#EndAusterityNow

I see there's some ghastly gathering of unwashed fucknuggets making Westminster smell even worse than usual today. Owen Jones, Russell Brand, Charlotte Church and various other shroud waving shitgoblins and taking time out from their celebrity lifestyles to boost their street cred with the lower ranks.

Apparently, because the actual overall majority of voters didn't vote for the Tories, so the Tories don't have a mandate for their agenda.

76% didn't vote for this Govt - Osborne has no mandate for austerity.  He wants to shrink state not cut deficit #EndAusterityNow #JuneDemo - Caroline Mucus

That's lovely, Cazza, but as was immediately pointed out to her, 71% of the people in Brighton Pavilion didn't vote for her, so is she going to resign out of principle?

Furthermore, as I recall (and I may be wrong, but it's definitely that order of magnitude) something like 61% didn't vote for Blair in his "landslide" and I don't remember this concern for the unrepresented from unwashed lefties back then.

There have been dozens of variations of democracy implemented all over the world, and none of them ever meets with universal approval. But the British state has gradually been centralising control powers over decades, meaning that the blatant disparity between what people want and what they get is becoming more and more overt.

The same thing happened with the Scottish Independence referendum - despite a very clear win, there was a sufficiently large minority who lost out that feel that they haven't been heard.

Yet when I point out that this is always the case in a democracy, that there is always a large chunk of the populace who get fucked over, whatever the result, I always get told that I should join the system and change it from within. I'm told that my sniping from the sidelines does nothing useful.

So today my message to the earnest, the thuggish and the hypocritical who want someone else to pay for everything is this: go become a politician, go change the system from the inside. Your protest marches are no more effective than my blog posts.

Or alternatively, consider the possibility that I may be right: democracy is merely a fig leaf that allows evil Tories to fuck over the poor or kind-hearted Labour to fuck over the poor in a different way.

Why would anybody need an automatic rifle?

A lot of fuss has been made about the apparent insanity of Americans with regard to gun control. There is no reason, people argue, that private individuals should have automatic firearms with clips that can fire off tens or hundreds of rounds.

Well, here are a couple of reasons:

• Why should I, a sane, balanced individual who has never harmed anyone in my life, not have such a weapon for my defence or indeed my pleasure, if that is how I want to spend my time? I mean, people collect stamps or do morris dancing or watch cookery programs for fun. I can't understand doing any of those things for fun, but it doesn't mean I think they should be banned.
• "Nobody needs more than 30 rounds to defend themselves." Perhaps if you're John Rambo, or Ethan Hunt; but in the real world, things are very different. It's surprisingly difficult to shoot a moving target, even for trained professionals like soldiers and the police. I was once involved in someone running a road block with a car, where around 80 rounds were fired and only 3 hit the car, none hit any of the occupants. (I wasn't shooting mind, if I had been, no rounds would have hit the car!)
• "There is no need for anyone but the government to have such powerful weapons." This fundamentally misunderstands the skeptical view that the Founding Fathers had of government. It is precisely because the government has such powerful weapons that the common man should have them too, to be able to bear equivalent arms against the state. You need to keep the state's monopoly on violence as weak and counterbalanced as possible.

So there.

A Ramble through Beastleigh

So, there we have hit: modern social democracy in one easy-to-digest bite!

Despite losing 14% of their previous vote, despite an actual majority (53%) of people wanting a centre-right party, they got whatever it is the LibDems are this week. That's democracy based on party politics in action, right there.

But it's OK, because there's at least a 30% chance that the Lib Dems will be a centre-right party on any given day of the week. And still the yellow drones flock to them.

One thing, however, has been entirely misinterpreted by the Twitterati: "A lurch to the right is not a good idea for the Tories as their candidate was virtually a UKIPper" - nope, people weren't voting for the candidates, they were voting according to tribal loyalty or, in the best case, for what they saw as the parties' direction. The only thing a candidate can really do is fuck up their chances, like, say, wishing that a former Prime Minister had actually died in a bomb blast.

Effectively, Cameron's vacuous social democratic politics do not appeal to enough people, they only "won over" people who would vote for a Blue-ribboned dog turd.

People don't understand this "core vote" thing at all. The core vote will always vote for the party, it doesn't matter whether you lurch to the left or the right.

(I recently spent a weekend with some Labour activists and some of the stories they told me made even my hair stand on end. And yet, despite their very clear understanding that the people that they're supporting are bullies, sexual predators, backstabbers and people that they intensely dislike, THEY STILL VOTE FOR THEM AND WORK THEIR ARSES OFF TO SUPPORT THEM.)

As we say in Topeka, Kansas: "Da FUQUE??"

Having said that, everybody (even the tribal faithful) can see the yawning chasm of amoral, unprincipled emptiness at the heart of modern politics. People don't vote for Cameron in droves despite Gordon Brown's disastrous incompetence because he stands for absolutely nothing. He is the heir to Blair in that regard, but he lacks Blair's media control.

