Truth - everyone is doing better here than anybody has ever done

I'll admit to finding Jordan Peterson a little irritating (and maybe a tad puritan) but this is absolutely true:

"Everyone is doing better here than anybody has ever done on the face of the planet throughout recorded history, and the whole West is like that!" he told me. "To call that all a tyrannical patriarchy is indicative of a very deep resentment and ahistorical ignorance that's so profound that it's indistinguishable from willful blindness."

Amidst all the cries of poverty and austerity, we should keep reminding ourselves - as Barak Obama observed - that if someone in the West is given the whole of history to choose the best time to be born, they should choose now. We have become trapped in a sort of depressive ennui about our societies, focused only on their failings and, worse still, blaming those failings on the success.

Every problem from teenage pregnancy through drug addiction to problems with train timetables is blamed on capitalism, neoliberalism or austerity. It's probably not true that any of these things are to blame but it sets a tone that, if we smash the golden egg that made us rich (free market capitalism), all these things will go away. The problem is that the people waving the hammers at that egg want to replace it with a different, rotten, egg called socialism - something we know creates inequality, division, death and starvation.

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"Tell 'em I lied". Why politicians aren't truthful.

It's usually attributed to Huey or Earl Long both, back in the day, Governor of Louisiana. Presented with the truth about a campaign pledge and after deciding to go back on this promise, the Governor says to his advisor, "tell 'em I lied". It sort of reinforces the public's opinion about what politicians will say to get elected - I'll fix that, stop this, build something, make something. Promises that, like April snow, vanish at the first ray of sunshine.

Seems there's a reason:

We know from public choice theory that lying is more rational for a politician than for individuals in other walks of life. A politician's lies are less likely to be noticed or remembered by the "rationally ignorant" voter. Rational ignorance means that the individual voter has little incentive to invest time and money in gathering and analyzing political information because he will not be able, with his single vote, to change the election result. The politician running for office also has an incentive to lie when deprecating his opponents' character. If he wins, there will be no way to know whether or not his opponents would have been as bad as he claimed. And since the politician has no property rights in his office, the discounted value of his political reputation over time is very low, giving him an incentive to trade long-term credibility for short-run victories.

This observation (from a super article by Pierre Lemieux) is compounded by two additional problems. The first is that the voter wants to be lied to, wants to believe that government can solve whatever problems that voter has in his or her life. And as politicians we are only to happy to indulge this delusion by saying "of course, do you want that in green or blue?". The second problem is that truth is, as anyone looking at 'fact check' websites will know, often a matter of degree or emphasis. There's a lot of shouting about 'post-truth' and 'fake news' but this anger is limited - it doesn't touch on things that aren't true but that the public really believes are true. Here's Tim Worstall:

Perhaps a red flashing cop light beside an article which contains any of the following lies?

The minimum wage does not cause job losses.

Corporations should pay more tax.

Global inequality is rising.

US child poverty is over 20%.

We have widespread poverty in the UK.

17% of UK families cannot afford enough food.

What? You think these things are true? You read angst-ridden articles about them in the Guardian? Us politicians lie because you think things like imports being bad and exports good, that 'dumping' steel or solar panels is bad for our economy, and that regulation supports markets.

If you want truth then the most grown up thing you can do as a voter is to assume that the government is not interested in making your life better, is not concerned about the things that you're concerned about, and has the primary function of sustaining its current size, structure and powers regardless of their actual value to society. And, that politicians lie because you want and expect them to lie.

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Cause and effect - how falsehoods are created

While the precise nature of truth isn't straightforward, we should be much clearer about falsity and the unethical use of data to present something that may not be true:

Firstly, of course, Leave.EU don't provide a source for the claim. The source is the latest ONS population digest:

Looking at the estimates by country of birth, between October to December 2015 and October to December 2016:

• UK born people working in the UK decreased by 120,000 to 26.37 million
• non-UK born people working in the UK increased by 431,000 to 5.54 million

The inference that Leave.EU make is that the reasons for this decline in the number of UK born people working is migration - 'British workers paying the price for mass migration'. And this could, indeed, be the reason for the decline. The problem is that neither the ONS data not Leave.EU provide the information needed to establish whether or not migration does put UK born people out of work.

