Something to look forward to

Like most sensible folk, I know that all that Kyoto Protocol stuff is anti-capitalist propaganda. But suppose, just suppose it’s all true. There is an upside:

WINE lovers will be able to buy their first vintage of Scottish wine within the next 50 years, say scientists.

Using computer models, the scientists at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, in Bracknell, say Britain will enjoy rising temperatures within the next five decades, possibly up by 2C, making it possible for viticulturists to develop vineyards north of the Border.

So global warming might be OK after all.

Not all of Scotland would benefit.

However:

Dr Elaine Booth, research officer at the SAC in Aberdeenshire, specialising in crops and soil research, suggests the drier east coast would be more suited to vineyards.

No problem: the rest of the country can continue to produce whisky and Irn-Bru.

If I keep eating my greens I may be around in 2050 to enjoy the odd bottle of Cote du Forth or Chateau Cowdenbeath.

Eat your greens - before the food police pay a visit to a dinner table near you

Yes, that's the headline for this story in Scotland on Sunday:

Deacon, the Scottish parliament’s first health minister, says the Executive is already engaged in an "impressive range of work" to improve the country’s diet, including the creation of food co-operatives, breakfast clubs for schools and healthy-eating advertising. But she said that can only go so far.

But of course. We can't have politicians running around with nothing to do, can we? So we'll have to go further:

Deacon says if high nutritional standards for school meals cannot be achieved voluntarily, "the Executive may need to consider whether to use the force of law".

Deacon adds: "The Executive must also work with the UK government to address the enormous power of the multinationals and the force of their advertising, particularly the way they influence young people.

"Again, much can be achieved through dialogue and voluntary agreements, but legislative measures should not be ruled out."

Ms Deacon then goes on about "curbs", "action", "changing the contents of tins" and "changing the eating habits of the nation". And how is this to be achieved? Our brave politician is already thinking ahead:

There is no quick fix or simple solution and the Executive deserves credit for the start it has made. But as work progresses, it is to be hoped that our nation’s leaders are prepared to consider the full range of options on the menu of possible solutions."

So what final solution could there be? For a start that word "menu" needs to go. We can't have the people deciding what they want to eat. That way lays chaos and anarchy. There is a better way.

I note that over in America Wal-Mart has cancelled the testing of Radio Frequency Identification Devices following a consumer outcry. Use of these RFIDs has become very controversial in the US. But here in Scotland we're not troubled by any of that outmoded, eighteenth-century constitutional privacy nonsense, are we? Let's lead the world in the War on Obesity. It's time for Scotland's own RFIDs. We need to put a Real Food Identification Device inside every apple, lettuce and carrot. Then we must all be fitted with internal sensors to make sure that we are eating in the manner prescribed by Ms Deacon. Once a week we shall be herded along to our wonderful new Parliament building to be internally monitored to ensure foodalogical correctness.

A CHIP IN EVERY SCOT: now there's an election-winning slogan for you!

Graduates, plumbers and entrepreneurs

Here's yet another call for Scotland to increase its output of graduates. We all know who is going to be pleased by the advice of Richard Florida:

His comments will be welcomed by university chiefs who reject the idea that we are training “too many graduates and not enough plumbers”.

There's nothing at all wrong for more people to go to university as long as they are willing to bear the full economic cost of doing so. Of course in Professor Florida's native America it's normal for students to finance much or all of their own higher education. That's probably why American graduates are associated with economic growth and why so many of them want to work in the private sector. Simply expanding the ranks of taxpayer-financed students encourages the very dependency culture that is at the root of so many of Scotland's problems. What we really need is a few more entrepreneurs and I don't really mind if they are college dropouts like Bill Gates or Michael Dell.

Travels with two cameras

I brought my old Yashicamat 124G roll film camera out of retirement last Sunday.

This first photograph shows the seafront at Anstruther in the East Neuk of Fife. The famous Anstruther Fish Bar is just along to the right.

The second one is a 35mm photo of the River Tweed at Peebles:

Throw them in!

I have no idea whether the redundant US Navy "ghost ships" that are to be dismantled at Hartlepool present any real danger to the public. The town’s MP Peter Mandelson thinks not. Friends of the Earth and other "environmentalists" are in full protest mode. The local ship recycling company Able UK Ltd talks of creating at least 200 new jobs and I imagine that the contract has preserved many existing jobs as well.

