Some quieter thoughts on the EU debate

I'm sick of the EU debate.  You're sick of the EU debate.  We're all sick of it - because it's not a debate.  It's degraded into a shouting match of fury and noise.  If you actually wanted a reasonable discussion or rational debate you're all out of luck.

So I thought I'd try and write something.  You might agree with it - you might not.  My "win condition" is that you reach the end of this post with a nagging doubt.  Maybe the leave campaign might not be all bad... maybe they're not all frothing loons. 

Caveats - this is going to be fair, but not unbiased.  I'm writing this from a pro-leave perspective, but an honest one.  Also - do not post links to politicians in the comments. If I wanted to listen to them I'd turn the news on.

As a rule of thumb, poverty is bad and I oppose it.  Not the relative poverty we talk about in the UK, of xx% percent of some average income.  That's not poverty, that's being in the top 20% of the worlds population.  I'm talking real poverty - the 2$/day grinding poverty that has been humanities base state for most of it's existence.  Subsistence farming for the most part.

What's this got to do with the EU?  Well, a third of the EU's money goes towards maintaining global poverty.  It doesn't do this very effectively, nor is it a primary objective.  But that's what it does.

That's... a bit of a leap.  Once more, with workings?  Sure.

So.  About one third of the EU's budget goes towards the common agricultural policy, or CAP.   It used to be more, but over the years it's dropped from about two thirds, as the EU has expanded.  What is this CAP I speak?  It's  a huge set of interlinked tariffs, subsidies and rules which the EU has being saying it's going to reform any day now for as long as I can remember.

Lets look at the case of sugar.  Let's use EU statistics, because using the numbers of your enemy is big and clever.  Ahh, lets use these.  We're going to use the "EU market price for white sugar" graph, in euros per ton.  So note that these prices are vulnerable to currency fluctuations.  Because of this we're only going to use the two lines denominated in euros/ton - because dollar fluctuations make things more complicated for all our purposes.

Go look at the graph.  No, seriously - you really need to.  On the "dashboard" page it's the top right one.  Fine, here's a copy:

Lets start with the obvious.  Ignoring the black dotted line (which is just the same as the black line but in dollars) what do we see?   First, apart from for a few months the price difference between the EU and the rest of the world has been at least 100 euros.  Usually it's been a multiple of hundreds of euros per ton.  Currently it's only ~50 per ton, but that's quite uncommon.

The EU is paying a higher price for sugar than the rest of the world.  That means that every single user of sugar in the EU is paying more than they need to.  Currently around 10% more, but historically up to 300% more than world price.  That's a heck of a lot of money there - where does it go?   Get to that in a second.

So why don't the sugar producing nations sell to the EU and make a mint?  They'd love to.  Except that there are tariffs.  Yep, that's right.  The EU will charge you for the privilege of importing sugar*.  The EU - keeping prices high for it's members since it's formation.  This keeps the market price high, which benefits...

Ah, who does all this benefit?  That's right - the farmers and producers of the EU.  All these market distortions significantly benefit the sugar farmers of the EU.  Entirely co-incidentally, the EU is the worlds largest sugar beet grower.    Which came first?  I don't care, to be honest.  Either way, it's a huge waste of money.

So we've established that the EU members all have a higher price, making life that bit more expensive.  But you say I was talking about a third of the EU budget.  Well, the CAP accounts for a third of the EU budget.  It's nowhere near that expensive to enforce tariffs - so where does it go?   Subsidies.

We pay our farmers for all sorts of things.  With sugar, the EU mandates that all sugar produced as part of an EU farming quota should be paid a minimum price for sugar beet.  We also pay farmers money for a host of other things.  Here's the Guardian as an example.  Critically we pay per acre.  Own farm land, get a payment.  There's payments and allowances for all sorts of things.  Critically, it goes to farmers and landowners. 

But how does this hurt the cause of World Poverty?  Well, if we didn't subsidize our own farmers, who would grow sugar?  Well, it wouldn't be us.  But you remember the * above?  It's the poorer nations of the world.  Proof of this?  From an EU site:

Since the reform of the sugar market regime, the EU has become a net importer of sugar. Imports are mainly in the form of cane sugar for refining, from the African, Caribbean and Pacific states (ACP) and Least Developed Countries (LDC) which benefit from quota-free, duty-free access to the EU market.

 So since 2009 the EU has made a start in reversing some of the damage they've been doing.  For 16 years we/they deliberately prevented the world's poor countries from selling to us.

Of course, this is for sugar.  I'm not an expert, and I've simplified the subject.  There have been improvements and small reforms over the years.  But we still have the situation where we

• Tax the people 
• To subsidises farmers
• Who sell at an inflated price
• Caused by a tarrif structure that hurts the poor sugar producing nations of the world
• Causing everyone in the EU to pay more for sugar and all related products.

To add insult to injury, if the EU produces excess sugar, above quota, what happens to it?  It gets sold to the rest of the world, at market rates.  Yep - we pay farmers to grow sugar to sell in direct competition to the poor.  Isn't the EU great?