People yearn for politics where there are principles, where they vote for some thing. Politicians since Blair have set expectations that the "thing" they're voting for is all about throwing money from the magic money tree, and recipients of their "largesse" are quite understandably upset that this can't happen indefinitely.

Ultimately, nobody is happy with the way things are being run. It's much easier to accept austerity if there's a clear goal at the end of it. But since there isn't a clear goal other than "clearing up Labour's mess" and there is no apparent sign of the chosen path to austerity working, as raising taxes leaves people with less money in their pockets to restart the economy, everybody is unhappy with the Tory government.

The rise of UKIP is not entirely down to the innate bigotry of British people, it's mostly down to the fact that they appear to stand for something and they're not one of the current lot, all of whom are regarded as massive failures.

But for politics to have principle does not require a "lurch to the right", a "lurch to the left" or a "lurch to the middle". British politicians are fighting over a tiny patch of centre-right, authoritarian ground. Even the ostensibly less authoritarian, more left-wing Greens are just eco-fascists, who want to inflict their own particular brand of bullshit on the rest of us.

Why can't politicians take a stand based on less authoritarianism? It's clear since Blair what the economic sweet spot is, but when it comes to letting people live their lives, every government seems to be more and more authoritarian. How much further can they actually go before we start getting curfews and shit like that?

Why can't we get a party that says: "You know what? As a thank you for voting for us, we're going to get out of your face. We're going to stop micromanaging your life. We're going to trust you to do the right thing like you're trusting us to do the right thing"?

A brief brief and beef about beef

If we ever needed proof that regulation is a tool of big business and not for the protection of consumers, the horse / beef fiasco proves it.

A massive infrastructure dedicated to making sure that our food is good and safe has failed, despite the regulation applied specifically to large corporate suppliers and supermarkets. Every day seems to show another crack in the edifice.

And what are consumers doing? Well, those who can afford it have always used butchers. Parsimonious types are now migrating to butchers where the food chain is known by actual people and not by regulation.

I strongly contend that people who actually know the food chain and the history of the food being bought are far more trusted than any ticked boxes or paperwork that has been completed. Regulation is no substitute for knowledge.

But no, for the average statist, there is no substitute for more regulation, no matter that the failure of regulation is evident to all, the answer is always more regulation.

Shock! Horror!

I'm afraid my appalling lack of British modern history has once again let me down. However, Andy Bolton has come to the rescue:

It was recently the 70th anniversary of William Beveridge’s famous report on the welfare of the UK people (‘Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services’).

In it he identified five ‘Giant Evils’ in society: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease. After seven decades the United Kingdom now has a ‘welfare state’ based loosely on the recommendations within this report. On all sides of political debate, from ‘left’ to ‘right’, from statist to libertarian, the welfare state can be seen to have fallen short of the ideals for which it was established. This article focuses on the changes to the welfare ‘benefits’ system that were proposed, implemented and subsequently evolved in the interim period.

Right, so this is the Beveridge report, that lefties always wibble on about as the source of the infinite kindness of the state in Britain.

The report’s initial objective was to “survey … the existing national schemes of social insurance” that were available at the time and “to make recommendations”. Existing schemes, surely not? Weren’t people left to die in the streets before the founding of the welfare state, that’s what I was taught at school? Well, surprisingly not; the survey documents considerable legislation. Over the preceding 45 years, beginning with the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1897, there was a plethora of legislation designed to make certain insurances compulsory. The above act was initially limited to a small number of occupations but was extended in 1906 to cover all, with compulsory health insurance beginning in 1912. Similarly unemployment insurance began for a small number of industries in 1912 but extended in 1920. The Pensions Act came into force in 1908 giving a non-contributory pension to all over 70; this was added to in 1925 by contributory pensions, which also covered widows and orphans. The Unemployment Act of 1934 replaced several earlier unemployment insurance schemes and introduced a national Unemployment Assistance service. Adding to this huge growth in social insurance were medical services, disability assistance, child welfare services (including pre-school), death and ‘other contingencies’. These services were mainly funded by life assurance companies, friendly societies and trade unions.

The report’s authors found the existing landscape “impressive”: it showed “that provision for most of the many varieties of need through interruption of earnings and other causes that may arise in modern industrial communities has already been made in Britain on a scale not surpassed and hardly rivalled in any other country of the world“. The only areas of social care that the committee could fault were healthcare, funerals and maternity. However where they did rail against the existing array of systems was its organisation: “a complex of disconnected administrative organs, proceeding on different principles, found invaluable service but at a cost in money and trouble and anomalous treatment of identical problems for which there is no justification” (as if voluntary interaction needs ‘justification’). They concluded: “It is not open to question that, by closer co-ordination, the existing social services could be made at once more beneficial and more intelligible to those whom they serve and more economical in their administration.” Anyone who has dealt with the Department for Work and Pensions, with its lack of communication and coordination, would question that we’ve made that much progress under a state-centralised system in 70 years. The claim of improved efficiency by providing insurance services through the state is laughable; you don’t need to know about Friedman’s Law to recognise this.

