F&W's profile

From these guys and now all over the blogosphere:

New photos

I've posted some more photos over on Scottish Clouds.

They were taken in southwest Scotland, mainly at the Isle of Whithorn.

Isle of Whithorn Church
Originally uploaded by David Farrer.

Should I be a Lib Dem speechwriter?

An interesting story in the Sunday Times:

Has Gordon Brown’s mood lightened since his little setback in Dunfermline and West Fife, where he happens to live? Sadly no. The chancellor failed to see the funny side of things when Malcolm Bruce, the Scottish Lib Dem president, bumped into him in the Commons and suggested introducing him to his MP, Willie Rennie. “He didn’t seem too keen and just rushed off without a word,” said Rennie.

I can just imagine Mr Rennie's words:

Pleased to meet you Mr Brown. I understand that you work round here somewhere. Now, if you have any problems you'd like to discuss with your new MP, you're welcome to attend my constituency surgery. Perhaps you've got career worries, concerns about your pension or maybe a troublesome neighbour who could do with an ASBO order?

Does anyone trust these people?

In particular, do the Liberal Democrats?

SCOTTISH Labour is poised to commit a serious U-turn by making identity cards compulsory to register with a GP, pick up prescriptions or claim travel concessions.

Despite assurances from Jack McConnell that the cards will not be required for devolved services, many Labour MSPs are now backing the scheme.

A change in policy would heighten tension between Labour and their Liberal Democrat coalition partners, who are implacably opposed to ID cards.

"Implacably"!

Oh, yes: like they'll give up their ministerial cars on principle. Switching into Machiavellian mode, perhaps the post-Dunfermline Labour party wants to antagonise the Lib Dems.

(Needless to say, any signs of real liberalism in Scotland will be ruthlessly purged.)

Drive Carefully

Drive Carefully
Originally uploaded by David Farrer.

Too late for Mary Jo Kopechne

Quote, unquote

I noticed this item over on Guido's blog a few days ago:

"to be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything."

Guido gives a hat tip for the Hayek "quote" to this site. And why do I put "quote" in quotation marks, you may ask. Because the "quote" isn't quite correct, and therein lies a story.

Around twenty-five years ago I decided to get a backup camera for my trusty Pentax KM SLR. I chose the Olympus XA, and what an excellent camera it was. Actually, I should say "is" - for it's still working fine, albeit without such modern innovations as autofocus or autowind, never mind digital.

At the time I was an accountant with an advertising agency in Knightsbridge. A few days after buying the XA one of the directors rushed into my office and asked if I had my camera with me. "Yes," I replied. "But I've only got black and white film." That was no problem and I was sent off by taxi to the headquarters of EMI who were one of our clients. The job was to take photographs of some visiting American executives while they were standing in front of the famous His Master's Voice painting. I was paid the sum of £60 and was well pleased with this outcome, as the camera had only cost around £100 the previous weekend. I made the decision to always have a camera with me.

About the same time, the Alternative Bookshop opened in Covent Garden under the management of my friend Chris Tame, founder of the Libertarian Alliance. Armed at all times with the XA, I became the official photographer at the shop's signing sessions including the one attended by Professor Hayek.

This was the outcome:

We decided to make the photo into a poster. A work colleague did some retouching that removed a bottle of wine from the dark area and chopped off the entire left hand side of the photo which was taken in landscape format, not portrait. Being in the advertising business I was able to get a supplier to make an A2 sized metallic block and print off the first batch of posters - it helped that I was the person who wrote the cheques - and all of this work was performed in exchange for a bottle of Scotch. This was well before the age of PCs. But of course we needed a Hayek quote to go on the poster.

Back then the Libertarian Alliance was a democracy instead of the benevolent monarchy into which it later evolved. (The full story of The Events of 1982 is complex, but clues can be found here.) The "Committee" searched through the great man's works and eventually came across the words: "To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be", and then several lines later: "controlled in everything". We decided to go with that "quote" using the ellipsis to indicate the missing lines.

Like this:

"To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be... controlled in everything." - Friedrich Hayek

Hayek was pleased with the choice and didn't mind the missing words in the least.

In the early 1990's my wife and I were pleasantly surprised to see the poster on the wall of Laissez Faire Books in their shop, which was then in San Francisco. Hopefully it's still on display at the IEA.

So, the lessons to be learned are:

(1) Don't believe everything you read on Google, and
(2) Always carry your camera.

Now, they're getting it!

