Statwatch #11

Here’s the £/€ exchange rate, Brent Crude Oil Future $/barrel and Forex Gold Index $/oz. I’ve decided to remove the signatures on the anti-Gordon Brown petition, as that particular statistic has petered out somewhat – it’s had its moment, and it isn’t really going anywhere anymore. I’ve also opted to add the £/$ and $/€ exchange rates, some stock market indices, as well as a couple of important commodities, courtesy of the BBC and corroborated by Bloomberg, and the overall index that tracks them.

In future I intend to attach some actual analysis to what are otherwise rather barren statistics, and thereby try and derive some tentative conclusions and perhaps predictions from them. In other words, bear with me…

The new commodity additions are: Silver Index $/oz, Aluminium Alloy Cash Unofficial Confirmed $/m tonne, Copper Cash Unofficial Confirmed $/m tonne, Lead Cash Unofficial Confirmed $/m tonne, Nickel Cash Unofficial Confirmed $/m tonne, Cocoa Futures £/m tonne (US ICE), Coffee “C” Futures US cents/pound (US ICE), Corn Futures €/m tonne (Euronext Liffe), Dow Jones UBS Commodity Index Cash Index

The index additions are: FTSE 100, Dax, Nikkei 225, Dow Jones and S&P 500.

£/€ XR: 0.8562 (↑0.0019 from last week)

£/$ XR: 1.6341

$/€ XR: 0.7153

FTSE 100: 4236.28

Dax: 4708.21

Nikkei 225: 9816.07

Dow Jones: 8280.74

S&P 500: 896.42

Brent crude oil: $65.43 (↓$3.67 from last week)

Gold: $932.50 (↓$9.50 from last week)

Silver: $13.44

Aluminium Alloy: $1410.00

Copper: $4975.00

Lead: $1675.50

Nickel: $16175.00

Cocoa: £2475.00

Coffee: 115.00¢

Corn: €137.00

Commodity Index: 121.02

Happy Independence Day

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — Thomas Jefferson, United States Declaration of Independence

I expect the overwhelming majority of English-speakers in the world will be at least vaguely familiar with the sentence above, the start of the second section of the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Second Continental Congress on 4.vii.1776. They are probably the most recognisable version of a concept that had emerged by the mid-18th century in much European political philosophy, which owed its origins to the argument of the 17th-century English writer John Locke that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions”.

Locke’s position found its way into several US documents before the Declaration of Independence, not least the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted in George Mason’s formulation by the Virginia Convention of Delegates on 12.vi.1776, which includes the following:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

This phrasing is altogether broader and more intricate than the famous equivalent, based on a more succinct version, “life, liberty and property”, that appears in the Declaration of Colonial Rights, a resolution of the First Continental Congress of 5.ix.1774.

It is common knowledge that the American rebels’ successful defeat of the British forces inspired the French Revolution that followed it only a few years later, and the tripartite motto evolved into liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, brotherhood) in France and “peace, order and good government” as a guiding principle in the parliaments of several Commonwealth countries, most notably Canada. The exact phrase was incorporated into Chapter III, Article 13 of the 1947 Constitution of Japan, and Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has the very similar stipulation that “[e]veryone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”.

What is interesting here is quite what a range of other principles are listed alongside liberty as the perceived ‘unalienable rights’ of mankind. Starting with Locke, health can, I suppose, be retermed ‘good quality of life’, which is embodied in, and could probably be subsumed into, most modern definitions of what the US Declaration refers to as ‘Life’. This leaves possessions, or property, from which derive the property rights so fiercely defended by libertarians like Robert Nozick – what is fascinating and telling in equal measure is that the Declaration of Colonial Rights lists property as the third crucial element instead of the pursuit of happiness, while the Virginia Declaration includes both terms. Given the chronology of the three documents, it would perhaps not be unreasonable to hypothesise that the Founding Fathers debated which of the two was more important as a complaint to be held against the British Crown – a brief skim through some of the more prominent subsequent US cases that have referred back to the famous hendiatris seems to indicate that the possession of personal property came to be seen an implicit condition without which the pursuit of happiness is impossible, or at least severely impeded. Also, I suppose, the textual change was made to allow for cases in which the forcible reallocation of property ownership is necessary to achieve the pursuit of happiness – a shift from a libertarian slant to a more utilitarian one.

