Balance in the board room?

There are often calls for more women to be placed in high ranking positions in business. Back in 2011 a report suggested that the percentage of women on board tables to 25%. If they don't they will "be missing out on a vast array of talent at their disposal."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/12560121

Why are they missing out on talent? Surely the men that are there have the talent they need, that is why they are there? If not wouldn't they hire more women on their own?

I should state at this point I'm actually in favour of more women being on the boards of major companies. I'm playing devil's advocate.

Women should be at the board table, not to statisfy some quota or because women are the same as men, but rather the reverse. There should be women on company boards because women are different. They have different attributes that men won't have. They usually have a different way of looking at things, a different way of evaluating and processing risk and many other different attributes. It is this that makes a balanced board room so useful. If women were exactly the same as men then a board room with 25% women would be no different, no better than one with 0%. It appears that lefties tend to get this.

So if it is so obvious to those on the left that a balance of men and women can help an organisation a serious question raises its head: If a board room of all men (or presumably all women) isn't as balanced as a board room with a mix, if they don't have the same variety of skills, approaches, strengths and benefits, does the same apply to a family?

Lefties tend to think that homosexual marriage is fantastic. There was a bill on adoption that was passed years ago, some wanted there to be reference to the importance of male role models in an adopted childs life, but this was rejected. How does this make sense? A board room is argued to be better for a balance of men and women, but parents can be 100% male or 100% female and that is fine? How can these two opinions be reconciled? Surely the attributes that make it beneficial to have women at the table of FTSE 100 companies are the same attributes that make it beneficial to have them as parents, and likewise with men. Obviously there will be individual examples where two good men can raise a child better than an awful couple made up of a man and woman. Just like there will be times when a board room full of men will be better than a mixed one, but we are talking about averages here. Does it not make sense that two men cannot behave like a man and a women, because women bring unique characteristics that men alone will not  possess? Does not the same apply the other way around?

To deny that women bring their own skills and perspective to a company seems odd, to say they do not bring them to a family seems absurd. Why does the left on the one hand shout out the benefits of gender balance and then on the other hand pretend they do not exist?

The obsession with immigration: Part II

So in part one I covered the basic issues. Why are the questions asked about immigration never the ones that actually count. In this section I move to my next point: skills.

The other arguement that people often discuss when considering immigration is the lack of skills in our country. 'Oh, how will business survive if we can't draw from those skilled, young, hardworking migrants?'. Somehow business is unable to survive without relying on importing people to do the work. Do I agree with this argument? Well actually once again I think to bother answering the question misses the real issue in the first place: we are a developed western nation, we have a mature education system (one of the best higher education systems in the whole world) and we spend a huge amount of money on educating our children, universally, I might add. Yet we're dependent on developing countries that have far more stretched resources and non-universal education systems in order to get enough skilled workers... how does that make sense?

If business cannot find the skilled workers it needs in this country surely the obvious question that needs answering is: why? Our country pours money into the education system, everyone has the opportunity to learn, almost everyone can read and write, why can't our people do the work?

If it is an issue with the type of education we receive (people studying [insert pointless qualification here] instead of training to become a plumber or software engineer) then don't we need to inform students about the jobs available and the demands that exist in order to ensure they have the best chance of getting employed in a job they will enjoy?

In the alternative if it is because our own citizens don't work as hard as immigrants, perhaps we need to ask questions about why they work so hard and we don't. I don't know what the answer will be, but if we don't look into it, you're not going to get the answer.

Finally there is another ethical issue at hand. Is it really fair for developing nations to spend their money on educating doctors and engineers and whatever else, just for a much richer nation to come along once they have finished their training and poach them? Training is expensive, and the host country no doubt needs doctors and engineers for its own companies and hospitals, is it fair to promote a immigration policy that allows poorer nations to pay for our doctors' training, when their own country's health standard is much lower than ours? Don't get me wrong, it is certainly cheaper for us, but I'm not sure whether that is justification.

Either way whenever I heard a discussion regarding immigration I wonder where the question of family and education comes in. Sadly, I find it usually (if not always) just doesn't come up at all... perhaps if we start asking the right questions we can start to get the right answers and we can finally let the issue of immigration take a back seat to other matters.

The obsession with immigration

Immigration is always news. I don't know what day you'll be reading this but if you check a few online papers it wouldn't be unlikely that at least one of them is running a story or report on something related to UK immigration. This is because of an age old debate that I'll just go over quickly so we're all on the same page:

People argue for immigration because we have an ageing population and a lack of certain skills. They say that if we bring in young hard working people from outside the country, they will help prop up our economy, earn tax pounds, pay for our NHS (particularly for those in old age) and balance out the demographic problem of an ageing population. Subtly, but usually not mentioned explicitly, it is also suggested that they work for less, so they keep prices down in certain industries too. This arguement is usually made by lefty liberal types. They are often well educated and have highly paid jobs, that is jobs that aren't going to be under threat from cheap immigrant labour.

On the other hand you have the opposition, this is split into two camps:

Working class: these guys are just annoyed that 'their' jobs are being filled by immigrants and that they are will to work for less.

Non-working class: these guys are more concerned about what will happen socially if you invite large number of people who may not share your countries common values, and let them settle without the need to integrate into the local culture.

You maybe wondering which side I'm about to come down on... give a guess. Go on....


Nope. Unless you said, none of the above, I'm afraid you didn't get it. While the discussion on immigration brings up these arguements on a regular basis, the thing that I want to highlight right now, are the questions that are never actually asked in these debates. The questions that some how seem to get ignored, despite the fact that they seem to be the most important fundamental questions under pinning the whole issue.

If we have a demographic problem, where our population is ageing, surely the question that needs to be asked is... why isn't anyone having children any more? Does that not make sense? The reason why we have an ageing population is because people are not having at least two children. Why? What has our society done to destroy the value in having children? What has happened to our concept of the family and what is important in life to make it so that we as a society don't bother having one anymore? We could bring immigrants in if we wanted, but eventually if they integrate into society they will become more like us and stop having children. So it is just a temporary solution. Once again it is just resolving the symptom rather than looking at the deeper problem.

It maybe we need to look deeper at our society and ask why we value someone who works, but we treat people who stay at home to look after a family as a bit of a drop out. Why is it that a family that has two working adults with no children is seen as a success and an asset to society even though our society has plenty of workers but not enough parents? In contrast the image of a person who stays at home to look after their children while the other works is generally portrayed as unintelligent? Some say raising children is expensive, and I think it certainly is. But I don't think that is what stops people. BMWs are expensive but we see plenty of them. In fact a few years ago BMW 3 Series' started out selling Ford Mondeos. People are willing to pay for expensive things if they are seen as valuable in society. My concern is that in our society family, is no  longer seen as valuable, it isn't something that we invest in. Some do, but less so now than in years past. Why is it no one asks how to solve this question?

There is another issue too, the work ethic of our own people... maybe that'll be part II.

Can economic pain be good?

Right here is the question: Can economic pain be good?

At the moment everyone in the UK is faffing around because the growth of our economy isn't shooting along at 3-5% and instead it is just bouncing around 0-1% if we're lucky.

As a consequence people seem to think that the answer is more public spending. At first I thought they were wrong, after all you don't get yourself out of debt by spending more money. Then when growth didn't pick up I thought maybe they were right. Maybe spending on infrastructure projects would be really useful.

To an extent I still believe that infrastructure projects would be useful. Right now the UK is far too London-centric. You want to work in Finance? Go to London. You want to Work in Law? Go to London. You want to work in Government? Go to London. You want to work in tech? Go to the South East (London, Cambridge and Oxford).

The consequence is these places overheat while the rest of the UK flounders. Demand for housing, education etc is far too high in the South East, meanwhile in parts of the North East you can buy a house for the same price as a family saloon. It doesn't make sense. One way to help reverse this is to improve infrastructure. So, building HS2 rail seems like a good idea.
(even if it was knocked back today: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/9932958/Government-forced-back-to-drawing-board-on-high-speed-rail-compensation.html)

So to a certain level I am in favour of investment that will level the playing field, bring business out from the overheated South East and up to the neglected North of England, Scotland and North Wales. But many people seem to think that the answer to economic stagnation is just generally more public spending. Preventing cuts to public servies etc. This will, it is claimed, reduce unemployment, help keep people out of financial problems and help get the economy going once more. I'm not so sure however.

In the short term, public spending will reduce unemployment, that much is almost sure. But so what? There are a huge number of ways people deal with short term problems that just make the future worse. Essentially this usually involves treating the symptom rather than the problem. For example, if one has toothache and they just take painkillers, it may be that the symptom is dealt with, but the problem continues, until one day, when perhaps the mouth gets infected and teeth need to be removed. Or another option would be a broken leg, where isn't of getting it reset with a splint (which would be painful in the short term) one ignores it and their leg fixes itself in a deformed manner. I'm sure we could think of endless ways to illusrate the point. The same goes for our economy.