Now, if it was just sugar I'd shrug.  There's a few other CAP goods... ok, it's pretty much every agricultural good I can think of. 

•     cereal, rice, potatoes
•     oil
•     dried fodder
•     milk and milk products, wine, honey
•     beef and veal, poultry meat and eggs, pig meat, sheep / lamb meat and goat meat
•     sugar
•     fruit and vegetables
•     cotton
•     peas, field beans
•     sweet lupins
•     olives
•     Flax seeds
•     Flax fibres
•     silkworms
•     hemp
•     tobacco
•     hops
•     seeds
•     flowers and live plants
•     animal feed stuffs

The first step on the climb out of poverty for any nation in the modern world is easy.  Find someone to buy your stuff.

While we are in the EU we are directly paying for a system that harms the world's poor.  If we leave it, we can just buy their stuff.  We go from causing active harm to helping the worlds poor.

No donations, no aid, no corruption.  Honest pay for an honest product.  Oh, and we'll save money on food while we're at it.

PS:  If we want to subsidize farms, to ensure we keep internal agriculture going that's an option.  But we do that while being open and honest about what we're doing.  We freely and openly accept and admit that we're screwing the third world in the process.  But we can do it in less market distorting ways.

PPS: Note that there's been no actual policies proposed to reform this.  But this is almost certainly because all the parties are campaigning to leave.  Serious policies on the "So what now" are essentially impossible till we know what the final conditions are on leaving.  

Why the Treasury report on the EU is wrong

Hi All.  It's been a while, and this is a politics post.  Feel free to ignore.

So, the treasury report can be found here.  The bits that this post is concerned about are page 192-193, B.26-B.33

It's an interesting read in it's own right, but there's something of a critical flaw in the numbers.  It's not a huge flaw, but it's misleading.  Misleading to the tune of £Billions. 

How, I hear you ask?  Well, it's about how much the UK contributes to the EU.   This is a complex number that changes every year, depending on a whole host of factors.  What the report does is look at the last 5 years published in the last published ONS report, which was 2015.  The average of those five years, 2010-2014 is ~£7 billion a year.  Sounds reasonable so far, right?

Well, no, actually.  Because the share of EU costs shifts.  The better off countries pay more - and one factor that this entire debate has failed to mention is that the UK has grown faster, year on year, than the EU.  And so because we've been doing markedly better our bills are going to increase.  Take a look at this report from the Parliamentary Library - Page 9.  There's a table of costs there, and it illustrates the problem.  EU Net contributions are going to be going up - by lots.  Billions, in fact.

Now, to be completely fair, the Parliamentary Report isn't directly comparable to the treasury, because this doesn't fully account for the money that the EU spends in the private sector in the UK.  But if we look at the 5 year average, 2010-2014 we get 8.86 billion, vs the 7.08 billion average the treasury gets.  If we look at the projected costs 2016-2020 in the Parliamentary report we get 9.5 billion.  That is, we're expecting an increased bill that's ~.7 billion bigger, every year.

Which the treasury doesn't think is important enough to mention. 

Even though this was reported in the telegraph last year...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11727741/Budget-2015-Cost-of-EU-member-to-be-3-billion-higher-than-expected.html


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Oh, and another thought.  This entire treasury model is based around relative strengths.  It doesn't take into account the risk of the disintegration of the EU.  Of Greece, Italy and Spain's current  woes.  Of the impact of Syria, or Turkey joining.  The model assumes no potential downside..

Change my mind

Hi All

First, thanks for coming this far.

So, what I want to do is try to disprove something I've believed all my life.  I'm doing this because people whose opinions I respect think that I might be wrong.  Because not everything you learn as a child is true - and even those things that are sometimes might as well be wrong.

The belief is simple - that it is almost always better to increase the size of the overall economy than change the way it's distributed.  Or, as I met the idea as a 10 year old, "Why argue about who gets the biggest bit of pie.  Make a bigger pie!".  In very modern terms (which is the definition I'll be using here) the belief is "Economic growth is more important than reducing inequality, under standard western conditions".

The process which I would like your help with is two(ish) steps long.  First, I want to identify the things that would prove that this belief is wrong *to me* - and then gather evidence. An example of the process:

"We have reached the limit of growth".  If more growth isn't possible, then more growth can't be more important.  Strong evidence against: UK average growth over xx years is 2%.  Therefore this statement is provably false.

I've come up with a number of these already, some completely trivial, others not.  Even a couple which I'm really not sure about, left in for completeness and potential debate.

The help I'm looking for at this stage is both "More ways that would falsify the theory" and "Evidence that supports previously accepted ways to falsify the theory".

An important point though - while I might not agree with what people say, every contribution will be read and considered.  Nothing will be just dismissed, except as outlined below.  While I might not agree with you your comments will be respected.  Evidence however will be carefully considered, but if this bogs down into a significant literature review this process will be reconsidered - I don't have time to do an undergrad in Sociology to help me reconsider my political views.  The election is this year, not next.