So, in essence, the state saw a thriving area where the market was providing everyone with all the cover they needed and decided they could do it better and more cost-effectively than the market could. Much like British Rail. Or British Airways. Or British Leyland. (The latter not technically nationalised, but utterly fucked by Tony fucking Benn coercing a functioning business to absorb one that should have gone under but was deemed to big to fail. Why does that fucking ring bells?)

If you look back at anything that the British state has done, it has inevitably taken functioning, competing businesses that delivered good services, nationalised them, let them become an overgrown complicated bureaucratic mess with utterly shitty service and a jobsworth corporate culture and then outsourced it equally badly.

Why the bastarding cunting fuck do lefties always think that the state is the only way to provide anything? British Rail was a nationalised industry, it didn't spring out fully formed. British Airways was a nationalised industry, it didn't spring out fully formed. The welfare state was a nationalised industry, it didn't spring out fully formed.

Get to fuck, lefties, with your crazy fucking idea that the state ever does anything useful. Just get to fuck.

Responsibility is not avoidable

Following on from my last piece about referenda and how we delegate decisions to a political elite, I had a small epiphany.

Why do we allow the state to get away with making our decisions for us? In some cases, it's laziness, a lack of knowledge about the issues involved, a lack of faith in our ability to make a good or right decision or one of a million other possible issues.

So, we deny our responsibility, we hand over the decisions to people via the mechanism of voting and when things are done we agree with, we're proud of it; when things are done we don't agree with, we have the fig leaf of other people's votes to hide behind.

But the truth of it is that we can't avoid the responsibility of this. Ultimately, every time the government spends money in a way that you disagree with or doesn't spend money that you would like to see spent, that is a cost of you handing over the decision-making power to them.

I would argue that morally, handing over your decision-making power to someone else does not absolve you of the crimes committed in your name, either, but that is an argument to be had.

However, you cannot deny that by handing over this power you do not avoid the financial consequences of your attempted avoidance.

Remember that, the next time you bang on about austerity.

Benefit reform

I see everyone is up in arms about "benefit reform". The latest numbers show that apparently, 97% of benefits don't go to people who don't contribute to benefits, whether they be severely disabled, orphans, third-generation benefit scroungers or whatever.

So actually, most benefits go to people who work.

Just think about that for a moment. You work to stay alive, you're a productive member of society, but you're still not earning enough to make ends meet. And what is the government's answer? A massively complicated and unreliable system of tax credits to give you some of your money back if you jump through a bazillion hoops.

Surely, SURELY, no-one can dispute that it would be much easier for all concerned if the the worse-off were simply taxed less in the first place?

Why exactly is it that we can't just stop tax credits and replace them with lower taxes for poorer people?

And why exactly was that great hero of the people, Gordon Brown, not vilified for the monster he created?

Could it be the blindness of statists to the many failings of state?

Lower taxes mean more money in pocket without the stress of proving you need it to some interfering busybody who is sponging off your work.

Everybody thinks about "good taxes", where rich, arrogant bankers pay for the upkeep of the needy. Nobody thinks about the fact that minimum wage workers help to subsidise train fares for Surrey stockbrokers or pay for overloaded European vehicles to destroy our roads, etc. Nobody worries unduly about people struggling to clothe and feed their kids when they demand that we subsidise EU boondoggles.

Tax ISN'T just a "good thing". Think about that the next time you demand more of it.

Why are these people dying?

Lefties all over Britain are up in arms:

Mark and Helen Mullins were found lying side by side in their home after committing suicide together.They had been left destitute after Helen had her claim for benefit turned down,they had no food, no heating and no electric.

Richard Sanderson, of Southfields, south west London, committed suicide after receiving a letter from Wandsworth Council informing him his housing benefit would be cut by £30 a month.

Martin Rust, 36,a schizophrenic had his benefits cut and was ordered back to work.He left a note saying: “To those I love, I’m sorry. Goodbye.” Coroner William Armstrong said the DWP’s decision “caused distress and may well have had an adverse effect”, recording that Mr Rust had committed suicide while suffering from a treatment-resistant mental illness.

Craig Monk, 43, was found hanging in his home, he had a a partial amputation of his leg and was described by his family as “vulnerable” he became depressed that his benefits had been cut.

Colin Traynor, who was a life long epileptic. He was assessed as fit for work, he appealed, but his parents say he became depressed and lost weight , he died less than four months later,the day after his death his parents found out he had won That appeal.

OK, look, let's just back off from the typical lefty perspective that libertarians don't care for just a moment: these are all terrible, senseless deaths.

But I want lefties to look at themselves here: these people all felt like the only thing that was keeping them alive was the benevolent state.