How does this illustrate our economy? Well, say we do give out lots of public contracts instead of cutting back. People will continue to have work in the short term, but the underlying issue will not have changed. What is the underlying issue? Our economy is stuck in the past.

How is our economy stuck in the past? Simple, it is facing the wrong way. Sure we have all the knowledge and technology we need, but who does it serve? Us, the UK, the EU and the US. In short our economy is largely arranged to serve the West. To show how this is the case people often quote how more trade is conducted between the UK and Ireland, a country with only 4,600,000 people than India, a country with over a billion people living there ( around 1,200,000,000). That is right, we trade more with the tiny republic of Ireland than with a country that comprises over a 1/6 of the world's entire population. Now obviously part of that could be explained by our proximity to Ireland, but distance doesn't stop China from trading huge amounts of goods with the US and the EU. The truth is our economy is still concerned with the question that mattered in the last few decades; 'what can we sell to rich westerners?'. The answer to that question was mainly 'cheaply manufactured products made in China'. And as a result the wealth of the so called BRIC nations has increased hugely (BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India, China). As a result of their increase in wealth and industry, we're no longer in position to pay ourselves large salleries in the form of public service jobs, because all our money is very quickly being sapped out of our country and spread to the four courners of the globe. Previously we could just keep borrowing, but that option is running out fast as money is being better invested elsewhere around the world. We as a nation need to stop huddling with the other western nations, turn around and embrace the brave new world around us. A world where is isn't all about 'us' any more.

This simply won't happen if we keep on borrowing and providing public service work. If we keep borrowing to provide work, our economy will continue to be an 'us' focused economy, we'll still be busy trying to pretend we don't have to go out and work for our standard of living, pretending we can borrow to keep ourselves in the manner to which we've become accoustom, all the while our economic position would grow precarious, and the government would be less and less likely to be able to pay its debts. In addition other economies would steal a march on us, being quicker and more ready to adapt to the new state of affairs. Once that happens it is much harder for us to play catch up....

Of course we don't need to have this happen, we could just start the change now, we could just stop looking for more debt, and start looking for what we can do to serve others in the world.... and pay our way in it.

Logic and morality vs 'don't be absurd'

 *** forewarning, this is pretty gross***
 'Don't be absurd, that would never happen'

There is an arguement by the American religious right, that if you allow gay marriage, the next step will be polygamy, beastiality and goodness knows what else. This is based on the idea that if you're not allowed to choose what marriage is set against a predefined standard, then the only standard you have is whatever people want it to be. If there is no reason why marriage should be between and man and a woman, then why should is be between a couple and not two men and a woman, or three women and a man? Does it even need to be a lifetime commitment? If there is no reason why it should be between a man and a woman why does it have to be between two humans? After all, if you're a bigot for saying it cannot be between two men, because you think that is wrong, does that mean that you're a bigot if you think that it cannot be between three women and a man, because you think that is wrong. Essentially if popular opinion changes, you have no arguement against changing marriage with it. Regardless of what you think of gay marriage it is an interesting arguement.

I can see the logic in the argument but if I'm honest I would have thought any such societal changes would take a very long time. Far longer than my lifetime for example. I never thought I'd see someone arguing for marriage between animals and humans in my life. Then I read this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20523950

Amazingly there is someone in Germany who is happy to represent an organisation that thinks of animals as... well let me just quote him:

"We see animals as partners and not as a means of gratification. We don't force them to do anything. Animals are much easier to understand than women,"

Yep, there is an organisation that is arguing the animals make better partners than women. Take a minute to finish throwing up. But the sad thing is, that this is how a process starts. I have codified the way social values change as follows:

-practice A is seen as disgusting
-practice A has someone who is willing to go on record to say it is good, almost everyone is repulsed
-practice A has someone who is willing to go on record the next time it is discussed, but this time there is less -shock and horror, more just disgust
-practice A becomes old news, society recognises that there are people who think it is good, even though -they strongly disagree, it is quite disgusting
-people begin being open about supporting practice A, and the people who talk to them find that 'they are just normal people', because of course, if you can hold a conversation with someone and they can be polite, whatever they do in their spare time can't be that bad can it? (because of course all people who carry out bad practices walk around with horns on their head and a spiked tail)
-people decide that since they are 'just normal people' it is just prejudice and misunderstanding that causes people to think the person is disgusting (mixing up whether a person or their practice is bad)
-those who are against practice A are bad, because they are narrow minded and prejudice

In just 9 easy steps a practice has gone from being seen as disgusting, to those who oppose it being seen as awful. I thought the process would take around 80 years, but it appears that it can probably be done in 30. What does this say about the future? I don't know, but I can't help but feel sorry the Labradors of 2042....

Civilisation is broken, and a man can't fix it.

There seems to be an odd novel way of applying 'equality' in such fashion to actually disadvantage those whom you are supposedly trying to help. This seems to be what has happened in particular with reference to women in the last 40 years.

Let me put it this way as an illustation.

1. To be equal you must be treated the same. (we're not talking about positive discrimination here)
Yes? If you say yes move on to question 2.

2. Does the fact that men and women are inherently different affect your conclusion?
No? Move on to conclusion.

Conclusion
There should be no men and women's races in the Olympics because that discrimination; you are treating people differently because of their gender.

No to me, the conclusion seems absurd. I mean, it could be done, if that is what people wanted, but it is clear that actually by treating men and women the same,  what you would do is disadvantage women. Whereas treating them as inherently different, actually makes things more fair.

Now if this applies with the Olympics which, lets face it has little to do with how society treats you and is based very much, simply on what someone can do, what does such a suggestion automatically become negative when it is applied in other everyday situations?

The difficulty is, I believe that by treating men and women the same, what actually happens is that women and men get entered into the same race. They get judged by one measure. That of a man. What society seems reluctant to do however, is realise that a man judged by the measure of a woman, will always fail, and a woman judged by the measure of a man will fail too. It is like having the same test to evaluate tractors and super sports cars, the fact is they are different and so using one meaure for both will actually pick the best of neither. The obvious solution is to treat tractors as tractors and sports cars as sports cars, that is, to treat them differently.

The disadvantage this provides to women in our society is subtle at first but increasingly obvious when you think about it. I have friends who, when they were in University, talked to other girls and came to the conclusion that British girls (they weren't British themselves) pretend to be 'modern women' who are happy to have casual sex, but really wanted to have a relationship, get married and settle down. It isn't a surprise. Men are happy to have more casual sexual relationships generally, so if women and men are the same, women must be expected to want the same things and behave in the same way. If they don't, then they just have to act like it, it would appear.

The biggest change appears to come from childbirth and work however. The fact that there are not 50/50 splits on boards of management is seen as something aweful. This means there must be discrimination in the work place. After all women are the same as men, therefore there should statistically be the same number of women on boards as men. What people don't really want to recognise is that actually there are at least 3 explanations for this:
1) women are incompetant
2) women are discriminated against by their male superiors
3) women have different priorities than men

Two of those are ruled out immediately because it suggests women are different to men, leaving the only answer to be that women are the subject of discrimination. Reality speaks otherwise however. The truth more than any of the other answers is really (3). The reason women don't make it to the top, is because they have other interests. Men make it to the top because they cannot give birth to children and they are happy pursue career over their work. Women often do not have the same priorities. Of course they can do, and those who do often succeed very well in their choosen pursuit, but in reality women don't just want a career they want a family. It isn't a bad thing, it is actually very good. But of course to recognise that recognises that men and women are different, and means that we judge women as women, rather than jugdge them as men.

If you think this is all imagined then you're probably out of touch. I know women who have a great deal of success in their choosen professions. Professions we would consider quite 'high flying'. On the one hand one was told by another woman that she had put her career before having children and now she regrets is and therefore if they wanted to have children they should just to it. While another person I know was told by another woman that if they went part time 'they would never be taken seriously as a [professional]'. Two successful women being told by their superiors two conflicting things. In the first case we see someone who bought into what they were told and regreted it, and another who appears to want to make sure that everyone else is judged in the same way she was. After all if the second example was someone who was happy surely they could have equally said, 'I didn't go part time and my career really benefited from it' which is informative and applies little pressure, rather than phrasing it as an obligation. It is hardly a surprise that this would happen however, if you pretend men and women are the same, you expect then to act the same, to want the same and to prioritise the same. In the first example someone bought into that and now regrets it, you can't help but wonder from the way the second phrased what they said, whether deep down, they feel the same, and so want others to have to make the same sacrifices they did. After all if someone really wants to put their career first, you don't have to scare them into doing it, they will do it by choice, because that is what they would choose left to their own devices.

Sadly, I don't think women are left to do what they want however. In a world where everyone must be equal in reality that means everyone must act like men and be judged as men. The real inequality that does exist however is that society no longer gives credit to the things women generally want to do, but are (as seen above) pursuaded not to do. Someone once asked 'what women can do that men can't... but don't tell me childbirth'. This I believe demonstrates where women really are discriminated against. We have made something that the vast majority of women would like to do, can do, and that men never can, and probably never will be able to do derisory. People who read this will think I'm being patronising to women just for bringing it up, and yet that is our very problem. We have made something that is wonderful, something that should be celebrated, something that should be given credit like holding a top job... almost worthless. Why? Because we judge women by the standard of being a man. This is the real discrimination. While we think 'anyone' can have a child (which they can't, only women can) which means it is not an acomplishment. Well lets face reality almost anyone can have a job, the difference is doing it well, and that applies the same to childrearing.

