Biting The Hand That Feeds

Did anyone else in addition to Clameur de Haro pick up on the snide little dig from the Jersey Evening [sic] Post’s Elaine Byrne in her reporting of the winners of the Christmas Lottery?

In her “you have to be in the finance industry to win anything in Jersey” intro, La Byrne couldn’t resist, could she, doing a little resentful biting of the hand that feeds, conveniently forgetting which sector of the economy it is that predominantly generates the tax revenues needed to fund public services. Perhaps she needs reminding that governments on their own can provide nothing without first extracting the financial wherewithal from private citizens and firms through taxation.

Possibly she’s one of those who likes to propagate the myth that Jersey suffers from a class divide between the finance sector and the rest. Unfortunately, this fallacy is more widely held than it should be.

What it does is to deflect attention from the real class divide in Jersey, which is the divide between those employed in the public sector – enjoying salaries in many cases on a par with private sector counterparts carrying more responsibility, plus the added benefits of job protection, security of employment and taxpayer-funded pension arrangements which the private sector can only dream about – and those in the productive, wealth-generating private sector of the economy struggling to cope with the downturn, and having to accept pay cuts and job losses as the price of survival.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

Wimberley Runs Up The Red Flag

Clameur de Haro was not remotely surprised to see the traditional banner of redistributive tax-and-spend socialism unequivocally hoisted to the Daniel Wimberley masthead this week. In his letter on Tuesday to the Jersey Evening [sic] Post about the Angry Men, Mr Wimberley rehearsed all the predictable mantras associated with the philosophy.

We had, most notably, the attempted excoriation of what he terms as the low-tax, low-spend ideology implemented over the past three decades, and which according to him must be resisted. Apart from providing an explicit statement of his predatory stance on public sector finances, it is also less than accurate.

Does Mr Wimberley really believe that we have had a low-spend government? If only we had been so blessed - we might not be in the position that we now are. The problems we face at present are in very great measure due to the runaway, uncontrolled public spending and public sector growth that we have seen in the last ten years, and the inability or unwillingness of most politicians to tackle it.

He then follows the usual scare tactics of the political left by implying that the Angry Men favour curtailing public expenditure by abandoning respite care for the disabled, the Town Park, and the problems of Bellozanne, and essential infrastructure maintenance. But nowhere in Mr Trower’s conversation with the JEP’s Ben Queree is any of this even hinted at.

What Mr Trower and his colleagues quite rightly protest against is the sheer size, reach, dubious utility and uncontrolled expense of much of the bureaucratic empire, allied to inadequate financial and budgetary discipline – and the inclination to tax in order to fund it, rather than address the underlying problem. Remember the contract for the incinerator, Mr Wimberley? Advocates of a smaller, leaner, less activist but more efficient government have been saying for years that the public sector does too much that is unnecessary, and does it at far greater cost than necessary.

Mr Wimberley appears to recoil in horror that States’ departments were forced to make efficiency savings in order to limit the necessity for taxation increases. Obviously he adheres to the collectivist assumption that public spending is somehow a good in itself, and finds the notion that individuals should be able to retain more of their own money as heresy.

He needs to be reminded that the state, and the public sector, has no resources of its own other than what it confiscates from individuals and firms by way of taxation. As Ludwig Von Mises put it -

“At the bottom of the interventionist argument there is always the idea that the government or the state is an entity outside and above the social process of production - that it owns something which is not derived from taxing its subjects - and that it can spend this mythical something for definite purposes.

This is the Santa Claus fable raised by Keynes to the dignity of an economic doctrine and enthusiastically endorsed by all those who expect personal advantage from government spending.

As against these popular fallacies there is need to emphasize the truism that a government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens - and that its additional spending and investment curtails the citizens’ spending and investment to the full extent of its quantity.”