Up here in Scotland the BBC is concerned about possible bias:

Wark was subjected to long-term behind-the-scenes scrutiny by her own managers, a team of broadcast executives, who checked out her performance on air for anything which might give rise to accusations of bias.

Let's think about this. Is the Beeb concerned that Ms Wark could be a secret admirer of David Cameron? Was she seen campaigning for the LibDems in Dunfermline? Is she thought to be a closet Nat?

None of the above, I'm afraid:

Concerned corporation governors put Wark under "review" amid fears that her relationship with the First Minister, together with her closeness to former Labour leader Donald Dewar and her role in the Holyrood parliament building, could be damaging to the image of the BBC as an impartial broadcaster.

Labour! Who'd have thought it?

Oops!

The Scotsman gets the Tory and SNP logos mixed up:

So long, pension thief

Isn't politics exciting - even for an anarcho-capitalist like me?

Labour has been defeated right in Gordon Brown's own backyard. The changes in the parties' share of the total vote since last year are:

Labour: down 35.43%
Liberal Democrat: up 77.70%
SNP: up 10.92%
Conservative: down 24.30%
SSP: down 4.44%
UKIP: down 60.34%

What's especially heartening is to remember that Labour lost the religious hatred vote in the Commons because so many of its MPs were up campaigning in Dunfermline at the time.

And I wonder if the Tories now regret shafting the obvious local candidate.

Why I don't live in Mexico City

Look at these stunning photographs.

Thanks to Marginal Revolution.

Fellow blogger nominated

I note from the print edition of the Scotsman that Margo MacDonald MSP has nominated Arthur's Seat as one of the "Seven Wonders of Scotland".

Congratulations to Mr Seat!

Economic illiteracy alert

Or, where's Bastiat when we need him?

We are told that Labour boosts service jobs:

MORE than 3.3 million jobs have been created in service firms since Labour came to power in 1997, new research showed today.

Isn't it a surprise to learn that the GMB union seems to understand economics more than the business writers on the Evening News?

... the new jobs offset huge cutbacks in manufacturing and that just over half of the posts were full-time.

Yes, it's the "Seen and the Unseen" yet again.

Needless to say, many of those manufacturing jobs have gone because of the socialist policies of Za-NuLab, and even more would have gone had the GMB been more influential.

But the point remains: How on earth does anyone know how many of those new service sector jobs have anything at all to do with the policies of the government?

A "guru" campaigns

There's nothing wrong with campaigning on dietary matters. Like this:

THE TV health guru Gillian McKeith has launched a campaign to kill off a much-loved Scots delicacy.

The dietitian, who helped Pop Idol winner Michelle McManus to shed five stones, now has the famous Aberdeen rowie, or buttery, in her sights.

While visiting the area at the weekend, she said: "I'm here to banish the buttery. Aberdeen is in need of my help."

The problem arises when politicians get involved and try to impose their values on the populace instead of leaving things to the market. Let's hope that Ms McKeith sticks to persausion and doesn't resort to force.

Anyway, the Aberdeen diet can't be doing too much harm.

Freedom, eventually

Rather surprisingly, the Scottish Parliament has decided that we own our own bodies.

Well, after death that is:

A new law to increase the number of organs available for transplant has been passed by MSPs.

But the Human Tissue (Scotland) Bill stopped short of "presumed consent, which would have required people to "opt out" of being an organ donor.

It's certainly no surprise to learn that the "Liberals" think that your body belongs to the state:

The move to presumed consent, proposed by Liberal Democrat MSP John Farquhar Munro and supported by the British Medical Association (BMA), was backed by several MSPs.

Needless to say, we still belong to the state while we're alive.

Dead tree media: some get it, some don't

There was a fascinating post over on the Normblog yesterday. Read the whole thing there. I was particularly interested in this from the editor of the Scotsman's web pages:

We receive a lot of traffic from blogs

Hopefully, I've done my little bit.

When I started blogging, I used to link to the Scotsman and its Glasgow rival in equal proportions. Now I don't because the Herald's links die after a day or so. It's so 2005. In fact, I hardly ever link to the Herald at all these days. I did mention this to a prominent Herald journalist recently and perhaps their new editor will get the message. I've had over 140,000 hits on this blog and I have little doubt that quite a few of my readers - especially the many from overseas - will now be regular readers of the Scotsman's web pages. Not so for the Herald.

Edinburgh this morning

Frost
Originally uploaded by David Farrer.

The red menace

Down south, there's no dithering:

IN ENGLAND an edict has gone out to shoot them by the hundred thousand.