Equally as intriguing is the progression from the US phrase to the French variant – liberty is still included, but life and happiness have been replaced with equality and brotherhood. Equality has strong connotations of social redistributivism, or at least the deference of property rights to a conception that status as an equalisandum is a social ideal. Brotherhood is an odd term, although I guess the implications it is supposed to embody are ones of mutual equal treatment and respect, communitarianism and implicit duties of care and concern between citizens. The theorists that derived these two concepts would, I expect, argue that quality of life and happiness will automatically be maximised in a society that safeguards equality and communitarianism – much as Jefferson and the others thought that right to property is an inherent part of the pursuit of happiness.

In many ways, I think that the two mottos of the American and French Revolutions are indicative of one of the major divides that have characterised political thought: the American version highlights (in its original versions more explicitly) the need for citizens to have some base of personal property to act as material extensions of the self, from which to evolve aspirations and by which to measure satisfaction and achievement; the French version instead stresses the need for some sense of shared community or commonality within any societal structure, even at the most basic level of inter-citizen interactions. At the purest level, equality and respect for property rights are extremely hard to reconcile – and then only with restrictions on the definition of each one – but nonetheless it is probably worth remembering on days like today that the ability to debate such distinctions is exactly what the revolutionaries in Europe and America fought and died for. On which note, have a happy Independence Day!

Top posts for June

By way of something to keep my readership satisfied, here are my half-dozen personal favourite stories out of all the ones I covered in the last month:

He’s still here (the political reappearance of Arthur Scargill)

How to deal with the BNP (in the wake of the radio interview between Simon Darby and Iain Dale)

Electoral reform in name only (on Gordon Brown’s plan to replace First Past The Post with Alternative Vote)

Plastic bags no longer a worry? (a spot of environmentalism)

The Conservatives’ new best friends (on the new Conservatives and Reformists bloc in the European parliament)

A spot of altruism (on the superiority of charity as a redistributive mechanism)

And finally, a little bit of humour:

Limited blogging

I must apologise in advance for what will probably be something of a drop in blogging activity over the coming 9 weeks – unfortunately it looks as though I will not be able to keep up the now-habitual one or two blogposts on average per day. During the next two months of my summer holiday, I will be commuting to and from London, working for a nameless major financial institution to help me earn my keep. Blogging will therefore necessarily become something of a lesser priority for the moment, though my weekly Statwatches shall continue as before, and I may even find time to hammer out a couple of half-decent posts proper in my spare moments.

Rest assured, however, that when normal service resumes, it will be with a vengeance!

Statwatch #10

Here’s the £/€ exchange rate, the number of signatures on the 10 Downing Street petition to get rid of Gordon Brown, the Brent Crude Oil Future $/barrel and Forex Gold Index $/oz.

£/€ XR: 0.8543 (↑0.0071 from last week and ↓0.0516 from observation #1)

Signatures: 68314 (↑205 from last week and ↑60875 from observation #1)

Brent crude oil: $69.10 (↓$0.30 from last week)

Gold: $942.00 935.25 (↑$6.75 from last week)

What Labour have achieved

Here we see what a little bit of YouTube trawling can bring up… heeheehee

In the words of the video’s poster:

A tear-jerking broadcast on the achievements of Labour so far. Please vote Labour if you want to see advancement of their vision. On polling day consider the happiness of our children and their children’s children with a Labour government that cares.