Did they not have families who could rally round and help them? Did they have no friends? No neighbours?

Where were all the lefty do-gooders sticking their hands in their own pockets to help out these people in need?

Why would someone commit suicide over a £30 a month benefit cut? If one of my friends or family needed £30 a month to stay alive, as a callous, heartless libertarian, I wouldn't even think about it, it would just get done. And if it was £300 or £3000, I'd arrange some sort of whip around or do SOMETHING. Maybe we could have had someone sofa-surf or find them a room that was cheaper or SOMETHING. But all these people literally felt like the loss of money from the taxpayer's pocket was the end of the world. They had no support mechanism apart from the state, despite being known to be vulnerable in some way.

Why is that? What happened to the idea that as civilised people we should care for each other? Why is the lefty perspective that caring for other people means that those who work should be taxed more on aggregate so that the government can spend the money on pretty much everything but taking care of the needy?

Why is it that lefties are so quick to socialise the costs but make individual failures or cases into a requirement for more aggregate inefficiency?

But mostly: in all the cases above and in all the cases I didn't quote: why did these people feel that they had nowhere else to go but death? Why did they feel that they couldn't talk to friends, family or neighbours? Or the caring lefties that have set up an infinite number of "charities" and quangos and so on to to address these things?

(I know why they wouldn't talk to an evil Tory or a heartless libertarian - because they're painted as selfish and uncaring bastards.)

Given that the whole premise of "social democracy" is that we care for the needy and the vulnerable, does this mean that the slightest cut-back from an ever increasing "social" support means that people will kill themselves? What does that say about what our society has become?

And why is it that the same people who promote this kind of society describe people like me who care about individuals and think support should be individualised and localised are cruel and uncaring?

Gay marriage

Really, gay marriage, eh? Who really gives a fuck if two pooves or two rugmunchers want to tie themselves together for life? Does your marriage really have any impact on mine?

It's clear that civil partnerships, while offering all the legal benefits of marriage (as far as I understand anyway) do create a kind of "back of the bus" situation. The back of the bus still gets to the same place, but who wants to be forced to sit there?

But now I see that Cameron, despite being firmly in favour of gay marriage, is going to make it illegal for the CoE to marry gays. He's not even going to allow the CoE to marry gays if they want to.

As we say in Topeka, Kansas: "Da fuque?"

This is ostensibly being done to prevent further schisms in the CoE. To which I say: "Who fucking cares?"

I'm pretty sure there must be a number of homosexual vicars in the CoE, some of whom would like to get married. Why is it being made illegal for them to marry in their own fucking church?

I instinctively despise this kind of bullying and it all just seems like a complete nonsense.

Ultimately, I believe that there is no need for the state to get involved in the business of any two consenting adults. Or even three or four or five. Any voluntary arrangement is none of the fucking government's business.

Hak Nam and the costs of low tax (for @jearle)

I had one of those tiresome twitter debates a while ago with a leftie about the value we get from paying our "fair share" of taxes. Specifically, Hong Kong's famously low income taxes led to the slum of Hak Nam.

Apparently, the cost of not paying enough tax is that 0.5% of the population of one of the most densely populated places on earth live aside from normal society. But reading about the town itself, I wonder whether it was not rather a case of a group of like-minded people who wanted to live outside the regimentation of "normal" Hong Kong life?

And how many people in the UK live outside the norm? I'd be surprised if our massive, benevolent, all-encompassing state didn't massively fail at least 0.5% of the population.

Anyway, the upshot of the debate was apparently we don't pay that much more tax in the UK than they do in Hong Kong.

But I'm not sure that's true. First of all, the rate of tax in Hong Kong is not 15%, it's 17%. Well, the top rate of tax is. There's actually a progressive tax system where the the first $100K isn't taxed (unless you're married, when it's $200K).

That sounds great, but HK$100K is actually only about £8000. Thereafter you pay 2% on the first $40K (£3000), 7% on the next $40K, 12% on the next $40K, then 17% thereafter. A bit of poking around on salary websites shows that it's not unreasonable to assume that the average wage is about $220K, so actually most people would be earning about £16000 and paying about £670 of that in tax.

However, in the UK, you have a personal allowance of £8100, thereafter you pay 20% of the rest, which is £1580, more than twice what you would pay in Hong Kong.

In addition, the other taxes and duties on normal life are either non-existent or trivial compared to us. Hong Kong has no VAT or Sales Tax, no Estate Duties, no Witholding Taxes. Duty on fuel is a risible 50p a litre, and duty on 1000 cigarettes is £135, compared to £155 PLUS 16.5% of the price. Beer and wine carry no duty and spirits stronger than 30% ABV are taxed at a flat 100% of the import price. So if you can import a bottle of whisky for less than £26 (and you definitely can), you pay less duty than you would in the UK.