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

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

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

Great – But Not The Line In The Sand That Some Will Want To Believe

Clameur de Haro was delighted to join with 7000 of his fellow islanders at St Ouen’s Bay yesterday in protesting the despoilation of our beautiful coastline by some truly hideous over-developments, for he seldom views the architectural excrescences at La Coupe, Portelet, Le Hocq and above St Aubin without shaking his head in disbelief at how they could have secured planning approval. So - many congratulations to Mike Stentiford and all his colleagues.

CdeH was particularly heartened also by the Planning Applications Panel’s decision unanimously to reject the proposed development of 73 chalets at Plemont. He found it disturbing however that the department’s civil servants apparently recommended its approval on planning grounds, for how anyone could envisage 73 chalets to constitute a substantial environmental gain defies belief. This is surely an area for an independent enquiry into the internal departmental processes.

But – a small word of warning. CeH noted the presence on St Ouen’s Bay of one or two politicians from the left-green end of the political spectrum, for whom the protection of the natural heritage is just part of a wider and more radical agenda for anti-business, heavily-taxing, aggressively redistributive economic and fiscal policies, and the imposition of either curbs or costs on individual freedom, advocated in the cause of environmental rectitude but equally in line with the collectivist ideologies to which they subscribe to greater or lesser extent.

The overwhelming majority of those to whom Clameur de Haro spoke were not in this category – they were there to protest against unsympathetic coastline encroachments (and rightly so), but that was all. So the left-green activists should beware – there is, justifiably, a huge mandate for resisting some of the planning approvals coming from the pen of Greenwash Freddie The Environment Minister, but that does not mean a 7000-person mandate for socialism.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

It's Another World Out There On Planet Public Sector

Clameur de Haro notes with exasperation that, while Jersey's wealth and tax revenue generating, but currently hard-pressed, private sector continues to shed staff as it struggles with reduced profitability and business volumes, the public sector in contrast appears to remain blissfully recession-proof - certainly as far as ongoing recruitment to the public payroll is concerned.

A quick look at the jobs vacancies section of the http://www.gov.je/ website reveals that "States of Jersey" is the second highest category for current vacancies, including this one -

Apart from the obvious irony inherent in upping headcount by recruiting a "workforce planner", CdeH wonders why, in a time of financial stringency, this isn't a function automatically required of Departmental Chief Executives and/or their existing senior staff as part of their core management role, and why it's necessary to hire an additional resource to undertake it, particularly when, assuming the part-time nature amounts to, say, a 25-hour week, the total employment costs are likely to approach at least an additional £35k on to the public payroll.

Why is no politician questioning this seemingly relentless expansion of public sector employment?

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

The JDA's Scintillating Standards of Numeracy

In this blogpost today, the JDA's "Pandora", perhaps a little lacking in awareness of matters mathematical, refers us to Mahatma Gandhi's own list of 7 deadly sins - and then purports to enunciate them as requiring display at the entrance to the States' Chamber for all to read.

However, complete fulfilment of that exhortation may unfortunately prove slightly problematical, as the list contains only 6.

If this is indicative of the JDA's grasp of numbers, Heaven help us all should one of them ever succeed in getting into a position to influence economic or taxation policy.

However, there is, as they say, some previous form here - Clameur de Haro recalls that, last December, Geoff Southern appeared to think that obtaining the least number of votes in States' elections to ministerial positions somehow meant that he was actually the preferred choice of members.

CdeH wonders if the missing 7th deadly sin was perhaps "Electioneering without Fraud". That might explain its omission, on the grounds of potential embarrassment.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

Two More Nails in the Coffin of Legitimate Financial Freedom

Clameur de Haro regrets to see that two more blows were struck this week against the freedom of the law-abiding to deploy their legally-acquired assets in entirely lawful ways.

On Tuesday, as part of a Tax Information Exchange Agreement with Lichtenstein, HM Revenue & Customs cut a deal with the Principality’s authorities under which HMRC will “offer” limited penalties on unpaid UK tax liabilities originating from Lichtenstein bank deposits, but the Lichtenstein authorities will arbitrarily close the accounts of depositors who decline to volunteer details to HMRC.