Or, even better:

The new line of attack

Guido has long been an exponent of the “Gordon Brown is insane” line of argument, which he argues is and should be the Conservatives’ main attack method between now and whenever the election is held. Sure enough, the latest Conservative party-political broadcast underlines the fact that the PM is now well and truly isolated where his irritating and hallucinatory “10%, Tory cuts, Labour spending” line is concerned (NB: bear in mind that god-awful Labour broadcast about how David Cameron winning the election would deprive hospitals of funding for cancer sufferers). The media don’t believe him, the public are no longer fooled, and even his own front bench have made their rejection of his mantra implicitly clear. And now Mervyn King has made it clear that the government needs to be honest about how drastic the necessary cuts will have to be. The election can’t come soon enough…

Olympic financial problems

An apparent exclusive from the Times: a team from KPMG have been called in to investigate a £100m hole in the 2012 Olympics finances of the London Development Agency. £100m that the LDA should have set aside to compensate the businesses forced out of the Olympic site in Stratford – and the KPMG team are there to work out whether this was “genuine oversight” or “a cover-up that could amount to reckless use of taxpayers’ money”. Either way, it’s incompetence or deception, and neither should really be allowed in a project as high-stakes as holding the Olympics: and this £100m hole has left the LDA with a severe cashflow problem which may well cause other infrastructure projects to be held up or cancelled altogether.

Taking a step back, though, can anyone seriously claim they didn’t see this coming when London won the Olympic bid back in 2005? When has anything in the UK ever gone smoothly and without political/financial hitches – or, for that matter, come in at or below the predicted cost?! In the words of The Hives, “Hate to Say I Told You So” – which incidentally was, I believe, the theme used by the BBC coverage of the Athens Olympics in 2004:

Plastic bags no longer a worry?

Dizzy has an interesting piece about the discovery by a 16-year-old Canadian by name of Daniel Burd of a way to decompose ordinary plastic bags in considerably less than the 100s of years cited by the green lobby. Through judicious use of a bacteria called Sphingomonas, along with a helper bacteria called Pseudomonas, polythene can completely degrade in about 3 months. The only ingredients, in Mr Burd’s own words, are “a fermenter… your growth medium, your microbes and your plastic bags”, the process requires little energy because the microbes produce heat as they work, and the only outputs are water and a minuscule quantity of CO2 (specifically, each microbe produces 0.01pc of its own body weight in CO2 throughout the process).

So instead of landfills and rough-handed punitive legislation, this young Canadian has developed a way for individual people to set up their own bacteria-powered plastic degrading plants. That’s what I call scientific research!

John Bercow is the next Speaker

Epic Commons fail. He’s barely even a Conservative, seeing as he apparently tried to defect to Labour not so long ago… I reckon Sir George Young would have been a much better choice (and not because he went to Eton and did Philosophy, Politics & Economics at Christ Church), not least because Bercow is also buried to the neck in the expenses mire, which makes his “need to reform” line ring a little hollow. Mind you, as David Cameron highlighted, he is also the first Jewish MP to hold the post, which should satisfy the need for cultural diversity within the House rather well (though unfortunately I can see the BNP and other rogue elements in the media and political world diving on a combination of these last two defining features before too long). Thankfully, it wasn’t an especially embarrassing margin, Bercow’s 322 to Young’s 271.

I fully expect the Conservatives to kick him out if they win the next General Election, and replace him with a ‘true’ Tory. Also, on a side note, I wish Gordon Brown would stop scribbling on his notes and actually listen when someone else is talking…

The Conservatives’ new best friends

The Conservatives appear to have completed the switch from the EPP-ED faction within the European Parliament, and created a new bloc called the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, with a total of 55 MEPs from 8 member states (26 of them the Conservative MEPs elected in the UK earlier on this month). Much has been made of the extreme (and frankly naive) anti-gay views held by the Polish Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) party, but the joint manifesto issued by the new faction bears few traces of such orientation-discrimination (H/T Guido):

THE PRAGUE DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES OF THE EUROPEAN CONSERVATIVES AND REFORMISTS GROUP IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

CONSCIOUS OF THE URGENT NEED TO REFORM THE EU ON THE BASIS OF EUROREALISM, OPENNESS, ACCOUNTABILITY AND DEMOCRACY, IN A WAY THAT RESPECTS THE SOVEREIGNTY OF OUR NATIONS AND CONCENTRATES ON ECONOMIC RECOVERY, GROWTH AND COMPETITIVENESS, THE EUROPEAN CONSERVATIVES AND REFORMISTS GROUP SHARES THE
FOLLOWING PRINCIPLES:

1. Free enterprise, free and fair trade and competition, minimal regulation, lower taxation, and small government as the ultimate catalysts for individual freedom and personal and national prosperity.
2. Freedom of the individual, more personal responsibility and greater democratic accountability.
3. Sustainable, clean energy supply with an emphasis on energy security.
4. The importance of the family as the bedrock of society.
5. The sovereign integrity of the nation state, opposition to EU federalism and a renewed respect for true subsidiarity.
6. The overriding value of the transatlantic security relationship in a revitalised NATO, and support for young democracies across Europe.
7. Effectively controlled immigration and an end to abuse of asylum procedures
8. Efficient and modern public services and sensitivity to the needs of both rural and urban communities.
9. An end to waste and excessive bureaucracy and a commitment to greater transparency and probity in the EU institutions and use of EU funds.
10. Respect and equitable treatment for all EU countries, new and old, large and small.

If I’m honest, I see nothing in this Prague Declaration to disturb me or discourage me from supporting the move, apart from possibly the clauses about the family being the “bedrock of society” (which is a little dated, but poses no threat in and of itself unless abused for the sake of discrinimation against homosexuals and women) and opposition to EU federalism (which I see as little different from subnational federalism, just with a higher central authority). Somewhat unsurprisingly, I’m particularly fond of clauses (1), (2) and (9) – greater freedom and requirement of action for individuals, and smaller, less bureaucratic government. Spot on.

Other than the 15 MEPs provided by Law and Justice, there are a further 9 from the Czech Civic Democratic Party (Občanská demokratická strana, ODS), and one each from the Dutch Christian Union (ChristenUnie), Latvian National Independence Movement (Tēvzemei un Brīvībai/Latvijas Nacionālās Neatkarības Kustība, TB/LNNK), Hungarian Democratic Forum (Magyar Demokrata Fórum, MDF) and Belgian List Dedecker (Lijst Dedecker, LDD). There’s also one maverick MEP from the liberal-centrist Finnish Centre Party (Suomen Keskusta, Kesk.), the remainder of which has stayed in the ALDE bloc. By way of a little more background, the ODS models itself on the Polish Civic Platform party (the more moderate centre-right group in the Sejm), ChristenUnie is economically centre-left and socially conservative, including anti-drugs, anti-pornography, anti-gay, anti-euthanasia, anti-genetic-manipulation, and anti-abortion policy elements, TB/LNNK are Latvian nationalists (with outward-looking views not far removed from those of the BNP), the MDF are free-market liberal conservatives, and the LDD are a libertarian-conservative party that follow the brand of liberal conservatism espoused by Pim Fortuyn (called fortuynism in his honour).

In other words, something of a mixed bag really – some deeply unpleasant elements (ChristenUnie, the PiS and the TB/LNNK) along with some really rather good ones (ODS, MDF, LDD). Which one of these exactly wins out in the end to affect the overall policy position of the new faction has yet to be determined – though I suspect that 26 + 9 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 38 liberal-conservatives vs 15 + 1 + 1 = 17 nutters should tilt the balance towards the sensible end of the group. And ultimately it probably won’t even matter all that much within the grand scheme of EU policy-making. But it’s still interesting to see quite what a motley crew the Conservatives have had to drag together in an attempt to create an anti-federal centre-right grouping within the EU Parliament, and whether the mood within the various countries that are contributing to the new bloc will keep it in existence for very long. The bad election results of the PiS and some of the others suggests otherwise from where we currently stand…

Statwatch #9

Here’s the £/€ exchange rate, the number of signatures on the 10 Downing Street petition to get rid of Gordon Brown, the Brent Crude Oil Future $/barrel and Forex Gold Index $/oz.

£/€ XR: 0.8472 (↓0.0066 from last week)

Signatures: 68109 (↑405 from last week)

Brent crude oil: $69.40 (↓$1.36 from last week)

Gold: $935.25 (↓$2.00 from last week)

Quotes of the election

Here are some of my favourite soundbites from the recent EU election (I’ll put some more up if and when they come to me):

David Dimbleby: [to Paul Flynn MP] “What’s the gentle equivalent of murder?”

