Quote of the day...the "Green New Deal"

From Tim Newman:

Yesterday Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled the Green New Deal, her plan to transform America by combining technologies not yet invented with those of Iron Age man, leaving out everything in the middle. If implemented it will make the USA look like the Soviet Union, only run by the sort of people who shop in organic food stores and collect their own stools to spread on the rhubarb.

 AOC is a force to be reckoned with - attractive, articulate, enthusiastic - but the policies she urges direct the USA down a path of chaos, the sort of zero-carbon world that only the loopiest of carbon-based lifeforms would advocate.

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The Cheese Toastie - gateway drug to motorcycle gangsterism

I am grateful that Bristol Council is on the case - what would we do without such folk:

Cheese toasties have been banned from sale in a Bristol park amid fears a proposed hot food van could attract booze-fuelled antisocial behaviour and motorbike gangs.

Where would we be without the sort of councillor brave enough to face up to the Dark Evil of the Toastie. The nation would be riddled with booze-fuelled motor-cyclists and other ne'er-do-wells. Here is our heroic councillor Claire Hiscott:

“It’s right next to Orchard School, which is a challenging school that sometimes has a problem with keeping kids in school. They have to have patrols of staff to make sure kids don’t walk off site. The lure of a food concession may encourage kids to take a little walk. The school has made a lot of effort to encourage healthy eating. We have problems with childhood obesity. Historically we had antisocial behaviour, not just motorbikes, from young adults gathering with alcohol and causing a disturbance."

What a load of nonsense and typical of the attitude of too many councillors (and a fair few local residents) to young people. Do they really think that having a van selling cheese toasties is going to turn sweet innocent school kids into obese, booze-crazed motor cycle gangsters?

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Stupid regulation and dumb government - why Detroit isn't regenerating

This piece from Scott Beyer sums up the problem with local government's default approach to business regulation - banning stuff:

The city has begun reinforcing regulations that, because of bureaucratic disorganization, have long been ignored. Central to this is the Operation Compliance Initiative, which was passed in 2012 by then-Mayor Dave Bing to regulate Detroit’s 1,500 illegal unlicensed businesses. Most operate on extremely low profits and, like the Browns’ project, are often run out of homes. Part of a complex underground economy, they are usually in poor areas. They offer everything from auto parts and electrical equipment, to basic retail and in-house dining—but they all have failed to meet the permitting and licensing requirements mandated by the city and the state of Michigan.

My city of Bradford isn't a broken as Detroit but we're just as dumb - banning A-Boards, charging upwards from £500 to put some chairs on the pavement, stopping taxi firms collaborating to compete with ride-share apps, imposing onerous planning restrictions on security, enforcing use classes to prevent innovation, banning takeaway food anywhere near schools. I guess we're probably no more unfriendly to business innovators than most other cities but, frankly, many of those can get away with it. Bradford, like Detroit, is damaged by these overzealous regulators and dumb rules.

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Minimum pricing for alcohol - stupid and immoral in equal measure

The Welsh government has (having tiptoed back from banning e-cigs) decided that it's keen on introducing a minimum unit price for alcohol:

A law to set a minimum price for selling alcohol in Wales has been unveiled.

Ministers believe tackling excessive drinking could save a life a week and mean 1,400 fewer hospital admissions a year.

Pricing is seen as a "missing link" in public health efforts, alongside better awareness and treatment.

Under a 50p-a-unit formula, a typical can of cider would be at least £1 and a bottle of wine at least £4.69.

A typical litre of vodka, for example, would have to cost more than £20.

The Welsh Government has not yet decided what the price will be, however.

This policy is popular with the New Puritans and temperance campaigners who populate public health departments these days. And, sadly, politicians who should know better cluster around these officious fussbuckets thinking that 'clamping down on drinking' is, in some way, a good idea and popular.

But minimum unit pricing is, in equal measure, stupid and immoral. Here's why stupid:

Alex Loveland, a recovering alcoholic who supports people with dependency, is worried that it will not help them.

"They're going to try to get alcohol by any means necessary and I think it will put more strain on very underprivileged people," he said.