It’s disturbing to note that the intensification of pressure on the Principality arose largely from the German Government being prepared to trade in stolen property, i.e. buying customer data stolen from a Lichtenstein bank by a former employee.

Then on Wednesday, the HMRC Special Commissioners delivered a ruling which means that some 308 national and international banks with operations in the UK will be forced to hand over details of customers with bank accounts offshore, in defiance of banking confidentiality.

If both of these initiatives are targeted solely at illegal tax evasion, then Clameur de Haro has no objection whatsoever. As he posted some time last Autumn –

Neither the slightest degree of opprobrium, nor the slightest taint of immorality, should attach to any private citizen, whether an individual or a corporation, who so arranges his financial affairs, by lawful means, as to minimise or avoid the appropriation of his wealth by the state. [Note the words “by lawful means” and “avoid” – and the latter’s important distinction from “evade” – for CdeH does not defend or attempt to justify in any way, and roundly condemns, the illegal evasion of obligations in contravention of the law of the land].

So CdeH welcome theses initiatives if they only counter illegal evasion and incidentally detect illegal money-laundering - the transgressors deserve what they get, because for freedom to function, it must mean freedom under the law.

But HMRC has recently started to adopt a much more aggressive, authoritarian approach to its remit, one not always in accordance with the settled law of the land. Two things in particular should be of concern: it has been deliberately trying to blur the distinction between legal avoidance and illegal evasion in the direction of treating any and all legitimate avoidance as being, by definition, evasion: and it has been increasingly adopting the position that actual tax law is not what is laid out in statute, as interpreted by the judicial process, but what HMRC consider the intentions of the framers of legislation to have been, irrespective of the actual wording.

In this context, even the law-abiding with legally-held accounts, with no connotations of evading UK tax liabilities, have reason to fear. When government purports to arrogate to itself the power to decide what the law is, we all have reason to fear.

In such ways do viscerally high-taxing states seek to eliminate, by threats and intimidation, the alternatives available to their citizens, rather than lowering their profligate spending, decreasing the tax burdens they impose to fund it, and so reducing the incentives for taxpayers to shelter themselves from it.

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

Hour's Not To Reason Why

Clameur de Haro? notes with despair the breathless enthusiasm with which the Jersey Evening [sic] Post is pushing the fatuous “Earth Hour” on 28 March, when we are all beseeched to plunge ourselves into darkness in order to do nothing less than save the planet, a (“vote for action against global warming”).

On no fewer than three occasions in the past week or so, an excited Elaine Byrne has eco-warbled enthusiastically (and repetitiously, to the point of tedium), despite her pieces being mind-numbingly long on regurgitated greenist propaganda and suspiciously short on hard scientific information.

This whole idea is arrant nonsense, and politicos like Cohen and the so called Eco-Active Team are achieving nothing more than signing themselves up to the nauseating marriage of gesture politics and muddled thinking which is the defining characteristic of populist environmentalism.

Firstly, a pinprick interruption to the overwhelming majority of residential light use which occurs at night will have no emission-reducing effects whatsoever, on anything. Most power stations run, during the night, at the same capacity as during daytime peak demand periods, and produce electricity (and therefore some amount of greenhouse gas) anyway, whether it is being used to create light or not. There is no way to store this excess power produced at night - that is why electricity generators sell off-peak power so cheaply to run our electric hot water systems at night, which function as virtual batteries. Hydro plants are responsive to fluctuating power demand, as are gas-fired plants, but others are not. Jersey’s certainly isn’t.

Secondly, in Britain, domestic household consumption accounts for only 30 percent of overall energy use — and lighting accounts for only 9 percent of that domestic usage. (By contrast, heating and hot water account for 80 percent of household energy use.) In short, less than 2.7 percent of total energy consumption in Britain can be blamed on the heinous eco-ignorant populace recklessly “destroying the planet” by having the lights switched on at night.