The fact that we judge women as men is already having repercussions in society. Our birth rate is below 2 children per couple. That means our society is dying out. That means that our NHS can't cope, neither can our pension system and pretty much most other social security systems, because they are all based on a health normal birth rate, which we don't have, because we tell all our women that if they don't act like men then they are wasting their lives. Left in this position the UK and actually Europe as a whole is going to potentially collapse.

We come to an ironic finally then. Our civilsation is broken, men cannot fix it. Pretty much only women can, and in order to do so what needs to happen is for women to ignore the plight for 'equality', being treated 'as men' and being told what they say they should want if 'they are to be taken seriously', and rather take claim of their differences and tell society that they will be valued for that difference and not because they can, when pressured, adopt the values of men to the sacrifice of whatever their own maybe. In short women will be equal, when we as a society (male and female) are brave enough acknowledge men and women are different.

Rowan Williams should star in a Sit-Com

It is a rather sad day for the Church of England when its Archbishop doesn't actually understand the religion he is supposedly leading. In fact the lack of understanding would actually be very amusing, almost sit-com like if it was not for the fact that it is a real life official Church of a developed nation.

Sky reports that he has said:

"We have, to put it very bluntly, a lot of explaining to do,"
"Whatever the motivation for voting yesterday (Tuesday), whatever the theological principle on which people acted and spoke, the fact remains that a great deal of this discussion is not intelligible to our wider society.
"Worse than that, it seems as if we are wilfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of that wider society. We have some explaining to do, we have as a result of yesterday undoubtedly lost a measure of credibility in our society."

(http://news.sky.com/story/1014291/archbishop-church-lost-credibility-over-vote )

I don't think that it is particularly unfaithful to the sentiments of what he said to paraphrase as follows:

1. "You've made a serious mistake!"
2. "You've voted on the basis of Christian principle that people unfamilar with the Bible don't understand."
3. "Worse than that, you're deliberately not following the trends and priorities of people outside of the church"
4. "As a result people outside the church don't think the church is doing things right"

A few observations...

People who care about Christianity would know about the Bible, if they don't know about the Bible, they probably don't care what goes on in church. Even if they do know about the Bible and care about what happens in church, they are inevitably going to be unconvinced by the way the church goers manage their life, after all if they saw value in it, they would be in the church not outside of it.

Those who are in the church, ie the ones that actually care what the Church/the Bible has to say, voted in the manner they did. They are also the ones most likely to understand the reason behind the decision.

'The church doesn't follow the values of wider society'. Well of course not. This is a most obvious statement of fact. The Church is completely counter cultural. It always has been. If socity says "it is a dog eat dog world" the church says 'love your neighbour'. If the world says 'nice guys finish last' the church says 'the meek shall inherit the earth'. If the world says 'don't get mad get even' the church says 'forgive us as we forgive others'. Most of the concepts of the church run completely contrary to wider society in general. Which is presumably why the Bible says "be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." (KJV).

It is with considerable shock that a Bishop would chastise the church of England for not acting like society. After all if the church acted like society what would the point of the church be? You don't need an organisation to show people to act the way they do anyway. The idea of the church is to attract people, not by their similarity, but rather by their contrast. To show that seeking revenge, being constantly drunk, taking drugs, cheating on your partner, having an unstable marriage, or being constantly self-seeking isn't the best way to go one doesn't do so oneself. If one does, what one will demonstrate is that this is the norm. Rather by avoiding those things one demonstrates that there is a different alternative way of doing things that is better in some way. To put it another way, if you want people to by Honda instead of Ford, you don't make a replica of the Ford (they already have one) you make something which is in someway better.

Society as a whole doesn't understand the reason why women aren't allowed to lead in a church. That is true. Society as a whole also doesn't understand how humbling yourself can mean you are exalted, how putting others first you can excel or how loving your enemy can make you happier and improve both your situations. It also doesn't understand how women and men can only be truely free and equal when they are accepted as of equal value, but still different, rather than pretending we're exactly the same, and hindering both. Society will never understand either... until they SEE it. And that is the very purpose for which the church is there.

How to remove freedom of speech in two easy steps

Here you go, the quickest post ever:

How to remove freedom of speech in a Western Democracy in two easy steps:

1. Out law hate speech;
2. Categorise any disagreement with a section of society as hate speech towards that class of people.

There you go, easiest thing in the world. You see step one is easy because everyone hates hate speech. That is understandable. Hate stirs up strife and potential violence and all sorts of nasty things that pretty much everyone thinks of as bad.

Step two is all the more cunning. Basically one just has to associate their views so strongly with themselves so as to basically make that view a part of their character.

Eg. I have OCD, that means I'm obsessive about hygine. It isn't my fault, I remember having it for as long as I have memory. It is just a normal part of my personality. Some people say it is strange but that is just because it is different to what they are used to. It just means I like things clean and I can't stand the idea of bins only being taken out once a fortnight...
Therefore anyone who thinks the bins be taken out once a fortnight, is an OCD hater, and therefore must be convicted of a hate crime. They are just using their claim of cost savings to cover up their clear hatred for people who have OCD. They are trying to oppress people with OCD because we NEED a clean environment, therefore any of these OCD bigots should be arrested for their prejudice and brought before the courts.

An opinion is an opinion, if someone disagrees with it, then they disagree with it. Sure there are some dangerous opinions out there. But isn't it just as dangerous to start moderating what opinions people are allowed to have? Take the following example:

a) 'asians are bad people' is clearly racist;
b) 'high levels of immigration is damaging to the economic and social coherency of a country' some would call that racist, others would call it an observation of the impact of a particular policy;
c) 'so called 'houour killings' are abhorent and should be condemed throughout society' many would agree with that statement, but in the context that the majority of what is considered 'honour killings' have been performed by British Muslims, some could call that racist too.

The difficulty is, when you start drawing lines in the grey areas what you end up doing is moderating who and what you can criticise. I'm not sure how wise that is, because if there is someone deciding what you can criticise and what you can't that isn't free speech, that is the total opposite.

I'm still against anything that advocates the use of violence in pursuit of a cause (outside the Queen's peace), but one must be very careful with any legislation that puts into the hands of officials the job of moderating what an acceptable opinion is. The fact is people with lunatic opinions are quite good at repelling people from their cause because.... well they have lunatic opinions, which means the only causes that would really be effected are those in grey areas, that is areas of debate where people don't agree with what is the right opinion/course of action, in other words, the exact circumstances where discussion is needed.

Why I just can't work myself up to giving a crap about 'equality'

Right, first things first, before everyone goes metal, I'll qualify what sort of 'equality' I'm talking about: economic equality. What? You're still irate, I guess you'll just have to read on then.

I was reading an article today about how several organisations had criticised a move by the government to redefine 'poverty' to include such things as drug addiction, family break down and debt. This was slammed because apparently is would lead to stigmatisation of the poor and it would "undermine the idea that relative poverty matters". News flash, relative poverty doesn't matter. Not in of itself.

I went on holiday not long ago and I went to a beautiful country with turquoise waters and I quickly realised that I was surrounded by rich yanks. Most people didn't have cars, they got around by yacht and the women all had diamonds on their fingers the size of the gravel on most peoples' drives. So if we want to use relative poverty, I was poor, but that would be ridiculous because I had a nice place to stay, drove around and could afford to eat. I had everything I needed and more, so I wasn't poor.
Likewise if I went to an isolated island where there was a very severe famine and I had plenty of gold and precious gems, while the rest of the people had none, the fact that I was 'rich' would be meaningless because there would be nothing to eat and everyone would be starving. The fact that by comparison I had more than everyone else, wouldn't make the smallest difference, because no one had enough to eat, even the 'rich'.

So in every way this fascination with how 'equal' people are is pointless. If equality is what you're after that is easy, get everyone to take all their belongings and chuck them into the sea. We'll all die pretty soon after but there will be perfect equality.

If you're thinking that this is an exercise in reductio ad absurdum, you're wrong. This actually happens in practise. Technically there are less poor people today than there were a could of years ago. How can this be, I hear you ask, we're in a recession. Well the technical definition of poverty is to be living on less than 60% of the average wage. Since the average wage has gone down, the number of people below 60% has decreased. Logically then a reduction in the number of people living in poverty is a good thing, and yet all that has happened in reality is that the standard of living has got worse for everyone. You know the way you measure poverty is a steaming pile of manure when life gets worse for everyone and yet that logs on your scale as a success.