Ian J: [text to me] “My dad is voting Scargill. Mum threatened him with divorce if he voted BNP!”

Obama and the fly

When I saw this story for the first time, I genuinely thought it was a hoax. The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have criticised Barack Obama for swatting dead a fly that was pestering him during an interview – frankly, I can’t think of a news story that carries less import, but because Obama was involved it’s become headline-grabbing news. PETA commented that they “support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals” and that they “believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals”.

It’s people like PETA who give animal rights activists a bad name – OK, maybe it’s more the ones who throw Molotov cocktails at research labs, but the pathetic sentiments are much the same. I’m a big believer in the rights-as-correlative-to-duties school of thought – and to speak of a fly in such terms is, to suspend for a moment the slight disbelief that something so blatantly obvious needs explanation, utterly ridiculous.

Like most beings on this planet (some of them human), the main purpose of flies’ existence is to eat and reproduce, each of which keeps them in their place in the food chain. If you’re going to complain about flies getting killed, then surely the animals that prey on them should be a constant target of PETA’s (and others’) condemnation. And taking the line that this is absurd because this would involve interfering in a natural process is ignoring the fact that the fly dying by being swatted is not in itself an unnatural occurrence. In case PETA haven’t noticed, cows and other animals do it all the time. What is unnatural is PETA’s insistence that, for some reason, humans have to go easy on all the animals they come across. Sure, we could do better at veering towards being ‘responsible custodians of the planet’ and the like, but insisting that everone stop swatting flies is taking it rather too far…

Now, for your delectation, the fly-moment in question…

Speakers & expenses

Oh dear – the ladies and gentlemen in our Houses of Parliament still don’t quite ‘get’ honesty, integrity, frankness and accountability, do they? Yes, MPs’ expenses have been put online, more than a year late, as the Times rightly points out, but with all or most of the other private details on the documents “redacted” or blacked-out. It seems they just can’t accept that they have to abide by the same rules and laws they want to subject us to if their profession is to command any respect amonst ordinary citizens – as one of the Times commenters points out, if they don’t want their private details sifted through, they shouldn’t apply for jobs in public life. Given that there is little or no explicit provision for any sort of division of citizens’ lives into public and private spheres in English law as it stands, politicians should not pretend to be surprised when they receive a taste of their own medicine – especially as they hold public offices to which extensive powers and responsibilities are attached.

The time has never been more right for a total overhaul of the Westminster system – again, I refer you to Douglas Carswell’s excellent blog and his book The Plan – and the choosing of a proactive, popular, able new Speaker is just the first step. Having watched the hustings on Monday, I was impressed by Margaret Beckett and Anne Widdecombe – the former made some good points regarding what the new Speaker’s priorities should be (though I suspect she won’t be the one to implement them), while the latter put forward a rather strong case for the election of an interim Speaker till the next General Election. To be honest, as long as they don’t choose John Bercow or Parmjit Dhanda (the one too mired in the expenses scandal, the other a little too keen on ‘empowering’ ethnic minorities, including creating exceptions fro them under UK law), I’ll be happy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8105227.stm

How to fool the police

Samizdata have a fantastic post up of late regarding the recently-unmasked police blogger NightJack (whose blog, which attracted admiration from commentators as elite as Danny Finkelstein, now no longer exists, thanks to the perversion of English privacy law by Mr Justice Eady), which features an extract from one of his best pieces, specifically about how to deal with being arrested if you are a law-abiding decent citizen who has been wrongfully detained (or detained for a minor offence). Given that, in parallel, the Times, which co-conspired to reveal NightJack’s identity, has just published an article saying that the police stop and search completely random members of the public under counter-terrorism legislation to ‘balance race figures’, even when the individual concerned is blatantly not a terrorist, I think there can be no better time to publicise NightJack’s incredibly useful advice, which I reproduce in full below:

A Survival Guide for Decent Folk

Paul has posted a number of lengthy replies on the “Modest Proposal” thread. In these days of us increasingly having to deal with law abiding folk who have fallen foul of the “entitled poor” and those who have learned how to use us to score points and exact revenge, I thought it would be a good idea to give out a bit of general guidance for those law abiding types who find themselves under suspicion or under arrest. It works for the bad guys so make it work for you.