Yeah! That'll show 'em.

And the result:

Reds have gone from England except in a handful of redoubts

It must be the Cameron effect.

But no such luck for us:

...in Scotland, where about 75 per cent of Britain's surviving 160,000 reds are thought to live

Aye, Princes Street is fair hoaching with Guardian readers.

Apparently we saw:

the first appearance of reds in Britain about 10,000 years ago

Where was Adam Smith when we needed him?

But now it gets confusing:

The red hordes of the late 1800s were proof that nothing is certain in nature, because the species had been in serious danger of disappearing at the end of the 18th century

Haven't they got their centuries a bit mixed up? I suppose the Scotsman writers are still hung over.

But this is surely correct:

Reds recovered and spread ... becoming a pest by the start of 20th century

Here's some surprising news:

Although reds ... are found across Europe and Asia, they are threatened only in Britain and to a small extent, so far, in Italy

I knew that Berlusconi was a sound chap.

But we're still going to see plenty of them in their natural Scottish habitat:

There is a good chance of maintaining reds in Scotland by co-operation

And:

What we hope to do is get through the next few difficult years - there's no risk of reds becoming extinct, but they are under serious pressure

Needless to say, the politicians are on to this:

A Scottish Executive spokeswoman said: The key objective is to maintain areas where reds thrive and extend them if possible. Long-term habitat provision is the most successful route we can take

So no threat to Drumchapel or Pilton then.

This is probably all for the good:

the Executive should be doing more sooner to preserve reds. But she says a gradual approach will work.

Gradualism: it's the British way.

The full story is reported here.

Church photographs

No, not her, I mean the buildings. Anyway, there are some good ones over here.

Press Release received this afternoon

TORY COUNCILLOR & CANDIDATE WON’T STAND IN 2007

Stuart Randall appalled by Scottish Leadership and posturing on tolls

Councillor Stuart Randall has resigned from the Conservative candidates’ list and so will not stand in 2007 for any level of Government. He considers his Council and Parliamentary careers at an end, but will serve out his current term of office on Fife Council, where he is Conservative Group Leader. He will stand down as Treasurer of the Scottish Conservative Councillors’ Association at the forthcoming AGM, where he will present the accounts for last year.

Cllr Randall stood against Gordon Brown in 2001 (Dunfermline East) and 2005 (Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath) and also fought his local Dunfermline East seat against Helen Eadie in 2003. He is the elected member for Dalgety Bay East and the only Tory councillor in west Fife. Before he was elected in 1999, there were no Conservatives on Fife Council at all.

Cllr Randall has announced his retirement from front line politics in order that he can speak freely regarding what he sees as his party’s poor management and a “policy vacuum”. In particular, he wishes to stand up for the interests of his constituents over Forth Road Bridge tolls and the need for a second road bridge.

In November, Cllr Randall’s status was renewed as an approved parliamentary candidate with authority to run for by-elections and key seats. However, Cllr Randall was kept off the Dunfermline & West Fife by-election shortlist, for which he was the local front runner, in order to promote a previously inactive female candidate from outside west Fife. Cllr Randall believes moves are also now afoot within the party to skew the Holyrood regional ranking arrangements. This will unjustly favour certain candidates and he wishes to stand up for the hardworking activists who will be disadvantaged by such a step.

Cllr Randall says:

“To many outsiders it may seem as if this decision has come suddenly out of the blue. But to anyone who has followed Scottish politics over the last couple of years, they will know that my frustration and disenchantment with the Scottish leadership has been growing inexorably over a long period of time. I have tried very hard behind the scenes to get the party to wake up and reform without success. The party has been taken over by an incompetent clique, who can’t see past the next headline, and there seems to be no way for the grassroots to regain control. Decision after decision has been botched and wherever one scratches the surface, the whole edifice of the party is crumbling, yet no-one seems to really care. Image is everything. There is a vacuum at the heart of Scottish Conservative policy and nobody seems to be responsible for where the party is heading. We need a strategy and we need it urgently, for if we don’t know where we are going, how do we know which is the right direction?

“The final straw came last week when the party announced its stance on the future of the Forth Road Bridge and the tolling regime. My ward is just a couple of miles from the north end of the bridge, so it affects my constituents greatly. It’s also the biggest issue affecting the whole of Fife at the moment, and yet I only found out about the new policy when I saw it in the local newspaper and a by-election flyer. And I’m the Leader of the Tory Group on Fife Council! Treating senior party activists in that way cannot be acceptable in any competent, democratic party. Local government is far too important for that.