Further, I would ask everyone to comment (and read) in the spirit of reasonableness.  We may disagree about things but this is no reason to be angry or annoyed.  If a comment persuades you of something, say that.  Thank them for it.  This entire exercise is to try to change my mind - but I'd ask that you accept that it might change yours as well.

Also note that everything will be looked at with sane eyes and rebutted as needed.  For example, "Economic growth has killed our children's childhoods" will be rebutted by "Yes, but infant mortality has dropped significantly; less childhood is lost by death in childhood".  This could of course be rebutted by some argument on the sexualisation of children and the degraded quality of childhood.  At this point I would mark the point as "Insufficiently clear cut without a degree in Childhood studies; this debate is not on the relative quality of childhood.   On hold pending further evidence." The point here is not to argue one point into the ground, but to establish clear cut statements.  If it boils down to "You can argue it either way in the end, and we don't actually know", this is a perfectly acceptable. 

There are some quibbles further below, for the interested.  Short version: no misleading stats, no spirit level.

Now there are some of you out there (Alan, I'm looking at you) who will be muttering that you don't have to choose between economic growth and reducing inequlity.  I have a couple of answers; 3 really.  First, "If you chase two rabbits you will lose both".  Second, this is a matter of priority, not an absolute zero sum game.  Third, the people who are usually able to make decisions of Growth vs Inequality are politicians - and I don't trust them to get one thing right at a time; let alone two.

So, the Falsifiable statements I already have:

Trivial to dismiss, but included for completeness

1) We have reached the end of growth
2) External costs of growth have significant externality costs that exceed the value of growth
3) Rate of growth so slow that other options are significantly more important/significant
4) Universal acceptance of the need to resolve inequality
5) Economic growth can't be significantly influenced.

Less trivial

1) The cost of redistribution to further reduce inequality is less than zero
2) That current inequality is provably Unfair.*
3) Inequality has significant, clear external costs.

Iffy - might apply, maybe.

1) There is no way to escape poverty, at the level of an individual lifetime for a functional,  non-handicapped individual.
2) The rate of growth of inequality is greater than the growth of the economy, including the effects of technological development - and that this matters.

So, people.  How else could you prove this theory wrong?  What strong evidence can you think of?


Quibbles

When it comes to trying to prove/disprove the statements there are going to be a number of quibbles.  While I'm not going to spell out all the quibbles (because that would take forever!) they could all (bar one) be described as "Be reasonable".  If something is true, but has only been true for one year, that isn't enough.  Obvious misuse of statistics is Bad.  Showing that a thing is un/true during an unusual economic period isn't proof, be it WW2, the 2008 recession or the Napoleonic wars.  You get the idea.

Where I will be unfair is the book "The Spirit Level".  I have great problems with this book.  The short version is - where I have specific knowledge of the subject matter it seems to fall apart.  For example, take Japan, one of the countries with very long lifespans and an apparently "equal" society.  The book doesn't address the severe inequalities in the country.  The huge social gulf between Men and Women.  The xenophobia foreigners experience.  If Inequality influences longevity, surely being treated as a non-person would??  What of Japanese pension fraud?  Anyway, every time I look at it the numbers seem to get worse.  So this particular book is not going to be considered evidence here.

*Note that the "Unfair" statement has significant additional restrictions.  Including but not limited to "Universally accepted as unfair" and "Unfair to all - living, dead and yet to be born".  Fair is a concept I have significant problems with, once it's passed out the realm of fair cake distribution.  Is it fair to Bob if Alice earns more than him?  Would the inequality be fair if Alice's father funded her time at university?  Would it be more or less fair if it was a scholarship?  How does talent/ability/disability effect matters?  As I said, fair is *hard* for me - it's a rabbit hole that is easy to fall down endlessly.

Free stuff from Microsoft

Hi all.  It's been a while, but I'm feeling in a strange and writing feels right.  Since I got some free stuff from Microsoft this week, I thought I'd talk about that.  Because it needs commenting on...

What was it?  Well, it was one of these, courtesy of Microsoft.  The short description is that it's a new development board called a "Galileo", for electronics and computing.  Combines both direct electrical access to components with about as much computing power as a PC from 1998.  Arduino compatible, as much computing power as a raspberry pi and a

So, full disclosure, they gave me free stuff.   Doesn't mean I'm going to be nice.

First, it's not flat.

Wait, this is a problem?  Yes, yes it is.  If I'm working on an electronics project I'm going to manhandle my microelectronics.  I'm going to - get this - plug things in.  Apply pressure.  Poke, prod, fiddle around.  And my faithful arduino sits on my desk without complaint - and it has the right to complain.  But this Galileo has interfaces all over it.  It sits ~1cm above the desk, supported on 2 small bits of plastic used for some cables or other.  Touch any bit of the board and it lifts off the desk.  How can you work on a board that won't just sit flat??

Second, power.

It uses 30 times more power then the arduino it's compatible with.  That's 10+ times the power of a raspberry pi - without any move processing capability.  So if you ever build anything running on batteries...Galileo is not your friend.