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that taxes in Hong Kong are overall much less of a burden, especially on the less well-off. And given that a large portion of the residents of Hak Nam chose to live that lifestyle, and our massively more burdensome state still lets people fall through the cracks in large numbers, are we really getting value for our tax bill?

Democracy by the Pound?

I was wondering, as I so often do, why people fetishise democracy so much.

After all, representative democracy is basically useless, anyone who looks at our political system objectively will certainly realise that it is almost completely broken. Politicians are pretty much unaccountable, especially in safe seats, only the most egregious and blatant criminal activity cause loss of privilege, and there is practically no comeback on any politician for fucking up in his job, no matter how disastrous a fuckup he or she makes. At best we can hope for "lessons to be learned".

Ha bloody ha.

But the reason we have representative democracy is because there are too many things to be debated and be agreed for something like a referendum to be applied to every decision that needs to be taken.

And so it seems that there is no way to square this circle. Representative democracy is a sham and a tribal game; and direct democracy is impractical.

So, what do we do?

Well, how about this: instead of us paying taxes to a central government pot, why don't we keep all our money and let government put forward its program of activities that require funding along with suggested contributions? We can then throw our money into specific activities that we think are important.

Pensions for the elderly? Yeah, I'll give some money to that. Disability care? Sure. Iraq war? No thanks. Foreign aid? Nah. Social services? Don't think so. Care for the homeless? Sure. Roads? I might overpay. Etc, etc, etc.

Effectively, we could all vote for our preferred government activities and policies by chucking money at it - whatever you think is important, you can vote for by the Pound. This way, every person can feel that the government genuinely is representing their beliefs and priorities.

A race to the bottom

I see that everyone is licking their lips that there will now only be one examining board when Gove manages to get back to O-levels. Or something.

And inevitably, there has been criticism of "the market". One particularly hurtful phrase was "there has been a race to the bottom". "The free market has failed us yet again."

I did wonder how competition could lead to this, surely any competition is good, right?

Well, yes it is, but it really does matter who the customer is.

Why, if competition is so good, are the train companies so expensive and so utterly useless? Why, if competition is so good, are examination boards in a race to the bottom? Why is the NHS generally such an unpleasant, bureaucratic experience when you're sick?

In all the cases above, you are not the customer. You are the stock in trade.

Train companies are effectively granted a monopoly over a line, so there is no real competition. Their objective is maximise revenue from a government-decreed monopoly.

Examination boards are there to make the government look good, to make education look successful, to tick government boxes. If we were the customers, they wouldn't be interested in any of those things, they'd be trading on their brand like Oxford or Cambridge, they'd have no interest whatsoever in being in a race to the bottom, because nobody would want to take their exams.

And of course, in the saintly (monopoly) NHS, the patient is the last thing on the mind of those who are in charge, who have to juggle arbitrary government funding with the infinite demand that comes with a "free" service. I suspect that the Lansley reforms (if they ever get enacted, of course!) will lead to a similar disaster where trusts compete with each other for government money by fucking over the long-suffering taxpayer and patient.

Competition only helps the customer. In none of these cases are we the customer, we're just the people who pay for stuff.

There's a big difference between the two.

The Moral Molecule

I listened to a fascinating podcast from the RSA, about how humans are genetically programmed to cooperate. It's more grist to the mill of libertarian belief that we don't need some thug telling us to get along. We all just get along anyway, it's how the overwhelming majority of us are genetically programmed to behave and those who aren't, aren't compelled by the state anyway.

Those amoral libertarians! #greshampodcasts

In the unlikely event that you did not know, I am very keen on podcasts provided by Gresham College. The are free and fascinating lectures on a wide variety of topics, and in the main, the lecturers are incredibly clever, entertaining and amusing. Indeed, I posted a particularly sound one yesterday.

However, no-one is perfect, and in one particularly special podcast, they chose an MP to pontificate on the lack of acceptability in boardroom pay.

Just savour that for a nanosecond: an MP, the very epitome of entitlement and thieving self-righteousness, passing comment on someone else. However, in the main, he didn't do a bad analysis of some of the issues and some of his proposed solutions are actually quite thought-provoking, if slightly impractical.

But then, of course, he goes off the rails. First he says:

In 1970 Milton Friedman famously wrote that the only social responsibility of business is to make as much money as possible. To gung-ho libertarians this provided the perfect justification for unrestricted plundering, irrespective of the consequences for society or the rest of the economy.

And also:

So rewards for failure subverts the very principle of private property itself. Yet the libertarian right’s response is to do away with regulation altogether.

Now, this is typical statist thinking. And frankly, it's quite annoying. The most militant libertarians I know are quite happy to voluntarily contribute to their own welfare provision and to the welfare of others.

Health and other welfare insurance works in the same way as insurance does: by pooling risks, some people win, some lose, but everyone has a greater degree of certainty in the provision for the unexpected. This gives everyone an incentive to share the burden of providing for welfare, even in an anarchist society.