“I was appalled to see Annabel Goldie, who has been selected for West Renfrewshire, posing on the Forth Road Bridge and singing the praises of tolling. This is not because I’m against tolls in principle, I’ve been very straight with people about that, it’s because I know she is simultaneously pushing for the abolition of the Erskine Bridge tolls back home. Why should my constituents be treated any differently from hers? Tolling can only be acceptable as a Scotland-wide strategy, as it is in England and Wales and I won’t stand by silently while my constituents are treated unfairly. What’s good enough for Skye and Erskine is good enough for Fife. It’s either tolls for every expensive long-span bridge or tolls for none.

“I have been pressing for a consistent right-of-centre policy on this matter for years, but it’s been like talking to a brick wall. No-one will take us seriously as a tax cutting party if we keep telling people that everything, including exorbitantly expensive bridges, can be provided and maintained by the Executive free at the point of use. Government should be concentrating on health, education and pensions not pretending it can provide 21st century infrastructure on time and on budget. The state sector has a terrible track record on infrastructure, precisely because this kind of seedy politics gets in the way. Just look at the gaps in our motorway network and see how long they’ve remained unresolved. No wonder no-one wants to manufacture in Scotland anymore. We pay high taxes, but still get poor transport links.

“The Conservative Party should be offering a distinct alternative to the spin and hypocrisy of the other parties, but unfortunately, we’ve been all over the place. Last May, Ted Brocklebank, who is in the party’s policy cabinet, stood up at Holyrood and called for all tolls to be abolished. He was shooting from the lip and had no proposal or budget to maintain the existing bridges, let alone replace them. He was simply making up policy on the hop for short-term populist reasons and it caused me a lot of trouble in my west Fife ward. People, understandably, thought he was pronouncing Conservative Party policy and that he was serious about this.

“Then, late last year, it was the turn of David Davidson, our Transport spokesman, no less. He stood up in Parliament and called for a new bridge with a freight railway line. He said nothing about how this would be paid for or whether motorists would end up paying through the nose for train passengers to cross the bridge for free. It was not in the Tory budget. Freight railway lines need a very stiff, heavy bridge and so add massively to the cost, but the Tory Transport spokesman didn’t seem to have considered this at all. There was no costing, consultation, or justification. If there had been he would have known that we have an under-used Forth Bridge and the whole point of the new Kincardine – Alloa rail link is to free up capacity on that.

“I’m pleased to say that both Ted’s and David’s proposals have now been dropped, but not before they caused huge embarrassment to the party. I don’t want to see the Conservatives pushing for expensive toys, like bullet trains, airport tunnels and tram tracks, in the way the spendthrift socialists do. Scotland needs a bit of common sense at Holyrood, not more of the same. Most MSPs behave like children in a sweet shop, presumably because they don’t have to go through the pain of raising the taxes they spend so liberally, but Tory MSPs should be different.

“It is ironic that, here I am standing down, when the idea of using private money and tolls to get new bridges built quickly is pretty much what I have been pushing for all along. But the chance to outflank the opposition with cast iron commitments to major Scotland-wide roads investment is now long gone. You cannot have a policy that gives the west of Scotland ‘free’ bridges at taxpayers’ expense and the east of Scotland endless increases in tolls. It looks like a short term patch up job, just to get the party through the by-election. If the policy had been finalised before the Skye bridge debacle, and if it had been applied consistently across Scotland, as I wanted, then we could have seized the moral high ground. But now it looks short term and shoddy. I don’t feel vindicated, I just feel sad.

“It’s also ironic that I am leaving front line politics at the very time when David Cameron, the UK leader, is pushing for my kind of politics south of the border. I was working in the council estates, promoting compassionate conservatism and advancing the cause of climate change long before David Cameron was even an MP.

“The poor judgement at the top of the Scottish party did not start recently. Twelve months ago we lost a disastrous general election, winning only one seat and with our share of the vote down to a measly 15%. And this despite the fact that the party made significant gains in both England and Wales. Of course, the party leadership spun this in public as some great success, as any politician would. The trouble is they have swallowed their own propaganda and have been feeding the same hopelessly complacent line to their troops, behind the scenes. It’s as if the party leadership stand in a closed circle with each patting the next person on the back.

