HIC SECRET PERSON INTERFECTUS EST

Just before Christmas my workload increased and my blogging activity decreased. I promised more to come after Christmas, but as you can see below, my Christmas break has become more permanent.

I considered producing occasional, but longer posts, more political philosophy than news commentary, but these types take long enough in themselves. And while I attract a few readers when I update regularly, I think you need a decent base of regulars to get the readers to make it worth posting infrequently.

However, the site shall remain, not dead, but sleeping, and may be resurrected should I find more time, or an important issue comes up I feel is worth the effort. A general election might tempt me, or a referendum on Lisbon (come on David, you know you want to…).

I shall try and read and comment on blogs when I get the chance, I shall not cease entirely from mental fight, even if my sword is sleeping in my hand. Maybe one day the Secret Person will emerge again, like Alfred from Athelney, stronger than ever!

Until then, remember, there’ll always be an England.

My not-blogging because I’ve been busy with work, will now be replaced with some not-blogging because I’m busy relaxing for Christmas.

I’d like to wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy New Year and hope to have some more for you to read in 2009!

Happy Christmas again!

Oh dear. New Labour cheerleader Polly Toynbee has let the cat out of the bag in an article calling for big government, when she mentions in a passing aside that dictatorship might be necessary.

Now Polly pushing for big government is no surprise, it is a constant theme to her pieces, and her answer to everything. It is matched only by her dodgy grasp of statistics and her fickle and ever changing devotion to her current hero, who will save the Labour party and bring it back to its big government roots. I believe Miliband is out and Gordon is back in at the moment.

Now in this paragraph, she dismisses civil libertarians as “conspiracy theorists”:

Meanwhile a second anti-state battleground had opened up, as libertarians of right and left attacked the government for Big Brother-like interference with the privacy and freedoms of the citizen. Labour’s plans to introduce identity cards, to allow police to hold terrorist suspects without trial for 42 days and the widespread use of CCTV cameras in public places were seen by conspiracy theorists as sinister encroachments on ancient civil liberties.

The first anti-state battleground was simply politicians who thought the state should do less, now there are those paranoid old libertarians who think giving the state too much power is a danger. We all know in Polly’s eyes the state can do no wrong.

I tell you what though. Our libertarian paranoia (and that of climate sceptics) may be fuelled by sentences like:

But other pressing global issues demand big government answers – above all, climate change, where every country needs to control its carbon emissions. That demands ever-tighter state control of business and private citizens’ behaviour.

That’s right. Ever tighter state control of private citizens’ behaviour. But worse is to follow:

No-one dares admit it yet, but the big question is whether democracies are strong enough to impose the kind of emissions controls necessary to save the planet.

Well you have dared to admit it Polly (I though Flash Gordon had already saved the planet though)! We may have suspected this attitude from you for many a year, but now we have it in writing. I would consider dictatorship a “sinister encroachment on ancient civil liberties” and not feel paranoid at all.

This attitude of Ms Toynbee’s is a dangerous one. The idea of democracies “imposing” is bad enough, but once you take the next step to requiring dictatorship it really takes a big turn for the worse.

We know dictatorship is required, so the most important thing becomes preserving the dictatorship. Any benefits of dictatorship become lost in self-preservation. Power corrupts. This is a similar attitude to one Polly would despise, that which led Gordon and Tony to outwardly adopt Tory economic policy. Gordon believes Labour was necessary not to let in the ‘evil Tories’, even if it meant copying said evil Tories’ policies. Retaining power became all.

The effect of a long time in power, even within our democratic system (imperfections excepted) can be seen in this Labour Home article suggesting the Tories may be guilty of treason for questioning the Great Leader. Labour was doing “what was necessary”, the questioning of this undoubtably right thing was therefore supporting the wrong thing, which would be bad for the country, and therefore treason. It is not hard to see this logic continued to dictatorship.

For how long would Polly’s all powerful interfering world government (for surely to tackle climate change it must be global) act only in the name of good and equality and low carbon? Not long I think. How many libertarians or Tories would be hanged, how many people starved as food went to waste unable to be transported for fear of carbon, all in the name of a greater good? How long before Polly decides the benign dictatorship should be benign in a different direction, then finds herself disappeared in the night? This is the path absolute power leads us down.

I believe there should be limits on how much a government, even a democratically elected one, can impose upon an individual. Weight of numbers does not always mean weight of moral justification. A democrat who believes in majoritarianism or an elected dictatorship can at least be argued with or voted against, we have some handle on the power of the state, however dangerous we may find it.

But when that into dictatorship is passed, when the ends justifies the means and sacrifices to everyone’s freedom must be made to do what is necessary, then we should worry. Polly doesn’t fear the big state, as she believes it will be ever benign and a leap to an omniscient, omnipotent and good dictatorship is a small leap for her mind. But to me it is a big hurdle, an event horizon that once passed will take centuries of pain, struggle and death to overcome.

Think much harder, be less trusting, Polly, before you wish for the strong guiding hand of a kind dictator to save you. There is no such thing.

