Tax enforcement California style - "get that Jew bastard."

If you want a reason to loathe and detest government this - including a choice bit of antisemitism - from California is a case study:

In the early 1990s, California tax authorities traveled to Las Vegas in pursuit of Gilbert Hyatt, an inventor who earned a fortune as the patent holder of the microcomputer. They staked out his home, dug through his trash, and hired a private eye to look into his background. He'd moved to Nevada in 1991, but California made a claim that the state was entitled to millions of his recent earnings.

What transpired over the next twenty-five years is a story of greed, harassment, anti-semitism, and the abuse of power. And it wasn't the first time that the California tax agency has strong-armed a former state resident. What's so unusual about Gilbert Hyatt is that he fought back—and won.

Worth a few minutes of your time.

....

Quote of the Day - on Harvey and Houston

A welcome perspective in an article pointing out that, despite Harvey being the wettest storm ever to land in the USA, the impact and effect is far less than the media narrative would suggest.

And there's a reason for this:

It other words, the facts would tell you that Harvey was not a catastrophe for Houston; it was our finest hour.

But the narrative spinners have an agenda: they want to assert that this event was an utter failure for Houston, and shame our city and county leadership into embracing centralized planning, and ultimately zoning. They believe in a top-down, expert-driven technocracy that rewards current real estate owners by actions that restrict new supply, raise property value (and therefore taxes), stifle opportunity and undermine human agency. As a life-long Houstonian, I would like to politely ask the narrative spinners to please pound sand.

Peter Drucker once said that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and Houston’s culture is one of opportunity. People come to this city to build a better life for themselves, to start and raise a family, and to do so with the support and encouragement of neighbors. This culture of opportunity means that Houstonians welcome newcomers, in a way that older or more status-conscious cities do not. Houston may not be a nice place to visit during the summer, but it is a great place to create a life all year round.

This culture really shines through during events like Hurricane Harvey. Despite what the narrative spinners would have you believe, we are not rugged individualists; we are rugged communitarians. We know that when times are tough, you must rely first on family, then friends, then neighbors, and then – and only if you’re one of the few, unfortunate folks who cannot rely on any of those three – on the government. And if we have family, friends, or neighbors who can help, reaching out for government support is actually taking resources away from those who need them more.

Yep.



....

It's my party and it'll change politics forever...

Setting up new political parties is a tricky business. I appreciate that us politicians all believe - each and every oneof us - that our intellect, wit, charm and charisma means any party we set up would storm to victory on a tidal wave of popular passion for our brilliant policies. But, truth be told, the track record of new political parties in the UK is pretty rubbish - indeed the record of new parties isn't great anywhere.

This, however, doesn't stop people suggesting that a new party would change everything. Here's Spad Superstar, James Chapman (from holiday in Greece):

James Chapman stepped up his online campaign for a proposed “Democrats” party he has been mounting while on holiday in Greece, saying Brexit signalled the demise of the Conservatives.

A number of serving, former and shadow cabinet ministers contacted Chapman after he posted a series of provocative tweets this week, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

He said: “Two people in the cabinet, a number of people who have been in Conservative cabinets before now – better cabinets, I might say, than the current one – and a number of shadow cabinets ministers have also been in touch.

“They are not saying they are going to quit their parties, but they are saying they understand that there is an enormous gap in the centre now of British politics.”

That this exciting new project from a bloke on holiday in Greece who appears not to have a job at the moment tells you everything you need to know. We've all, with the help of sunshine, Mediterranean food and good red wine worked up incredible schemes to build mighty businesses, transform the game of football, rebalance the British economy and, as James has done, change the face of British politics forever. And when we return to the rain, sandwiches and supermarket lager of Britain these grand plans disappear into the mundanity of everyday life and business. As they should - 'pub talk' as a former colleague David Emmott once called it - because they make little sense.

We know how new centrist parties motivated by divisions over Europe, along with other policies like nuclear disarmament and nationalisation, turn out - even when they are led by a phalanx of cabinet superstars (or in reality three superstars and the one whose name no-one can quite remember):

The SDP began in January 1981 with the Limehouse Declaration, a statement of intent by four former Labour Cabinet ministers—Roy Jenkins, David Owen, William Rodgers, and Shirley Williams—to quit the leftward path that had lately been taken by Labour.

The SDP sputtered on until 1988 as a serious party when most of it voted to merge with the Liberal Party (that it so closely resembled it had shared election campaigns in 1983 and 1987).

While James Chapman's 'Democrats' might be the product of him having too little to do in Greece and too much wine, lots of people seem to think that there's some sort of mileage in setting up a sort of centrist party (presumably one that isn't run by a pleasant god-botherer or aged ballroom dancer) to stop Brexit. Leaving aside that this is perhaps the most short-term justification for creating a political party, it's not going to happen for a couple of very important reasons.

The first reason is that Labour MPs (activists, councillors and what have you) are going to stay right where they are in the expectation that one of two things will happen - Corbyn's leadership will collapse leading to the centre-left getting control again or Corbyn will be prime minister and they'll get some of the goodies that go with power. Folk like Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper and Keir Starmer won't walk away from safe seats and guaranteed media access to engage in a risky, dodgy new party (even one with a tad more thought and planning than James Chapman gave the idea in between eating, tanning and drinking).

And secondly, with a few exceptions the Conservative Party has already been done over by Remainers and the Conservatives currently have (courtesy of the DUP) all the jobs and most of the power. Why on earth would any unnamed cabinet ministers walk out because of the slight possibility that Jacob Rees-Mogg might get to be leader of the Conservative Party at some unspecified point in the future? Assuming that Rees-Mogg actually wants the job.

Moreover running a political party is about a little bit more than have some influential figureheads - political organisations aren't just a couple of chancers sending out press releases from an office on the edge of SW1 (although I suspect folk like James Chapman think this is all you have to do) but involve a lot of organisation, effort and structure. Remember that, after its initial surge, the SDP essentially piggy-backed on the existing Liberal party structure and organisation - a new centrist party can't assume that the current liberal democrats, for all their opportunism will let this happen again.

The last successful new political party in the UK was the Labour Party. And it's worth bearing in mind that it arrived to the left of existing politics and that it took best part of 25 years to get to the stage of forming a (coalition) government - over 40 years to govern alone. There may indeed be a 'gap' in the centre of British politics because of Brexit and Corbyn but, if people want a party, you have to ask why - just like in 1981 - they don't simply switch to the existing, established and "winning here" Liberal Democrats?

British politics has to get a lot more broken before there's even the faintest chance of a new party - let alone one with any chance of success. The Conservative Party isn't (despite the best efforts of the media to pretend otherwise) split on policy but rather by the competing ambitions of leading figures. This is why otherwise sane Tories give credence to the idea of Rees-Mogg. And there may be enormous policy differences between the Corbynistas and Blairites in the Labour Party but the latter are staying put because they believe people - inside and outside the party - will eventually get bored with permanent revolution.

But Still - pour me another glass of that lovely red wine and let me explain my plan for a new centre-right political party...

....

Government...

A couple of examples from John Stossel at Reason:

But New York City's bureaucrats are unapologetic about their $2 million toilet. The Parks Department even put out a statement saying, "Our current estimate to build a new comfort station with minimal site work is $3 million."

"$3 million?!" I said to New York City Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver, ingcredulously.

"New York City is the most expensive place to build," he replied. As a result, "$2 million was a good deal."

I pointed out that entire homes sell for less. He said, "We built these comfort stations to last... Look at the material we use compared to that of a home. These are very, very durable materials."

They have to be, he says, because the bathroom gets so much use. "We're going to expect thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of visitors... So we have to build it to last."

Yet not far away, Bryant Park has a bathroom that gets much more use. That bathroom cost just $300,000. Why the difference?

Bryant Park is privately managed.

Or in Canada:

Toronto's government estimated that a tiny staircase for a park would cost $65,000-$150,000.

So a local citizen installed a staircase himself.

Cost? $550.

Did the bureaucrats thank him? No. They say they will tear his staircase down. Can't have private citizens doing things for themselves. (Update: The private stairs have been torn down, and the city says it will replace them for $10,000.)

