Mr Cameron has another vicarious emotion

Hot on the heels of Mr Cameron's vague fantasy of doing something about Europe comes this:

"Tells friends... wants... could... has discussed his views..."

Meaning Cameron has told him to tell him, just like he gave Useless Eustace Grayling's opinion to him (a feeble fire that Ken Clarke has immediately pissed on).

To be vulgar, Cameron and Gove (and Grayling, as discussed yesterday) are cock-teasers. They lift their skirts and what you see is just what you won't get, no matter how many drinks you buy them. The Daily Mail plays along because it knows which side its bread is buttered; it would turn Cameron's fart into a Hallelujah Chorus. Until it switches to sinister clown Boris Johnson.

We now have a political elite composed of overprivileged, useless chinless wonders, fainéants occupying the place of people who might achieve something for somebody apart from themselves.

They are the choking bozone layer above us and it's time we got some fresh air.

The privatisation of crime by Failing Grayling

Householders are now encouraged to enter a fantasyland where they confront and subdue intruders and are authorised to use "disproportionate" force.

1. Force that is "disproportionate" is unjust in common law. You are already entitled to use force according to what seems reasonable in the circumstances, which can mean killing someone else. Should you succeed, some might advise (unofficially) that you should then go totally over the top and make a bloody mess of the perpetrator, as evidence that you were panicking and so didn't kill him in cold blood. One shot, jail; the whole magazine plus pistol-butt-smashing the face to a pulp while screaming like a banshee for ten minutes, walk free - maybe. A knife fight - far messier: they often don't die straight away, which is why deceased knife victims often have many, many wounds. You think you're going to win this?

2. You are likely to be asleep when a burglar comes in. What are the chances that you will wake in time to recognise the threat, and that you will be stronger, fitter and quicker than the intruder who is already fully pumped-up to the extent that (typically) after the break-in he raids your fridge and biscuit tin to replenish his adrenalin-haywired blood-sugar level? And what about his Number Two, who unknown to you is behind you as you are dealing with Number One? Possibly also Three and Four, and a lookout? How about when you're ill, or old, or crippled?

3. If self-defence becomes the norm, don't expect the criminal to come in unarmed.

What this is really about, is the failure of the police and the courts. If police patrolled regularly, checking gates and shop doors, you'd be protected. If first-offence burglary was punished by a stiff prison sentence - as it used to be - your property would be protected. If hanging were still a legal punishment, your life (and the lives of your loved ones) would be protected.

As it is, you're on your own, son.

That EU Nobel Peace Prize

 

Mel Brooks - I Want Peace (from "The Producers", Embassy Pictures, 1968)

I don't want war. All I want is peace. Peace.             

Peace!

A little piece of Poland
A little piece of France             
A little piece of Portugal
And Austria perchance

A little slice of Turkey
And all that that entails                 
Und then a piece of England Scotland
Ireland and Wales

A little nip of Norway
A little spot of Greece
A little hunk of Hungary
Oh what a lovely feast

A little bite of Belgium
And now for some dessert
Armenia Albania
And Russia wouldn't hurt

What exactly is liberty?

Dick Puddlecote has another go at Prohibition (the American experience of which is widely misunderstood), and (being naturally contrarian myself) I have a geat deal of sympathy for his opposition to officialdom.

But we can easily be misled into thinking there are only two positions to take: bans, or complete lack of restriction. I think lovers of freedom need to develop a more nuanced stance. As I comment there:

It's not the making available that harmful, it's the pushing. Look how licensing laws have been progressively relaxed since the 50s, mostly for the benefit of brewers and the supermarket lobby.

And the advertising - remember the 1989 Woodpecker cider ad showing a couple of woodpeckers seated on the ground, cans in hand, with the slogan"Get out of your tree with Woodpecker Cider"? There's a reference to it in this book (p 368 in Google Books - even there the text is unavailable online) but it seems impossible to retrieve the image - it's like getting hold of the Sun's "Gotcha!" Belgrano front page.

The liberty of the individual is distinct from the liberty of powerful commercial enterprises to exploit our weaknesses, and in this context I do not consider businesses to be persons with the right to liberty.