So here's a fellow who, I guess, knows a little bit about problem drinking. Imagine the typical alcoholic - faced with more expensive booze, what are they going to do? The idiot fussbuckets who are proposing a minimum unit price think this:

"The most substantial effects will be experienced by harmful and hazardous drinkers, who are more likely to consume cheaper and higher-strength alcohol products." 

Yes folks, these people think an alcoholic is going to drink less because the price goes up. You know, I've a feeling that addictive demand is pretty inelastic - just a guess but if I've a compulsive need for booze, I'm going to fail to feed the kids before I don't get that booze. The policy is stupid.

It doesn't make any difference how you look at this outcome, it is also immoral to propose a policy that has such an effect. To introduce any public policy that, by design, results in more risk and more harm for vulnerable people cannot be justified. Plenty of public policy (any examination of our benefits system over time shows this) has unintended and harmful negative affects but most of it is not harmful by design. Minimum unit pricing is intended to increase risk and harm among problem drinkers - it is its sole purpose. Or rather among those problem drinkers who can't afford £20 for a bottle of vodka, which I suspect is a minority of such drinkers.

Others will point out that this policy of targeting only cheaper drink is an attack on the less well off. On the poor old man who buys a couple of the cheapest cans to drink on Sunday afternoon while he watches the racing on the telly. Or the single mum on benefits with two kids who gets respite from them on a Thursday and celebrates with a bottle of Lambrini, some cheap snacks and reality TV.

Us better off folk will be fine. We'll still be able to afford malt whisky and craft beer. And we'll feel better - or so the public health nannies think - knowing we've dealt with the problem by making poor people pay more for their moderate drinking. As I said - stupid and immoral.

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In which the medical profession reminds us how monumentally stupid it is

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Seriously these doctors are utterly ignorant, they have not the first conception of human behaviour:

Norway's biggest medical organisation wants to ban the sale of cigarettes to adults.

In a drive towards a smoke-free society by 2035, the Norwegian Medical Association (NMA) is pressing the government to back its proposal for a ban on tobacco sales to citizens born after the year 2000.

What could go wrong here? Right now it's anyone younger than 16 which I'm guess means they can't buy fags anyway. They do however have friends who are 17 and can buy fags. And since the stupid doctors don't intend to ban possession of cigarettes, this secondary market (doubtless a pretty profitable one) still exists and won't go away until the last of those 17 year olds has died in about eighty years time. All this, of course, is without the capacity of Norwegians to pop to Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland, the Baltic States from where they can bring back - perfectly legally - loads of cigarettes.

Fortunately Norway has some politicians with a modicum of common sense:

Yet despite the NMA's hopes, health spokespeople for the Conservative, Labour, Centre and Christian Democrats parties in the country told Aftenposten the idea was not currently feasible.

Indeed the idea will never be feasible. In other news teen smoking in most places - including Norway and the UK - is at its lowest ever level. Something that's down to vaping and nothing to do with public health at all. Not that the health fascists and nannying fussbuckets will ever admit to this.

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Urban vertical farming is a really stupid idea...

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Yet the ability of its promoters to sucker government and other investors is striking:

These factors, however, have not prevented New Jersey’s government dreamers from subsidizing what hopes to be the world’s largest-producing vertical farm. As the New York Times noted on Tuesday, the city of Newark and the state of New Jersey, both heavily indebted, have provided $9 million in grants and tax credits to build one in the city’s Ironbound district. Further financing will come from the urban investment arm of Goldman Sachs. The farm will be built by the RBH Group on the site of a former steel plant, and operated by the company AeroFarms. Along with being viewed as a job-creation and neighborhood revitalization tool, the indoor facility will grow crops using LED bulbs and aeroponics. Perhaps in an ode to the smart set who embrace such ideas, the farm will grow two million pounds of arugula and kale.

The total project cost will be arounf $39 million to create around an acre of indoor farmland - a place where growing is promoted with expensive (to install and to run) aeroponics and lamps. Right now farmland in New Jersey is selling for around $10-15,000 per acre.

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Things famous economist, Brad Delong says that are utterly wrong...

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Brad Delong is a famous economist. He wrote this - it is utterly wrong:

And yet there are few signs that working- and middle-class Americans are living any better than they did 35 years ago.

Does this man - who was a top advisor to Bill Clinton and is Chair of Economics at a leading US university - really believe this for a second?