That is the problem with 'equality' you can't make everyone better, you can try, but you won't succeed, but you can make everyone worse. I had a discussion the other day with a chap who was wondering whether banning private schools was worth it because children who go to them come out with better grades and since it costs money to go there that is unfair because not everyone can go. Well, private schools have exams just like everyone else, they just get the children to do better then them, close them down and sure you'll have a more equal society, because the children who would have gone to private school will go to state school and statistically they will do worse. So you'll have a more equal, but worse educated society. Hardly a winning scenario.

Surely it is better for everyone to do better and have a better standard of living regardless of whether that entails some people inevitably getting a slightly bigger share of it than others. The alternative is we all get a more equal share of something worse.

This leads me on to my next beef with this endless idolising of 'equality'. I don't want everyone to be equal. Oh I know very unfashionable thing to say but its is true. Why? Simple we're not the same. My sister earns far more money than I do. Probably a multiples of what I earn in fact. This does not bother me in the slightest. For a start she is older than me, which means she is more experienced and is thus higher in her job. But even with that aside, she spent her school years working... HARD for all of them. In contrast I faffed around for most of my school years constantly ignoring requests to do my homework and putting in just enough effort to cruise by. Of course, since then I've been introduced to the real world and I work hard. But if I could do as little as I have done for most of my life and then earn a sum of money that is 'equal' or even near equal to my sister then this world would be a seriously unfair place. It would be unjust it would be inequitable... not because we were treated differently, but because we weren't.

With this in mind why is it a big deal if people earn more than others. So they should, there will always be lazy people (like I was) in the world and so there should always be people with less money than those who work hard, or extremely hard. This way we have the freedom and liberty to pick our own lifestyles. We can work little and have lots of time, we can work hard and have some time or we can work very hard and have very little time, all with a corresponding amount of money that comes with it and at no point any equality of income.

Without doubt everyman (or woman) who puts their hand to the plough and works a solid week should be able to afford what they need to live and bring up a family, but that has absolutely nothing to do with how equal their pay is to everyone elses, what that is to do with is how much it costs to pay a mortgage, a gas bill, a food bill, a petrol bill etc. It has to do with the cost of living, it has nothing to do with what percentage of the top 10%'s wage they earn or anyone elses for that matter. This is why I've got no problem with the minimum wage. If someone works, they deserve to be paid for it and the deserve to be paid enough to have a life. What people don't deserve to do is look at how much someone else gets paid, who is in completely different circumstances as them, have made completely different life choices to them and have chosen completely different paths to them, and then decide that actually they should be earning the same amount.

Because when we do that we really, REALLY need to learn that sometimes equality just doesn't treat people equally.

Like a dog without a bone...

I don't know about you, but I have my own financial adviser, therapists, student loan bankers, in-house medical specialists, career advisers, child care volunteers, business consultants and educators. It is a highly effective support and advisory network but best of all I get is all free!

This may sound all very surprising but it is part of a deal I was given (I didn't even negotiate it) when I was born. I joined something called a 'family'.

At the moment, there are a lot of people suffering from economic woes and understandably so. There are a lot of people who think they have the answer to the aforementioned woes too. Usually it falls into one of two brands 'austerity' or 'growth' (for growth public borrowing). But I've got an new engine for growth. More people can sign up to the same thing I did when I was young, a 'family'.

Amazingly the burden this would lift off the state would be extraordinary. I mean think about it. Everyone could have far greater support than they do now, saving them from relying on the public purse, maintaining the standard of living while reducing everyones costs.

How do I know that this would work? Well interestingly these groups have already been rolled out across Asia and are doing a great job there of internalising problems and expanding access to various skill sets. For example, say there is a 'family' of 5 people. Statistically at least one of them is likely to be unemployed. On their own they couldn't afford to retrain, for example. However, the other 4 are likely to be employed and so if they can share their money in such a way so that the fifth retains and starts work then eventually the fifth person will return to productivity and be become a net contributor to the 'family'.

Well so far no different from the state, right? Wrong. There are additional advantages of using the 'family' paradigm. For example, where as the state doesn't know you or me personally, the 'family' will, so they will be in a reasonably good position to judge whether the training is of value or whether it is just a scam to get more money off them. This is something that would be very difficult for the state to do, but due to the small nature of these 'families' they are aware of what the course is like and whether it suits the person taking it. Amazing huh!

There is another plus too! When payment has been made and the member of the 'family' has retrained, the other members of the family often don't even demand direct repayment! How incredible is that, so it turns out that person will not be sullied by huge amounts of debt, constantly creeping up due to interest when they are just starting off in their new and (usually) not highly paid work!

The benefits just keep coming too, because fraud is reduced as the 'family' members are usually fully aware of whether their members are working or not, it makes it incredibly difficult to claim money for being unemployed or injured if they are if fact lying.

Wow, no wonder Asian economies are so efficient! What may surprise you more is that such 'families' are in fact already in use in some places in the UK, but have become over the 40 years far less popular. Individuals appear to only see the benefits of independence from 'families' despite the fact that this provides far less support and costs the tax payer way more.

Most worryingly, most politicians, instead of championing the cause of 'families' and promoting them in schools, educating those who could be future members seem very reticent in doing so. They are usually far more in favour of expanding the state instead, despite its inability to regulate fraud, its higher costs and inability to provide full support and personalised guidance.
There seems to be a belief among many politicians that if one supports the 'family paradigm' it is somehow saying that non-members are inferior or that they are selfish because they are not willing to spend more on the vastly less efficient state spending.


This is a shame, because countries don't waste time thinking that non-'family' members will feel inferior, their culture just keeps families together in the first place. I just wish we'd follow suit, rather than thinking the best way to help a dog who has lost his bone is to take the bones off all the other dogs to make sure he doesn't feel bad.

Very liberal... just like a dictatorship...

Is it just me, or is the left and the far right starting to look like the same team?

For those who don't know, the far right is meant to be authoritarian, believe in strong state control and often characterised as intolerant towards minorities of race/religion etc.

The liberal left is meant to be about minimal intervention from the state and providing freedom to everyone to as much as they want within the limits of what will affect those around them (ie, you're not allowed to shoot someone, because they interferes with their life etc)

Generally everyone hates the far right for obvious reasons, while the liberal left is 'cool' because they are usually for legalising drugs, reduced sentences for criminals and for all round telling people that whatever lifestyle you go for just fine and dandy.

The flaws with both are simple:

Far right: see Nazi Germany
Liberal: it doesn't take long to realise that most people's behaviour has a cost for someone else, ie, you take drugs and you'll end up being treated by the NHS... which is paid for by me or your neighbour or whoever else didn't want to have to pay for it.

Anyway I'm not actually on my point yet, which is, as I said at the start, that actually these days the liberal left is starting to look like the same team as the far right. Maybe they don't play in quite the same way, but their tools and practises are starting to have an uncanny similarity.

I'll take a few examples that are going on around the world right now:

Sweden & Germany:
Sweden is usually portrayed by many people as a liberal paradise. They have high investment in rehabilitation and relatively 'pleasant' prisons. What they now also have, is a total ban on home schooling your own children. Not only this but the government controls the curriculum for any non-state schools. What difference does this make? I hear you ask. Well ignoring for a moment the fact that on average home schooled children tend to get far better grades and be more involved in the community, the problem can be summed up in one sentence: the government has legal control of what every human in the country (excluding immigrants) must be taught at a young age, that is when they are most impressionable.

The scope for indoctrination is staggering. Anyone who says anything that the government considers untoward can the act as a flag to have their parents investigated. The Nazis were known for encouraging children to report their own parents if they said anything in the home against the Nazi regime, amazingly this could easily have a similar effect. Just set the curriculum on whatever you want, get people to discuss it and chances are they'll say what they've been taught by their parents. The fact that it was also adopted in Germany isn't encouraging. Last year some parents pulled their children out of a sex education class, they were fined €2,340. How liberal is that? You don't even have the liberty to educate your own children on 'family matters'.

United States, New York:
Recently in New York they have made it so that churches cannot use state school premises for a place to worship on a Sunday. Never mind the fact that this brings in money for state education (ironically something that liberals in America always complain is underfunded and inadequate), never mind the schools aren't used on Sunday so essentially it is efficient use of resources (something that American liberals also claim to care about) they've decided that churches can't use state premises because... it suggests that the government supports Christianity.

Once again irony knocks considering the pledge of allegiance often recited in schools states "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God" and that the money which they hand over in order to pay for the hire of the premises states "in God we Trust". The fact is, hiring out a hall constitutes an endorsement, according to New York state. Presumably those who hire out a wedding premises endorse the match and the couples choice. Does the state favour pilates over yoga if it rents out a community hall to a pilates class? Does the state endorse Tae Kwon Do over Karate if it rents a hall to a Tae Kwon Do team? Or maybe one could go further and say that is an endorsement of Korea's right to use violent defence (Tae Kwon Do is Korean) over and above China's?

The list could go on forever, it is just retarded to think that venue hire actively endorses an activity just because it allow it to go on. Don't get me wrong, there may be a time when a venue is expected to refuse to allow someone to use its premises but that is when they are actively against, it, not passively indifferent.