I think libertarians need to consider how they may inadvertently be acting as unpaid agents for the more questionable sectors of corporate capitalism; and to what extent liberty is better exercised in controlling an appetite rather than giving way to it.

Superficial consumer uptick, underlying concerns continue

Back in June, I noted that credit card lending had declined over the previous 12 months; now, according to the Bank of England, there has been a sharp recovery:

Similarly, the second-quarter report from ING Direct's Consumer Savings Monitor (PDF) shows a rise in consumer savings balances:

Yet the figures for UK M4 continue to decline:

So are these signs of recovering confidence? Perhaps the credit card figures reflect a temporary Jubilee Year / Olympics buildup feelgood splurge, and the plumping up of the savings cushion shows continuing underlying caution; otherwise, why not spend from savings rather than rack up plastic debt? And the M4 figures indicate a deflationary undertow beneath the surface.

But the aggregate statistics may be misleading. It could be that some who still have their heads above water, are saving hard while they can, and others are driven to buy on the card because they have no savings and cannot get more bank credit.

The next quarter may clarify the picture.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Superficial consumer uptick, underlying concerns continue

Back in June, I noted that credit card lending had declined over the previous 12 months; now, according to the Bank of England, there has been a sharp recovery:

Similarly, the second-quarter report from ING Direct's Consumer Savings Monitor (PDF) shows a rise in consumer savings balances:

Yet the figures for UK M4 continue to decline:

So are these signs of recovering confidence? Perhaps the credit card figures reflect a temporary Jubilee Year / Olympics buildup feelgood splurge, and the plumping up of the savings cushion shows continuing underlying caution; otherwise, why not spend from savings rather than rack up plastic debt? And the M4 figures indicate a deflationary undertow beneath the surface.

But the aggregate statistics may be misleading. It could be that some who still have their heads above water, are saving hard while they can, and others are driven to buy on the card because they have no savings and cannot get more bank credit.

The next quarter may clarify the picture.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Tyranny in the name of freedom: a case history

We're watching with interest BBC's "Wartime Farm" series, about efforts to increase food production in Britain in World War Two. Last week's episode (number 4) included a sadly instructive story about a farmer who ran foul of what seems to have been the stupidity and inflexibility of centralised bureaucracy. Resisting it, he paid with his life.

The incident is covered from 23:19 in the programme, and also described in the online Radio Times. A Hampshire tenant farmer called Ray Walden had been ordered to plough up "roughly half" of his farmland for extra corn production to meet "War Ag."targets, but according to a contemporary interviewed in the programme, some of that land was too wet and unsuitable for corn. Walden refused and when served with an eviction notice (as some 2,000 farmers were, during the War) barricaded himself in his house and in the ensuing 18-hour siege shot at those trying to remove him, wounding one or two in the process. Walden was shot in the head and fatally injured.

The contemporary report by the Hampshire Chronicle, covering the events and the inquest, is here. However, significant extra details are given in this account, which tells us that (a) under wartime regulations the proceedings of the inquest were held in secret, the public and Press being excluded, and (b) no evidence was offered on the late man's behalf to explain why he had acted as he did. In the latter account the Cultivation Order is also said to have been for only four acres to be ploughed, not half the (62 acre) farm as in the BBC's version, which raises the possibility that there may have been some falsification in the evidence given at the inquest in order to make the Min of Ag's demand seem more reasonable.

Only one man, only one death - but that's all any of us has, despite the BBC's attempt in the programme to sweeten the bitter pill by reference to "the greater good". In how many areas does government act like a kind of Juggernaut, rolling over anyone who gets in its single-minded, sometimes simple-minded way?

UPDATE

A comment on this post at Orphans of Liberty:

Well, what a surprising thing to stumble upon. George Walden is an ancestor of mine, on my mother’s side. Family legend has long held that “dark forces” were at work of a more local nature, namely anti-Papism in the form of the vicar and a long-held grudge over disputed debts with a local worthy. In light of these, favours were called in and a ridiculous land demand was drawn up. All rumour and hearsay, of course. The family were most offended by the suggestion that he committed suicide.

Readers may know that anti-Catholic prejudice still ran pretty strongly in those days, as my late mother-in-law found when as a youngster she spent time in Scotland. And money is often a cause of trouble.