist Socialist Unity - for an electoral pact in Birmingham with the Green Party “……….to give a progressive and environmentally aware candidate the chance of taking the seat, and a victory for all those opposing the policies of privatisation, war, greed, racism and environmental destruction. We are firmly of the belief that this will benefit both the Green and progressive movements in this country……….” ;

The author of this, intriguingly enough, is one Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party, who in another incarnation also comes up with this explicit summary of the advantages from the growing collaboration between hard-left socialism and the Green movement -

“The creation of an Eco-socialist International network seems a good institutional basis for making European Green Parties more radical and I would like to see EU Greens working with the Nordic Green Left. I hope that it builds an eco-socialist network that links activists in every single state on this planet and, as we agreed in Paris, to work to make greens redder and reds greener.”

This, and plenty more of the same, can be viewed at http://www.climateandcapitalism.com/.

All of which suggests to Clameur de Haro that, far from the idea of Greenist Fundamentalism being an exaggeration, when taken overall, ample justification exists for that upper left Authoritarian Socialist quadrant of The Political Compass being the correct location for the activist, militant Greenism most often propounded by the save-the-planet-warriors. This is what he refers to when he speaks of Green Fundamentalists. As we can see, there’s a lot of it about.

And yet CdeH is mocked by a commenter for displaying a “Green is the New Red” logo on his sidebar?

Which brings us inevitably on to Mr Nick Palmer, Clameur de Haro’s most frequent commenter, and serial ritual abuser. Mr Palmer is fond of labelling CdeH as a recidivist perpetrator of what seems in his lexicon to be that most heinous of all crimes, far, far worse than mass-murderer, or child-abductor, or financial swindler, or…………………well, worse than anything at all really, namely being a “global warming denier”.

It sheds, firstly, an interesting perspective on the more strident advocates of radical environmentalism that mere scepticism, inherently just a manifestation of thought or opinion, rather than any illegal actions or criminal deed, should be judged so deserving of such calumny. But given on the one hand the inclination so prevalent in Gramscian cultural marxism (to give the colloquial, more familiar, label of political correctness its ideological origin) to establish, define, and prosecute crimes of thought and opinion, and on the other hand the correlation between Gramscian thought and militant Greenism, CdeH is relatively unsurprised by this.

The attaching to sceptics of the term “denier” in this context is quite deliberate, and no mere accidental or careless use of language. Its users are employing one of the classic tactics of cultural marxism – closing down the argument and thereby circumventing debate. It’s exactly the same technique which accuses someone of racism if they attempt to discuss whether current levels of immigration are sustainable, or of elitism if they suggest that a few more grammar schools with scholarships might actually benefit bright children from modest backgrounds, or of xenophobia if they suggest that handing over sovereignty to an unelected and unaccountable supranational authority might not be a terribly good thing for democracy. By seeking to equate enquiring scepticism about anthropogenic climate change with something as repellent as (primarily) Holocaust denial, they try to convey the idea that their target is so irretrievably and unspeakably vile that anything they say should not even be given a hearing, never mind taken seriously.

For the record, Clameur de Haro does accept that there has been an upward movement in average global temperatures over significant periods of the past century-and-a-half or so, but equally is persuaded that this has not been the case since 1998. As indeed, even the warmists – from the IPCC, who acknowledged that its first apocalyptic predictions omitted the Medieval Warming entirely, through Mann, who eventually conceded the fundamental flaws in the algorithms which generated his infamous hockey-stick, to the Biased BBC, which has just reported that for the last 11 years no increase in global temperatures has been observed and that there could be 30 years of cooling due to falling ocean temperatures - have had to admit.

Noticeable, isn’t it, how in the last few years, it’s all become “catastrophic climate change” rather than “catastrophic global warming”?

He has yet to be convinced, also, by the entire man-made / CO2 argument, having seen too many graphs of data sets showing non-correlation between temperature and CO2 output, temperature cooling during periods of rising CO2 output irrespective of whichever time lag is attempted, and studies suggesting that CO2 levels may be the consequence, not the cause, of temperature movements.