Third, wifi.

My projects always seem to have 2 problem.  Either I'm on battery (yes, I have a battery problem.  I know.  But doesn't everyone have 50 AA's laying around, just in case.  Right?) or I want it on the network.  Wifi built into whatever board I'm using would be amazing.  Not having to faff with adding wifi, just connecting with a couple of simple lines of code.  Galileo doesn't have it.  It has a PCI Express slot.  It's got a *serial* port.  But WiFi?   Nah, who uses that?

Anyway, that's enough of me moaning.  When...if I come up with something to do with it, I'll let you know...

Music...

A common way people classify themselves and others (officially "getting to know you" - but really, classifying) is asking what kind of music you like.

This is a question that I find impossible.  A track here; a tune there.  And yet this weekend I heard a new song, "Little boxes", something I hadn't heard before.

I look it up on youtube and there is this 1960's (or perhaps 70's)  era video of a man with a banjo.  This video is more gripping then a hundred modern pop songs.  There's no cookie-cutter image, just a man, in a jumper, singing about boxes.

There is tune, meaning, feeling - the things I want in my music. 

So what music do I like? 

Music like this, played by Queen, written by Bach or sung by a friend.  Easy really...

Hotmail

Hotmail. Claims to be an email service... But it deletes my email if I don't log in for a while. What a piece of junk! How are you supposed to rely on that? I've used related services...MSN and the like. Bloody junk.

Leveson inquiry

So, the Leveson enquiry.

It's been something I've been trying to ignore for a while, but it's failed. I've got to the point that I've got to make a comment on the stupidity.

Of late, we've had all these terribly damning links between media people and politicians. It's so terrible. Oh noes!

Let's be absolutely, one hundred percent clear. Before one media company was allowed to buy another recently (no names, you know who, but no names) it had to be put through a political process before it was approved. A process where the person running it had to be replaced because he admitted to a bias.

The media are completely in the hands of the politicians.

Given this, why are we so surprised and shocked that a company tries to stay on the right side of the people who can close them down?

I mean, really? Something was discussed for 2 minutes? Someone rode on a horse?

Get a grip.


Edit to add spacing

A few answers to questions

Evening all

I'm going to be responding to a post on another blog, which can be found here.

Little Miss Giggles pointed me at this, knowing my views - so I've bitten, and I'm going to try and rationally debate the answers. Yes, on the internet. No, the other one does not have bells on.

It's a serious of questions, which Raggady Man put to the No to AV campaign and he wasn't happy with the answers. I can't blame him, I'm not either. But there are answers, which I'm going to attempt to give.

Now, question one - I don't see a need to respond to. The motivation to put "None of your taxes have been used to print this leaflet" could be almost anything - and it's not really a contentious point, really. A little dirty... but not one word that wasn't true. So let's leave that...

Question 2:...on the front page you claim that the current First Past The Post system gives one person one vote. However according to http://www.voterpower.org.uk/ with the First Past The Post system and the dominance of one party in my area I actually have around 0.25% of a vote. Can your further explain how, when my vote will be discounted if/when I don't vote for the local dominant party, I actually even have a vote worth casting in the next election.

Answer

Well, the official answer sucked - yes, the people who made the website are partisan. This does not allow you to ignore the point.

The point is in the current system, some votes aren't worth the same. Ignoring the strict, 1=1 point, this is to a degree, true. I've lived in areas that I couldn't change the outcome so much as a bean. However, does AV make this any better? Let us examine some cases in a hypothetical election...

Out right winner

1) If the majority party has more then 51% of the vote, under AV your vote matters exactly as much under FPTP as AV.

Your party won...

2) If you voted for the A party, and they win (and were the largest party) the value of your vote was the same.

3) If you voted for Party A and they won, and didn't have the most 1st priority votes cast, your vote is worth the MORE.

4) If you voted for Party B and they lost, but did have the most votes at stage 1, your vote is now worth LESS.

5) If you voted for party B and they lost and didn't have the most votes at stage 1, your vote is still the same.

Your n+1 choice won (not out right)

6) ...and your first choice was eliminated, your vote is worth more!

7) ...and your first choice is still in the running your vote is worth..less.

Someone you didn't vote for wins (not out right)

8) ...and they had the most in the first round, your vote is worth the same.

9) ...and they didn't win the first round, this just gets madly complicated. But probably balanced.

Now, my point here by listing all these possible outcomes is that the answer to the question of "Is my vote worth more with AV" the answer may be yes or no. It's complicated. But for every situation where your vote is "worth more", there is another where it is "worth less".

And for added fun, one of the most marginal seats in existence is Crawley. In 2005 there was a majority of 37. And in that seat, your vote is worth...according to http://www.voterpower.org.uk/crawley - 0.932, increasing to 0.952.

In a constituency where some voters have more pets then the winning candidate had majority voters your vote isn't worth 1.

The very metric that this site is using is flawed, because the only "perfect" situation is where there is only a majority of 1 - and that's you, alone, on an island.