We - and I include working and middle class Americans in all this - are living much better than we were 35 years ago. This is a fact - back in 1980 let's consider what we didn't have that all those middle-class Americans take for granted now:

The Internet and the World Wide Web
Mobile phones - indeed 'smartphones' that are really little computers
Microwave ovens
Satellite navigation and mapping
Instant payment by card
Lycra
Home delivery for groceries

Feel free to add to this list - there are literally thousands of things we didn't dream of having back in 1980. And then consider those things people had back then but which are vastly better today - cars, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, hair products, music reproduction, telephones, air travel and central heating to name just a few. Our domestic machines are faster, more fuel efficient, have more capacity, better features and cost relative less than they did back in 1980.

And this is before we get to things like food, fuel and travel being cheaper relative to income. The only big black mark is housing. And nearly all of that is down to the stupidity of big government idiots like Delong.

To put this simply, Brad Delong is talking (not for the first time) complete drivel.

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Corsham is, of course, a hotbed of militancy and extremism...

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Corsham is a quiet, unspoilt town where peacocks wander freely around the streets! It owes its prosperity to the wool trade and quarrying of golden Bath stone, brought to life in the town's heritage centre.

Discover the wealth of beautiful and historic buildings including Corsham Court, 17th Century Flemish buildings, Lady Margaret Hungerford Almshouses, weavers cottages, old inns and the elegant Town Hall. 

OK this comes from 'Visit Wiltshire' who are obviously going to put a positive spin on the town. The truth could be that the town is riven with community tensions and a hotbed of violent extremists seeking out people who might have bought the wrong kind of magazine or displayed the wrong sort of cartoon:

“A police officer visited a local shop and post office in Corsham to make an assessment of community tensions and, if appropriate, encourage the newsagent’s owner to be vigilant. During this conversation the officer requested information about subscribers to the Charlie Hebdo magazine."

Now (and we know the newsagent retails that source of evil, The Guardian) it's clear that Wiltshire Police were on the look out for the subversive sort - like 77-year old Anne Keat - who, by buying the 'commemorative' issue of Charlie Hebdo, threaten the peace and stability of the nation.

Part of me takes the view that, once again, we're reminded that the police really don't have enough to do. But worse a police officer felt it OK to ask for the names of people who had bought a perfectly legal product as part of an "assessment of community tensions". And - even worse - that the newsagent didn't simply tell the police officer that he could sod off.

Finally, what sort of tipple does the Wiltshire chief constable inbibe to make him think tasking "officers across the county to assess community tensions" makes any sense in a place like Corsham where community tensions are almost entirely absent? Unless it's about the peacocks, of course.

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Can't afford organic grub? Eat less says green socialist millionaire...

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Ah, Vivienne Westwood - revealing her green credentials again (and stuff the poor):

Dame Vivienne Westwood, the fashion designer, has declared that people who can’t afford to buy organic food should "eat less" and stop getting fat.

The millionaire designer made the comments as she delivered a petition to Downing Street protesting about genetically modified food.

When a BBC Radio 5 Live interviewer suggested that "not everybody can afford to eat organic food", Dame Vivienne replied: "Eat less!"

Such a caring attitude to the less well off! But then that's millionaire socialists for you!

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Allowing barn conversions won't help provide housing. Really?

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Or so says Sarah Wollaston (that she is a Conservative MP makes me want to weep) presumably following a meeting with the folk who want her local National Park to be an unchanging place where only the wealthy can afford to live:

The average house price within the Dartmoor national park is in excess of £270,000; nine times the median local income and over sixteen times incomes in the lowest quartile. The chance of finding affordable rented accommodation is also grim, and the situation is forcing out young people and families with serious consequences for rural communities.

An increase in housing supply will do nothing to reduce prices if it caters for an entirely different demand. The proposals would allow for new developments to be almost twice the guideline size for affordable housing. Rather than meeting a genuine need they would unleash a second and luxury homes bonanza, creating yet more ghost villages and hamlets inhabited only at weekends or in season.