And there are other equally plausible reasons for the decline such as 'baby boomers' retiring, the decline in public sector employment leading to early retirements, increased numbers of people staying in full-time education, more women opting to remain as housewives. Unless all these possible reasons - and maybe others I've not thought of - are shown not to be the reason, we cannot make the claim that Leave.EU make. It is, regardless of the source's quality, a falsehood.

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What is truth?

Once upon a time I was planning director of an advertising (well direct marketing really) agency. We'd done so focus groups for a client looking at pensions and savings. They were enormous fun - I mean this, we did pensions the advertising agency way with cushions, music, pictures of sexy celebrities and party poppers. OK, I made the last bit there up - but the work was good and I learned more about the issues around pensions than I'd done from all the dry as dust actuaries and economists (we did lots of stuff with these folk too).

Any way, we presented the work to the client. It was well received by them with one, somewhat grumpy, exception. A day or two later, I got a letter (this was in the days before email since you ask) from the Finance Director asking how I could know the research was true - after all we'd conducted six focus groups with ten people or so in each. It can't be true can it, I can't commit to a major investment on the basis of giving sixty people wine and cushions can I?

I can (more or less) faithfully reproduce my reply:

"Dear Finance Director,

Thank you for your letter regarding our research. It was interesting.

What is truth?

Yours sincerely,

Simon Cooke

Account Planning Director"

The problem is that there are a load of people out there who think - nay, insist - that they know what truth is. And, more to the point, that we have moved into a "post truth" world:

Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics) is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored. Post-truth differs from traditional contesting and falsifying of truth by rendering it of "secondary" importance.

Yeah. And no politician before Farage and Trump lied. Or, shall we say, carefully selected the statistics, the words and the timing for something so as to get the maximum political impact.

The whole idea is - as these things so often are - an attempt to discredit critics of a politically dominant group by suggesting that they are, in some way, charlatans or chancers rather than wise, noble folk who care deeply about the people. Yet no-one ever challenges them on the idea of truth itself. My Finance Director at least had the defence of needing to make a decision about a major investment - most of the 'post truth' stuff isn't so significant. Instead it's a way by which an intellectual (and very Laputian) elite closes off criticism.

In political discourse there is very little objective truth. Our job isn't to capture the moonbeam of that hypothetical truth but rather to negotiate between a set of possible truths including ones based on the feelings and emotions of voters. In a world where we're encouraged to respect the faith of people who believe their prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse what exactly has changed in our understanding of truth?

Christians believe Christ died for our sins and rose again after three days. Is this truth? Is the idea of the world's creation - whoever's myth you prefer - true? Or should we go with a sceptical view that, in essence, says there is no truth except that we don't know?

In our daily lives (and this is so for peasants and kings) we make choices on limited information, opinion and prejudice. We choose to call some of this "truth" but that's a rationalisation rather than, dare I say it, truth. The truth we're getting over in 'post-truth' is exactly the truth that finance director was writing to me about - a sort of scientific method truth in a world where, most of the time, we can't conduct randomised control tests. Assuming that such things are ever truly random, controlled and a test.

Talking about 'post-truth' is a recognition from the bien pensants of this world that they have been fibbing to us for all these years. Instead of this 'skeptical' idea, we have instead an approach embracing doubt, emotion, intuition and wisdom. It's no longer the case that some academic's research - framed by their prejudice and enacted in that context - is seen as truth. Interesting, challenging, informative - but not true. Long may this last.

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Public health - might some truth be getting though at last?

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One swallow doesn't make a summer. But there are two current news items that suggest that the truth is gradually seeping through to one or two bits of the public health world.

Firstly there's a letter from fifty odd doctors, researchers and public health folk urging the WHO not to regulate e-cigs out of existence. As one pointed out:

"If the WHO gets its way and extinguishes e-cigarettes, it will not only have passed up what is clearly one of the biggest public health innovations of the last three decades that could potentially save millions of lives, but it will have abrogated its own responsibility under its own charter to empower consumers to take control of their own health, something which they are already doing themselves in their millions." 

Progress (although it didn't stop the BBC running a ghastly phone-in essentially to plug some egregiously misleading documentary it's planning to air on tobacco - at the presenter said to one smoker who called: "that's basically the tobacco industry line" as that chap explained why he wanted leaving alone).