And because there is a much greater social interdependence as there is no state "safety net", there is also a much greater likelihood of people actually taking care of each other, simply because you don't know whether you may not wind up needing their help in years to come. It's naked self-interest working to keep others.

There is certainly no indication in any libertarian or anarchist literature I've ever read that says that libertarianism is, by definition, amoral or any more selfish than any other form of society. Indeed, because there are so few of the protections of the powerful that are offered in modern social democracy, I would actually argue that the exposure of unlimited liability would make most businesses much more careful and conservative in the way they transact.

On the other hand, it's not entirely surprising that one of the entitled thugs who currently tells us all how to live our lives should be so disparaging of a philosophy that holds that his class of arrogant, self-righteous bullying is not and has never been necessary for a civilised, tolerant, economically stable and integrated society.

Religion as an argument for libertarianism

Twitter is once again abuzz with comment about religion, Dawkins, Santorum, blah, blah, blah.

I have seen plenty of people arguing that the UK is a Christian country, I have seen plenty of people banging on about the need for secularism and I've seen plenty of people arguing that people should be free to believe whatever they want, as long as they don't foist it on the rest of us.

And actually, I've some sympathy for people preaching (ho! ho!) religious tolerance. I went to church plenty as a child, tried really hard but I just couldn't make myself believe. But there are clearly a load of people who despite their doubts and challenges continue to believe in some kind of God. In much the same way I can't make myself believe, they can't make themselves unbelieve.

But there is a vast difference between people having an individual belief and people have a wish to force their beliefs onto others. No sane person has a problem with a Muslim quietly enjoying their own faith, plenty of people have a problem with Muslims wishing to force Britain into some sort of Caliphate. Nobody has a problem with Anglican going to church on a Sunday, but loads of people have issues with the Anglican Church being the UK's official religion and part of the establishment.

And so on and so on.

And that made me think. If people can be so tolerant about other people's faith as long as it's not forced onto society as a whole, why is it so irrational for me to want to live in a society that share the common faith in the beneficence of the state?

I mean, plenty of people will say they'd happily live in a godless, atheistic society. Most of these people would further say that if the state was officially atheist, they would have no problem with individuals having their own belief. And I suspect that most genuine believers in a given religion would actually be quite happy to live in a society that was officially atheist but allowed them to congregate voluntarily, enjoy their faith and was generally tolerant.

I've never had a conversation with a statist that didn't eventually come down to some form of handwaving that anarchism could never work. Utimately, their belief in the state is as unquestioning and central to their being as religion. It is unquestioning belief that some things just cannot work unless there is a state. I have an equally unquestioning belief that society can function better, people will be happier, communities will be closer, etc., etc. in a state-free society. It may not look entirely like the world looks today, but even statists will not argue that the world today is how they're really like it to be.

Much like Christians who argue that the world would be better if everyone was Christian, statists invariably call for more power and more money to be given to the state, because the state has some sort of magical formula for making things better. To which I say "Norn Iron" - that really was a showcase for Christianity, wasn't it?

So to me, it looks like statism has all the hallmarks of a religion. Perhaps libertarianism is too.

But why then is it so entirely insane for me to say that I want to live in a society where other people's belief in the state (which has, like religion, killed at least as many as it has saved and for equally ludicrous reasons) does not apply to me, but if you want to go ahead and band together (voluntarily) as a state and live under statist rules, you can, as long as you don't inflict those rules on people who don't want to live under them?

Why is that a perfectly reasonable approach to religion, but not to the state?

Border Bollocks

I went abroad last week. For work, natch, I don't have the readies to swan off for jollies in 5-star hotels for fun.

And I was reminded again of what a fucking miserable business it all is. From the moment you start queueing for checking, through the several pointless and unpleasant "security checks" where bored cunts are clearly just seeing how far they can go and keep a straight face.

Take your belt off (It's leather and has a tiny buckle), take your shoes off, take out your laptop, do this, do that, stand over here, have you got your toothpaste in a bag, blah blah blah. It's all fucking bollocks. I'm bloody sure if I put my mind to it, I could find a way to subvert it, and I'm the least devious, most open person I know.

So I'm amused to hear that not only has Theresa May had to defend herself because someone at the UK Borders Agency decreed that people should be waved through to reduce queues, but that there is also an immigration debate (I caught the tail end of the exposé on the idiot lantern and there was the predictable bollocks that they had let through some people who were claiming benefits and weren't entitled to them - why is this UKBA's problem and not the problem of the FUCKING WELFARE DEPARTMENT?)

Now there has been a 100,000-signature e-petition which means that the government needs to debate tightening up border controls. This is fucking bollocks. Most of the migration coming into the UK is from the EU and there's nothing that anyone can do about that. And the vast majority of immigrants who come here, add something to the UK.