Apologies to anyone who’s missed my inciteful commentary but I have very busy recently doing things for people who give me money to do them. So that kind of gives them priority over blogging! What with reading the press and other blogs to keep ahead of developments it was taking up a bit too much time, but I hope to organise myself and return with a regular, if less frequent, supply of posts.

I’ll probably try for more longer posts, rather than quick comments on news items people can find anyway, but we’ll see how things develop.

Speak to you soon, SP

Scotland’s ambitions for independence seem to have taken a hit in the current financial crisis, but those of Greenland haven’t. 76% of voters supported a proposal which will see increased independence from Denmark, the adoption of Greenlandic as the official tongue and perhaps most importantly control over their natural resources, including oil. The Danish government supported the referendum.

A subsidy from Denmark is to be halted, but Greenland will keep a set share of oil revenues. Denmark will continue to represent Greenland in foreign affairs, although Greenland already has some independence in this matter, not being an EU member even though Denmark is.

I wonder if Alex Salmond is watching this and getting any ideas.

Others have said it already very worrying; and it seems beyond Jacqui Smith and Gordon Brown, everyone is unanimous that Damian Green’s arrest was heavy handed, and especially that the searching of the Commons office sets a dangerous precedent.

Smith and Brown are currently ‘not interfering’ with the independent police, and refusing to comment. When was the last time they didn’t offer an opinion, even on things well outside the remit of their power. Gordon is forever ‘calling for’ things.

There is a lot to play out on this story, but given the relative prominence given in Tory-leaning and Labour-leaning newspapers, and the comments of the politicians on various sides, I suspect it is the New Labour government who will come out of this worst.

to any Scottish readers.

Depsite Blair giving up part of our EU rebate in return for reform of the Common Agricultural Policy from 2013, it looks like French farmers will be guaranteed protection and therefore in effect the continuation of the CAP, before any talks take place.

Talks were planned to reduce tariffs and subsidies in the EU, allowing increased trade with the developing world’s farmers. However French president Nicolas Sarkozy, currently holding the rotating EU presidency seems set to put a stop to this.

Surely all those who sing the praises of the EU’s lack of borders and tariffs can see that the same borders are imposed at the edge of the EU, to the detriment of trade with the rest of the world. And for those who insist that we remain within the EU and work to reform it from within, maybe this will be a wake up that there are huge vested interests in the current system and reform is, if not impossible, slow and tedious.

I hold no hope for the reform of the EU into a form that would provide a net benefit to the UK (or England, the bit I really care about) and this latest, typical, story only adds to my conviction. Better Off Out!

As I have said before, I am no economist, but I am unconvinced by Alistair Darling’s pre-budget review.

VAT is to be cut by 2.5 percentage points to 15%. That is a 2.1% drop in prices, if shops pass it on, and is designed to encourage spending. We are currently coming up to Christmas and shops, in order to attract customers are offering their own sales to encourage spending. Please do write in if you say any store with SALE 2.1% OFF signs. The market will cut prices and encourage more spending than Darling’s VAT holiday. I am not really complaining about a tax cut, but I can’t see it having the desired effect. Plus it will be offset by duty rises in alcohol, cigarettes and fuel.

National Insurance will rise. Now we know Gordon Brown has raised NI contributions before, while not raising income tax. But, of course, NI is an income tax, it is a tax based on your income. This will hit the middle classes more, which may please the left, but won’t help start spending. The poor who spend most of their income on essentials have little room to manoeuvre in adjusting spending levels, neither will these essentials be affected by the VAT cut.

Income tax will rise to 45% on earnings over £150,000. This could raise £3bn, which is better than nothing but small change in the total budget of nearly £700bn. And sometimes raising taxes can reduce tax take, especially amongst the highly mobile rich, but this particular initiative will likely have little effect beyond cheering the Polly Toynbee’s of this world who dislike high earners (despite belonging to said group).

Public spending growth will be cut. Not public spending cut, just the rate of increase, this despite the economy predicted to shrink by 1.25%. Borrowing will rise to £118bn, and that’s just the official borrowing figure, the real total may be much higher.

So despite some tax rises, borrowing will still be enormous. The tax rises will be delayed till after any election, for obvious reasons. By the time these rises are set to come in, we could be recovering from this downturn or still emersed deep in recession. When combined with the inevitability of higher tax long term to cover increased public debt costs, it looks like more borrowing and spending and delaying the inevitable pain.

But the pain will come. Gordon Brown might avoid the personal pain of an election loss this time if he can borrow enough on our behalves to ring-fence the public sector and collect their votes, but the pain will come eventually. And it’s really going to hurt.

This blog has now been going for one year, with 471 posts, 544 comments and a measly 23,000 views (I don’t have a proper stats package for all the fancy stuff).

I am pleased to say it’s been fun for me and educational. I like to think a few people have enjoyed it too. I will be taking a break over the weekend. But worry not loyal viewer(s?) there is plenty more to come…