And then the radio headlines were filled with news that we aren't drinking quite so much:

Between 2005 and 2012 the percentage who drank alcohol in the week before being interviewed fell from 72% to 64% for men, and from 57% to 52% for women.

The survey also shows that the percentage of men who drank alcohol on at least five days in the week declined from 22% to 14%.

The percentage of women who drank frequently fell from 13% to 9%.

This was all part of a slightly scaremongering report (so typical of health fascists to wrap up good health news in scary stories about girls drinking) but Radio 5 Live ran a couple of substantial items focused on the core fact - on average, we drink a hell of a lot less than we did ten years ago and the latest cohort of teenagers are the more abstemious since the 1950s.

It may be a false dawn - yesterday I was told by one of Bradford's public health consultants that 'hazardous' drinking would increase in Bradford without 'further intervention. This - as I pointed out - is simply untrue yet these people carry on with the misinformation. Still, though it's a long way to go, I am reassured that some of the truth might just leak into the public health debate for a change.

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Things that are true....

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From Longrider:

There is a word for this and that word is stealing. Because that is what socialists do –  steal other peoples money and give it to their friends.

Yep.

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Things that really aren't a surprise...

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George Galloway is a muslim convert (although he didn't quite mention this fact in a recent by-election):

George Galloway, MP for Bradford West, is a Muslim. He converted more than ten years ago in a ceremony at a hotel in Kilburn, north-west London, attended by members of the Muslim Association of Great Britain. Those close to him know this. The rest of the world, including his Muslim constituents, does not. 

What I can't understand - unless George thinks his conversion might lose him votes - why he hasn't come clean about it? What sort of muslim does that make him?

Or maybe it is a surprise - Mr Galloway continues to deny the claim:

 "The opening paragraph of Jemima Khan's piece in the New Statesman [referring to an alleged conversion ceremony] is totally untrue. Moreover I told her it was fallacious when she put it to me. I have never attended any such ceremony in Kilburn, Karachi or Kathmandu. It is simply and categorically untrue."

So there you go! Clear as mud! Which really isn't a surprise at all.

Update II:

It seems that George really didn't go through this ceremony (although the New Statesman say he didn't deny it and he says he did):
 

“Jemima Khan asked me on tape about this phantom ceremony in Kilburn and I told her it was a lie and whoever told her it was a liar. No trace of this exchange appears in the New Statesman piece, which is predicated upon it. Now that they are denying my denial it places the matter in the hands of my solicitor.”

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So it might be something other than the drink?

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Data from the Health Protection Agency suggests around 4,200 people could need a transplant owing to serious damage to their liver, with many unaware they have the condition at present.

Ah, yes! It's that "pandemic of binge-drinking" the doctors are on about isn't it?

It would seem not...

Experts estimate around 216,000 people in the UK are living with chronic hepatitis C, many of whom are currently undiagnosed. People can catch the disease through contact with the blood - and less commonly the bodily fluids - of an infected person.

Those who share needles and use unsterile drugs equipment are particularly at risk, although people who had a blood transfusion before 1991 or received blood products before 1986 have a higher chance, as well as those having treatments abroad.

Sharing toothbrushes, razors and scissors also heightens the risk, as does having tattoos.

So not just the drink then?

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Hard to disagree with any of this...

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From the ever admirable Mr Worstall:

...the Labour Party needs to be trampled into the dust. The buildings razed, the population sold into bondage and the land ploughed with salt. It is sweet and necessary for us to kill our enemies and to hear the lamentations of their women.

This does not apply to those who would champion the rights of the workers in our economy, nor to those who would have a more social democratic polity, those who desire more equality nor even those obsessed with the isms….feminism, anti-racisms, genderism and the rest.

It applies solely to the Labour Party. For deep within its primordial brain, in the recesses which produce the knee jerk reactions, the Labour Party is wrong.

Yep.

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In which I try to explain truth and reality to an archbishop

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I am worried. I appreciate that some may not see it my way but I really do prefer my bishops – when they comment on the political world – to have at least some connection to truth and reality. Sadly the Archbishop of Canterbury has lost this connection somewhere in his beard.