Most places, most of the time, government is rubbish at everything.

...

In which Professor Mazzucato discovers government is useless

Various people had a bit of a laugh about a tweet from economist Mariana Mazzucato moaning about the officious nature of the UK Home Office.



The humour came, of course, in that Professor Mazzucato is a popular advocate of the argument that it's the state that drives innovation with the private sector toddling along behind making profits from all those clever things government has done (I oversimplify but not by much). The Professor's entire opus is about how government is brilliant.

I am, however, a little more interested in what this Tweet tells us about government. Mostly it tells us that, when it comes to administrative functions, government is rubbish. This doesn't matter when all it represents is some inconvenience and annoyance to an economics professor but it does matter when the issue in question is whether a family has any money at all. The other day, I was told that a housing association was giving out food parcels to some of its tenants because of the delay between getting an assessment under the new universal credit (or indeed, on occasions, other benefits) and actually getting any money. This isn't because the benefit isn't enough but simply a case of government being unable to process simple administrative tasks efficiently (and yes I know the system is complicated but that's about getting the right boxes filled).

We encounter example after example of this administrative uselessness, most of it annoying and delaying rather than life threatening and all of it reminding us that huge bureaucracies operating without either adequate scrutiny or any competition are, in truth, the very antithesis of innovation. Government, the acme of monopolistic bureaucracy, has always operated this way - in 'The Castle', Franz Kafka summed how this governmental incompetence is married with arrogance and a lack of self-awareness to great the impenetrable barrier of bureaucracy:

“Surveyor, in your thoughts you may be reproaching Sordini for not having been prompted by my claim to make inquiries about the matter in other departments. But that would have been wrong, and I want this man cleared of all blame in your thoughts. One of the operating principles of authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity. So Sordini couldn’t inquire in other departments, besides those departments wouldn’t have answered, since they would have noticed right away that he was investigating the possibility of an error.”

What Professor Mazzucato, a highly regarded denizen of Britain's Castle and an advocate of its greatness, has discovered is that the system will do what the system does, will do that slowly and badly, and regardless of your job title will treat you with the same impersonal disdain you thought was reserved to common sorts on benefits. Your form will sit in a pile, will be processed in due course and will be returned if it is incorrect or incomplete. And there is no option to expedite matters by buying the mayor an expensive cup of coffee.

In the end government is useless. Then we revolt. And, as Kafka said about revolution:

"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy."

....

Owning robots...

Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution responds to this question (with a very interesting consideration of robotised government):

There’s two versions of this.

1. One or a small group of entrepreneurs owns the robots.

2. The government owns the robots.

I see how we get from where we are now to 1. How would we get to 2, and is 2 better than 1?

Leaving aside Cowan's discussion of what government means in a robotised world, isn't there a big issue with the premise of this question? The idea that state ownership of the robots is desirable? And whether 1. accurately describes how those robots will actually be owned?

The first point is that the robots will be an asset either of the business employing them or, assuming some sort of leasing arrangement, of a financial institution. So there may be a 'small group of entrepreneurs' owning the businesses that make the robots but the robots themselves won't be owned by those businesses (except one guesses for the robots that are making the robots that make the robots).

So the question really isn't about who owns the robots in a future economy but rather who owns the businesses that employ the robots to make and do things. This is a very different question. We can, on the basis of historical experience, dismiss the idea that state ownership of the economy is better than other forms of ownership. The Soviet Union tells us this is the case. At the same time, however, we can see that the productivity gains from the robot economy have to arrive in the pockets of regular folk for that robot economy to work.

Partly this distribution of the robot benefits comes through goods and services being cheaper (lots cheaper in some cases) thereby allowing our money to go further. But there is also the consideration that the benefits cannot simply go to a few entrepreneurs if the advantages of robots are to be realised. This is where some advocates of minimum basic income get their shtick - government taxes the robots' added value and shares it with the humans who don't have jobs any more thereby allowing those humans space to go off and do exciting, creative stuff. This does presuppose that government will not crash the robot economy so as to pay the higher basic income they promised in order to get elected. Not a presupposition I'd care to put money on.

Far better would be for us - not the government but us - to own the robots. Or, to put it another way, to own the businesses that employ the robots. And we have the models for this - mutual funds, pensions, investment funds. It would be good if (and Cowan's robot government suggests this might be so) government didn't crowd out investing in business by running huge debts funded by money that might otherwise be invested in the productive economy.

So the robot future could be very different from our presumption. Much smaller (or really much cheaper which isn't quite the same thing) government meaning that money currently taken either in taxes or spent buying government debt is available to invest in businesses that employ the robots. And a whole load of that money will belong to 'we the people' - actually belong rather than belong in some sort of romantic, wistful socialist manner. We get to own the robots.

So it's not how we get from 1. to 2. in the original question but rather how does government help us get to own those robots.

....

Why we need faith in The Market

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” John 20: 24-29

This is the dilemma of faith. You will, I'm sure recall when Arthur Dent is introduced to the babel fish in Douglas Adam's 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy':

The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that something so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.'

'But, says Man, the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and vanishes in a puff of logic.

'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

And, as many have observed, faith does matter because it represents the unprovable premises on which we build our arguments. We are right to, as St Thomas did, doubt but if we only accept that which is before our eyes, what we can see, feel, taste or hear, then we deny things that are really important - love, honesty, creativity, hope.

Here, in a critique of something called 'neoliberalism' (the existence of which I doubt but that's another story) we see the denial of the transcendent, refusing to accept something exists because it is abstract, incorporeal:

The market, which is essentially a useful tool (and like all tools limited) has been converted into a false god The Market. Markets make poor gods for many reasons, but primarily because they don’t exist. A market is a space, not a thing; it is a vacuum; it is a space within which human beings trade stuff. Trading stuff is also useful preparation for doing other stuff, like making, healing, building, growing and creating. The market does not do any of those things - people do - but the market helps people by because people can use trade to get the useful things they need from others. Markets can help people be productive, but they are not productive in themselves.

So The Market exists because people want to exchange. The accumulation of all those exchanges, however conducted, is The Market. And the benefit we get from this exchange - trade as the writer rightly calls it - is that we can focus on the things we're best at, on what David Riccardo called comparative advantage. Here's Don Boudreaux:

...the only economic reason for trade is that each of us produces some goods or services at costs lower than the costs that our trading partners would incur to produce those same goods or services. That is, each of us has a comparative advantage in supplying the goods or services that we sell to others, and a comparative disadvantage in supplying each of the many goods and services that we buy from others.

So The Market does exist (whether or not you use capitals) even though we can't take your hand and plunge it into the spear wound so as to prove its existence. Even where, as with some very important things like health and housing, the state has tried to control (or even abolish) the market, The Market still exists. The best examples here are criminal markets. We have for all sorts of 'good' reasons made some products illegal yet there still exists a market for those products - this is the dilemma of public health's approach to smoking. We are nearing the point, may even have reached it, where further increases in the price of tobacco only act to increase the illegal part of the market - with all the risks associated with criminal markets (we see these with the market in illegal drugs, for example).

The question that our writer poses (although mostly fails to answer) isn't whether or not markets exist or even whether they are a good thing. Rather the question is whether we should 'worship' those markets. Since there is, so far as I'm aware, no actual ritual worship of The Market, I have to assume that this is meant metaphorically and refers to the viewpoint that The Market is the most efficient way to allocate scarce resources. But is the belief that the market, under most circumstances, is the fairest means to allocate resources an act of 'worship'? It may be faith just as a belief in the efficacy of democracy, government or the 'rule of law' is an act of faith but it is not worship.

The debate that prompted the comment about markets began with a simple question: if it wasn't the liberal belief in markets that led to the fastest decline in absolute poverty the world has ever seen then what was it? Inevitably this discussion became one about the UK rather than the world and, as these things do, resulted in the assurance that inequality and poverty are essentially the same, and that government is the primary agent of poverty reduction (more specifically that taxation is essential to poverty reduction).