So this example isn't illiberal, it is just absurd.


The United Kingdom

For the UK I'm going to pick one that is topical. Gay marriage. Now as I said before a liberal in theory wants people to be able to do what they want without affecting others. At the moment Gay people are able to get a civil partnership that provides every legal right of marriage. If you're heterosexual you can't have a civil partnership if you're homosexual you can't have 'marriage', but essentially they provide exactly the same rights and benefits. Those who have the one are legally treated the same as those who have the other, no exceptions. In theory those who have a civil partnership don't have a religious aspect to their service, but in reality any gay couple are free to find someone who is considered to have religious standing in the community to add a 'religious' aspect to their special day.

So from a liberal point of view people can have what they want and no one can impose their desires upon another. Arguably there is an equilibrium where each party can do as they wish without being able to force their version of events upon another.

But liberals are seeking to ensure that gay people can legally have a marriage, something that I'm sure lots of liberals would think is a great idea. But in the UK there is an act called the Equality Act which means if you do something for one person, you have to do it for another and you cannot refuse on specific grounds. One of these involves sexuality. While this may make sense in a work case scenario, that means all of sudden not only will the change allow gay people to marry, it will also mean that anyone (vicar/minister etc) whose consciences tell them they shouldn't be performing such ceremonies will not be allowed to follow their conscience or even redirect them to someone else, and will be fined large sums of money if they do, and potentially imprisoned if they don't pay up. In short you can't just endorse what you want to endorse, you have endorse what the state tells you to too. How liberal is that?

So to summarise modern liberalism is all about laid back freedom. Allowing people to make their own choices and live their lives in anyway they wish to as long as it doesn't interfere with other peoples' rights to do the same.... that is unless they think they could explain something better/educate their child better than the state, unless they want to hire a venue that the state owns, or follow the convictions of their conscience on the life-styles they choose to endorse. If you want to do any of those things then chances are liberals are not so laid back, not so freedom loving and actually far more the 'drag you before the courts and fine you thousands of £/€/$' types. And if you don't pay up, you're going to jail.

An easy way to get around this of course, is just do whatever the state wants and don't disagree with any of their values or stances or try to express/teach anything different or abstain from behaviour you wish to avoid... a bit like what the far right expects of people. See simple!

Don't going giving out reasonable advice..... it is too dangerous

It really worries me sometimes when, as moronic as governments can be, the public as a whole acts in a manner that is even worse.

Recently a govenrment minister told people that they should probably be keep in mind the potential of a (petrol) tanker drivers' strike and as a result keep a reasonable amount of fuel in their tanks. No need to queue, but if you get the chance, pop some fuel in and maybe keep a bit in a jerry can.

What resulted was a reasonably sizable amount of queuing while flustered drivers drained the fuel station's forecourts dry. Petrol stations actually run out of fuel despite there being no shortage whatsoever.

Now this idiocy wasn't too much of a surprise, but what was, was the result. After this panic, after the British public demonstrated that they had no greater ability to mashall their powers of reason and emotion than a herd of edgy wilderbeast, the blame was laid at the feet of... the government.... for 'causing panic'.

Perhaps I was brought up in an odd area, but if someone says 'you probably want to take reasonable precautions to avoid 'X'' and then people act in a completely different way and over react then the fault lies at the door of the person who was acting unreasonably. Yet that isn't what happened. Apparently now, it is not only the government's job to give advice, but also to account for the fact that some people are totally unable to keep a sense of perspective or use an ounce of logic and will hear something completely different to what you actually said.

How can anyone work in conditions where you ask someone to behave reasonably, they don't and then it is your fault. If you think like that the goverment isn't our government, but rather our parents, and when they try to act like our parents they will always fail, because:
a) they aren't our parents;
b) they can't take the place of our parents because they don't know us/care like parents;
c) we're meant to hold them to account, not the other way around;
d) we're meant to be adults.

Perhaps a new strategy would be, when people totally disregard what someone says and acts irrationally, instead of blaming the person who gave them reletively reasonable advice, we admit to ourselves that some people will always act in a ridiculous way and the people who need to change their behaviour.... is them. Just a thought. Is that too irrational?

Bishops, I'm glad you're helping the poor, but you're doing it the wrong way

We have a disturbed view of the poor. This is a statment with which most people would probably agree to a greater or lesser extent, but probably not for the reasons that I'm about to put forward.

My rant starts with an article I read that said that the UK was the worst country for social mobility, citing that those who are from poorer background are less likely to do well than their European counterparts. But I have a problem with that. What has that got to do with social mobility? If the people who are born to poor backgrounds work hard and never go anywhere then there is a problem, but if they are lazy and don't go anywhere then that is how things should work, isn't it? Or are the lazy to be promoted above others?

So far, so harsh. Now I'm not saying we forget social mobility, it is very important, I just recommend a different measurement, how about we take those who are from poor backgrounds, who get AAA (or ABB etc) at A-level (unlike me) and then ask where they end up. That way what we're asking is 'what happens to those from a poor background who are competant and work hard?' If the answer is still 'they don't suceed', then we've got problems!

Unfortunately this lack of understanding goes even into the Church. The Bishops in the House of Lords recently defeated a bill that would cap the amount people could get from benefits. I'm sure they thought that this was a win for Christian charity, sadly I'm not so sure. This is based on what I would call 'rights' verses 'grace'. When someone can be given over £26,000 in benefits, they are unlikely to work. Who would? Work is hard, tiring and often boring. It requires dedication, persistence and the ability to concentrate on the tidious and the repetitive... why would someone do that if they can get far more doing nothing? And remember the average wage is £26,000 BEFORE TAX, which means someone being given £26,000 in benefits is getting a net sum. To get £26,000 net a working individual would have to earn around £35,000!

Meanwhile to pay for such benefits we need to borrow until our country is in serious debt and tax people who have earned money giving them even less of an incentive to do so. That makes no sense, unless you want to try to force the system to collapse.

Anyway that isn't my main point. I'm not in the take all the money off the poor and let them rot camp. Far from it. What I want to point out is this:
Lets say you're in trouble, you can't pay your rent and you don't want to be thrown out of your home. You tell me about your troubles and I say to you, well I'll pay your rent for the next two months while you look for a job. Two months goes and you find a job, would you pretend that you haven't and keep taking money off me?

No, of course you wouldn't. Why? Because you would feel terrible that you're ripping off your friend who was there for you when you needed it and because sooner or later I'd find out and then you'd lose the type of friend everyone needs around.

But this is basically what government benefits allow people to do everyday. When a friend gives you money it is an act of grace, recieved with thanks. But when a benefit is given to you by the government, it is a 'right' that you ought to demand. Why not after all? You are entitled to it!

But really both scenarios are the same, when a benefit is handed to someone, it is not government money, it is money that has been taken off someone who earned it. It did not come from a bottomless pit that people think of the government as being, it came from a man or woman, who worked hard, then had their due wages taken off them by HMRC and then given to someone who hadn't worked for it.

I've been told of people who have told the government that they need a house because their girlfriend argues with their mother.... when they don't. And who have stayed in a hostle two nights a week so that they are classified as homeless to get a house sooner, even though there was no reason for them to say there, they just wanted to be shifted up the list. This was because it was their 'right' that they were entitled to. But no one would lie to their friend in such a way, despite the fact it is the same thing.

Further each time that money is taken off people and then given to another there is an army of civil servants who are required to do the taking. They need to take the money, process it, analyse who to give it to, get it to them, and chase up those who don't pay or claim when they shouldn't. All of that costs money which is also taken off the person who works. That isn't efficient.

So what is the answer? Do I think we should let the poor suffer? No of course not. But we can't 'nationalise' our poverty relief. It just leads to people treating the government as an infinite source of cash, it leads to people cheating the system, and plenty of money being syphoned off in the process. Oh, all the while giving every working person less of the money they earn.

What we need to do it organise our giving ourselves. Cut back benefits, cut back tax. We'll all have more money and when we get it we need to give it away. How much? Well is you're earning the average £26,000 per year and over night you stopped having to pay tax, you could afford to give away £3,700 per year to charities. Now I know that the government is important for certain things, defence for example, or the NHS, but those don't account for the £700,000,000,000 (£700Bn) the government spends!

Think of what could be acomplished if we only spent the bare minimum on the government, say £150Bn (the cost of Defence and the NHS and a bit more) and then spent the rest on charities and each other instead?
You know your friends so they aren't going to rip you off like they would the government and if a charity is wasting money on unecessary things then you can just give it to a more efficient one... so you don't have to pay for arts grants of £50,000 for something useless.

Our fellow man would be a lot better off as long as we were generous. We can do that, right?

Please don't leave us isolated from the Titanic

Ed Milliband has recently warned that we're going to soon be living off raw potatoes and stale bread.

He attacked David Cameron over his decision to keep us out of any new European treaty. I won't quote him exactly but in summary; Britain will be isolated, the city will fall apart and before long you'll be queueing up in Soviet style mile long queues just to get some bread.