According to the numbers on the page itself, swapping to AV increase the number of "marginal" seats by 6.4%.

So, really, 6.4% of people's votes are worth more.

And the people whose votes are worth the most are the minority parties - because they are the parties who will always get re-assigned.

The smaller the party, the more extreme, weird and odd the issues they consider important.

Are they the people we want to have the deciding vote?

The prank vote, the protest vote, the single issue parties?



---
Depending on response, may/may not continue with the rest of the questions - I'm out of time!

Windows Server 2008, oh the pain

Morning all

How's this for infuriating. You're running windows server 2008 and you want to download linux. Not for the server, but because you're going to stick it on the netbook. Sounds reasonable, right?

Well, there's a slight catch. You see, Server has an "enhanced security configuration" for its built in internet explorer.

This means that every time you try and download something that's even vaguely risky - like, say, linux - it asks you to add the site to a list of exceptions. Fine, yes, you can add thee site.

But places like ubuntu have mirrors - that is, multiple sites that take it in turns to download the file to you - because they're fairly hefty files. But every time you click it gives you another, different mirror.

So I think fine, sod this - I'm downloading firefox. A browser that I can use. But.... no. Instead I get exactly the same problem. So I end up running my main machine overnight, when one of the explicit reasons I have it is to manage large downloads like this because it uses next to no power.

But no.

Server.

FAIL!

Telepathy - What would it really be like?

You see it in many science fiction stories, fantasy programs - heck, every now and again it makes it into mainstream fiction!

But what would it be like, to be with someone who could read your mind? And what if you could read theirs?

I don't have to guess. I know.

For, you see, I'd taken Little Miss Giggles to a games weekend at her parents place. And there was a gentleman by the name of Bester.

Now, I've never actually played with Bester before, except while approaching that point of tiredness during which I can fall asleep in the 30 seconds between someone starts shuffling cards and dealing them.

So we started playing a game of "God's Playground" with him. Now, there's a secret bidding mechanic in this game. And if you both bid the same amount, you have to bid again - and all the extra resources are lost.

This is a four round game. So, we should have had 4 silent bids - but we didn't.

We had more than 20.

Every single time the deadlock wasn't broken by one of us making a mistake, the other out thinking us or by some fluke. It was by the other person deciding this was getting silly and deliberately not playing.

This is different from the (3? 5?) times when we both decided, at the same time, to bid 0.

Still, eventually the game ended and we went onto another, called Carson City.

By this point we were firmly in each others heads. We knew what the other player was doing. What he was thinking. Why he was doing everything.

We had to waste actions not because we wanted to do something. But because we'd seen things the other player could not be allowed to do, so they had to be stopped. And we knew that they had seen this option - because they had.

Yes, that paragraph was confusing. It was confusing because we were thinking in lines so similar that the other player of the game just didn't know what we were talking about.

At the end we were talking about what his final moves should be in semi-code. Not because we wanted to be secretive, but because the other player already knew. All you had to do was mention that "The hidden four pointer was better".

That is, the 4 point move that was hidden because the 3rd player had covered it with their hand.

So I know what telepathy is like.

It's damned annoying.

Rage at the Radio

I'm a huge fan of radio 4, any questions and any answers specificly. despite the rage that it causes me.

But I've just sat through both and, as far as I'm concerned, EVERY SINGLE PERSON managed to miss the point on an issue.

True, I normally disagree with most people about a lot of things. But maybe I just take a long view. But yes, xx number of years after a sex crime, yes, the culprit should have a chance to be removed from the sex offenders register.

Not because of "fundamental human rights". I'm not a huge fan of them, as currently implemented.

Not because of rehabilitation - the justice system may or may not rehabilitate. To rehabilitate there must be the acceptance that it's possible - but the point of the system varies from society to society.

Not even on the insanity of keeping people with dementia on the list.

No, but because things that are a sex crime change. Fifty years ag0 - within the lifetime of a decent part of the population, homosexuality was a crime. Now, it's not. So someone who was a sex criminal then wouldn't now warrant more then raised eyebrows.

Right now there are some serious oddities in our legal system. It's a crime to be *sent* a picture of naked girl less then 18 years old. That is, if a 17 year old girl sent a naked picture which she took herself to her boyfriend, he is committing a crime.

It's lunacy I expect to be fixed at some point. But people caught by this are by definition sex offenders.

Our definition of what is a sex crime changes; so we should review - if it's not still a crime, they don't need to be registered.

Muppets.

Jelly on radio 4

Now I'm grumpy.

Not only do I have to be up and alert on the morning after a bank holiday, but the BBC are giving air time away to a politician to lie.

Turn on the radio and we hear a labour politician being asked "What don't you like about the VAT rise?". His answer, paraphrased slightly, was:

1) Because they promised not to (but they and the lib dems were going to increase national insurance.
2) Because it's regressive
3) Because it's a tax on jobs

All this and the presenter didn't even query any of them. Now, I know the general election was last year and people might not rememebr it that well. So lets look at these claims.