Thirdly, just consider the language used to justify this minor measure that will achieve staggeringly little, if anything (apart, possibly, from an increase in traffic accidents or petty crime). “Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing people and nature”, pontificates the WWFN. Well, thank heavens for that – CdeH? mistakenly thought that the effects of the global economic downturn, declining heath and nutrition standards in the third world, and Islamist terrorism were far more serious than a (by no means unanimously) predicted temperature rise of about 0.8 degrees…….

So this little eco-mentalist war on light is itself based on an utterly false prospectus. But of course it’s a golden opportunity for the greenists and our putative lords and masters to combine to present it (and themselves) as epoch-definingly heroic, to show how supremely committed they are to “saving the world”, and to condemn anyone who says “just a minute………” as either a sceptic, or a heretic to the green religion, or of course, a perpetrator of that ultimate crime, being a “global warming denier”.

CdeH? observes that we taxpayers in the beleaguered productive sector of the Island’s economy appear to be funding one Olivia Copsey, described as “Education and Awareness Officer” at the Environment Department. With access to information almost universally available over the internet, might we know precisely what she has been engaged to educate us about and make us aware of? And more to the point in these straitened times, how much we are paying for the privilege?

Clameur de Haro? will not be succumbing to the collective flight from the light of rational thought into the darkness of unreason on 28 March, even at the risk of not being able to tell himself what a good and caring person he is. He will, in protest, be switching on every damn light that he has, if only to ensure that the militant eco-mentalists don’t seize the opportunity presented by the darkness to come and vandalize his fleet of 4x4s.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

Tax Avoidance, International Financial Centres, and Jersey – Part I: Neither Illegitimate Nor Immoral

Judging from several posts over the end of November / beginning of December, Clameur de Haro?’s fellow-blogger Jersey 24/7 seems to be somewhat confused both about modern banking and financial services themselves, and their contribution to what he or she clearly believes is the latent immorality of Jersey’s role as an international financial centre, namely helping – or presumably, in his view, influencing - overseas taxpayers to reduce their liability to taxation in their own jurisdictions.

Jersey 24/7, however, isn’t alone in this misconception – several recent election candidates from the leftist and green extremities of the political spectrum postulated much the same thing, adding in for good measure the alleged iniquities of depriving high-tax “home” economies and populations of taxation revenue (though, curiously, they failed to go on to advise electors to avoid a low-price Co-Op in favour of a high-price Checkers so as not to deprive the latter’s ultimate shareholders of profit). So CdeH? is grateful for the opportunity to counter their false arguments.

Clameur de Haro?’s basic philosophy on this starts from the premise that tax levied on the private citizen, whether an individual or a corporation, by the state, on pain of criminal sanction, is nothing less than the state’s self-legitimated appropriation for itself of that private citizen’s legally-acquired wealth, whether in the form of income, capital gain, inheritance, or whatever. [Note the phrase “legally-acquired” - and be in no doubt, incidentally, that CdeH? has no objection whatsoever to the confiscation, by the judicial arm of the state, of wealth acquired directly as the proceeds of crime]

CdeH? entirely accepts that some such appropriation is necessary, and does not, for example, espouse the extreme libertarian position of believing that the state has no role in society. CdeH? 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 (though there are many instances where such goods or services, while necessarily funded by the state, are not necessarily provided better or more cheaply by agencies of the state): and that taxation is both an acceptable and practical way of raising the revenue needed.

However, because the state appropriates for itself, in the form of taxation, part of the private citizen’s legally-acquired wealth, CdeH? believes that the state then has an overwhelming, corresponding moral duty (1) to spend the resulting revenue prudently and not recklessly or wastefully, and (2) to extract from the private citizen no more than the absolute minimum of his legally-acquired wealth than is necessary for the state to fund or undertake those functions that it, and only it, can or will do.

But states everywhere either ignore or abuse (or in most cases both ignore AND abuse) this moral obligation [and Jersey is no different]. They waste, or otherwise deploy recklessly or imprudently, the taxation revenue they extract from the private citizen: or they employ it in undertaking activities which the state need not, or should not, undertake because the private, non-state sector of the economy would willingly undertake them itself (often better and cheaper). Most states are guilty on both counts [and again Jersey is no different].