So what exactly are these changes? Well the main one is this:

 In brief the new measures would:

• Allow up to 3 additional dwelling houses (which includes flats) to be converted on an agricultural unit.
• Enable the physical development necessary to allow for the conversion, and where appropriate the demolition and rebuild, of the property on the same footprint.
• Include prior approval for siting and design to ensure physical development complies with local plan policies on design, materials and outlook.
• Include prior approval for transport and highways impact, noise impact, contamination and flood risks to ensure that change of use takes place only in sustainable locations.

The new proposed changes will only apply to buildings constructed prior 20th March 2013, but will also include properties within the boundaries of the National Parks, AONB’s and other conservation areas. 

That's it folks. Owners of redundant agricultural buildings can (subject to complying with rules on design, materials, outlook, highways impact, noise, contamination and flood risk) go ahead an build without the need for planning permission.

I really can't see the problem, indeed I wrote about the stupidity of blocking conversions to residential nearly two years ago pointing out that this could deliver 500 new homes in my ward without any 'take' from green belt or loss of openness.

Dr Wollaston's other moan is about affordable housing and the rural exemption policy. This policy, in effect, allows the breaking of green belt rules because there is no other way of delivering small scale affordable housing developments:

Where the landowner knows there is no possibility of selling to developers at open market housing rates, affordable housing is cross-subsidised by a small percentage of open market value properties.

Of course this policy still exists and housing associations are still able to secure developments on exemption sites. Nothing has changed except that the potential supply of market housing is increased. Not, as the scaremongers are saying, by the 'suburbanisation' of the countryside, but by existing and unused buildings being turned into homes. Seems to me this is a good thing?

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On blocking access...a slight rant

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I sent an email entitled "a slight rant". It went like this:

Hi,

Corporate Overview & Scrutiny are running a review of drugs and alcohol work in the district. The Council spends some £12 million every year on this work with similar amounts spent by health services. That's a lot of money and some important services.

 

However, if I want to do a little research into drugs policy - look at the case for deregulation or at some of the work being done by charities and health services maybe...

 

...I can't because the Council blocks just about every site and I'm not going to keep sending requests to the 'infosec' address.

 

I'm a grown up. I am not about to start up a drugs peddling site nor am I about to use council IT to make or promote the illegal purchase of drugs. The presence of drugs references - or alcohol or smoking, for that matter - on my screen is not about to turn me into some sort of crack-addled speed freak.

 

What exactly are we doing? Who exactly are we protecting? And how am I to do my job?

 

Many thanks

 

Simon

Nothing to add to this but am I alone in finding this stuff utterly maddening.

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An e-cig tale from Bradford Councillor Imran Khan - sometimes I despair

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I was in the local paper being quoted about e-cigs. This followed the awful decision of West Yorkshire Metro to ban vaping on buses and in bus stations. I'd written a letter - here's an excerpt:

Forcing e-cigarette users out into the cold and wet with regular smokers is a stupid idea and one that will merely encourage people to go back to smoking regular – and much more dangerous – cigarettes.

Perhaps Metro and its partners would care to explain how they justify this ban, especially since there is no secondary or sidestream smoke risk and the devices are acting to reduce the users harm from smoking.

I suspect the argument will be as crass as “well it looks like smoking”, which is frankly pathetic. 

This prompted a little article where Bradford Councillor, Imran Hussein, a vaper, said this:

 “I think there’s a big difference between traditional smoking and vaping. If there wasn’t, there would be no need for me to use an e-cigarette. But it’s a matter of public perception.

“I think the sight of adults vaping could encourage children to try cigarettes. If they see vaping as not harmful, it could be the first step to smoking.”

The man is an idiot - doesn't he realise that it's the very similarity with smoking that makes vaping work? And am I the only one who finds the who "it looks like smoking, it must be bad" argument a little tiresome? There is precisely no evidence to suggest that e-cigs are dangerous to health but the BMA and others among the health fascists persist in pretending that somehow these things are scary.

E-cigs are saving lives. This is really all you need to know about them. Millions of people have switched from lethal cigarettes to take up vaping. And that's millions of people less likely to be in the lung cancer and heart attack queue. Isn't that what we want?

Sometimes I despair

Update: The eagle-eyed will spot I made an error - got the wrong Imran! The Council Deputy Leader is a vaper (so an easy mistake) and is called Imran. Nothing much to add except 'oops sorry'!

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Advertising doesn't cause riots, make people gamble or cause revolution!