1) The conservatives very clearly said (at some cost) "We have no plans to increase VAT". But they didn't promise it - they were amazingly clear on this.

2) Regressive. Define regressive. This term now seems to mean "any policy we don't like" - if it doesn't actually benefit the target groups a politician cares about, it's regressive. It's a meaningless word, and I'll show you why.

Lets say that you're going to increase tax in such a way that someone earning 10,000 a year pays an extra £10 but someone earning £30,000 pays £30 extra - that sounds progressive, right? Well.... no. You can still call it regressive. Or progressive.

Yes, the rich are paying more - but so are the poor. Indeed, if the £30K person paid £20 more then labour would be dancing up and down, it's regressive, regressive! Because as a percent, the rich are paying less of their income.

So to pass this test the poor both must pay less in absolute terms and as a percentage of income. Which makes virtually any cut you think of making regressive. Which is surprisingly difficult.

Oh, and the third point, about a tax on jobs? All taxes cost jobs. National Insurance is paid by both employers and employees. So, by definition, any increase is an actual tax on jobs.

VAT increases prices for everyone. So that's 2 actual lies and one meaningless statement - not even a follow up question.

An interview as hard of Jelly.

A few words of advice

You will know fear; you will know pain and then you will die.

These words should have been written in blood on the church door hosting the carol service I was at today. Indeed, adding "Abandon all hope all ye who enter here" would be to err on the side of caution.

First, let me state my position - I am not a Christian. I just have a thing for carols and singing. This means that I actually listen to the music. Today... this was not a good thing. And for the record, I have sung in amateur choirs with pretentions of standards.

First; the music. It is not an exacting standard to expect all the players to keep their instrument in tune; not close to it, near it or in spitting distance. On it.

And, for that matter, asthmatics should not be allowed to play a flute.

Second, the singers. Imagine, if you will, the spectrum of female singers who can be termed alto or soprano. There exists a point on this line, above the altos - and from this point every singer is alto. Yes, perhaps they can sing some soprano lines. Indeed, they might even sound nice on occasion.

But this is the same as a scalpel and a sword. Yes, you can behead someone with both - but this does not mean they are interchangeable.

Don't let a high alto pretend to be anything but what she is.

Ever.

Then, there is the choice of music to play...

Carols are beloved of many for a reason - classic tunes, lyrics learnt in the depths of childhood in a time when snow was special and hope lived.

This is why you should restrain any musical director who dreams of re-writing descants for them. Or tweaking the final verses so as to confuse everyone but the choir, who are ignoring everyone else anyway.

And while we're talking, know your limits. This applies to musical directors, alcohol and cake. Don't even dream of doing anything more than "the usual" with 5 rehearsals. With something odd or different, allow 10. If including an orchestra, changes to almost every part and new songs...christmas really does begin in June.

The Right Reverend Irrelevance. Yes, this might be the fullest you've seen your church since...last Christmas. This does not mean you're allowed to sell your Alpha course. Nor should you spend the first 10 minutes running through fire exits, the contents of the program (that we have in our hands), where the money raised in the offering is going, how persecuted christians in general are and how the world is a terrible place.

Talking of terrible places. If you pick out 8 readings, there is no requirement to play Holy Book Roulette. You don't need genesis, revelations, all the gospels and two random books. You can have real structure and meaning. You can have a theme - even, dare, I say, a message. Of the readings I think 3 had a relationship with christmas. If by message you mean mentions something which you later may rely on in court. Sorry, church.

But random quotes?? And, more to the point, if at any point your reading from *any* biblical book just sounds like an eidolon from Maelstrom - then you've really, really picked the wrong quote.

And finally, the choir. Oh the choir. There is much I could say. If your altos over-ride not the rest of the choir but the entire church singing, they need to be told to calm down and listen to themselves.

If your choir can't even stand up at the same time, there's no way they'll start singing at the same time, except at gunpoint.

But I'm going to restrain myself by saying that I believe the entire choir would have been improved by a single, simple addition.

A hand grenade.

/rant

How would you explain this to the children?

Have a read at the article, here.

I'm not going to quote it, but a summery would be "A women describes how she's doing all she can, up to breaking down because of running out of petrol, because she's afraid she doesn't have enough money in the account. She's doing this to send her two girls to a private school, at the cost of £8,000 a term - but she has (at least) 3 children. One of them is a boy in a state school."

Now, she does try to justify this - girls do better in single sex schools, they'd love to do the same for their son by they just can't afford it. That it's the most critical years for the girls now.

But what I'm trying to get my head around is, how will she explain to her son that for most of his life he's been relatively poor - if she can't afford petrol, that's relatively poor.

He's been relatively poor for his entire life while is parents have spent everything they had - house included - at a rate of £24,000 a year (3 terms a year, 24K a year) - on his two sisters.

That's £24K a year for 5-18...that's £24*13 = £312,000. Not including university.

How could any one explain that to their youngest child?

Grumpy is in the building

Here I am, sleepy and tired on a Monday morning.