In these circumstances, not the slightest degree of opprobrium or immorality can attach to the private citizen, whether an individual or a corporation, who so arranges his financial affairs as to legally minimise or avoid the appropriation of his wealth by the state. [Note the words “legally” and “avoid” – and the latter’s important distinction from the word “evade” – and again be in no doubt that CdeH? has no truck with the illegal evasion of obligations in contravention of the law of the land]

And by extension therefore, not the slightest degree of illegitimacy or immorality can be inferred to an economy or polity which chooses to provide services to meet a clear, substantial, and unsatisfied demand from the makers of such legal arrangements. So Jersey can and should continue to uphold and develop its prime industry with a clear conscience.

Clameur de Haro? has no doubt that the real immorality here lies with those high-taxing, excessive and wasteful-spending governments - notably the UK under the present administration and most EU countries under any administration - who impose systems and levels of taxation which extract unjustified proportions of their citizens’ wealth, thereby driving them to seek external alternatives.

Jersey need entertain no qualms whatsoever about benefitting its own population by supplying those citizens with an alternative to mere acquiescence in their governments’ rapaciousness.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

First Post-Election Thoughts

Clameur de Haro? was exceptionally disappointed at the general thrust of last night’s results, and suspects that the silent majority who rail at the ineptitude of the current Establishment, but positively despair at the direction espoused by the left and the greens, will feel the same.

Amid the euphoria of the JDA and their fellow-travellers (and CdeH? uses the expression advisedly) the implications of the composition of the new States Assembly for the island’s future economic prospects are decidedly unfavourable.

There must now be a strong likelihood of a raft of superficially crowd-pleasing, uncosted exemptions to GST, coupled with the equally costly additional bureaucracy necessary to administer them: yet CdeH? recalls few if any of the tax-and-spend socialists have offered any cogent suggestions as to how the resulting shortfall should be met.

In the current financial markets, populist sentiment may well favour a “let’s hit the banks, they can afford it” approach to filling the revenue gap. Would-be imposers of greater burdens of tax on the industry which comprises 70%+ of the economy, provides significant numbers of its jobs, and contributes most of its Jersey’s prosperity should remember however that financial services are internationally mobile, and that other jurisdictions are willing and able to accommodate ours should the industry be taxed into a disadvantageous position.

Clameur de Haro? never under-estimates the capacity of socialism to leave an economy seriously worse than it found it. Let’s hope that those now congratulating themsleves don’t in the future have to explain themselves to a population wondering how it is that benefits have had to be cut, jobs have disappeared, and living standards have dropped alarmingly.

And finally, a footnote. If there had to be some degree of electoral success for Time4Change, what a pity that Nick Le Cornu - an intelligent and articulate exponent of civilised but robust debate, however much one might disagree with him – didn’t make it in St Helier while his egregious associate Montfort Tadier did in St Brelade. A travesty indeed.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

GST Exemptions: Easy, Principled Adjustment - or Expensive, Bureaucratic Nightmare?

Clameur de Haro? has been looking in a little more detail today at Deputies’ Election candidates’ positions (well, their stated positions, anyway) on the thorny subject of GST exemptions.

Inexplicably, a sizeable number don’t actually mention the subject at all, which in view of its prominence, strikes CdeH? as extremely odd, to say the least.

Of those that do, and with the honourable exceptions of Ian Gorst in St Clement, Rod Bryans in St Helier, and John Le Fondre in St Lawrence, candidates universally declare their objection to its general application, and call for exemptions on, variously, food, heating supplies, and children’s clothing, or more usually a combination of all three.

But not a single one of them offers either the slightest estimate of the revenue shortfall which would result, or any proposal for meeting that shortfall, whether by reduced States’ spending or compensatory increases in tax elsewhere. This omission is fiscal irresponsibility of a high order.