"With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted," he writes. "At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context."

There are two ways to respond – the first one is to point out that, in our electoral system we vote for people not policies.  But I suppose that might get the riposte – “why do political parties have manifestos then?”  So there is a second response which is to ask – “so tell me, Your Grace, what policies did people vote for then?”

The Archbishop cites some policies – such as education:

"[T]he comprehensive reworking of the Education Act 1944 that is now going forward might well be regarded as a proper matter for open probing in the context of election debates."

Strangely enough Your Grace, by this very statement you have undermined your own argument. The idea of ‘free schools’ was in the Conservative Manifesto as was the need to do something to support schools in maintaining discipline and to make changes to the national curriculum. As to the continuing academy programme – that was legislation passed by the previous Labour Government, of course.

While the “we didn’t vote for this” line can be argued, the Archbishop’s comments on education policies are simply wrong. The proposed changes were probed “in the context of election debates”. For example here between “experts” and here between politicians. So you’re talking rubbish, Archbishop.

And then welfare. Here the Archbishop simply invents a straw man and attacks it with vigour:

Williams also launches a sustained attack on the government's welfare reforms, complaining of a "quiet resurgence of the seductive language of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor". In comments aimed at the Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, the Archbishop criticises "the steady pressure" to increase "punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system"

I admit to listening closely to the debate about welfare – after all, welfare reforms are very popular:

A new YouGov poll for Channel 4 News yesterday found strong public support for many of the government’s planned cuts to benefits. 73% of respondents supported the idea of making the long term unemployed do compulsory work placements or risk losing benefits, 66% supported withdrawing jobseekers allowance from people who turn down job offers or interviews, 69% supported more stringent testing of people claiming disability living allowance and 68% supported capping housing benefit at £400 a week, “even if this means people are forced to move house if they live in an area where the rent is high”. In all these cases the policies weren’t just popular amongst Conservative and Liberal Democrat supporters, they were also backed by a majority of Labour voters.

I appreciate that popular doesn’t equate to right but that polling – whatever you think of opinion research – does indicate something of a popular mandate for the policies being pursued. And making up opinions for Iain Duncan Smith (who I’m sure can arrive at an opinion without ecclesiastical assistance) simply doesn't look well on a bishop.

Finally, there’s the “Big Society”:

The Archbishop also questions David Cameron's "big society" agenda, a phrase which he describes as "painfully stale". He writes that the policy is viewed with "widespread suspicion" as an "opportunistic" cover for spending cuts, adding that is not credible for ministers to blame the last Labour government for Britain's problems.

Yet again we see the bishop simply parading his ignorance. Perhaps this is because he wasn’t listening when David Cameron first talked of the “Big Society”. However, the Archbishop has changed his tune just a little. Last September he had this to say on Newsnight:

"The positive side of the big society agenda in the present Government's language is I think not just about saving money or cutting corners - it's about some kind of effort to get hold of a strong sense of civic responsibility".

Maybe also the Archbishop spends too much time with the great and good rather than among ordinary people. On Tuesday evening I was at a Neighbourhood Forum in Denholme witnessing the big society:

·         The Town Council were recruiting volunteers to run the library – not just taking over from the Council but extending the hours and the services

·         A call was made for more volunteer drivers for the community transport scheme – taking the infirm, disabled and isolated to appointments, shopping and to the hospitals

·         The Community Association briefed the meeting about plans – at an early stage – to take over running the Mechanics Institute from the Council

This, dear Archbishop, is the ‘Big Society’ – it really is that simple. Perhaps you should get out of Lambeth Palace and into the real world once in a while – you might just learn something about people. 

It seems to me that the Archbishop should check his facts and try to adopt a logical approach to argument.  Or maybe just stick to god-bothering and marrying princes.

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Put the books down, look out the window and think for yourself.

Once upon a time there was a blank page – Locke’s tabula rasa. We couldn’t lean on some other persons thinking as a replacement for our own consideration of the truth. We had to look, listen, poke at, pull apart and generally fuss around at the world so as to get some information – followed by thinking about what it all meant.

Somewhere we’ve lost this – not entirely but mostly. Rather than craft our own arguments based on the evidence we’ve found, we turn instead to Professor X or Doctor Y and say, “look at the very clever person and what they say, I am clever too because I’ve read their writing and cleverer still for telling you about its wonders!”