I turn on the radio (about 7.20?) in the morning and I find the Today program is interviewing people about the coalition's plans to change the nature of council housing. (Aka, houses owned by the local council and rented out at reduced rates to "those in need" - typically about 50% of "market rates".)

These annoyed me.

The first example was a women who had a council house - they may have said why, but I didn't hear. She was studying to be a nurse; this would take 3-4 years, but she would be able to "better herself" without the council house, or so she says.

Lets call that four years in a place with the same commercial cost as mine. So that's a rent of £500/2 = £250 a month discount. So £250*12 = £3,000 a year. So, over the period of three to four years while studying that's £9,000 to £12,000.

Lets compare that to Little Johny, who's a good student, worked at school, lives with parents. Like huge numbers of students he'll have to take out loans and receive no actual support from the state - I didn't, and you don't need much in the way of "wealth" to do this. Bugger all, in fact.

Would little Johny get 9-12K in aid...?

Interview 2 was from a women who moved into a council house with her mother and family in 1984 - about 26 years ago. She's still living there.

She considers the council house "hers" - she's inherited it from her mother, effectively. Never moved out, has been subsidised for her entire adult life; almost certainly most of her life. Said that if they lost the place they would be expect to be paid for all the work they've done in the past - painting, cleaning, etc.

Total cost - half her housing costs for 26 years and administration+maintenance costs for the same.

Social housing is important... but I'm really having issues understanding why some parties are opposing the reforms.

Because they just seem fair - to those who pay for it all.


---
Edited because I first posted just a title

Burning bridges

If you've not heard yet, the London Fire Brigade is taking fireworks night off.

Yep, that's right - the Fire Brigades Union are calling them all out on strike, because of what they clearly consider to be critical and unresolvable differences with the management. After all, if they were resolvable they'd talk first, right?

Well, have a look here

Union position

The union claims firefighters were being threatened with the sack if they do not agree to new shift patterns. FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said: "We do not want to take this action but we have no choice. The alternative is to allow London's firefighters to become doormats for their employers to walk on."

Sounds moderately damning - new shift patterns could mean a lot of things, but they don't seem to say what's so terrible about these new patterns. But surely there must be some room here for some debate, negotiation? There must be a reason why they want to change the shifts?

A little further down...

"There are no cuts, no job losses, this is about reducing a 15-hour night shift, adding those hours to the day shift and doing more community safety work and firefighter training."

Ahhhh, now I understand. Your members are paid for a 15 hour nightshift, during which they.....wait for fires?

Let me unleash my inner cynic. The firemen spend most of this 15 hour shift asleep or playing games - and this is what the unions are afraid of their members losing. But wait, further down still:

"The crucial fact being ignored in all of this is that if we can agree a compromise with the FBU on different start and finish times, the whole process ends immediately. Talks have been ongoing for five years, and a compromise from the original proposal of two 12-hour shifts, to an 11-hour day and 13-hour night, with a range of other benefits, are still firmly on the table."

Talks have been going on for 5 years. After FIVE YEARS of talks, with a half-way compromise (with no details on "range of other benefits" it's hard to say more) available the union involved decides to call a strike on the busiest night of the year.

The employers are trying to improve the public safety - more community safety and the like. They've been trying to negotiate this for so long that a child could have been born during this process and grown up enough that you could talk to them about the concept of fire safety.

The union is striking on the day when that same child is most likely to die in a fire.

They need to get a grip.

What to do when ill...

I want you to imagine - you're ill.

You've been running a temperature for days, quite high at times. Paracetamol, plenty of fluids etc, What would you do....

1) Stay in bed, huddled in blankets and read/sleep/do nothing
2) You're ill and can't go to work - a chance to do all the housework/dusting/sorting of photos/crocheting
3) Nothing. I'm ill, I'm allowed to not do anything. Daytime TV!
4) Chart your temperature, log all your drugs and try and determine how effective paracetamol is as an antipyretic and determine how long it's effective for

What can I say?

Have thermometer, will meter?

I'll stop at the second paragraph

Morning all

As my Stars partner has failed to send me a turn, I'm having to resort to blogging this morning wake me up. This is fine, because first I went to a couple of news websites, to see what was happening in the world. And I found this.....

Dr Cordelia Fine's new book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society and Neurosexism Create Difference, argues against the idea that male and female brains are programmed by nature to provide contrasting talents and skills. Fine's conclusions provide a timely warning against taking too seriously the deluge of books and articles that would have us believe that men are biologically advantaged when it comes to mathematics, racing driving or map reading – and that women are naturally more intuitive and nurturing, so better at childcare and multitasking (they can look after a child and clean at the same time). No marks for guessing that "masculine" skills tend to be the ones with status in our particular society.

So, let's see. Some feminist is releasing a book and is trying to get free advertising. Her friend in the guardian (if only via the "sisterhood") repeats the core message, saying that we should ignore science that shows differences between men and women. Or at least be very skeptical about it.

Oh, and as a side issue, being good at maths, science and reading doesn't seem to hold any status at school - it makes you more of a target then anything else.