Over at Tony’s Musings, Tony has (as usual) a thoughtful critique of Sean Power’s position (basically - it’s here, so let’s leave it settle for a while), and suggests that to exempt foodstuffs, heating and lighting, and children’s clothes really can’t be difficult or bureaucracy-creating to any significant degree.

Clameur de Haro? disagrees with Tony on this, though –

On foodstuffs, should we exempt, say, caviar, yet apply GST on toothpaste? That hardly seems to be in the spirit of what’s proposed.

On heating and lighting, say, should we really make no distinction between heating for the pensioner’s apartment, and heating for the multi-millionaire’s swimming pool? Or between lighting for the pensioner’s apartment kitchen and lighting for the multi-millionaire’s driveway? Both cases involve use of the same materials from the same supply sources. But that doesn’t seem equitable.

On children’s clothing, should we exempt, say, the expensive designer tops the relatively affluent might buy for diminutive but highly fashion-conscious 13-year old daughters, yet levy GST on the suit the man of modest means struggles to buy for his tall, well-built 16-year old son, newly left school and going for his first job interview? That hardly seems fair.

CdeH? is afraid that these kinds of dilemmas over definition and rating would occur all the time, and that additional, costly, bureaucracy and administration will be the inevitable result – producing a double-whammy, in fact, because the extra costs of it would have to be layered on to a smaller tax base. Which neatly completes the circle, because none of the exemption-favouring candidates either knows, or will tell us if they do know, how they would address the consequences.

For this reason, Clameur de Haro? will be sticking with one of the realists who, rightly, eschew facile, ill thought out promises, and have the courage to tell it like it is. But at the same time imploring them to grasp, in return, the nettle of arresting the inexorable growth of public spending by an administration to whom stringent fiscal discipline seems a wholly alien concept.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This

A New Direction of Travel

Welcome to this the opening post from Clameur de Haro?

CdeH? is angry: in fact positively seething with exasperation and frustration at the poor quality of both the political philosophies currently on offer to the people of Jersey – and echoing the cry of Mercutio in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.. “a plague a’ both your houses!”.

CdeH? is most definitely NOT an enthusiastic standard-bearer for Jersey’s current Council of Ministers and the present States’ Establishment, and believes that the wider electorate’s manifest disillusionment with both is amply justified. Yet, like so many of the Island’s silent majority, CdeH? shudders at the prospect of the potential damage should what may be called the Stuart Svvret Tendency and the JDA/Green Coalition gain political ascendancy.

CdeH? is convinced that there really does exist a radical alternative direction for the Island – one between, at the one extreme, the complacently inefficient, overly bureaucratic, excessively mercantilist, and fiscally irresponsible current government: and at the other extreme, the assorted collective of tax-and-spend egalitarian socialists, muddled-thinking talk-gooders, and mendacious eco-authoritarians, masquerading under a disparate variety of labels of the left, but all essentially wanting the same thing - a much more interventionist, enterprise-averse, anti-freedom and aggressively redistributive regime.

CdeH? contends that a significant number of Jersey’s current domestic problems stem from one thing – the sheer size, scale, and therefore cost of government and administration: that Jersey’s public sector is too large for the size of the population, and generally does too much: and that it compounds that error by doing so expensively and inefficiently – much, much more expensively and inefficiently than would private enterprise, because of government’s ability, and natural inclination, to increase the tax burden to cover expenditure, rather than control its activity and therefore its cost, so as to keep expenditure below the tax revenue achievable consistent with a flourishing, dynamic but also equitable society.

So – for CdeH? the direction of travel has to be to reducing the size and impact of the state, curtailing its remit, controlling its cost, and lowering its burden on the economy – by applying free-market and libertarian economic and social policy prescriptions, and eschewing the deceptively and superficially attractive solutions dangled by both persuasions.

From CdeH?'s position, poised in the Royal Square on the steps of the States' Assembly, this will be the approach put forward in the coming days, weeks and months.

Watch this space.

Add to del.icio.usDigg It!Stumble This