Last night I watched a story about this affair on the Channel 4 News as the first ship arrives in the UK. The "environmentalists" were given a great deal of coverage. The lady presenter then introduced the boss of Able UK as: "Perhaps the only man in Hartlepool who wants the ships here." Somehow I don’t think so.

There are 200 new jobs at the yard and there’ll be extra jobs at suppliers, as well as money flowing into local shops and other businesses. Perhaps Channel 4 imagines Hartlepool to be some sort of remote Victorian relic of the industrial revolution with undernourished workers running around in clogs and all the money from the contract flowing to the yard owner. I think that some burly members of the Hartlepudlian working class should toss a few "environmentalists" and southern TV folk into the town’s dock.

A joke - or is it?

As seen on The Daily Reckoning:

"WHAT IS POLITICS"

A little boy goes to his dad and asks, "What is Politics?"

Dad says, "Well son, let me try to explain it this way: I am the head of the family, so call me the president. Your mother is the administrator of the money, so call her the government. We're here to take care of your needs, so we'll call you the people. The nanny, we'll consider the working class and your baby brother, we'll call him the future. Now think about that and see if it makes any sense."

So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what dad has said. Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him. He finds that the baby has severely soiled his diaper. So the little boy goes to his parents' room and finds his mother sound asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with nanny. He gives up and goes back to bed.

The next morning the little boy says to his father, "Dad, I think I understand the concept of Politics now." The father says, "Good, son, Tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about." The little boy replies, "The president is screwing the working class while the government is sound asleep. The people are being ignored and the future is in deep doodoo."

Why not in Edinburgh?

Tony Blair has stirred up a hornets' nest:

Government plans for a new Supreme Court could undermine the independence of Scots law, legal experts claimed yesterday.

And the move could be unconstitutional if the new court is seen to be part of the England and Wales court system, it was argued.

The Faculty of Advocates is up in arms:

The faculty said it had "serious concern" that the Supreme Court plan, as drafted, fails to respect the independence of Scots law under the 1707 Act of Union.

Any court with jurisdiction in Scotland cannot be a part of the England and Wales court system, and the faculty warned: "The constitutional significance of this cannot be overstated.

"Any attempt to create a Supreme Court which did not comply with these requirements would be contrary to the constitution of the United Kingdom, and any purported act in, or affecting, Scotland in such a court would be unlawful and of no effect in Scotland."

I'm pleased to see that Scotland's lawyers are objecting to Blair's constitutional coup d'etat.

The editorial in The Herald says that:

The threat of crisis can be avoided by the prime minister taking up the faculty's suggestion to put the supreme court firmly out of the reach of government, perhaps by giving it a home outside London and having it sit on a UK-wide circuit; certainly by creating a body at arm's length from the administration to disburse funding.

That seems reasonable. Come to think of it I don't imagine that the Act of Union makes it unconstitutional for English cases to be held under Scots law. No one would have imagined such an eventuality. So why don't we set up the new UK Supreme Court here in Edinburgh, under Scots law? What could be wrong with that?

The Campaign for Real Education

Here's another call for a degree of privatisation in education:

Private schools should be given the chance to provide "state" education, a prominent figure in UK education claimed yesterday.

Pauline Davies, the president of the Girls’ Schools Association, said independent schools want parents to be able to put the cost of a state education towards a place in an independent school.

You've got to laugh when a local government education spokesman (Labour of course) says:

... there were no failing local authority schools in Scotland.

Eh! So how come the Labour leader in Dundee is sending her son to a private school?

I note that the Executive rejects suggestions that the private sector is no more expensive than state provision:

The cost of fees at a private day school is about £7,000 a year at secondary level and more than £5,000 at primary.

This year, Scottish Conservatives claimed that, while the Executive gives authorities £4,500 for each pupil, £1,500 was lost in bureaucracy.

A spokeswoman for the Executive rejected the Tories’ claims, insisting that authorities had to retain funds to pay for nurseries, special-needs education, school transport, school meals and education psychologists.

This completely ignores the question of economies of scale. The private sector supplies a very small proportion of the education "market". Imagine what the cost of food would be in Tesco or Safeway if groceries were also obtainable free from a National Food Service. "Free" at the point of consumption that is! Prices in private shops under such a food regime would be far higher than at present. Once education is solely provided by private institutions costs will plummet. If we must have taxpayer-funded education let's at least give the job to those best able to do it. Privatise the schools now.