And he feels unable to ignore the peer-reviewed evidence that the Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history (and that a mere 30 years ago, some of today’s warmists were ardently warning of catastrophic global cooling and the strong danger of a new ice age). Climate change isn’t unlikely – it’s guaranteed, as it has been for the last x million years, mankind or no mankind, and CdeH is presently unconvinced that human influence on it, while possible, is nevertheless other than peripheral. The notion of “combating climate change” CdeH suspects, is about as feasible as combating tomorrow morning’s sunrise or combating the advent of next Christmas.

So, the correct term for Clameur de Haro is actually “anthropogenic climate change sceptic”. But then that’s so much less emotive as a term of derision than “global warming denier”, isn’t it? Perhaps those who inadvertently - or more likely deliberately - conflate the two need to put “dictionary” at the top of their Christmas List.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

Deconstructing the Financial Crises

On his way back from the Far East, Clameur de Haro passed a good deal of time reading arguably one of the best books yet to be published on the causes of the 2007-08 credit crunch and the subsequent banking crisis, Gillan Tett's book "Fool's Gold".

In an excellent read, Tett comprehensively charts the genesis and development of the ever more exotic, opaque, and risky off-balance-sheet financial instruments and structures that played such a pivotal part in creating the 2007 credit and liquidity crunches, and the ensuing banking meltdown.

Refreshingly however, she also shows that the anti-capitalist left who gleefully parrot the unthinking, intellectually lazy, but - for them - politically expedient mantra of "blame the bankers and blame free markets", disregard the myriad other relevant contributing factors, including those to be laid at the door of governments.

Prominent among these was the 1990’s Clinton administrations’ forcing mortgage providers, on the threat of prosecution and legal sanction under their own misconceived, mal-administered, political correctness-driven equality legislation, to lend to fundamentally uncreditworthy borrowers, with the consequent ratcheting up of the risk of defaults.

Equally significant were the inadequacy of government-conceived regulatory structures whose mandates explicitly excluded the credit derivatives markets and the parallel banking sector, and the lax monetary and interest-rate policies pursued for too long by central banks, at the behest of governments more concerned with creating a short-term feel-good factor for base political purposes, rather than pursuing policies ensuring medium-term financial stability.

Definitely a must-read for those who want to know, and for those who wrongly just assume that they do.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

Back to Jersey – and Back to the Blogosphere

Clameur de Haro found it a stimulating and rewarding experience living and working again in the Far East for the past few months: but with his last-ever overseas assignment having come to an end, and now lately arrived back on the Blessed Rock for good, he feels it’s time to pick up once again the reins of rightwards-inclined posting, to balance a little the local blogosphere’s majority leftward slant.

So, catching up, to what extent have the numerous undesirable features of the Island’s politico-economic landscape which CdeH hitherto railed against improved in his absence? And despite keeping intermittently in touch with events from afar, what does CdeH find on his return the land of his birthright?

Many of the answers, sadly, are not encouraging.

A still-bloated public sector, where spending appears predominantly out of control, where budgetary discipline seems lax or non-existent, and where sufficient determination to tackle either to the large extent actually necessary (as opposed to some cosmetic tinkering at the margins) looks less likely than snowdrifts in August.

Terry the Taxer and Ozo the Bozo purporting to direct an economic strategy which announced an appallingly cynical curtailment of front-line patient services and public facilities, but retracted immediately when objections were made – if cuts were (wrongly) thought necessary in the first place, why were they not defended robustly, however unjustifiable they were? And their cohorts and satraps already musing about raising indirect tax rates.

A government which almost certainly will have neither the vision nor the courage to go through with implementing much-needed staffing cuts, an absolute pay freeze, and pensions reform in public sector employment, nor any inclination to contemplate shrinking the size of the state by withdrawing from activities better undertaken by private enterprise.