Yes, there are dole-bludging cunts and murderers and rapists, but fuck knows, we have more than enough home-grown of all of the above. I'd rather have a hard-working Somali cock-washer than a dole-bludging Northern gimp any day of the fucking week.

This is just more pandering to people who won't or can't think about what is going on here, or are just old-fashioned bigots. And conclusive proof that even the most direct democracy is just a festering pile of cock. Just because the majority or a significant minority believe some horseshit, doesn't give them the right to force it on the rest of us.

The Utopianism of Anarchists

One of the more irritating disparaging remarks that gets levelled at me as an anarchist is that my views are "utopian" and "impractical".

Yet it seems to me that when you discuss the failings of every system of government that exists, each will be supported by its own group of political anoraks that will say that "if the government just did this and that, why then everything would be perfect!"

Even in the frankly appalling cesspit that is social democracy, there are people who say that "if we just got government employees to care a little bit more and focus a little bit more on making things more efficient (and maybe one or two other things) then it would be perfect".

But this is considerably more utopian than the ideals of anarchy. Every form of government involves balancing objectives that are often diametrically imposed. Yet somehow, if we just fiddle a bit here and tweak a bit there, then current government can be made absolutely spot on.

Well, fuck that. I don't believe that shit for a fucking moment. People have been honing and shaving and fiddling and twiddling and generally buggering around with government since it was first shat into being. Some brilliant minds used to be involved in it (although those days are long gone now!) and yet it's always been a fucking shambles and it always will be a fucking shambles.

And what about impractical? Well, it's true that some things might be more difficult to do in an anarchic society. But I think people would be amazed at how few those things were. But even if there are some things that are difficult to do, do we as people not deserve the other benefits that come from a regulation- and government-free society?

I don't think that an anarchic society would necessarily look much different from what we have now, but at least costs would be transparent and fairly borne by people who need services and our money wouldn't be wasted on crap like jingoistic wars and we wouldn't have the behemoth state sucking the life out us all.

The Fallacy of State Prevention of Crime

One of the most irritating objections to anarchy that I have to face on a daily basis is that the state prevents crime. Hopefully, it is now abundantly clear to the thickest of statists that it does no such thing.

The thing that prevents most of us from committing crimes is that we don't want to. Most of us do just want to get along and live a peaceful life. Those that don't are almost certainly already criminals, who may or may not yet have been caught.

The fear of detection is not really a factor in preventing crime. It just means more planning to the committed criminal and is not a concern of anyone committing a spur-of-the-moment crime. But even if this fear is a factor, why does that imply that we need a state?

Detecting can, and often is, done by private investigators. Bobbies on the beat (remember them?) could easily be replaced by privately contracted people.

The business of slapping people on the wrist and dishing out entirely inappropriate punishments could also be done by a call centre in India, with as much effect on criminals.

But seriously, although it's the area where most people really struggle with not having a state, the truth of the matter is that most people implicitly accept the idea of having multiple impartial arbiters for various requirements. You don't go to a Magistrate's Court to settle a football match.

You don't go to the Supreme Court to arbitrate a small claim on a shop. You don't go to to the FA to get a decree absolute. Equally, when you sign certain contracts, you agree the jurisdiction that will be applied.

So when you download stuff from Apple's iTunes Store, you're agreeing to a whole bunch of conditions under the laws of the United States, even though you may not be there and may never have been there.

And even within the UK legal system, there are specialist courts for specialist legal areas. So the idea of a market for courts is by no means unfeasible. A market for courts already exists.

The big struggle that people have is that they feel like having them privately funded will expose them to greater risk of corruption. I disagree, because in a society with no state to hide behind, judges would be completely personally liable for the consequences of any corruption or malfeasance.

So I would expect judges to be much more careful in their dealings because the consequences of any shady dealings would not only mean that they could wind up in gaol if caught, but they would also be financially responsible for any losses incurred by affected parties.

But really, in societies before government, there are always a shaman or a chief or elders or some group that people subjected themselves to.

In an anarchic society, you might have a visible disclaimer in your shop saying "Any crimes committed in this shop will be under the jurisdiction of Fred's Supa-cheep Court", or on the company website you might find the disclaimer "Any crime committed against this company will be under the jurisdiction of Chris's Corporate Court".

This would make it clear which court you would be tried at. Or, in much the same way as juries are haggled over by defence and prosecution attorneys in the States, perhaps the initial haggling would include which court was going to decide the case.

In either event, it's not beyond the wit of man to imagine such a system.

Similarly, it's not beyond the wit of man to realise that the state has done nothing to prevent this current outbreak of crime and is more responsible for its happening than anyone else.

The state does not prevent crime. The state is not needed to detect or punish crime. The state does not make us all just get along.

Fuck the state.

Post script: if you think the police are a better, safer option than private security with unlimited liability, watch this:



Tip of the clown wig to @Matt_Muir on twitter.