As a conservative I am not a market fundamentalist but I do not believe that, in the long run, taking money forcefully off one set of folk to give it to another set of folk represents any sort of solution to poverty. I'm also a pragmatist and this means that, given the evidence, open markets deserve our support as they are better able to meet human needs than planned systems managed by government. This doesn't preclude regulation or even direct government provision, it merely recognises that we have to balance the social benefits of such actions against the disbenefits of interfering with the market.

We live in a world largely created by the action of markets, by that specialisation that is central to Adam Smith's ideas and to the concept of comparative advantage. The Market is not an end in itself worthy of worship but rather, for all its abstract nature, a means by which we make for a better world. Without our faith in the efficacy of markets there would be no specialisation, no free exchange and less innovation. Believe!

....

Tax offices, roast potatoes and the accountability of experts

Anyone who was even half-awake will have spotted the roast potato story. You know, the one where the UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) advised us that we'll catch cancer from crispy roast spuds, well done toast, thin crust pizza and trendy thrice-cooked chips.

"The Government has been accused of “massively overreacting” by telling people not to eat crispy roast potatoes or browned toast despite there being no scientific proof of a link to cancer.

Experts said the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) new campaign, which warns people against cooking starchy foods at high temperatures for long periods, risks undermining support for “real” public health priorities like tackling obesity."

The thing here is that it's "the government" providing this advice, the government that's run by those people we elect. Or so we're told. Especially during court hearings about who's the boss, parliament or government. Now I've trawled through dozens of news reports looking for a comment on this story by a minister of the government that has made this announcement. An announcement that is so misleading and lacking in evidential support that it undermines the credibility of the FSA, the organisation set up by the government to make sure our food is safe. Nor (although I may have missed it) has anything been said by Heather Hancock who chairs the FSA "Board".

What's clear here is that no-one is looking the FSA's experts in the eye and saying something like: "Are you really sure you want to tell folk roast potatoes are bad for them on the basis of a very tiny increased cancer risk? You'll look very silly." Or, after said experts have rushed out with their shocking advice, no-one is pulling them into the office and telling them to go and change the bloody advice to something that doesn't make the FSA look like a bunch of rather dumb health fascists.

Let's imagine for a second that some MP - maybe Philip Davies - asks the appropriate Secretary of State (it's pretty tricky to actually find out who this is by the way) what's going on and why, despite the lack of scientific evidence, they thought is just fine to tell folk not to eat well-done toast. I'm pretty sure that the minister in question will respond with some sort of well-honed quip followed by an explanation that the FSA is a "non-ministerial department, supported by 7 agencies and public bodies" so nothing to do with me guv.

All this brings me to the matter of tax offices. Now, whatever we think of Her Majesty's Revenues and Customs, there are a lot of people working in tax offices. And, here in Bradford we have two of these offices - one in the centre of Bradford and one at Shipley. The nice people at HMRC propose, as part of some sort of reorganisation or restruture, to close these offices and open a brand spanking new shiny office. The problem is that HMRC propose to put that office in Leeds. Apparently (although this isn't very clear) because they don't think they can recruit the right quality of staff if they're based in Bradford.

It may well be that all this is absolutely the right thing to do, that the efficiency and effectiveness of tax collection will be enhanced by the merging of these offices into the new super-office in Leeds. But just like the roast potatoes it's pretty difficult for us to make any persuasive contrary argument - such as why not have your super-office in Bradford. I know this because Philip Davies did ask questions of the correct minister who defended the HMRC decision. It's important to note here that the minister, for all his willingness to respond, is not really in a position to overrule the HMRC on this matter because HMRC is a "non-ministerial department, supported by 2 agencies and public bodies".

There's nothing new about this problem and ministers have for three decades hidden behind the semi-detached nature of these "non-ministerial departments" with their "boards" and "directors". From the prison service through defence procurement to decisions about overseas aid such agencies act without proper accountability while making pronouncements and decisions affecting millions without the benefit of public accountability. They are the experts and neither their "boards" not ministers seem able to control what they do.

Here in Bradford we'll keep making the case for those tax officials to come to Bradford but the experts in question - the HMRC management and its property advisors - do not have to do anything except politely nod, smile and proceed to remove a few hundred jobs (and a pile of business rates) from Bradford. And the worldwide coverage of roast potatoes will fade while the advice remains on the FSA website and gradually becomes, like salt and raw milk, received wisdom among those who enforce food standards.

There's plenty of good reasons to have agencies of these sort and plenty of reason to listen carefully to what experts tell us. But there are also good reasons why our Government - by which I mean the secretaries-of-state and assorted ministers not officialdom - should be accountable for their decisions and empowered to change them if they seem wrong or unhelpful.

....

Putting on the postman's uniform - a return to local leadership

In David Brin's book, The Postman, he describes how a man in a post-disaster USA dons the uniform and, as if by magic, is transformed into that same reliable and trustworthy working-class public servant. In exploring the importance of connections between places, Brin (in common with many other writers exploring a post-disaster world) touches on different forms of organisation. We wander from self-reliant little homes with tough but loving families through suspicious and fearful villages or towns to the most dystopic world of the Big Man and the warlord.

In all the book's places we see what many would see as a crisis of leadership. In some places there is no leadership beyond the family, an entirely independent pseudo-pioneer world - a sort of Farnham's Freehold without the casual racism. In others we see safety and security achieved at the cost of compliance with oppression - Zamyatin's We with tatty leather jackets. Elsewhere we glimpse the entirely lawless where, in a world of scarcity, the utility function drives human decisions to their logical conclusion. Here's Deirdre McCloskey in "The Bourgeois Virtues":

"The economist and historian Alexander Field has based a similar argument on biology. He notes that on meeting a stranger in the desert with bread and water that you want, you do not simply kill him. Why not? Sheer self-interest implies you would, and if you would, he would, too, in anticipation, and the game's afoot. Once you and he have chatted for a while and built up trust, naturally, you will refrain."

Or perhaps not if the utilitarians are right? In their world the task of the leader, or so it seems, is to decide - by whatever means - what is the greatest good for the greatest number and implement that good. Such, for all the deal-making, fancy words, thought leadership and opinionating, is the core purpose of those gatherings of great and good - Davos, Bilderburg, summits, conferences and think tanks. Such things are the manifestation, the logical conclusion of a philosophical tradition running from Plato through Mill and Bentham to A C Grayling: leadership from the wise.

The problem today isn't that we are entering some sort of dystopia but rather that the most essential part of leadership - that someone has to follow - has been lost in our desire to perfect the manner in which leaders lead and the things that they lead on. Here from the Millennium Project:




I haven't got the Davos agenda but, while the words may vary, this 'conscious leaders' agenda' pretty much covers what they'll talk about (other than how to get themselves more power and money of course - that's not on the official leaders' agenda). What we have here is the agenda but the problems for those leaders in Davos is that, especially for the political ones - plus those pompously titled thought leaders - it's the lack of followers that is the agitation. This is the 'populism' that is troubling so many of the great and good - for them it is, indeed, better characterised as 'unpopularism'.

The problem here is that these leaders, for all that they seem secure in their power, are uncertain how long this will remain the case. We were all pretty certain that Donald Trump wouldn't win the US presidential election - and we were wrong. We were less certain but assured by our leaders that the UK wouldn't vote to leave the Euorpean Union - and we were wrong. Elsewhere we've seen the President of France become so unpopular that he withdrew from any prospect of seeking re-election. In Spain and Greece social democratic parties are being replaced by radical parties of the left and the big losers to left and right in Holland, Sweden and Germany aren't conservatives but rather Europe's once dominant centre-left.

And the image above of the world and its problems? That is an image constructed by the centre-left - a reflection of big state, big government models for the future. It's not that the content is wrong but rather that the model assumes that the wise - Philosopher Kings - will provide the leadership and this leadership will be global. These are the people who Harm de Blij says live in a flat world, flitting effortlessly from place to place across the world and inhabiting a community where they genuinely feel like Tom Paine's citizens of the world. The problem is that 99% of the worlds population aren't in this flat world - they're, in de Blij's words, either locals living in the global periphery or mobals trying to get from that periphery to the core where they can have a better life.