A policing function with an effectiveness reportedly all but paralysed by internal strife, but still retaining the ability to commit the unbelievably ham-fisted bungling of what ought to have been a low-key routine investigation, thereby giving that malignant pipsqueak Syvret a golden opportunity to revel in his much-loved but self-proclaimed martyr status.

How depressing too, to see that the vast majority of the local politics blogs remain firmly anchored at the left-green end of the spectrum: some still obsessing, ostrich-like, with conspiracy theories about cover-ups or justice-denial to the exclusion of all else (and goodness knows, there’s no shortage of other things to get worked up about in this mis-governed island), while others continue to proselytize pernicious eco-authoritarian greenery.

At least Ratleskutle, Tony’s Musings, and Jersey 24/7 are still out there, providing a bit of much-needed wider variety of subject-matter.

So Clameur de Haro looks forward to a resumption of both promoting the alternative free-market and liberal prescriptions of a smaller state, reduced public spending, lower taxes and enhanced individual freedoms, and rebutting the authoritarian collectivist fallacies peddled by the pink leftists and their green fascist allies of convenience. Just as a taster for the latter, CdeH spied, on his pre-departure sojourn in a certain Far East airport, this entertaining piece in the Jakarta Globe about a ceiling collapse in a virtually new school building in Cirebon, West Java. Do, please, note the last sentence –

“Dedi Windiagiri, the head of the Cirebon school board, denied that the contractor was to blame. Climate change, he said, was the true cause of the accident.”

Really, you couldn’t make it up, could you? Ridiculous? Of course. But as an example of the fundamental dishonesty of so many genuflectors before the altar of the green religion, and their desire desperation to attribute any misfortune at all, whatever its cause, to the great holy mantra of climate change, regrettably not untypical.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

Nick Palmer's Radically Different Economic System

Clameur de Haro? notices that, over on his Elect Nick Palmer 2008 blog, Mr Palmer regales us with his evident pride at having signed a Friends of the Earth petition “Call Time on Global Greed”.

Excoriating those who created “a crisis caused by a greedy, reckless and under-regulated economic system”, “biased against the poor and the environment”, the Petition calls for “a radically different economic system”: one that “reduces inequality, creates jobs, protects vulnerable citizens, preserves the environment, and works to eradicate poverty”.

How very noble and apparently altruistic. CdeH? however is reminded of a few realities.

First, Friends of the Earth, despite the misleading title, isn’t an environmental organisation. It was once – but no longer. Like Greenpeace, it was long ago taken over by the economic and political collectivist left, who perceived that, while socialism would never be permanently accepted as the prevailing economic system per se, if it could be cleverly cloaked in an environmental camouflage, then, to a deliberately under-educated populace, it just might be.

Secondly, the present financial crisis has, in actual fact, several origins, and many, many different culprits, ranging from fiscally irresponsible governments who directed central banks to hose unlimited credit at economies for no other reason than to cynically maintain an illusion of prosperity for political advantage, to financially illiterate consumers who foolishly lapped up every offer of credit lobbed their way, with no thought of ability to repay. The very thing that the present system has not been is under-regulated: over-regulation, but inefficiently conducted and misleadingly targeted, has played its significant part.

Thirdly, despite inequalities in degrees of betterment, no other system has ever delivered greater overall advancement, for the majority of the time, to the majority of humankind, than has capitalism. FoE’s “greed” is, of course, the leftist translation of the natural aspiration towards improving one’s lot possessed by all mankind. In the leftist lexicon, the desire for something as fundamental as a better education for one’s self and one’s children becomes “greed”.

Finally, Clameur de Haro? recalls that the FoE’s appealingly-labelled “radically different economic system”, the one which purports to “reduce inequality, create jobs, protect vulnerable citizens, preserve the environment, and work to eradicate poverty”, but which actually does the opposite, isn’t new (although it certainly is radically – and in more than one sense of the word – different). It’s been tried. It’s called communism, or its watered-down variant, authoritarian socialism.

And it doesn’t work.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This