I exaggerate of course, but he genuinely does think the city (by which I mean the financial heart of London) will be worse off for being left out. This is rather strange considering the reason Cameron didn't go into the treaty was because the EU wanted the UK to be subject to the same new financial rules as everyone else in the EU... in other words, they wanted to control our financial industry. Doing this would mean there was no incentive to be in London, because it would be the same as anywhere in the EU. This would mean it would make most sense for a bank to move Germany (close to the European Central Bank where the power would be).

I apologise for this first part, how dreadfully dull I know. But now I'll move on the the crux of what I actually wanted to say. Isolation from the EU, how will we survive?

Well I would suggest that we'll survive in the same way someone does when a ship is sinking and they 'isolate' themselves by getting into a lifeboat.

The enormous disaster that is the mainship takes on water and the person in the life raft remains safe and dry, even if they are a bit rocked by the waves caused by the ship going down. This leaves the person in the life boat in a great position to get on another ship should one that is seaworthy turn up.

I'm hoping we're all getting the analogy.

You see, while free trade is excellent the political control of the EU is largely unnecessary and extremely expensive. Having public workers do any job is usually quite expensive (excluding Teachers, Nurses..) but having public workers do a job where no one in the building speaks the same language so everything has to be translated 20 times is the Mercedes A-Class of expensive, ie its not just expensive, its not that good either.

So what is to be done? Well what if we keep the free trade regulations and bin everything else? I mean EVERYTHING else. That particularly includes the Common Agricultural Policy... which for those of you who do not know, it where your money is taken off you and given to vineyard owners, so that they can tell you that Champagne is only called Champagne if it is from a specific region of France, otherwise it is 'sparkling white wine', very useful. In fact, it is worse than that, but I'm trying to give you a flavour.

So we're left with just the Common Market provisions, wouldn't that be nice? Is it even possible you ask? Well yes, we know this because Norway and Switzerland already have this arrangement. Both basically enjoy the free market but without having their countries run... well, from another country. And how does it affect their economy?

Well I'd like to finish with this. Below is the top five countries by GDP per captia. That is, how much money the country makes, divided by how many people in that country, it is an excellent way of working out how rich a country is proportionate to its size (population wise):

Luxembourg (tax haven, doesn't count)
Norway (in EFTA but not EU)
Qatar (not European)
Switzerland (in EFTA but not EU)
United Arab Emirates (not European)

So apart from a tax haven, the only countries in the top five that are European are outside of the EU but within the European Free Trade Area (ie they enjoy the Common Market, but don't have to waste their money on paying for bureaucrats to tell them what to call Champagne).

In fact, pretty much anyway of measuring the proportionate wealth in a country leaves the Swiss and the Nords way out in front of Germany, France, the UK etc. Which leaves us with the question, why aren't we joining them. And that is a question to which I just don't know the answer.

You've lost that entrepreneurial feeling

We need more jobs!

Unemployment is high and the economy is only just about 0% growth. This isn't an inspiring time to be unemployed. Therefore it is the government's job to make jobs, apparently.

For the retarded amongst us that means they should borrow more and then spend it to 'create jobs'. Or as I call it borrow more money to give away. After all if there is a job to be done, surely people will pay for it themselves. If they can't afford it as a person, it is highly unlikely we can afford it as a nation. If people won't pay for it themselves then it is probably because they don't really want it or it costs more than it is worth.

This doesn't always apply of course. We know that the NHS works best because everyone (officially employed) has to pay it. Old and young, rich and poor, fit and unfit. This means we all pay a little rather than some paying a fortune and others paying virtually nothing.

But generally paying public servants is very inefficient, because you can never choose to stop paying them. If my car insurance company is rubbish I can stop paying them and go to another company. If the bus service is rubbish I can stop paying them and take a train. If a public service is rubbish, then I'm stuck paying for rubbish service. There is no pressure on them to slim down when they have too many people because the money rolls in regardless of the service provided.

Anyway, I'm getting distracted. What I wanted to talk about was what I discovered when I was in California a few weeks ago.

We tend to think of the US as the place of big businesses. What we know of the USA is largely based around films, television and the chain stores that make it over here to Great Britain. Many of us go on holiday to the US (if we're blessed with some extra money) but often that is to the East Coast and more specifically; Florida.

But what I didn't realise until recently was for every Starbucks/ McDonald's/Burger King in America there is a Carl's Jr/Chilli's/independent. That is for everyone huge shopping chain that makes it across the pond, there are several smaller mid size or just totally independent restaurants that we in the United Kingdom, have never heard of.

Why is this relevant to anything? I heard you ask. Why did you start talking about the economy and now reach hamburgers? Well you'll be glad to hear I haven't lost track. My point is the reason why the USA has so many huge corporations is partly because it has so many small ones. When you have a decent size base of small companies, statistically some are bound to do really well. This is good for everyone.

But this leads me on to another point, Americans just have a different attitude to starting businesses to us. I think this is for a couple of reasons. first off, British people are far more pessimistic than Americans. I have heard it said that the difference between British people and Americans is that Americans think that they are going to live forever and British people know that they are going to die. I thought it was an exaggeration but American people genuinely do seem to avoid thinking about death at all cost. Which seems a bit odd, since that and tax are the things that are certain for all (perhaps not co-incidentally tax is the other Americans avoid at all cost).

Either way, this incredible optimism combined with a feeling that they are part of a 'pioneering' culture and a belief that anyone can make it if they work hard (potentially with the spur that you keep the money you make and you don't get lots of welfare support) means that people in the US set up businesses a lot.

In contrast we can look at the UK. In the UK we are very skeptical of anyone who says that something can be done, easily, quickly and with huge success. In fact, we are just skeptical. This has good sides to it. We are less moved by emotive speeches by politicians, so we're less likely to elect a 'Hitler' (although this is never impossible). It also means that most of us are less likely to be convinced by advertising which promises to change your life when you by a new mop, or taste a new sweet. Some will, but the majority with roll their eyes and want to slap the person back into reality.


Our heritage too is completely different. British political and economic heritage stretches all the way back to 1066. Almost a thousand years. Here it was established (or should I say confirmed) that those in the establishment lord it over those below, who work hard and are kept at the bottom of the social scale. Today of course, this is not the case, but the culture still comes from that same source. Which is why, you'll notice, that a large part of being rich and successful in Britain isn't just about being rich and successful, but also about entering the establishment.
This is why much more credence is given to established professions in Britain than to almost any other work. There is almost instant respect for Doctors, Barristers, Solicitors and accountants. This is despite the fact that (whether it is known or not I don't know) many managers earn more than all of the preiously mentioned professions. The reason being of course because a profession seems far more 'upper class' than saying I'm a manager, because there is a whiff of the nouveau about it. Like some how you could have reached a managerial position without knowing which cutlery to use in a fine restaurant, and somehow these manners are important.



As a result the British legal system is one of the finest in the world. Many of the worlds largest law firms are based here (Slaughter and May, Freshfields, Linklaters, Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy but to name the obvious). Ernst & Young and Pricewaterhouse Coopers' profits run into tens of billions of pounds, they are enormous organisations unsurprisingly based on professional services such as accountancy.

So there is no doubt that both sides have their benefits. Americans have huge businesses, the British have huge professional practises. But the thing is professional services generally services business.

In this time of recession the one thing we don't have, is enough businesses. The news largely seems to show people complaining that the government isn't providing enough jobs. But the question may be asked, at what point did the government start being responsible for jobs. Now I have to declare at this point that my money comes, indirectly from the government. Not all of it, but most of it comes from central government. So feel free to discard everything I say. But I think it is worth hearing me out.

Why wait for the government to create jobs, when each person has the freedom to create their own. Finding something that people are willing to pay you to do, then doing it has been the basis of income for the free man for years (the exception being the peasant tied to a lord and slaves).

Maybe, we need to take a little bit of our American cousins' attitude to heart and once again stimulate the entrepreneurial spirit.

The wise among us at this point will point out that the US is also down the pan right now. I would agree, but I'd also note that they seem to have developed their own dependence on government a little like us.

No doubt there are things that the government can do to help, reduce paperwork and invest in infrastructure being the main ones. But generally that isn't much else they can do without borrowing more money and essentially just making the matter worse. In reality the economy rests on the shoulders of the people, not the Prime Minister.

PS When I've got £10,000 saved I want to start a business, any other investors?

Got you by the Bonds

When you have the money, you don't need guns to manipulate a country.

That was the claim I made in my last post. I wasn't going to go into detail because frankly these posts always seem to go on a lot longer than I anticipate. I guess argument just takes time.

However since China appears to be helping out the EU by giving us money, it actually seems like a prime opportunity to explain why having huge amounts of debt to another country is really concerning.


To begin I'm afraid we need a brief history lesson. The scene is post war Europe. The UK hasn't gone into the EU, because we didn't need to. Europe has huge debts to the US because after the war Europe had spent every penny it had trying to kill off Nazism. Britain and Germany had practically destroyed themselves in a fight for supremacy, while in the mean time, for most of the war, the US was happy to take over the trade the Britain was unable to serve because it was too busy trying to save Europe from the Nazis.