"From the vantage point of a high-floor room in the Shanghai Hyatt, the Mumbai Oberoi, or the Dubai Hilton, or from the business-class window seat on Singapore Airlines, the world seems flat indeed. Millions of world-flatteners move every day from hotel lobby to airport limo to first-class lounge, laptop in hand, uploading, outsourcing, offshoring as they travel, adjusting the air conditioning as they go"

Such 'flat earth dwellers' understand the locals and mobals. After all they've listened to a thought leader speak, they've read a precis of the current academic research and they reviewed documents from a UN agency or two plus, for balance, Oxfam or some other NGO. The right noises about poverty, economic development, humanitarianism and growth drop from their lips. But they do not know these locals and mobals. Those people, the ones they see from the limo window, serving them tea in the hotel and marching angrily about how their livelihoods are threatened - they've stopped following these Philosopher Kings. Our 'flat earth dwellers' are no longer leaders but rather a bunch of folk who can see a lot of locals and mobals pushing against the glass of their bubble. And they are scared.

None of this is to say that enlightenment liberalism is wrong or a problem. After all, despite the best efforts of some to suggest otherwise, capitalism has made us richer and is doing the same for those locals and mobals de Blij worries about. Rather it's to suggest that we need to rethink the model of leadership that is revealed at Davos and to recognise that this approach - consultative, knowledge-focused but still globally focused and top down - no longer fits what's needed.

At a board away day recently (from where I pinched that image of the world's agenda) a couple of almost throwaway comments struck me as important. The first of these was that we're moving to a self-service world, quite literally through the power of the smartphone in our pocket. Want to know where something is? Phone. Need a picture? Phone. Want to buy some car insurance? Phone. I forget where I read it but if your business idea doesn't work on a phone, don't bother.

Many of the presumptions about public services, transport, retailing and decision-making no longer apply. It's not that we don't still need leadership but that that leadership needs to be more dispersed, connected and local than what we see today. The economics writer, Tim Worstall taked about Bjorn's Beer Effect:

Instead they have what I call the Bjorn's Beer Effect. You're in a society of 10,000 people. You know the guy who raises the local tax money and allocates that local tax money. You also know where he has a beer on a Friday night. More importantly Bjorn knows that everyone knows he collects and spends the money: and also where he has a beer on a Friday. That money is going to be rather better spent than if it travels off possibly 3,000 miles into some faceless bureaucracy.

In a self-service world we need to look more at local considerations than at the systems needed to deliver services - the phone in your pocket can deliver those services and you can work it out for yourself. But you still want advice, help - dare I say it, leadership - but this should be at your scale: local, responsive and focused. Most of the world's problems - pretty much all of them with the exception of that huge asteroid - don't require a global response but require us, at most, to change our personal behaviour. This needs dispersed local leadership rather than grand gatherings in nice cities.

The second throwaway from my meeting was about how people work - specifically Generation Y and Z but I suspect this applies much more broadly - in a world where access to knowledge (and fake knowledge) approaches being universal. We heard a description of a noisy, confused room of young people discussing the task at hand, phones being consulted, everybody talking, groups forming and unforming - there's leadership here but not in the traditional, dominant, top-down manner that our Philosopher Kings would want. And the leader on one task is different from the leader on another task - all a bit like The Apprentice!

This again reflects the manner in which connectivity - something that mobile technology is bringing to de Blij's locals - now forms the core function in leadership. The leader is no longer in that high castle and, tomorrow, may step aside because a different person has stepped up to lead. All this suggests that the established power structures of representative democracy and bureaucracy serve less of a purpose - if we self-serve we don't need that big bureaucracy and, therefore, its great leader. And if we're connected, involved and engaged we have less need to choose someone else to do the connection, involvement and engaging.

We'll still need the public servant but that person won't be a president, chief executive or civil service mandarin. Rather that servant will be Bjorn having a drink on a Friday with his friends and neighbours or Claire playing Lego with the kids in the local pre-school. Someone who, to return to where we started, has put on the postman's uniform.

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Article 50 Case: Incompetence, lies and the importance of free speech

I may have been misunderstood. Not because of anything I said but because of how some people decided they knew what I'd said or because they knew what I really meant. The starting point was that, following the High Court decision about invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, I was angry. Indeed, I was as angry as I had ever been about something political.

Now if people had noted what I said, they'd have spotted how my anger wasn't directed at those three judges (however much I might think their decision egregious) but rather at the Government. After all they'd proposed and got support for (overwhelming support as it happens) a proposal to have a referendum on our membership of the European Union - something that had been in the manifesto that government stood on in May 2015:

That’s why, after the election, we will negotiate a new settlement for Britain in Europe, and then ask the British people whether they want to stay in the EU on this reformed basis or leave. David Cameron has committed that he will only lead a government that offers an in-out referendum. We will hold that in-out referendum before the end of 2017 and respect the outcome.

So my expectation was that the result of the referendum (and whether you like it or not, we voted to leave) would be implemented. The Government even wrote to us all telling us just that:



All pretty unequivocal. It seems, however, that this isn't really the case, at least as far as those three judges are concerned. Not only was the Government incompetent in proposing a referendum bill that didn't do what it said in the manifesto, they then compounded this by issuing a false statement that this was so. Put simply the Government led by David Cameron was either incompetent or it lied (maybe even both). I feel entirely justified in being as angry with this as I was with Tony Blair's government when it sent young men to die in Iraq on the basis of what turns out to have been a lie. Just as subsequent enquiry revealed Blair's duplicity, the three judges last week revealed the incompetence (or lies or both) of David Cameron's government.

Although I may not be angry with the judges, I do have a great deal of sympathy for the many people - including those writing the front page headlines in some newspapers - who were explosively cross with the decision and those who made it. And I find the reaction of too many, especially lawyers clucking round their superiors, to these headlines deeply concerning. All this stuff about the headlines "intimidating" the judges (by writing in a newspaper - how spineless are they?) and wanting some sort of unspecified action from the Government to deal with the offending editors simply represents an attack on press freedom and free speech. Do we really think a headline in the Daily Mail is going to destroy the independence of the judiciary, however unpleasant and intemperate that headline might be?

The thing with free speech is that it's loud, messy and often pretty unpleasant (trust me on this - I get that same bile directed at me as those judges got). But no part of our state's institutions should be immune from robust criticism - even when that criticism is ill-informed or ignorant. It is disturbing that the Bar Council and a parade of "Important Legal People" think judges should be privileged by newspapers being punished in some way if they dare to criticise. The law - just like other institutions - needs broad public support. If the law's leadership is too thin skinned to make good decisions because a newspaper might have a go at those decision, then perhaps we need to get better leaders?

If the law is excluded from exposure to free speech because of 'judicial independence' then we have a problem. Law in all its forms - and the decisions lawyers and judges make - is central to our lives. If we're not permitted to challenge those laws, those lawyers and those judges then our liberty is compromised. The law becomes vainglorious, privileged and its practitioners untouchable. In a nation that values freedom and the idea of democracy, this cannot be so.

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Creating a Yorkshire Powerhouse - it's down to us not the government in London

My eponymous great-grandfather was born in East London. Tragically he died young - in his thirties - leaving a widow and young children. He died in Wakefield.

This isn't some terrible story of loss or tragedy and nor was my great-grandfather one of those victims of industrial capitalism. He was a wine merchant. Not only is this a noble calling but it explains why he ended up in Wakefield. Put in simple terms there was better business to be had (and perhaps less competition) in Yorkshire than there was in London. As my boss, Judith Donovan, said to me when I arrived in Bradford on 27 July 1987 - "A hundred years ago, Bradford was the richest city in the richest county in the richest country in the world."

How things have changed. Now, too often, Yorkshire paints itself as a victim, bashed and battered by the tides of globalisation, ignored or patronised by the powers down in London. It is a theme we hear again and again from 'leaders' in Yorkshire - that somehow the economic gap between England's greatest county and those southern nancies is down to the perfidy of national government. London is rich because, as if by a dark magic, all the good stuff in England is sucked away from places like Yorkshire for the folk living in that huge city to spend on fancy bus tickets, overpriced coffee and criminally-priced one-bed apartments in Stockwell.