Essays, articles, reports – even dissertations – are constructed through the careful rewashing of someone else’s work. This isn’t plagiarism, nor is it entirely without use but such an approach reveals in us a lack of thoughtfulness, a craven adherence to the status quo presented by our betters. We comply with authority’s bias and prejudice for fear that disagreement would mark us apart and down.

The creation of entire philosophies through the recycling of others' opinion – I quote someone, someone else quotes me quoting that someone and so on until the original someone quotes me quoting him! Replacing that blank page we have a vast wall covered in scribble, indecipherable as a whole but interpreted by a select group who understand the occult nature of that graffiti. As a result we learn nothing but that some acolytes are granted the great privilege to interpret the myths for us lay supplicants. And woe betide those who question those acolytes.

Perhaps we should start to question the basis of our policy-making – the pretence that the evidence it uses is real, the fiction that its processes allow for genuine review. What we need isn’t just a politics of doubt but a rediscovery of autodidact questioning and the questioning of authority. We need an end to telling people their opinion is worth less than some other person clutching a piece of paper from one university or another.

Above all we need to promote and champion people who doubt – who start with that tabula rasa rather than with someone else’s – be it Marx, Keynes or Rothbard – prescription for perfection.

Put the books down, look out the window and think for yourself.

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The truth of place lies in hearts not ruins

When Hugh de Morville, Norman baron built this little keep up in the hills of Westmoreland, it was forever. The King had granted him the lands and he built his home among those hills better to control and direct what went on. Yet today, having passed from de Morville hands - perhaps as punishment from the fates for his part in slaying Thomas a Beckett - the keep stands ruined, unused, guarded by just a gate plus a few sheep.

It was not for ever but for a blink in human history that this great man presided over his lands and his men. Today new great men preside - governing, ruling, directing, controlling. And like great men of the past they will be forgotten, their works will wear, ruin and decay - recalled only by travellers wondering why such a structure was built in such a place.

Hugh was Norman, spoke French and sat atop a pyramid of power in Westmoreland. But today, the local people don't speak French and aren't Norman. The language of England prevails, corrupted here by celtic words and places - nearby Pen-y-ghent, one of Yorkshire's three peaks proclaims this heritage. To understand a place we have to look behind the buildings, beyond the architecture - we must look to the people and into their hearts. There we will find the truth of place - as Houseman wrote:

In my own shire, if I was sad,
Homely comforters I had:
The earth, because my heart was sore,
Sorrowed for the son she bore;
And standing hills, long to remain,
Shared their short-lived comrade's pain.
And bound for the same bourn as I,
On every road I wandered by,
Trod beside me, close and dear,
The beautiful and death-struck year:
Whether in the woodland brown
I heard the beechnut rustle down,
And saw the purple crocus pale
Flower about the autumn dale;
Or littering far the fields of May
Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,
And like a skylit water stood
The bluebells in the azured wood.

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Those moments

You know you get those moments? Instants of utter despair, hair-tearing upset and distress? Whatever it might be – a death, a financial crisis, a lost job…whatever. Nothing, no person can understand how you feel – the agony, the loss, the bleakness of tomorrow.

Those moments stood on the platform wondering whether a quick dive in front of the train would take it all away. The frisson of temptation as you cross the high bridge – thirty seconds of agony in exchange for an eternity free from mental pain.

Don’t tell me you don’t know those moments.

Such moments are the darkness of tomorrow – the negation of hope. If you must, the Devil’s temptation. Nothing comes of them – no peace, no happiness, no joy. And if you set such a moment in aspic by acting on its impulse, you serve no purpose in doing so.

We are not friendless, alone or deserted. If we sit on the stone and look out at the sea we’ll be embraced – not by the cold waves but by those we saw as enemies. By all means cry. But do not despair.

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Life's mosaic...