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She said she was particularly concerned about gambling advertising before the 9pm watershed and went as far as saying that "excessive marketing" had been a factor in 2011’s London riots, when looters had gone in criminal search of expensive trainer brands.

Read that very carefully. What Helen Goodman (for it is she) is saying here is that some of society's problems - in this case gambling and rioting - can be laid at the the door of advertising. This is clearly illiberal, when it comes to gambling certainly judgemental, but worst of all is utterly ignorant of advertising and marketing and what it does.

It makes me incredibly cross that people like Helen Goodman (who is a leftie but not everyone who wants bans or controls on advertising and marketing is such) simply fail to understand that commercial speech is still 'speech'. And that it is as worthy of us defending it as any other form of speech. I know that Helen probably read 'No Logo' a few years back and has signed up to the Naomi Klein school, that "brands are the work of Satan" line, but the truth is that marketing communications are a tiny proportion of all the communications we receive every day.

If someone like Helen Goodman is going to stand up and talk about advertising, to propose legislative intervention of some kind, then the least we can expect is that some effort has been made to understand the business of marketing. Let's start with whether advertising increases aggregate demand, what we might call the 'false demand' hypothesis:

“The null hypothesis that advertising does not cause consumption cannot be rejected, but some evidence that consumption may cause advertising is presented.”

Unwrapping the academic language this research says that advertising doesn't (in aggregate) cause demand and may even be caused by consumption. Funnily enough us advertising and marketing folk have known this for years - most of our advertising isn't about creating demand it's about us not losing our bit of that demand. As I wrote a while ago:

Why should I spend my client’s scarce cash on making the market bigger – promoting sausages rather than Fred’s Grand Yorkshire Sausage, The Champion on Your Plate?

This isn't to say that an advertisement has never prompted someone to buy something they haven't bought before but it is to say that there isn't a strong connection between advertising and demand growth. To illustrate this, here's a graph of US cigarette advertising against cigarette consumption:

If you can find some sort of causal link here you're a better man than I am!

If shadow ministers (or government ministers for that matter) are going to pass opinion about advertising and marketing - rather than merely court a headline - then they really should start to understand what marketing does and how advertising works. And that it's as much a part of free speech as their address to the house or my torrent of tweets.

And if Helen Goodman wants to know about the revolution - it won't be televised you know!

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Today's nannying jobsworth...

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Via Arfur Daley on Facebook:

Fires at an historic city centre pub will have to be put out after a landlord was told it was causing pollution following a passer-by's complaint about smoke in the street.

Graham Rowson, 60, has traditionally lit three fires for customers at his real ale bar so they can keep warm over the Christmas period.

But officials at Preston City Council have now said his 115-year-old Black Horse pub is pumping out fumes - putting it in breach of smokeless zone rules.

Apparently someone (anonymously) complained and the Council leapt into action to force a chilly Christmas onto a popular pub.

It makes you want to cry - such thoughtless, uncaring intervention based on nothing more than the word of some busybody.

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...and these people might be in government?

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Save us.

Helen Goodman, Labour's shadow minister for media reform, reached further back into history to illustrate her point, comparing the internet to a lawless 13th Century forest.

"It would be quite wrong if we were to preserve a special place within the law, where the net could be outside the law. The net today should not be like the forest in the 13th Century.

"Robin Hood and the outlaws - they were called that because they were outside the law - that was not a sustainable position in the 13th Century and it's not a sustainable position now."

Leave aside the ignorant definition of "outlaw", where exactly is the "net" outside the law? Nowhere - all the laws on libel, hate speech and so forth apply.

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Simon Jenkins proposes the stupidest response to terrorism ever...

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I'm not joking. Simon Jenkins - usually a fairly thoughtful journalist was clearly drugged or drunk when he wrote this:

The slaughter of Christians in Peshawar this weekend showed that wherever crowds gather they are vulnerable to any group with a brainwashed youth and a bomb. It might be sensible to discourage like-minded crowds from gathering in one place, be they co-religionists or party faithful or merely the wealthy.

I am at a loss for words. And Jenkins then makes is worse by saying we shouldn't build shopping malls because they might be a terrorist target. I'm assuming that Simon would also close football stadiums, large hotels, nightclubs, markets, mosques and beaches?