Here's the Yorkshire Post:

Yet the frustration is that Yorkshire has so much more to offer and that this region’s limitless potential will not be maximised until the Government invests sufficient sums in this county’s human capital – school standards have lagged behind the rest of the country for an unacceptable number of years and are having a detrimental impact on job prospects – as well as the area’s transport and business infrastructure so more world-leading companies can be persuaded to invest here.

Today is Yorkshire Day and it is worth giving the Yorkshire Post its due for setting out an agenda for the county that genuinely reflects much of the debate going on up here. But it's a shame that the habit of holding out the cap and fluttering those Yorkshire eye-lashes still remains. No-one's denying that Yorkshire - and the North for that matter - needs investment but when all they hear is the regional politics version of "got some spare change for a coffee" is it really a surprise that government doesn't rush to help out?

Take education. The Yorkshire Post rightly highlights how Yorkshire's levels of educational attainment lag behind those elsewhere in England and in many ways this is a scandal. But what's the bigger scandal - that politicians in London aren't throwing cash at the problem or that the leaders in Yorkshire haven't got any plan, policy or strategy to address the problem? Where's the education 'summit' bringing together political and business leaders from across the county? Why haven't local education authorities - along with schools - pooled their investment in educational development and improvement?

The same goes for transport. Again the Yorkshire Post reminds us that Leeds is the only big city in England without a tram system or metro. And that - quite rightly - the government pulled the plug on that city's latest wheeze, a new 'bus-on-a-string'. I recall sitting in a meeting - in some slightly tatty, anonymous office block in Leeds - and formally giving Bradford's support for what was dubbed 'supertram'. And I remember adding, at the end of the presentation, that it was a great shame said 'supertram' wasn't going to Bradford or, indeed, anywhere near Bradford. The single busiest inter-city commuter route - Leeds-Bradford and vice versa - didn't register.

So - again - where's Yorkshire's transport plan? Have the transport great and good gathered to set out how we'll respond to 21st century challenges in transport? Or have we just sat mithering about ticketing and real-time information as if they're the answer to the question? Why should - other than for reasons of political calculation (hence Cameron launching the 'Northern Powerhouse' in Shipley) - central government do anything for Yorkshire when Yorkshire's not doing much for itself?

Even on devolution, political calculations - both sub-regional and by the political parties - has meant deadlock. Yorkshire - after London itself - is the only English region with a genuine identity. Yorkshire Day really is a thing (my friend Keith Madeley and the Yorkshire Society deserve a lot of credit for this). We really did showcase the glories of the county through the Tour de France and its child, Tour de Yorkshire. And the county really does have everything - except, that is, the leadership to get on with devising responses to our challenges without waiting on someone in London first giving us the thumbs up.

I learnt a couple of important lessons recently. The first was during a meeting with Lord Adonis following the National Infrastructure Commission publishing reports on Crossrail 2 and Transport in the North. The lesson was that London had prepared, done the legwork, written a plan and set out how that city would fund half the cost in the time Northern leaders had drawn up a scope for a possible plan the content of which wasn't set. London will get the money because London knows what it wants. Here in Yorkshire we just ask for more transport investment - we have no plan.

The second lesson is that London's planning is far deeper - more granular as the trendies put it - than any spatial or urban planning anywhere else in England. In part this just reflects the fact that London is a city and has a coherence (and obvious centre) that Yorkshire doesn't have but it also demonstrates that our fragmented systems of government, business leadership and administration won't allow for that level of planning. Here's what I wrote in June about New London Architecture's exhibition:

During a brief visit to London, we called in to the New London Architecture exhibition at The Building Centre - it's just round the corner from the British Museum and well worth an hour of your time not least for the splendid model of central London at the heart of the exhibition. The NLA uses this magnificent visual to present a vision of the new London emerging through investment, initiative and development and is accompanied by a series of short films featuring NLA's urbane chairman, Peter Murray, talking through the challenges - homes, transport, place-making, environment - and setting out what's already happening and how built environment professionals including architects, masterplanners, designers, engineers and builders can deliver a better city.

What comes across in these films is the scale of engagement between public and private sectors - the projects highlighted on the grand model or featured on the wall around the space are mostly private sector projects. For sure there are the great transport schemes sponsored by London's government and supported by national governments but we also see investment in public realm, privately or in partnership with boroughs, by the great estates - Cadogan, Bedford, Grosvenor and the Crown - that enhance the City's character and variety.

Above all there is both a sense of vision - one shared by mayor, boroughs, transport chiefs and developers - and an intense granularity to that vision. We're so familiar with vision being just that - grand sweeping words accompanied with carefully touched up pictures. But this London vision comes with hundreds of individual projects, with emerging plans across the 32 boroughs (all pictured on the walls around the huge model), with examples of individual masterplans for smaller places and with specific project plans ranging from hospitals and university facilities through housing schemes to pocket parks or street markets.

The Yorkshire Post is right to make the case for the county and to present it to the Prime Minister. But we also need to make the case for bringing the county together, for a new agreement - with or without devolution deals - to work together on planning for Yorkshire's future. If - in some few years - we can take people to an exhibition put together by a private organisation demonstrating how Yorkshire's people, businesses, charities and landowners share a clear, radical and creative plan that is being put in place then we will be changing the county for the better.

I fear that, after a brief flurry of excitement and a modicum of political grandstanding, the Yorkshire Post's welcome initiative will be lost. Not because folk in Yorkshire don't want their county to be better but because we've not made our own plans for making the county once again, the richest place in the richest country. So long as we wait for handouts from London this won't happen.

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Brexit means we're leaving the EU - it really is that simple

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"But what does Brexit mean?"

In a multitude of comments, each coloured by the particular preference or prejudice of its author, this is the cry. It's not enough to say you want to Brexit, you have to set out all the precise constitutional, legal, economic, political, cultural and moral details of that Brexit. If you don't do so it isn't Brexit and we can carry on pretending that, on 23 June 2016, the British electorate didn't vote to leave the European Union.

Worse still you can get your lawyer friends to cobble together an argument that might - just might - mean that the referendum result can be ignored in favour of what you'd probably call 'wiser counsel'. And then get surprised when ordinary voters wonder what the hell you're on about and which bit of the word 'democracy' you fail to understand.

Some have a cannier approach - rather than trying to use legal legerdemain to try and get round the fact that people voted a way you didn't like, they set about a process of getting a second referendum so as to get the right result. That result being, of course, one they agree with - that overturns the mistaken decision of those 'excluded' and 'insular' voters last June. We're familiar with this disdain for European electorates - our lords and masters have rammed through second referendums in Ireland and Denmark and, in the case of France, simply ignored the referendum result completely.

In summary Brexit means we're leaving the European Union whether or not you are happy about that. As the Prime Minister said - "Brexit means Brexit".

What was this I heard you say? "What do you mean by 'Brexit means Brexit' then?"

Really? You've not worked this out then? It's simple - the people voted to leave the European Union and, therefore, the government is morally (if not strictly legally) bound to take us out of that Union. That's it - people didn't vote to do anything else and it's for the government to propose, parliament to debate and the application of politics to decide just what the details of leaving might be.

But that doesn't include an option where we ignore the wishes of the electorate and remain a member of the European Union.

In the future all things are possible but right now our government has to set out a timetable and process for leaving the EU. I'm pretty confident that is what it will do and I'm also pretty confident that the government will seek the support of parliament for that timetable and process. And that parliament - if it has any respect for the idea of democracy - will endorse a timetable and process for us to leave the European Union. Probably one pretty close to that set down by the Prime Minister and her government.

I appreciate that there remain a bunch of folk who hate the result of June's referendum. And they've every right to argue for us to stay in (or, in some future scenario, rejoin) the European Union. But right now the right - as in moral, ethical, democratic - thing to do is set about doing what the electorate asked for. That is to leave the European Union.

Now, as a consequence of this, the UK government might have less open borders - "an end to free movement" as its advocates put it. But that's not what we voted for - we voted to leave the EU. Other things may happen as a result of us leaving - we might see more state intervention in industry. We might see an upsurge in the sort of economic nationalism that people like Will Hutton have been advocating for years. And we might see some new regulations and the ending of some old regulations.