Not exactly America's proudest moment, but in fairness it was American citizens who didn't want to get involved in another costly war and no one knew about the holocaust until later.

Anyway, after the war the US bought huge sums of British bonds in order to give the UK the money to rebuild itself and get back on track. Largely it had.

So that is the scene. Now Egypt decides that it is going to take over the Aswan Dam, a French and British owned structure. The British and French unsurprisingly don't find this amusing. They launch a military invasion and sort the matter out within 5 minutes. Militarily Egypt was not a challenge for countries that knew how to fight.

So far, so straight forward, so where does the debt come in? Well at this point its 1956 the cold war between the Soviets and the US is going on... by cold of course we mean there was no war, there were just two countries (the USSR and the US) getting ready to beat each other into the stone age should war actually break out.

Egypt was doing a fine job of playing the two countries against each other. It went to the US for weapons, they said responsibly... fine but only if you're trained and supervised by US personel, the Egyptians didn't fancy that, so they went to the Soviets instead who said "sure, whatever you want, if you've got the money (or even if you don't) we've got the guns. Egypt also recognised China too a new communist state even though the US really didn't want this to happen, so all in all Egypt was doing a great job at playing the two off each other.

So you can imagine how wary the US was when two of its biggest allies went in and started kicking in Eygpt like an annoying little brat who isn't giving respect to the sixth formers.

The US feared that the USSR would come in to help Egypt and before you know it the cold war would turn very very hot. Bear in mind we are talking WWIII with nuclear weapons hot.

So the US told the UK and France to back off. Of course, Britain, like a good independent country would, told the Yanks to jog on and get on with their own business. Now if there was no debt, chances are, that is where the story would have ended. Possibly the US would have paid both the UK and France the cost of the Dam and quietly they would have left Eygpt with some excuse about respecting national autonomy or some other rubbish.

But the US didn't need to do that. It had bought all our bonds, remember? It just said to the UK, get out of Egypt or we'll sell all the bonds we own in the UK government. In doing so supply would have shot up, while demand stayed the same. The price of our bonds would have plummeted, the pound would have dropped like a stone and our economy would have collapsed. So perhaps unsurprisingly, we got out.

How embarassing. Annoying behaviour from the Yanks, but understandable when you consider what the cold war was about; essentially stopping the world from wiping itself out.

So that is the end of the history lesson. Well actually the true end of the story is that after this the UK joined the EU, obviously annoyed that there was the potential for foreign powers to interfere with its policies, it thought the best thing to do was to get into a bigger gang to look after its interests. Personally I don't see how taking orders from the EU is any better than taking orders from the US, in fact, I'm confident it is worse.

Back to China and today; I'm guessing you get my point. China is now buying bonds in the European Financial Stability Facility. Hmmm, do you see a pattern here?

Of course China has its own benefits from loaning Europe money. Europe is the country buying its products in the first place so if Europe goes down, so does their Export economy. Also as long as the amount of Debt owned by China remains low over all their influence will remain limited. But with the papers suggesting it could be as much as £62,000,000,000 that is a little concerning.

(see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/china-holds-europe-to-ransom-over-16362bn-bailout-deal-2377396.html
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2011-10/30/c_131220069.htm)

Either way though it just seems to signal a worrying desperation to keep the EU afloat. Surely a lot of people are wondering why it is such a good idea to keep borrowing money, rather than letting those who are going to go under, go under.

Sure lots of countries would be bankrupt initially. Money would be lost and there would be problems. But then instead of borrowing to finance borrowing money could be spend investing. Lots of companies would become worthless and their assest can be bought by companies that are doing well and want to expand. Businesses that are efficient could borrow money and invest it, instead of governments borrowing money just to spend on interest payments. It would allow the system to re-settle itself with the companies that made mistakes dying off and those that didn't being in a better and stronger position than before... I'm willing to accept that I'm not certain about this, but I can't help but get the feeling all this borrowing is just postponing the inevitable.

Part of the problem is that we're too used to having what we want. We think that because we live in the West we're entitled to have the best of everything and the rest of the world is another matter.

In reality the West only ever had all it had because of a work ethic and a level of morality that meant you worked hard, didn't cheat and you weren't corrupt. Even now thankfully the level of corruption in the UK is way lower than in China. But I doubt that is going to stay the same. After all it is no surprise to me that the wealthiest areas of China are usually those that have the highest Christian populations, and a true Christian (I imagine a fake one is pretty rare in a country where it draws adverse attention from the authorities and can land you in jail) isn't likely to behave in a corrupt manner. This combined with the exploding Christian population in China at the moment means it is likely that corruption is going to decrease.

But while we're not too corrupt, areas of the West do not have the right work ethic. When the banks went under, people still refused to give up their bonuses. What sort of work ethic is that? You and your team fail so badly you send your country into crisis and you're still not willing to give up your bonus? What? If I was the government minister responsible I would have fired them on principle. I don't know where they think they are going to get new jobs when they have just made such a hash of their previous one.

Anyway, I digress, my concern is, with that sort of attitude in the West and the increasing efficiency of the East, that predicts storms coming our way, regardless of who has got us by the bonds.

The one thing that is likely however, the moment that problems do come, it may be that we start to sort ourselves out, moving away from materialism and more towards family and community... one can hope eh!

The EU vote raises the same question that is never explicitly asked.

Why do Labour and the Lib Dems never vote against Europe?

This was largely the question posed to me by a friend when the discussion of exiting Europe came up. I have to be honest, I had to think. If the population of the UK wants to get out of Europe, which it does (why else would a government be so scared to hold a referendum?) surely it would be easy money for Labour or the Lib Dems to cash in on this by saying they would exist Europe.


Well, the reason begins with this; no one believes in independence anymore. Confused? Let me lay it out. Power is dictated by money, whoever has the most money, has the most influence and has the spare cash to spend on financing a nice shiney military. But even without guns money gives control (more on this a little later). To get money you need a good economy.

The US has a good economy, for example, because it has low tax, highly skilled workers and a huge home market. If you don't know what I mean by a home market take this example.

Your name is Bob, you like in the US, you make a product which brushes your teeth for you. You can now sell that to the whole US population of 300 million people at $5. You make $1.5 Bn.

Your name is Francois, you like in France, you make the same product. You can now sell it to the whole of France's 65 million people for $5 which makes you only $325million.

If you want to sell else where you need translation, you need to address the change in cultures their toothpaste tubes don't fit etc etc. This all causes expense and profit margins go down.

In short, if you live in a big country or area with the same rules and regulations and culture, you make more money.

This is why the US is so rich. Everyone speaks the same language, drive on the same size roads, has similar values and so on.

Great. Lesson one, done.

Lesson two I'm going to abridge to stop this getting too big. The more money a country has the more you can get other countries to do what you want. If they don't do as you ask, sell all your investments in their country and their economy goes down the pan, people lose jobs, the leader gets kicked out, and you start the process again.

So with this in mind the leaders of the UK know that if we go it alone, we're going to get screwed with by countries like the US. So we need to get along side someone equally as big. The two obvious options at the moment is the EU and the US. Frankly I'd rather get on side with Australian, New Zealand and Canada, but whatever.

This is where the explanation comes in for Labour's and the Lib Dem's behaviour. Everyone in Parliament knows we need to choose between the EU and US... how do they decide?

Ideology.

The United States is a free market, free speech, small government, morally Christian kinda place.

Europe/the EU is 'generally' is a protectionist, socialist, big government, morally secular kinda place.

Labour is protectionist, socialist, pro-big government and morally secular
Lib Dems are big government, morally secular
The Tories are for free speech, small government, free market, and half of them are morally Christian.

Get it?

Basically this is lifes play ground and we're having to choose who our friends are. Each party is trying to pick the ones that are most like them. This is just an epic sized question of "do you hang around with the junkies, the nerds, the jocks or the Crispys?"


You're not going to spend your life on your own, so it is time to choose some friends. But be careful who you choose, "Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.” or another proverb "The righteous should choose his friends carefully, For the way of the wicked leads them astray."

Now I'm not saying Europeans are evil or good or vis-a-versa. But you will become more like your friends, whomever they may be. Whether they are good or not.

So the next time you heard about a EU treaty and who has voted on it and how. Don't look at the small picture, whether the treaty has merit or not. Look at the bigger picture of the aims of the two parties, because I'm willing to bet that there is one group of people who will vote for it no matter what it says and others who will vote against, almost everytime.

That's because the question is not about that individual treaty really, rather it is about the country you want to live in in 30 years: a socialist leaning, protectionist, big government secular one, or a free market, small government (slightly more) Christian one.

That is the question for the EU vote, and that will ALWAYS be the question for each EU vote.

Sweden Fascist paradise?