I'm a mosaic - a fragmented, fractured collage of flotsam, jetsam and washed up driftwood. I'm not a clear fresh painting but a creation of doubts, questions and uncertainties. I do not understand those people who are so certain in their belief - or their unbelief - that they can dismiss questions and doubts without thinking, without consideration. I had a parish priest once - Father Best - who doubted. His homilies were not what the comfortable, certain congregation wanted - Father Best challenged his faith, questioned what it was all about, explored what it meant to believe. He doubted in public. And there were mutterings; "this isn't what we come to mass for, we come to be assured of our salvation not laden with doubts." What those certain folk do not understand is that doubt makes us human. Without doubt, without challenge, without question we become automata - mere machines stamping out our short time on earth to the rhythm of our masters, of whatever definite thing we choose to believe. Without doubt there is no magic, no discovery, no joy. And we must take the pain - the agony - of doubt with that joy. We must take it because it makes us what we are - independent, creative and exploring. There are those who would have us be machines. Who want us to march in step with the wisdom that they impart to us. Who wish us not to doubt. These people are the evil ones - the ones who would deny the truth of humanity. Whether it be politics, religion or science, we must never ever condemn those who doubt, who question, who challenge. They may seem mad - we may beleive them mistaken. But their doubt is more important than our certainty. I am a mosaic of doubts. I am certain only of the absence of certainty. And this imperfect pattern of bits and bats presents its face on the world - to challenge, to argue, to question and to say that your certainty is not so. And that fragmented, uneven picture lasts better than the smooth, unblemished coat of clear colour - it is real, living, a construct of doubt rather that certain truth. It is life's mosaic... ....

What's the point of lying Ed?

I am 100% sure that, had I been an MP in 2003, I would have voted in favour of British military action in Iraq – mostly because the Prime Minister lied through his teeth to persuade people like me of the case for war.

Now as it happened the new leader of the Labour Party was safely ensconced over at Harvard during this great debate. As far as we know, he made no public statement regarding the decision to invade Iraq. I am 100% certain that, had Ed Miliband been an MP back in 2003, he would have supported the line from Blair and Brown. His period in America seems to me as somewhat akin to an extended visit to the dentist!

Now, I’m prepared to say that I was wrong back in 2003 and now take the view that the invasion of Iraq was wrong (not illegal but definitely of no strategic significance to my country). What I find odd is that Ed Miliband – covered by the tiniest or tiny fig leaves – can’t say the same. Especially as he appears able to do so on the banks, the deficit, ID cards, incarceration without trial and public spending cuts.

But then Ed Miliband lives in a world where the truth is a man in rags staring in at the opulence of bullies and liars.

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The Blind Men and the Elephant

As parables go - or is it fables - The Blind Men and the Elephant is one of my favourites. Whether the narrative version or John Godfrey Saxe's entertaining poem, the tale speaks a deep truth - the secret of great doggerel:

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The point being that we approach the great beast - the thing we want to understand from different perspectives and, as these things are, each person's understanding is true until the game changes to extrapolation. At this time, we find that the description is false - it is not so. That single blind man clasping the tail, the ear or the trunk cannot comprehend the magnitude of creation - yet we set about doing so, content in our limited knowledge (or rather the knowledge revealed to us as absolute truth even though we know it is limited).

We will go on arguing with other blind men who do not have the joy of revelation - who foolishly grasp the ear, or the trunk, or the tail. What would they know about the truth.

What would they know...

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Hyperbole Fail: Oil spill fails to live up to it billing.

As if often the case with these things, it appears our oil slick is not quite the disaster the eco-freaks were telling us:

The sea's warm surface and oil-munching bacteria have dissipated the slick to such an extent that a planeload of journalists had to fly for an hour before their pilot could find a patch of oil. His relief, according to one reporter on board, was comparable to the anxious captain of a tourist boat spotting a distant pod of dolphins.

It turns out that the playful sea mammals, like other creatures, suffered much less damage than was forecast. A grand total of three dead dolphins covered in oil have been recovered by wildlife rescue teams. The spill has so far killed less than one per cent of the number of birds claimed by the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.

It’s still a mess but it puts the hyperbole from some folk into context. Just leave it to the mushrooms guys!

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Ministerial Honesty - is this a first?

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In an address to the Development Trusts Association, Cabinet Office Minister, Nick Hurd appears to have been surprisingly honest:

"We have a very short timeframe in which to review public spending so there is a risk that in too many areas – including those places where social capital is already low - we will get it wrong."