Kilts reprieved

As reported here by Rab The EU has now backed down and agreed that kilts are not skirts.

I found this interesting:

Jack McConnell, the First Minister, stepped into the row when he learned about it yesterday, ordering Executive officials in Brussels to clarify the matter with EU bosses.

The Office of National Statistics also got involved, and Eurostat agreed to send out the amended forms.

I'm no fan of McConnell but he has kicked some EU ass and got this sorted. Tony Blair please note.

Three letters

The Scotsman carries three letters today about the economy.

Douglas Taylor warns:

What will happen when the boom in job vacancies for welfare liaison officers and senior administrative co-ordinators, that Bill Jamieson refers to (Opinion, 31 October), dries up? Our economy is more dependant on the public sector than is the rest of the UK. So when government spending meets its day of destiny, with the need for a country to pay its way in the world, Scotland’s economy will be disproportionately hard hit.

As Mr Taylor points out, we don't need the advice of leftist economists such as Paul Krugman. We've got quite enough of them here already. Yes, bring back Adam Smith.

Judith Begg writes:

Too often, economists, and indeed politicians, discuss economic policy with out reference to the reality of making it happen, and in the belief that the workforce can be directed to operate in the desirable manner on demand.

The only "direction" that the workforce needs is the one given by its customers in an unregulated market economy. I'm not sure that's what Ms Begg has in mind.

Allison Hunter makes this observation:

For instance, he (Paul Krugman) argued that Scotland could model itself on the economies of the states in the US, without acknowledging that they have a much higher degree of fiscal autonomy than Scotland does.

Not only does Scotland lack fiscal autonomy but so also does the UK itself. A US state may decide whether or not to impose a sales tax - some do, some don't - but the UK must levy VAT as a condition of being a member of the EU. The UK and Scotland need full fiscal freedom.

Minding one's own business

In Scotland on Sunday Peter Oborne laments the forthcoming departure of Michael Portillo from British politics. Perhaps it's our fault, he suggests:

Do we make too many demands on our politicians? Ever since he first rose to prominence as an ambitious young Thatcherite 20 years ago, Michael Portillo has been subject to endless attack, probing and exposure.

His private life - in particular some homosexual experiences when he was a young man - was for many years the object of innuendo and exposure.

Well, sorry, it's not our fault. We pay so much attention to the "private" lives of politicians because they interfere so much with ours. If politicians didn't run schools we wouldn't pay so much attention to which schools their children went to - see the previous post. When they stop telling us what to eat we'll let them get on with their private lives. If politicians are necessary at all - and that's by no means certain - they should limit themselves to helping us defend ourselves against aggressors and do nothing else.

Our own Diane Abbott

This time it's the Labour leader in Dundee:

THE Labour leader of Dundee City Council was condemned last night for sending her child to a £7,000-a-year private school despite running an administration whose schools have recorded some of the worst exam results in Scotland.

Note how one Labour "insider" responds to the outcry from parents:

The Scottish Labour Party last night refused to be drawn on the subject. However one party insider sought to put distance between the party and Shimi.

The insider said: "It’s utterly and entirely reprehensible to use someone’s child as part of a political attack. But I think that a lot of us could see why people in Dundee will be disappointed to hear of this."

This is nonsense. The Labour party uses children for political purposes all the time. Why else is it against the use of education vouchers and home schooling? It's because Labour wants to maintain control over children through its friends in the schools. This is what one of Labour's victims has to say:

Another parent asked not to be named out of fear that she and her son, who attends a Dundee high school, would receive a "hard time" from teachers at the school who were members of the local Labour Party.

We need to get Scottish children out of the grasp of these socialist "insiders" now. Let's privatise all of our schools immediately.

Nuke Brussels now!

This time they've gone too far.

Tony Blair must act today.

All Scotsmen have been insulted:

EUROCRATS have ruled that the kilt is "womenswear''.

Spaniard Pedro Solbes, an EU commissioner, insists our national dress should be listed as a skirt on official forms.

And kiltmakers could be fined up to £1000 if they don't comply.

They have taken away our freedom but they won't make us wear skirts!

Scotsman letter from Neil Craig

Here is another letter on education from a Freedom and Whisky reader.