Complain First

Always get your complaint in first, even if it is you who started it and you who were in the wrong. If things have gone awry and you suspect the cops are going to be called, get your retaliation in first. Ring the cops right away and allege for all you are worth. If you can work a racist or homophobic slant into it so much the better.

Make a counter allegation

Regardless of the facts, never let the other side be blameless. If they beat you to the phone, ring anyway and make a counter allegation against them. Again racism or homophobia are your friends. If you are not from a visible minority ethnic culture, may I suggest that that the phrase “You gay bastard” or similar is always useful. In extremis allege sexual assault. It gives us something to bargain with when getting the other person to drop their complaint on a quid-pro-quo basis. This is particularly good where there are no independent witnesses. When it boils down to one word against another and nobody is ‘fessing up, CPS run a mile and you, my friend, are definitely on a walk out.

Never explain to the Police

If the Police arrive to lock you up, say nothing. You are a decent person and you may think that reasoning with the Police will help. “If I can only explain, they will realise it is all a horrible mistake and go away”. Wrong. We do want to talk to you on tape in an interview room but that comes later. All you are doing by trying to explain is digging yourself further in. We call that stuff a significant statement and we love it. Decent folk can’t help themselves, they think that they can talk their way out. Wrong.

Admit Nothing

To do anything more than lock you up for a few hours we need to prove a case. The easiest route to that is your admission. Without it, our case may be a lot weaker, maybe not enough to charge you with. In any case, it is always worth finding out exactly how damning the evidence is before you fall on your sword. So don’t do the decent and honourable thing and admit what you have done. Don’t even deny it or try to give your side of the story. Just say nothing. No confession and CPS are on the back foot already. They forsee a trial. They fear a trial. They are looking for any excuse to send you home free.

Keep your mouth shut

Say as little as possible to us. At the custody office desk a Sergeant will ask you some questions. It is safe to answer these. For the rest of the time, say nothing.

Claim Suicidal Thoughts

A debatable one this. Claiming to be thinking about topping yourself has several benefits. If you can keep it up, it might just bump up any compensation payable later. On the other hand you may find yourself in a paper suit with someone watching your every move.

Always always always have a solicitor

Duh. No brainer this one. Unless you know 100% for sure that your mate the solicitor does criminal law and is good at it, ask for the Duty Solicitor. They certainly do criminal law and they are good at it. Then listen to what the solicitor says and do it. Their job is to get you off without the Cops or CPS laying a glove on you if at all possible. It is what they get paid for. They are free to you. There is no down side. Now decent folks think it makes them look like they have something to hide if they ask for a solicitor. Irrelevant. Going into an interview without a solicitor is like taking a walk in Tottenham with a big gold Rolex. Bad things are very likely to happen to you. I wouldn’t do it and I interview people for a living.

Actively complain about every officer and everything they do

Did they cuff you when they brought you in? Were they rude to you? Did they racially or homophobically abuse you? Didn’t get fed? Cell too cold? You are decent folk who don’t want to make a fuss but trust me, it pays to whinge and no matter how trivial and / or poorly founded your complaint there are people who will uncritically listen to you and try and prove the complaint on your behalf. Some of them are even police officers. Nothing like a complaint to muddy the waters and suggest that you are only in court because the vindictive Cops have a grudge against you. Far fetched? Wait until your solicitor spins it in court and you come over as Ghandi.

Show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it

You think that if you are a difficult, unpleasant, sneering, unco-operative and rude things will go badly for you and you will be in more trouble. No sirree Bob. It seems that in fact the worse you are, the easier things will go for you if, horror of horrors, you do end up convicted. Remember to fake a drink problem if you haven’t developed one as a result of dealing with us already. Magistrates and Judges do seem to like the idea that you are basically good but the naughty alcohol made you do it. They treat you better. Crazy I know but true.