The point isn't that these changes are or aren't made but that they will be made by British governments through the UK parliament. And when it becomes clear that ending all but "high skilled" immigration is a bonkers idea, a future UK government can open the borders up again. And the same goes for trade deals, for tariffs, for regulations on the shape of bananas and for much else besides - the final decision, while moderated by treaty and international negotiation, will be made be people we can boot out if they get it wrong.

All Brexit means is that we're no longer a member of the European Union subject to the obligations in the various treaties that form that Union. That's it. Nothing else. Indeed all the other stuff people are talking about - the assorted bogeymen and doom-laden dystopia set out by disappointed Remain voters included - represent the consequence of choices that can, and will, be made by the UK government.

So instead of crying salty tears into your schooner of achingly trendy craft lager try accepting that Brexit means Brexit and moving on to argue for a post-EU Britain that follows the sorts of policy you think right. You might not get those policies - democracy is a pain - but if your policy is to plan to say "I told you so" on a loop tape then you will definitely be disappointed. We're leaving the EU - what matters is making that decision a great one not in either insulting those who made that choice or else sitting with your bottom lip out and arms crossed sulking because your side lost.

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Don't kill free speech for the sake of sensibility.

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Somewhere - I don't know precisely as I've not been paying it all that much attention - there's a gathering calling it self "Reclaim the Internet". My Twitter timeline is filled with a steady dribble of reports from this gathering - many from Labour MPs but also photographs showing earnest folk talking about trolls, abuse and how the Internet is a horrible place stuffed with nasty people who live under bridges.

Now I've no doubt - indeed I've witnessed it - that there are plenty of thoroughly unpleasant people hiding in corners of the Internet churning out pretty vile and personal stuff. Anyone who has encountered the less intellectual parts of the 'alt-right', especially the American 'alt-right', will have enjoyed a collection of choice insults, gun-toting threats and plenty of racism. And the sort of stuff that's levelled at Jewish public figures like Luciana Berger is straight up revolting.

So I get the idea of 'reclaiming the Internet'  presumably drawing on the experience of 'reclaim the night' marches that have been a feature of feminist campaigns down the years. Indeed the use of moral suasion and solidarity to sway public opinion is pretty valuable - the fact of saying 'you're not going to stop us, this is our space too' is powerful.

What worries me is that we get - especially when there are politicians involved - a sense of 'something must be done' where that something is almost certainly some form of further constraint on free speech. It's fine for organisations - in the real world or online - to have rules and to enforce those rules (my local Conservative Club is pretty tough on bad language, for example) but when this becomes a means by which the difficult, the challenging and, yes, the unpleasant can be shut down warning bells should go off.

It's even worse if the result of these campaigns is that governments take 'something must be done' as permission for creating a policing system allowing argument to be closed down by reporting the 'abuser' to the authorities. Don't get me wrong here, there are times when this is absolutely right, but too often the opportunity is taken to close down real debate and, worse, to conduct a political attack using reporting.

The, now thankfully neutralised, 'standards' process in local government tells me that having a quasi-legal process driven by reports of supposed wrongdoing presents less scrupulous politicians with the opportunity to undermine opponents, to destroy careers simply through reporting someone to the beak. And it doesn't matter much whether the person reported actually did much wrong, the fact of the reporting is sufficient.

So when you see someone Tweeting "I've blocked and reported @pigeonpost for being a vile troll", what you are seeing is something that is an attack on @pigeonpost - by all means block and report but waving this fact around the Internet is pretty poor behaviour when it might be that the worst @pigeonpost has done is lost his or her rag (and it's not your call whether the medium's terms and conditions were breached). It's also indulging in the same trolling behaviour you're accusing @pigeonpost of using.

In the end the price of free speech is that people can be - and often are - pretty vile. This isn't just true online (as any visit to a city centre pub late on a Saturday night will tell you) but clearly causes some consternation online. So complain and protect, encourage good manners, insist that terms and conditions of social media are adhered to, but please don't use abuse as a reason for restricting speech, for giving to politicians, public officials and campaigners the tools to shut up those whose only offence is to be rude or inarticulate in their opposition to such folks' agendas.

Free speech matters. It is one of the protections - too few of them - we have from the worst of government. Governments don't like free speech and will find ways to limit it. Ways to stop you from saying what you want to say. Too often I pick up little whispers - "I know I'm not supposed to say this but..."  And yes, sometimes this is racist, sexist, anti-gay but I can challenge that, explain why it's wrong - if they can't say it and take that challenge will they not remain racist, sexist or anti-gay? And won't that speech become hidden and in doing so become more extreme by developing only with affirmation and never challenge?

So, in reclaiming the Internet do remember that you're reclaiming a place of free speech, filled with the jokes, opinions, stupidity and rudeness humanity churns out. It's mostly ephemeral, often thin in thought, but for many people it's the way they get to sound off, to explode with fury, to celebrate, to share joy. Don't kill this because there's a few who think it grand to swear and cuss, to issue threats and to parade their nastiness for all to experience. Don't do in free speech for the sake of sensibility.

PS There probably is a Twitter user called @pigeonpost and I'm sure they're not remotely offensive - it was just slung down as an anonymous name, hopefully no-one's upset!
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How I might be disappointed by Brexit - and why this doesn't matter

EEA, EEA Plus, EFTA, WTO, the Norway Option, the Swiss strategy, the Canada solution - even the Liechtenstein approach. A veritable pot pourri of acronyms and discarded titles for Robert Ludlam novels - none of us really has a clue as to what the UK Outcome might be, what Brexit really means. We could even - parliamentary sovereignty being what it is - simply stay a member of the EU (although this option might do little for the electability of the politicians who take it).

In settling this matter some of us are going to be disappointed. This is because - as everyone has noticed - there's a divide in the world of the leave supporter. On the one hand we have the 'sunlit uplands' team who talk about an independent, free-trading country, a sort of giant version of Singapore. And on the other hand we have the autarchs, protectionists and nativists who want a sad, declining (and probably white) nation crouching from the nasty world behind barriers to trade, movement, investment and choice.

Now I'm a sunlit uplands sort of chap - I didn't vote to end 'free movement' but rather to leave behind a dated, tariff-based and protectionist customs union and go for free trade. As I say again and again, trade isn't something that's done by governments, it's a simple reflection of that human desire to maximise value by exchanging things with other humans. What governments have done is create barriers to trade - everything from bans and sanctions through to tariffs and regulatory constraint. All the state does is make trade more difficult and then, through tortuous negotiations, trim away some of those constrainsts to trade thereby allowing bigger, more open and more free markets.

I also don't know which of those acronyms and rejected Robert Ludlam titles is the right approach to leaving the EU. I know that the GATT rules and the WTO mean that, for most trade, the impact of us being outside the single market is negligible. But I also know that a big chunk of our economy isn't covered by those rules - not just agriculture but important sectors like finance, law and advertising where the UK is a dominant player. So it's not enough to simply sit back on WTO rules in trade if we want to make sure important export sectors perform.

I'm pretty sure too that imports - consumption - are more important than exports - production. So it's too easy to dismiss the argument that we simply have no trade barriers (beyond the physical and logistical) other than those contingent on domesitc standards set by the UK parliament. What we don't know is whether such a radical approach really does what the theorists say - reduces prices and costs allowing the glorious benefits of opportunity to drive economic growth.

Looking at what our new prime minister has done, I get a feeling that I'll be disappointed. There does seem to be an assumption that some new sort of immigration model - more restrictive, more limiting - will be imposed and that, free from EU state aid restrictions, we'll see a rash of supports and interventions that use taxpayers money to prop up inefficient industries. This sort of protectionism - in capital and labour - is politically popular with that constituency making up a sizeable portion of the leave vote and especially the provincial, suburban working class that tends to vote Labour.