What do you think when you think of Sweden? Most people think of Ikea, Volvos, Saab (although that is Chinese now) and possibly traditionally stereotypical blond/e people. Well, here is something new to associate with Sweden, fascism.

Yeah, I know it sounds all very dramatic, a little too dramatic actually, I don't like, it the British part of me thinks that introduction is too earnest... shall I change it? Maybe later.

What do you think of when you think of fascism? Generally oppressive police and serious invasive control of its citizens right? Well that is what comes to my mind. When I read about the plight of Christer and Annie Johansson it made me want to vomit. What did they do that was so bad? Well apparently they were so bad as to educate their child at home!

No for long, they were moving to India (the Mother's homeland) soon anyway, so rather than disrupt their child's education too much they thought they would teach him at home and until they left.

That was what they thought they would do. They notified their school and asked them for some materials (normal procedure) but obviously some people got to hear about this who didn't like it. So they changed their minds and said that the child HAD to go to school. If they didn't they would be fined 250 Kronor per day (about £25 at the time of writing). This didn't bother the family because they knew they were within their rights as it was perfectly legal to home school.

The day came for the family to depart, they are sitting on their plane for India and then the plane is stormed by police removed the child and that is how things have remained for 2 YEARS.

So to recap, the government didn't like them homeschooling, so they took the child off them and they are apply to legally terminate the relationship between the child and the family. So far so fascist.

I've tried to find official documents, which is slightly difficult because, of course, I don't speak Swedish, but here is the application to the European Court of Human Rights:

http://oldsite.alliancedefensefund.org/userdocs/JohanssonApplication.pdf

But the deeper I research the worse it seems to get. Apparently the case was taken on by the Nordic Committee for Human Rights, so far so good there. You have got to respect those who taken on such important cases. "After reviewing all pertinent documents, Attorney Harrold-Claesson has agreed to defend the Johansson family and is now acting as their legal counsel."

Huraay!

But then when the lawyer tried to meet the child in question they were delayed by staff while social services (SS) took the child out the back of the school without them knowing. The only reason the parents found out is because the grand parents of the child had been sitting in their car waiting for them in the car park.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=152697

As if that wasn't enough the SS then decided that a phone call that was scheduled to take place between the parents and the minor was then called off because of what happened that day. Of course, I mean that would teach them a lesson, daring to have their lawyer talk to the minor.

As if that wasn't bad enough, that same lawyer (who is, by the way, the president of the Nordic Committee for Human Rights) is then kicked off the case by the Court.

At this point we're into full nut job society. I don't really know what else can be said. I guess lots of things. Largely involving injustice, state control, excessive, unwarranted and abusive use of force.

So the Swedish authorities seem rather unhappy that someone has the power to educate their own children. I can understand of course, information I'm sure is key in any tyranny. Again, I know, I'm using emotive words but lets face it, there isn't much reason to justify stopping someone home school their child. You'd think that home-schooling a child would risk them being too shy and reclusive. But all the stats say the opposite. Statistically home-schooled children outperform their peers by about 30 percent. Further they are also found to describe themselves as happier as adults and more active in their community.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Test_results

This hasn't stopped the Swedish government from now banning, yes banning home-schooling all together.

http://thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/3885-sweden-bans-home-schooling-religious-instruction

Only is 'exceptional circumstances' can one can be home-schooled now. Which realistically is probably intended to mean never.

So there you have it, a modern Western civilisation, in 2011 passing laws to ensure that everyone has to be taught just they way they want and no exceptions. The heart felt dream of tyrants, dictators and megalomaniacs everywhere. Well done Sweden.

Makes me sick.


http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=165361
http://friendsofdomenic.blogspot.com/p/latest-news-and-announcements.html
Judgement of lower court:
http://oldsite.alliancedefensefund.org/userdocs/JohanssonOpinion.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3CmaPzRCG8

Woe unto those who have to employ British educated recruits?

young people arrive at interviews without the "vital employability skills" required by employers such as having a suitable grasp of English, being punctual and having a general "can do" attitude

Mr Frost, whose organisation represents more than 100,000 British businesses, criticised Britain’s education system, saying it was a “failure” despite billions of pounds of government funding. He said firms were then saddled with funding remedial training for school leavers who lacked vital skills to do their jobs.

Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Tesco’s executive director of corporate and legal affairs, said school leavers had basic problems with literacy and numeracy and have major “attitude problems”.


Everything above it taken from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8819425/British-graduates-not-fit-to-start-work-say-majority-of-bosses.html

First of all I want to start on the positive, the Department for Education spokesman said "too many of our young people leave school without the necessary skills – in particular in the basics of English and maths. That is why we are prioritising them."

Great start, well done. I think we can all agree that we can't leave school, or we shouldn't leave school without English and Maths.

I don't think there is anything wrong with our Maths teaching. I didn't find it particularly good, but that was because I was lazy and lacked focus. In addition Maths is a difficult subject to teach in the sense that often if the student loses focus and misses one step in a mathematical process, then they can't come back in 2 minutes later (after they have stopped day dreaming) and get back into the process. In short, Maths is something that is ideally taught one to one. But I appreciate the government can't afford that.

I personally have no problem with adding, subtracting, per centages or pretty much any maths that you are realistically likely to use in everyday life.

English is another matter. Leaving school, I had little idea of the rules regarding the use of the English language. Sure, I knew how to speak properly. My written communication was tolerable. But I didn't know where an apostrophe went in a sentence and I had little concepts of commas too. Yet, for some reason my school had seen fit to seek to teach me poetry analysis. A lesson that could have been made a whole lot shorter and a whole lot more successful if the teach had stood out the front and said "here is a poem, talk about it like you're a pontificating, arty fart".

Had this been done I believe the whole of English literature could have been dispensed with and the teacher would have been able to actually take the time to teach me punctuation.

But as I've said, focusing on those subjects, sounds great. As long as the focus is on the technicalities. So for example the teach should state; "I want you to write a story, I don't care how boring it is, just so long as the handwriting is legible, the spelling is accurate and the grammar is correct", because lets face is, that is what counts in the real world. Unless you're going into novel writing, which most of us won't and even if we were going into it, a GCSE in English doesn't get you any further whatsoever.

Writing a good book isn't something that is really should be taught in a English lesson. The five people in the whole of the UK who are good enough to make a living from it didn't learn how to write in school. It isn't something you can really teach. If it was the teacher would be a million themselves.

But the thing I want to get on to is the bit that the writer skips over. The lack of 'can do attitude', puntuality and 'attitude problems'. This is the thing that can't be addressed by a government minister, because he doesn't have the power to change it. In reality if Britain is to become more economically developed the things that need to change start not in Whitehall, but in the home.

Like so many of our social and economic problems, there isn't a magic wand in government that can be waved to solve the problem in a moment. The more I look around the more I can see that people seem to love to think that government is the answer to everything, maybe because that means we can always have someone to blame when things go wrong and we don't ever need to look at ourselves.

Look at the Jewish community. Statistics bear out that the Jewish community tend to be wealthier than any other (ethnic? Social? Religious?) group. Why is this? Is there lots of government schemes always looking to increase the participation of Jews in various high flying professions? No. What about social intergration initiatives? No. As far as I can tell there are hardly any government initatives that are founded to help Jews. Is this because no one is every prejudiced against Jews? I don't think I need to answer that question. So it must be a cultural thing... i.e. how they bring their children up and how they expect entrants into their ranks to behave. Change starts at home.

Like wise if our country is to get back on its economic feet we need to adopt a 'can do attitude' and drop the 'attitude problem'. Thinking we're entitled to a high standard of living even when we don't do any work is not healthy. Maybe what they can teach in Maths in how an economy will collapse when we buy more things than we sell as a country. Or perhaps how borrowing money from the market and then using it to create public sector 'jobs' is actually just borrowing money and using it to keep the 'good times rollling'. But such education would no doubt be considered ideological and therefore would be replaced with some socialist guff as soon as the government changes hands.

Nope, the answer lies firmly at our own doors. It has been shown that those who try to send their children to private schools, even if they fail to do so, tend to have children who do better at school. This is because the type of parent who cares enough to want to send their child to a good school cares about their child and their education, and if they fail in getting them into a private school, this concern obviously provides enough motivation for their children to do well even if the school isn't perfect.

Those who are educationally sub par, arrive at school behind those who aren't, once again showing it is what happens at home that makes the difference.

If Britain is to get going, parents should spend time with their children, supporting them, encouraging them, even just talking to them. It will all make a difference, then when it comes time for them to go to school, they will have a better chance at being able to concentrate long enough to learn their ABCs and they will be in the situation where they want to work hard because they understand that it is highly likely to make their, and everyone else's life a lot more pleasant overall.

We, as a people need to realise that what makes an economy tick is not liberally distributed bits of paper with "degree" written on it or teachers pressurised with targets or throwing money at schools. But instead it is hard working, intelligent, (by which I mean 'natural' cognitive ability developed when very young) disciplined and stable people seeking to do their best and being rewarded fairly for it.

That is what moves an economy. And that my friends is a product of families, not policies.