I didn't predict a riot

Lord knows how many days of riots now. Spreading like a rash over London, with sporadic incidents of related violence in Birmingham and Leeds and Bristol and Lord knows where else. People have died.

I am acquainted with a local rozzer and if what she's telling me is true, it's either going to, or already has kicked off in some unlikely, sleepy places.

Out of nowhere, mass uprisings of what really do appear to be nothing more than well-organised scrotes are going out and indulging in some high-impact shopping.

It's quite mind-boggling. Lefties have been quick to leap on the bandwagon of "Tory cuts", but since I see no evidence of cuts anywhere, I am forced to conclude that they're talking bullshit.

In fact, I want to say some more about this. When I was a kid, my parents were not, by any definition of the word, rich. I went to a "theme park" exactly once as a child, and we literally had just enough money to get in. We trudged around the park looking at the exhibits and stuff, did all the free things and then left. We didn't even have enough money to buy a cold drink. I was not inundated with the latest consumer playthings. As soon as I was legally able to, I went and got a job.

My parents provided me with clothes, food and a roof over my head. I never went out to riot, the idea never even occurred to me.

This just looks like a mad surge of thugs out to help themselves to new TVs and various other bits and pieces. Expect a massive surge of cheap electronics on eBay next week.

I am actually quite angered by "the left" blaming this on social deprivation and a lack of role models. First of all, the state has, for decades been visibly throwing money at "social deprivation" at the behest of the left, and now it's clearly not working and the argument is that we need to throw more money at it, because it just wasn't enough? By far the biggest component of state spending is on welfare. And now more spending on welfare will have a better result?

And the lack of role models thing really gets on my tits. By making it viable for any woman to be a single parent, by making it reasonably easy for a single woman to raise children on their own, what the cunting fuck did they think was going to happen? I mean, you can argue the case for single mum-ness, and you can argue the case for lack of good role models, but you can't have that particular cake AND eat it. All the single mothers I know take their parental duties seriously, and that included not having an abusive or useless father in the house.

And fair play to them, it's easier to be a single mother than make the effort of going off to find a decent father figure who can also provide. I don't make light of the effort required to find a decent and compatible man. But then you can't wring your hands and say that somehow this violent behaviour is excusable because the perpetrators don't have a good role model in their life. Your policies have made it much more likely that they would grow up like this.

Some of the stories I've read have been horrifying, like this tale of an injured boy being casually mugged by looters.

It is one of our worst nightmares, really, a mass insurgency of violent, amoral thugs, storming homes and shops, casually burning buildings and cars and looting with apparent impunity. And it came out of nowhere. The ostensible cause of it all, the shooting of an allegedly armed man, bears no relation to the scale and delightful social inclusiveness of the subsequent rioting.

Scuttlebutt is that the looters are using a number of social media sites and tools to organise the looting with nearly military precision.

The police have been rocked back on their feet. BoJo and the massively-foreheaded cunt have curtailed their summer holidays. Cameron has been photographed repeatedly looking serious, pensive and statesmanlike, while BoJo has apparently disgraced himself completely and made a laughingstock of himself. Both of these underscore just how much use modern politicians are.

Of course, far be it from me to point out that one of the great advantages of a state is that it protects us from things like this happening. Or so I'm told, repeatedly. Without a state, we would descend into mayhem and nihilism. Mindless violence and thuggish theft would rule the day.

I'm so glad that the state has prevented this from happening out of the blue.

The truth is, the inability of the police to bring this under control underlines the value of the state quite clearly. Eventually, the thugs will get bored and run out of easy prey and it will quieten down and the state will claim victory.

Sadly, that will not be the case.

The state has been systematically removing the normal tools of ensuring civility and cooperation from us. They claim a monopoly on defending us from violence, exhorting us not to resort to evil vigilantism. But if you look at how useless they've been at stopping this from happening, it's abundantly clear that it really cannot protect us from the one thing that "everyone" agrees that we need a state for.

The thugs will eventually get bored and go do something else. The police will arrest a trivial number of them and by the time they get to trial, the usual hand-wringing bollocks will kick in and nobody will get an appropriate punishment. Insurance and the taxpayer will pick up the pieces and a couple of businesses will be shut down, further destroying jobs and inflicting poverty and misery on innocent people.

We will be told that the state has sorted things out, when in truth boredom and apathy will be the only things that actually stop the mindless violence.

The only people who will wind up paying for this will be taxpayers and anyone who actually pays insurance. Thugs will be reassured that no-one will actually do anything to stop them if they ever feel the urge again and we will all be worse off.

And still the sheep will cry out that the state is necessary to protect us from this exact thing, that the state prevents it from happening more. Therefore we need more state, so that the state can protect us even more.

It makes me weep.

Terrifying!

Update: It seems like this is not the truth any more. However, the actual truth is hard to ascertain, because the Home Office website says it's seven days, while Damian Green says it's fourteen.

So much for a quick blog then.