So I'll be disappointed. The Brexit model chosen won't be the best one, will probably be rushed a little, and will focus more on protecting the British working class from the realities of the world's economy than on riding that economy as a route to riches. For sure, there'll be trade deals galore with each new one rammed down the throats of Remain advocates. But these will be technocratic deals - dropping a tariff here, a regulation there and a loophole over there, all washed down with state-sponsored grand deals in defence, technology and infrastructure. We won't have markedly changed from the system we enjoy - if that's the right word - within the EU (with the exception of replacing Romanian fruit pickers or Polish care workers with Indian, Chinese and African ones).

Now, dear reader, not only could I be wrong but, just as importantly, my disappointment doesn't matter (any more the does the disappointment of Faragist enthusiasts for a crypto-fascist autarky) for one simple reason. We - that's you and me as voters - can change it. If the chosen Brexit model doesn't work, we can seek a different approach. The people can elect a different bunch of politicians with different ideas to see if they can get it to work. We can have robust arguments about the options and choices available to government and then elect an administration with a fighting chance of implementing one or other of those choices. This is the real change that brexit brings - yes, I think we'll benefit economically if we get it right but next to regaining the power to choose where we go with our economy this is as nothing. So long as we remember the curse of democracy - sometimes the wrong people get elected. As democracy's blessing - we can kick those wrong people out when they screw up.

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The new vaping regulations are wrong. We shouldn't introduce them next month.

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I could turn this post into something of a rant about the iniquity of the EU and all its works. After all the new vaping regulations are contained in the 2015 Tobacco Products Directive (TPD for short) steered through the European Parliament by Yorkshire MEP Linda McAven and then ignorantly - quite literally as she'd no idea what she was voting on - agreed to by the UK's Public Health Minister (then Anna Soubry MP) at the Council of Ministers. In the latter case after the amendments removing some of the anti-vaping provisions of the TPD were ignored by the European Commission in its recommendations to that Council.

But given there's a debate about our membership of the EU going on out there, I'm going to hold fire on all that for another post nearer the June 23 referendum date. Instead I think that the UK Government has sufficient grounds - evidential grounds - for saying to the European Commission and our EU partners that it would be a mistake to enact the regulations. Not only does the UK Government have the independent report produced by Public Health England that demonstrated how vaping is at least 95% less harmful than smoking but today we also have a comprehensive report from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) building on this evidence:

The RCP report, published yesterday, acknowledged the need for proportionate regulation but said rules should not be allowed to significantly inhibit the development and use of harm-reduction products, such as e-cigarettes.

The RCP said the long-term negative effects from vaping were ‘unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco’.

The regulations under the TPD - bans on advertising, product strength limits, volume controls for e-liquids and an onerous product approval process - in effect put e-cigarettes into the same position as smoking with the result that smaller producers and many retailers of vaping products will simply close. Only the biggest producers and the e-cigarette brands owned by tobacco companies will be able to survive. Vaping is, in effect, denormalised in the same manner that public health has approached the control of smoking. It's true that vaping will still be cheaper (although the EU is discussing imposing taxes on vaping products) but it will no longer have a visible high street presence as a much safer alternative to smoking.

The Government should simply say to the EU that the evidence is that, while the TPD as a whole will benefit public health, it would be even more of a benefit if vaping was allowed to develop freely as an alternative to smoking. Indeed the Department for Health's own impact assessment says just this:

Its impact assessment (pdf) on EU rules to be enshrined in UK law also acknowledges that higher costs for e-cigarette manufactures could lead to price increases and reduction of choice for consumers, leading people to switch back to smoking, which public health experts regard as far more dangerous.

It recognises too that regulations might create new barriers for small- and medium-sized companies, a concern that comes as public health doctors warned of possible consequences from tobacco giants becoming more involved in making e-cigarettes.

The TPD effectively leaves the vaping market to be captured by large companies able to deal with the cost of approval and regulation, which amounts to capture by either or both of the pharmaceuticals industry or big tobacco companies (far be it from me to suggest that this might just explain the enormous investment from these two sectors in lobbying the EU, MEPs and Governments over the TPD). This is not in the interests of public health, small businesses trading legally now but unable to once the regulations arrive or the two-and-a-half million former smokers now getting pleasure from vaping.

I hold out little hope here. But it would be a sensible government that saw when something is wrong and changed what it is doing accordingly.

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Quote of the day - tax fraud as a thought crime

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Quite amazing:

Despite this new evidence providing the artist had paid his taxes, Nerdrum was sentenced in June 2014 to one year in prison for tax fraud after the case had been appealed twice “because he had admitted to considering evading his taxes,” says Molesky.

All-in-all a strange story involving Icelandic citizenship, allegations of state corruption and the mixing of paint by an artist with the splendid name, Odd Nerdrum. Plus an arcane "when is a painting a new painting or an old painting" debate. It does appear that the artist paid his taxes in full through a scheme that could be used to avoid taxes.

Governments, dontcha just love 'em!
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You want less corruption? You need smaller not bigger government for that.

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This is what we must guard against yet is exactly what those who take the 'who will build the roads' line on government.




Government must be limited - in its size and in its powers - to prevent it becoming a protection racket for the select few, for the connected and powerful. I am always aghast when I see those concerned with corruption who see the solution in giving more power to politicians and the officials they appoint. They attack those like me who believe in small government and are blind to how the rules, taxes and controls they love are meat and drink to the powerful.

If you want a fairer society, if you want a less corrupt society then you should reject the idea of big government, high taxes and constricting regulation. Support freedom not authority folks.

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So is it democracy or a chimera of democracy?

The EU's approach to decision-making that is?

As I understand it, the European Commission is the bit of the EU that proposes the legislation. It does this on the instigation of either or both of the Council of Ministers or the European Parliament. And off its own bat.

The Commission doesn't make the decision. That is for the EU's weird bicameral system - a majority in the Parliament plus, usually, a qualified majority in the Council of Ministers is necessary for the Commission's proposals to become law. The Parliament is elected and the Council of Ministers (again usually) consists of elected people although those people are not elected to the Council.

It's a little more complicated than this because, as vapers discovered, the Council of Ministers can (and does) amend the proposed legislation approved by Parliament. This process is call 'trialogue' and is described by Transparency International:

As we pointed out in our EU Integrity Study, the meetings are a major transparency black hole where large concessions are won and lost with very little oversight and without public disclosure. In the vast majority of cases, Parliament’s plenary vote serves only to rubber stamp the deals secured by a handful of negotiators from each institution, side-lining 99% of MEPs in the process. Even the Parliament’s own internal strategy document recognises that transparency has been traded off against efficiency and there is need for reform.

In theory this is about ironing out the process but, as we saw with the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), it can be used to put back into the legislation things that the Parliament has removed. And remember that the parties to these discussions do not automatically include the proposers of amendments approved by Parliament. In practice, what the Council of Ministers and Commission wants gets passed regardless of Parliament's wishes.

The final part of all this is whether 'we the people can kick the bastards out' - does the public voting bit of the system allow any change. It's clear that the Commission and Council of Ministers are only affected by a series of domestic elections in individual member countries as they are entirely - albeit for different reasons - appointed structures. And while the Parliament is directly elected so could be subject to change, it is pretty clear that not only is it a fairly unchanging body but it also has little or no power to affect institutional change since it cannot propose laws, does not have the final decision on those laws, and cannot insist that its democratic mandate takes precedent.

The inability of Parliament to enforce democracy or transparency (even assuming this was something it desired) demonstrates that the EU is not recognisably a democracy. This is compounded by most members of the European Parliament (MEPs) perceiving their role as being European courtiers fluttering round the grandees of the EU. Access to this decision-making process for non-corporates - again as vapers discovered - is extremely difficult since the entire system, typical of a court, is geared towards engaging with organised corporate representation whether that is business, NGO or professional lobbyist.

So in summary we have a system that lacks transparency, where the decisions of democratic (or seemingly democratic) bodies can be overturned in secret, where access to power is restricted by the lobby and by organisational gatekeepers, and where there is no mechanism for removing our rulers or prospect of those rulers introducing such a mechanism.