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This week's star nannying fussbucket - Newcastle City Council

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It had to start somewhere. And where else than in Newcastle where, it seems that that Council really doesn't like it's working-class population to enjoy a drink:

Newcastle City Council has introduced a minimum unit price condition for all new licences and applications for licence variation across the on and off-trade.

Now, leaving aside the dubious legality of these proposals, this demonstrates just how little Newcastle Council understands anything other than signalling a disapproval of less well-off people affording to have a drink.

The sad thing about these proposals - and the Council gets round not having the authority to dictate prices by claiming they are 'voluntary' - is that the Council claims that this policy will help pubs. Quite how this works heaven alone knows - we could discuss the myth of "pre-loading" but no-one is listening. People in Newcastle - and everywhere else for that matter - aren't going to pubs because they can't afford it and they can smoke at home.

If the City Council as its spokesman, one Stephen Savage, claims this will help pubs why on earth is it the first Council to clobber those pubs with a late night levy.

Nope, this is government by gesture. It won't save a single life. It won't reduce the amount of booze drunk (because they can't impose the policy on supermarkets as they can afford the lawyers). All it will do is make a bit of extra margin for those signing up and piss off Geordie drinkers.

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EU regulations - we shouldn't laugh...we should cry...

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Chris Snowdon reminds us of the lunacy that is EU regulation:

For example, the Commission wants to ban cigarette packs which are 54 mm wide, but will allow packs that are 55 mm wide (and only 55 mm wide). It will allow cigarettes to be sold if they have a diameter of 7.5 mm, but no more and no less than 7.5 mm. Only cigarettes which have a flip top lid will be allowed. Menthol cigarettes will be arbitrarily banned. Cylindrical rolling tobacco tins will be banned, but rectangular pouches will be tolerated. Packs of 20 will be OK, but packs of 19 will be illegal.

There will be some cod public health reason for each of the daft proposals. But, the complete picture is of an organisation so far up its bureaucratic backside that it simply doesn't comprehend how it destroys freedom, choice and independence.

And it's not a joke - however much we want to laugh about bent cucumbers or straight bananas. The result of this endless rule-making is to allow those with the cash to buy politicians or bureaucrats or the time to camp out in Brussels the power to damage our interests while pursuing their profits, prejudice or power.

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Stupid, stupid, murderously stupid...

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It was going to happen, they were going to get their way, they couldn't allow e-cigarettes to succeed. So they've set about killing them:

"Reducing the harms of smoking to smokers and those around them is a key Government health priority. Our research has shown that existing electronic cigarettes and other nicotine containing products on the market are not good enough to meet this public health priority.

“Some NCPs are already licensed and the Government's decision to work towards medicines licensing for all these products is designed to deliver quality products that will support smokers to cut down and to quit.

“The decision announced today provides a framework that will enable good quality products to be widely available. It’s not about banning products that some people find useful, it’s about making sure that smokers have an effective alternative that they can rely on to meet their needs."

Some 1.3 million people have already switched to e-cigarettes. To stop this process is stupid.

It's stupid because e-cigarettes are 99% safer than smoking regular cigarettes

It's stupid because e-cigarettes are not a medicine - unless a cup of coffee is a medicine

It's murderously stupid because it means that people will die unnecessarily.

But then it never was about health, was it.

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Racists and left-wing thugs can march but the Scouts can't! The world is mad.

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When the EDL came to Bradford there were 1700 police manning the barricades so to speak. Not to mention the endless hours of meetings, planning and general fussing over the occasion. Indeed, the professional leadership of the Council can't shut up telling us what a brilliant job they did!

But it seems that an entirely violence free and peaceful march through the City has maybe seen its last steps:

Scouts have held a parade in the city to celebrate St George, the patron saint of Scouting, for decades. But the police has told them it can no longer oversee the march for free, as its national guidelines had changed. 

Now let's be clear about this shall we? The decision is entirely a local decision, the scouts march along the public highway on a Sunday once a year. This is just a daft - pointless, purposeless, bureaucratic and soul-less - decision made wholly in West Yorkshire.

And it is wrong. Wrong that decent folk - men, women, boys and girls - have to pay for a couple of coppers when the protester, the union activist, the racist and the anarchist get their policing for free,

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