Another menace that needs to be banned

The Blair government prefers to ban weapons instead of bringing perpetrators to justice. We have seen this with guns and now, as David Carr has pointed out on Samizdata, the same "logic" is being applied to fireworks:

If, as Mr.Watson avers, unruly teenagers are using fireworks as weapons, then the problem is not a lack of law but a notable and palpable lack of enforcement. If the police are either unable or unwilling to enforce the laws that already exist then why does Mr.Watson or anybody else assume that they will suddenly spring into action to enforce new ones? The problem is not that the state has 'come down hard on misuse' but, rather, that the state's agents clearly cannot be bothered to 'come down' to any measurable degree at all.

I therefore predict that the new regime of which Mr.Watson is so proud will make not a jot of difference. The thugs who terrorise their elderly neighbours with firecrackers will simply carry on regardless and that will cause a whole new round of hand-wringing and cries of 'something must be done'. Sadly, it will add impetus to the already vocal lobby demanding the nationalisation of fireworks or their outright prohibition. As with firearms, rather than bring the full force of the law to bear on those who misuse, it is easier to simply abolish all use. This is another 'thin end of the wedge'. Not because it achieves the desired objective but because it won't.

Mr Carr is quite right, though if it is Labour's policy to crack down on all potentially anti-social devices we must pay attention to this story:

The controversial deal to select Holyrood as the site of the Scottish Parliament was cooked up in a chance meeting on an evening commuter train to Glasgow, it emerged yesterday. John Clement, a surveyor and property fixer, found himself squeezed next to Anthony Andrew, a senior Scottish Office civil servant, when he travelled through to Glasgow one evening in late September, 1997.

So it seems that we are spending £400 million on a Scottish Parliament building as a result of a "chance meeting" on a train. Clearly this sort of thing can't be allowed to happen again. BAN TRAINS NOW.

Traffic chaos hits Auld Reekie

I'd just finished moaning about possible bus restrictions in six years' time and the City Council goes and closes Princes Street to all buses this very afternoon.

Apparently this is because characters such as Beyonce Knowles, Justin Timberlake, Dido, Christina Aquilera, Kylie Minogue, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna and Minnie Driver are in town for tonight's MTV Europe Music Awards that are taking place in Leith. An overspill event is to be held in Princes Street Gardens.

All buses were diverted along George Street and I suspect that Labour has lost the little-old-lady vote, as regular customers were unable to get off outside Jenners for their afternoon tea.

Bring back Jimmy Shand, I say.

OK, Kylie can stay too.

Keep those buses rolling!

Edinburgh's latest transport row is about a proposal to reduce the number of buses in Princes Street:

Senior councillors believe "far too many" buses use Princes Street as a through route, and want to see many of them forced to turn back at either end of the road. It is felt the changes would make the area a much more pleasant shopping environment once trams start running in the capital.

This does seem to be a rather silly idea. Shoppers need the buses! I accept that it would only occur once the planned tram service gets going but Line 1 and Line 2 will serve very limited areas of the city compared with the bus network. We can see from the map that Princes Street is the key to the bus system in the city centre. These Lothian Bus routes pass through the street:

1 3 3A 4 8 10 11 12 15 15A 16 17 19 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 33 34 37 37A 41 42 44 44A 45 64 X26 X31 X37 X47 and all Night Buses

(More routes are operated by First Bus.)

People need to be able to travel easily to and through the city centre. Instead of restricting the number of buses on Princes Street why not get rid of the single-deckers? Perhaps we need to ban tourist buses in the rush hour. Turning buses around at the beginning of Princes Street is a nonsensical idea. Sometimes I think that politicians say things simply to justify their existence.

What do you believe in?

Why not take the World's Smallest Political Quiz? The analysis is far more useful than the usual "left and right" way of seeing things.

Give Glasgow positive help

Glasgow has come bottom in an exam league table. Many politicians want these tables to be scrapped. I think that's entirely wrong. Parents - and taxpayers - have the right to know this information. Listen to a typical politician:

A local Glasgow SNP councillor John Mason said he was glad league tables were being scrapped.

He said: "It is completely wrong that the tables judge on academic achievement alone and place Glasgow at the bottom. More money is needed to address unemployment and social work issues as without that you could still find Glasgow struggling."

Of course it's true that social conditions will affect school performance but that's no reason to censor educational information. Why not think about ways to positively help Glasgow? What the city most needs is a huge expansion of entrepreneurialism and for that Glasgow needs to get government off its back.