So there you go, basically anything you try and do because you are decent and straightforward hurts you badly. Act like an habitual, professional, lifestyle criminal and chances are you will walk away relatively unscathed. Copy the bad guys, its what they do for a living.

If the law does not intend to respect the privacy and civic rights of its citizens, then there is no reason for citizens to offer respect for the law in return.

Unions threaten to boycott Labour Party

It seems that Unison, one of the biggest trade union financial bankrollers backers of the Labour Party, are threatening to cut funding to MPs who support further privatisation of public services. As far as I’m concerned, this is amazing news, because it puts the Labour Party in an almighty quandary: either they cave in to union pressure and reintroduce the old pre-NuLabour Clause IV, thus putting themselves thoroughly at odds with the rightward shift of popular sentiment (as witnessed across Europe by the results of the EU election), or they stick to their Blairite guns and have to compete *shock horror* for funding from private backers (none of whom will want to back them), like all the other parties have to do…

There’s nothing like a good reality check to take down socialists a peg or two

Am I a right-libertarian?

Yes – according to the well-known Political Compass site – yes, I apparently am. Specifically, I’m Economic Left/Right 6.75 and Social Libertarian/Authoritarian -2.21. Admittedly the test does contain some rather suspect questions, such as this one: “A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system.” Intuitively, yes, I agree with the statement – the whole point of a one-party state is that one general point of view forces its way through, without too much internal or external partisan political opposition – but I disagree with the sentiment that this is in any way an “advantage” – as far as I’m concerned, the more veto points a political system has at whatever governmental level, the better.

But all the same, I still find it interesting to do the quiz every so often, even if I can still remember some of the questions from previous times, and even some of my answers to them. I’ve taken it four times now – I blogged about the third occasion last summer – and have completed something of a rightward spiral. I started off just inside the ‘red’ quadrant, moved upwards and onto the vertical axis, then further upwards and right to where Thatcher might be, and have now undergone a significant jump right and down towards approximately where Milton Friedman was. Pro-free-market and pro-individual-liberty. Perhaps fittingly, today is, as Devil’s Kitchen succinctly points out, the 794th anniversary of Magna Carta Libertatum – the document that first laid out, for all the self-interest of the barons that wrote it, the rights of the individual against the state, including the famous right of habeas corpus. If only market economics had a similar document on which it could rely…

Seeing as how none of the states in the EU, and none of the political parties operating within the UK, are now anywhere close to where I find myself on the Compass, perhaps it’s time I acknowledged the fact that I’ve become a free political agent (or in the words of some people I know, ‘beyond help or salvation’). Although, given how fond I am of party systems, and how this post is essentially a divertissement from reading about electoral systems, maybe it’s time to reach for the LPUK membership form…

Statwatch #8

Here’s the £/€ exchange rate, the number of signatures on the 10 Downing Street petition to get rid of Gordon Brown, the Brent Crude Oil Future $/barrel and Forex Gold Index $/oz.

£/€ XR: 0.8538 (↓0.0254 from last week)

Signatures: 67704 (↑1475 from last week)

Brent crude oil: $70.76 (↑$2.39 from last week)

Gold: $937.25 (↓$24.75 from last week)

Goodbye cruel world?

Oh well done Iran – you’ve just reelected one of the most dangerous men in the Middle East and given him another 4 years in which to try and bring the region to the cusp of all-out war. 62.6pc of the vote, with or without electoral fraud, is just obscene for a man who has seemingly made it his mission to take on Europe and the USA, whatever the cost, and to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. Admittedly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opponent Mir-Hossein Mousavi was one of the most boring men in politics, the archetype of “grey eminence”, but what Iran needs right now is a conciliatory reformist, not an extremist firebrand (for all the social projects he’s promised). With four more years of Ahmadinejad, Netanyahu in power in Israel, and the Taliban running riot in Pakistan, I’m not exactly optimistic for the immediate future of the Middle East…

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