At university I recall studying the political regimes of The Phillipines, Indonesia, Malaysia and pre-Communist Cambodia. My politics lecturer, Dr Oey Hong Lee, described these polities as 'pseudo-democracies' - places where elections are held, where there are all the trappings of a democracy (parliaments, votes, prime ministers, opposition) but where this is all window dressing for business-as-usual cronyism. The same politicians remain in power either because of a rigid ethno-politics as in Malaysia, because the ruling party is endorsed by monarchy (Thailand, Cambodia), or because the system is designed to look like a democracy without actually being one (Phillipines, Indonesia).

This is, without question, what we see with the European Union. It has all the symbols of a democracy, indeed that word is seldom far from the lips of political and corporate leaders, but the system is geared towards either processing agreement between 28 individual nations - a sort of rolling treaty programme - or else serving the needs of influential groups and especially sectoral lobbies with powerful corporate backing (farming, industry, banking, health). But what the EU is not, is what most folk see as democratic. The Union falls down on the very basics - that people we elect make the decisions, that decisions are transparent and open to challenge, and that the people have the collective power to change our rules.

It is not democracy. It is a chimera of democracy.

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Sucker Taxes - how we're fooled into believing a tax is good for us

Let's get one thing out of the way. The new impost on fizzy drinks isn't a public health measure it's a tax raising measure. Not a single pound from a single child will be shed because of this new tax. But HM Treasury will have £500m to splurge on a whole load of nannying interferences dubbed 'school sport'. There'll be - if there isn't one already - a new national agency, School Sport England, created to spend the money. It will have a well paid chief executive and some flash offices somewhere in either central London or a shiny regenerated city centre like Bristol, Brighton or Norwich. And it will have a chairman who used to be a (sort of) well known runner, swimmer or rower.

The 'sugar tax' as this measure has been dubbed (at least the Mexicans got their description right by calling theirs a soda tax) will join a load of other measures - from stamp duty through to insurance levies - that are, in as far as this applies to any tax, popular. Over the past couple of years, a coalition of public health agitators have banged on about sugar creating the belief in the public mind that, compared to other ingredients, 'sugar' (and especially that product of chthonic cunning, 'hidden sugar') is peculiarly bad for us. Add to this a campaign by Jamie Oliver of egregious misinformation and weapons-grade hypocrisy and the result is that the public will accept the imposition of a tax on sugar - or rather a specific tax on the special kind of bad sugar that only appears in cheap fizzy pop.

The wedge has been rammed into a crack - one created essentially by the lies of public health campaigners and self-serving celebrities like Jamie Oliver - in the food business. We can now expect an avalanche of further proposals - advertising bans, health warnings, taxes on confectionery, duties on table sugars, the banning of free sugar in cafes and coffee shops, and the further deappetising of school dinners to the point where they're little more than tasteless pap with half a flavourless apple on the side. In the same way that fast food takeaways, for no evidential reason, are being banned near schools, we will see planning controls extended to sweet shops, bakers, cake shops and ice cream vans.

And none of these measures, not a single one, will result in any child losing any weight. But they will result in a new industry funded by taxes on the bad things, and more opportunities to nanny the pleasure out of being a child. Once sugar in food has been taxed to the hilt and given that the illusory 'obesity crisis' will still be with us, public health campaigners and assorted nannies will move on to another ingredient. It might be fat. It might be grains. Maybe red meat. Sausages. Bacon. Cheese.

They'll churn out hundreds of poorly researched, badly referenced, scientifically inaccurate articles for the sort of journals that used to publish real science but now realise that propagating illusory health scares is a better business than science. Newspapers, magazines, TV shows and the new industry funded by the sugar tax will leap on this crappy pseudo-science to push for more taxes, bans, controls and limitations.And the taxman will rub his hands with ill-concealed glee as the public is suckered again into believing paying more taxes on everyday ingredients is good for their health - or rather good for the health of the children.

These are the sucker taxes of tomorrow - measure after measure sold to us as a public health benefit but, when stripped to essentials, nothing of the sort. Just taxes. Just new ways of extracting money from the public to squander on the deranged priorities of the Church of Public Health, its acolytes and useful idiots in the media or celebrity-land. This sugar tax is an object lesson in Colbert's law - we are the goose and we're letting the taxman pluck a load of feathers. Worse still we think this is good for us!

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The accountability of markets and governments - lessons from a Keighley cafe

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In positioning themselves in opposition to states, tech giants have taken on certain state-like characteristics. “If you look at Google and Microsoft, they don’t just have the power of states, they even organise themselves like states,” says Brown. “Microsoft has a foreign service that negotiates with foreign governments.” Facebook has its own internal counter-terrorism unit.

It seems that some people are getting hot and bothered about the way in which big tech firms are behaving. This is prompted, in part, by popular decisions such as Apple's refusal to crack an iPhone at the behest of the FBI. Now while some people - mostly from the populist left (the sorts who applaud at the wholesale theft of private property) - are agitated about big business taking on the sort of hegemonic role normally reserved for governments, I'm rather more interested in the extent to which this approach challenges our model of representative democracy by presenting accountability via customers and markets rather than via elections.

Democratic systems evolved because people demanded a say over the decisions affecting them - "no taxation without representation" absolutely captures the principle of democracy. But in accepting this model for government, we also accept its limits - limits beautifully captured by this little piece about a cafe in Keighley:

A STRUGGLING Keighley cafe owner has been threatened with prison if she does not hand over cash for the town’s new Business Improvement District.

BID bosses have demanded Janet Croden, who runs wartime-themed Forteas in North Street, pay £97 to a special fund for town centre promotion and improvements.

The BID, which is run by local businesses, also has the power to make Mrs Croden bankrupt or seize her property if she fails to pay up.

Mrs Croden said that last autumn when Keighley businesses were asked to vote for or against setting up the BID, she could not see how Forteas would benefit.

I'm not here arguing for or against the imposition of this additional tax on Ms Croden's cafe merely pointing out that it shows us the limitations of democracy as a system. Having voted for the additional tax, Keighley's businesses (or rather the local council on their behalf) are able to insist that all businesses pay up regardless of whether they supported the proposal.

I'm guessing that our tech progressives who believe Apple et al are too over-powerful are quite happy with Keighley's little business democracy. But what they're not asking is whether a system founded on decisions freely made in an open market makes authority (and for the sake of argument we'll say Facebook, Google and Apple are, in this context, authority) more or less accountable than is the case with a system based on representative democracy. This isn't a question about ownership but rather a question about market power and whether that is exercised by us as consumers or by the big businesses as big businesses. And, as the tech progressives make clear, the loser in all this is the state:

However, tech giants have something new: millions of loyal customers, many of whom choose to side with companies over their government. This is especially true in the dispute about privacy and encryption. In this light, Apple is protecting its citizens.

It's also true that these progressives are now likely to work with the state in attacking these large consumer-based powers - for example by scuppering free (or pretty near free) internet access for millions of poor people in India. The apparatus of government is used to prevent one of these new powers from acting positively essentially for reasons of protectionism (which is all so-called 'net neutrality' is really):

While it acknowledged some “positive effects” of differential pricing, TRAI said that “differential tariffs arguably disadvantage small content providers who may not be able to participate in such schemes.

“This may thus, create entry barriers and non-level playing field for these players, stifling innovation. In addition, TSPs may start promoting their own web sites/apps/services platforms by giving lower rates for accessing them.”

The beneficiaries here aren't India's consumers but a small group of Indians with the capability of offering ISP services. And, while the core context is the myth of net neutrality, the wider issue takes us back to government and it's capture by producer interests. What saddens me most in all of this is that those producer interests have persuaded a group of activists - I've dubbed them tech progressives - that a more expensive, industry-dominated web is better than a cheaper, consumer-focused web.

Returning to the theme we started with - is Apple more or less accountable than the US government - we can see an emerging discussion that places the exercise of consumer preference and power in direct competition to government and to a group in society who have historically seen themselves as champions of 'people power', the progressive left. It's pretty safe to say that neither the FBI nor Apple are especially accountable but Apple has one advantage - you and I don't have to be one of its customers. If you live and work in the USA, you've no choice as to whether you're the 'customer' of the US government and its agencies.

It's the difference between the Keighley cafe owner freely agreeing to pay into a marketing agreement to promote the town and her being coerced into paying because she was outvoted in a referendum.

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