Help! A Government Minister admits to the possibility of "getting it wrong"? Have we moved to a strange parallel universe? And there's more:

"decisions have to be taken very quickly – often without being properly thought through"

Amazing. Staggering.

Is this what they meant by the 'new politics'?

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A mad economist writes (some tips on policy-making from over the pond)

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The Whited Sepulchre reminds us – and a welcome reminder it is to – about some economic truths that too many commenters ignore. The good blogger asks a series of questions to which you might respond with one of these: 1) Strongly Agree, 2) Somewhat Agree, 3) Somewhat Disagree, 4) Strongly Disagree, or 5) Not Sure.

The questions are:

Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services.

Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.

Rent control leads to housing shortages.

A company with the largest market share is not a monopoly.

Third World workers working for American companies overseas are not being exploited.

Free trade does not leads to unemployment.

Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.

Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.

Now I know The Whited Sepulchre is an American and they speak slightly differently from us but these are important questions. And it is important that we understand the right answers and what they mean for policy making.

The right answer, dear reader, is either ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ in every case (and don’t go trying all that ‘ethical’, ‘socially responsible’ stuff – this is economics we’re talking here and economics is amoral). Having established this we can make informed policy decisions rather than emotive appeals to specific target audiences or ideological obsessions.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have minimum wages, development control or rent measures but we do at least know that these decisions have a downside (which may or may not be significant). And we’ll get away from nonsensical statements like these:

Raising the minimum wage will increase employment by getting people off benefits

The planning system has no influence on house prices

Making trainers in Vietnam is immoral

…and so on. We allow what we would like to be the case to govern our decisions rather than what actually is the case. I’m reminded as ever of the wise words of P.J. O’Rourke:

I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on literally everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God's heavenly country club. Santa Claus is another matter. He's cute. He's nonthreatening. He's always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who's been naughty and who's been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without the thought of quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he's famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.

Were Santa Claus an Englishman he would vote Labour. We already know God’s a Tory!

Wednesday Whimsy: The Spirit of the Unicorn

“Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a gold horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. ‘There’s a unicorn in the garden,’ he said. ‘Eating roses.’ She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him. ‘The unicorn is a mythical beast,’ she said…”

Thus opens one of the incomparable James Thurber’s little fables – from the same place that gave us ‘little girls aren’t nearly so easily fooled these days’, and (for all my libertarian friends), ‘anyone who you or your wife thinks is going to overthrow the government by violence must be driven out of the country’. If you haven’t read ‘Fables for Our Time and Illustrated Poems’ you have missed a treat of wit, charm and humour – so get out and do so (although my wife once went into a bookstore in New York enquiring for Thurber books and got the response “who?” – rather sad given he is maybe The New Yorker’s most famous ever writer!).

But that wasn’t the point – I didn’t want to talk about not counting one’s boobies before they’re hatched but about mythical beasts. And where better to start than with that most elusive of such beasts, the unicorn. Now clearly, being neither female nor a virgin, I have never encountered a unicorn. Indeed, those who have encountered the beast are of course sworn eternal silence as to mention its existence or reveal its location is to condemn it to death.

Mythical beasts – whatever their provenance – are now mere symbols. Our unicorn indicates chastity, purity and honesty (perhaps explaining the beast’s rarity) just as the wyvern shows us guile, exploitation and wickedness. And, like much of legendary and religious symbolism, mythical beasts give us a shorthand of morals, values and virtue. We can use such mythic metaphor for anything – even shy depression. Such beasts are real in that we know what they are, can describe them and can appreciate their role and purpose – and that reality is to me the same reality as gods, devils or the Lorelei. These symbols explain – make easier to understand – some of the dilemmas of virtue, the vagaries of fortune and the wonders of nature. Without them the world is two-dimensional, prosaic, dull and lacking in magic. And without magic we are not human.

Unicorns do not have a scientific reality but a reality of the spirit – a symbolic truth as important to understanding the world as the laws of science. They show us beauty, perfection of spirit, purity and faith - surely things we can believe in, even aspire to? And the unicorn's darker side - the loss of such magic with growth and adulthood is just as important.

But nevertheless a unicorn may be a mythical beast but it is the most beautiful of mythical beasts!

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