Gender difference is a thorny issue and historians would be unwise to enter where even some scientists fear to tread. But leaving the merits of scientific evidence aside, history shows that whenever women start to demand equal access to what have traditionally been men's roles, theories about their "natural" unsuitability tend to emerge.

Historians would be unwise to enter? I'm sorry? The point of a historian is to tell us what happened in the past and try to understand it. To reach the cause of events explain, so that we can learn from the past. So why should they be unwise to enter - it's not their fault. Oh, you mean that what they find might be different to what you believe? *mutter* Those who forget the past are condemned to repeating it.

Where scientists fear to tread... why would scientists fear to tread? Oh, that's right. Because of women like her. Because if they find in a nice, blind study something that backs up a common prejudice feminists and "writers" will come down on them like a ton of bricks. Science should NEVER fear to tread somewhere.

Because it's possible for science to be wrong. Scientists are fallible people to. But science has (in most fields) this pesky ability to find these errors and correct them. Some times it takes longer then others - they once believed in the aether - and now we know better, because they went and made a test for it.

If there isn't a way to prove it wrong, it's not science.

So she wants scientists to go away, or at worst, only prove her pet little theories right, because... oh, never mind the because. Look at the next line.

"leaving the merits of scientific evidence aside". Right. So she doesn't care about what the science shows - because she's going to ignore it anyway, because she is right and science is irrelivent.

Oh, and the final line cracks me up. After telling the historians to bugger off and leave history alone she then has the audacity to talk about "historically".

So what she wants is for us to ignore history and science and accept that women are equal (and/or better) , that the reason women aren't equal is because of the prejudices of men and that we should ignore anyone who says anything to the contrary.

The thing is, the world isn't that simple. What we should do is accept this and understand, not ignore and stifle debate. There are differences you can observe in your own home and the world is better because of this.

Well, with a pair of consenting adults...

Ideologically blind

I've just been listening to the "Today" program on radio 4.

And today there was a section on education and school admission policy, which isn't what I want to comment about.

No, I was irritated by a comment from a representative of the Barnados charity, which complained that the difference between the academic achievement of the rich and the poor hadn't shrunk. And by implication that was a bad thing the government could fix.

Now, I don't know about you, but I can see a very simple reason why this might be the case - which just didn't seem to occur to the representative.

Intelligence is an inheritable trait - and intelligence can be linked to both educational achievement and income.

True, the link is far from perfect. It's an indication only. But we should not be terribly surprised if the children of the "winners" of the last generation "win" this one as well.

We should be taking advantage. Look, look , study the sciences. Understand the universe. Learn how we can manipulate reality at the level of the atom. Build server farms.

Because science and technology are directly responsible for the industrial revolution, the computer revolution and now the biological revolution.

Each such revolution has benefited the society as a whole, eventually.

Trying to push back the tide - sorry, ignore reality for an ideology that says everyone is equal and that it's the systems fault that they haven't achieved...

Hasn't.

Midwives...

Morning all

For your daily dose of insanity, have a look here...

It would appear that the medical establishment has published a report that says that a home birth has three times the risk of the baby dying.

It came complete in the lancet with an editorial, which is quoted in the guardian as including the line... ""women have the right to choose how and where to give birth, but they do not have the right to put their baby at risk"."

Now, I'm going to go as far as assuming that no one in the article has lied or is materially wrong in what they say. Which, for me, is rather generous.

The response from someone who could be described as the head of a midwife trades union was...

She said midwives now "feel there is a concerted and calculated global attack and backlash against home birth which is being unfairly pilloried by some sectors of the global medical maternity establishment.

"There is a danger that risk during childbirth is presented in a way which is leading women to believe that hospital birth equals a safe birth. It does not. There is no hard and fast guarantee that a woman will have a safer birth in a hospital than at home".

She's wrong. And for a couple of reasons. Let us list them?

1) They aren't comparing the same thing. The medical journal reported on infant death; she's talking about maternal death.

2) "Global" is not a dirty word. The "Global medical establishment" has eradicated smallpox. What she's saying is that "One of the most educated professions in the world disagrees with me"

3) "attack and backlash" Hmmm. Either it's an attack on "home births" or it's a backlash against something midwives are doing. You can't have an attack and backlash at the same time. They describe different things.

4) That last paragraph is a little confusing. If I was to paraphrase the entire thing, what would it say? "There is a chance women could be misinformed about risk". Ok, fair enough. Which is why studies like this are important, because slightly flawed though it probably is, it remains better then no evidence.

She just doesn't like it.

5) Comparing cars to tractors. I haven't had anything to do with maternity hospitals, home births or the risks of child birth. However, I do know a few things.

One of the critical things is that doctors will strongly advise anyone who hasn't had a perfectly ordinary pregnancy to give birth in a hospital. Be it high blood pressure, diabetes or infection by zombie bite - they all advise a hospital is safer.

This forms a self selecting group, those at home who are low risk, those in the hospital at higher (average) risk.

And yet, despite all this, three times as many babies survived in hospital.

Which sounds safer to you?