I was at a meeting of the Policy Institute on Tuesday. Business leaders and politicians from different parties recognised that Scotland's companies are over-taxed and over-regulated. That's why our economic performance is so dire. Why not scrap part or all of Scottish Enterprise and use the money to abolish business rates in Glasgow? A thriving economy will lead to better performance in schools.

Inefficiency in state education

I have just noticed that the Sunday Herald carried a letter from Andrew Duffin who is a regular contributor to Freedom and Whisky's comments.

Educational lunacy

In today's Daily Mail (no link) Allan Massie writes about choice in education:

"On the one hand, is the parents' right to choose the sort of education they want for their children. On the other, there is the assertion that such schools perpetuate the sectarian divisions in Scotland and so help breed intolerance"

The correct response to the claimed "right to choose" is to ask: "At whose expense?"

We have taxpayer-funded non-denominational schools, Catholic schools, Jewish schools and understandably Muslims now want their own schools. Why stop there? What about separate state schools for Methodists, Mormons and Jedi Knights?

I believe that in fifty years' time people will find it extraordinary that schools were once run by the government. It is already possible to give parents vouchers that would enable all children to be educated privately at no extra cost to the taxpayer. Once schools are fully privatised parents would of course be free to spend extra to send their children to all sorts of schools - at their own expense. In the meantime the state should not fund religiously divided schools. It is quite wrong that taxpayers be made to pay for the kind of nonsense that has been going on in Dalkeith.

It's blogday!

Today is BBC Scotland's Blogday. 16 bloggers across the country have been asked to take part in a Radio Scotland programme that will feature excerpts from the blogs. Here is a list of the blogs that are participating.

Treason and plot

There's a lot in this morning's news about firefighters and fireworks and bonfires.

Good Morning Scotland spent quite a lot of time covering the latest firefighters' dispute. It is of course November 5th but the BBC tells us that:

... bonfire night crews have stressed that emergency call-outs will not be affected.

Let's hope that's the case.

An editorial in The Scotsman considers the wider matter of the availability and use of fireworks:

For some time now, the use of fireworks has become detached from 5 November. Instead, it has degenerated into a common nuisance spread over the weeks before (and after) the annual celebration of the Gunpowder Plot.

The paper welcomes the forthcoming Fireworks Act and links Britain's freedom to legislate with the failure of the Gunpowder Plot.

Some of us believe that our liberties are again under threat. A really excellent analysis of Britain's current position has been written by Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance.

Dr Gabb writes:

The real area of conflict is cultural. That is where the engines of destruction are now most concentrated. And this is a conflict in which there is no overall strategy of defence. There are local defences, and these sometimes succeed. But there is no strategy, nor even the realisation that one might be needed. The engines of destruction may be ranged against fox hunting, or unfashionable humour, or Remembrance Day commemorations, or the Churches, or the nuclear family, or received opinions about the past, or national independence, or the Monarchy, or standard English, or private motoring, or whatever else - but the object is always to delegitimise dissent where it cannot be made impossible.

Read the whole of Dr Gabb's article. As he says, the threat to our country is primarily cultural. It's time for a successful plot - this time in favour of liberty.

Who am I?

Some readers have been asking this rather strange question.

I was born in Annan and the family then moved to Stewarton where I started primary school. Next we spent a few years in Leeds after which came a move back to Ayrshire. I attended Prestwick High School and then Ayr Academy. My spare time was spent watching planes at Prestwick Airport. A few weeks after leaving school we moved to London where I lived until my wife and I moved to Edinburgh early last year. In London I qualified as a company secretary and eventually became finance director of an advertising agency. Later, I did a degree through the Open University. A more formal CV is on the website of the Libertarian Alliance:

David Farrer is Finance Director of the Libertarian Alliance. He has a BA (First Class Honours) in Modern History and Economics, is a qualified Chartered Secretary and a member of both the Institute of Directors and the Institute of Management. David provides business services through his company, Midlothian Management Ltd. As well as subscribing to the Institute of Economic Affairs and the David Hume Society, he is a member of the International Society for Individual Liberty through which he met his wife Pam who runs the California Hypnotherapy Center in Edinburgh. David is a Rothbardian natural-rights Libertarian with a particular interest in the politics of his native Scotland in which he lives. In the nineteen-eighties, he was candidate for the Hampstead constituency for the Campaign to Abolish the Greater London Council.

Sadly the Libertarian Alliance "job" is unpaid but you could help the cause by signing up for the LA Conference to be held in London later in the month.