“I have served the Scottish Conservatives, to the best of my ability, for almost eight years, in the front line. I’ve taken flak for just about everything and it’s been very difficult sticking at it through probably the darkest years in the party’s history. Others dropped out when times got hard, but I stuck at it, suspended my business and career, and made whatever personal sacrifices were necessary to keep the Tory torch burning in west Fife, a hard Labour area. I’ve never expected special treatment in return, but I certainly expected a fair crack at the whip, to be treated with integrity and to be consulted when serious decisions affect my patch.

“I’m not cancelling my membership or abandoning my ward, which I won under the Conservative flag. I still love the Scottish Conservative Party and the principles for which it stands. The problem is, I don’t recognise those principles among the current leadership.

“It’ll truly hurt to walk away next year and not take part in the campaigns. But I have no choice but to speak out, because I fear for the party’s future while they are in control.”

(UPDATE: Stuart Randall tells me that one of the main local papers has received lots of election material from the other parties but nothing from the Conservatives.)

Lanarkshire tops British league for generating ‘affordable’ businesses

That's the upbeat headline for this story in today's Sunday Herald.

Good news, I thought. Lots of Lanarkshire entrepreneurs generating affordable businesses. But hang on a moment: what's an "affordable" business? Is it one that you buy down at the Co-op? Are we talking of companies that can be purchased by people "in the community"? Sadly, no. Remember that Lanarkshire is the heartland of the "Labour Community", and that means money, money, money. Your money:

A final evaluation report of the Lanarkshire Enterprise Zone project suggests it cost much less in taxpayers’ cash per job created than any other similar project.

Aha! The taxpayer. And how much less is this costing, you may ask?

The report showed that the cost per job of the net additional jobs created was £14,609, compared to £21,485 which is the UK average, according to the 1995 evaluation.

But note that one reason for previous economic problems in Lanarkshire was this:

A high degree of reliance on an inward investment market which subsequently collapsed.

Many, many, foreign-owned factories were given taxpayers' cash to come to Lanarkshire and other parts of Silicon Glen and now they're leaving for cheaper or more subsidised pastures. It's beginning to dawn on most of us that imported businesses built on subsidies don't last. So, tell me, why doesn't this logic apply to domestic businesses, even "affordable" ones? I think that it does. So instead of spending £14,609 a go to create jobs that probably won't last, why not simply make Lanarkshire a vast tax-and-regulation-free enterprise zone?

Straight from the horse's mouth

It's quite clear that the state could pay for a private education for every child in Scotland for no more than it spends on its own Stalinist system:

The figures mean that while taxpayers spend £5,160 on the average child's education annually, £1,700 is swallowed up by local government.

Of course, as a good libertarian, I don't believe that the state (OK, the taxpayer) should be funding anyone's education, but one must wonder why so few politicians advocate education vouchers and the closure of government schools.

Actually, we don't need to wonder:

But Keir Bloomer, chief executive of Clackmananshire (sic) council, said: "It is not clear to me that devolving more money to schools, which traditionally have been the most conservative part of the education system, is going to get the change that we want. I would start by querying the assumption that we should be devolving more and more."

That sums up things perfectly: It's not what parents want or children need that matters, it's what "we", in the political class, want. "Devolve" the money back to its rightful owners and we'll find out quickly enough what's wanted.

Quote of the week

And it comes from a daughter of Socialist MSP Rosie Kane:

"Give us a break mum, we're watching Big Brother and, anyway, how hard can it be sitting in Parliament all day?"

A question: Are socialists more of a joke in or out of the Big Brother House?

The back-stabbers sit in Dunfermline toun

I've avoided writing about this before because I know Stuart Randall. Now it's in the public domain:

Stuart Randall - leader of the Fife Tories and a councillor in nearby Dalgety Bay - is incandescent at having been left off the shortlist drawn up by the Scottish Tories, describing the procedure as "shabby" and "insulting the intelligence of the voters".

Being leader of the Fife Conservatives isn't a glamorous job - it's not like being Tory leader in Kensington and Chelsea. Of the 78 councillors in Fife, two are Conservatives. Stuart Randall is the leader, and the other one isn't.

Thanks to his hard work over the years, Mr Randall was selected to fight the Westminster seat of Dunfermline East in the general election of 2001. His Labour opponent was a Mr Gordon Brown. In the 2005 election Mr Randall was selected to contest the new constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. Again, his target was Mr Brown.

Now it seems to me that the Tories should owe a bit of loyalty to the person whom they chose to fight two consecutive general elections against the man expected to be the next prime minister. One would have thought that Mr Randall would have been on the shortlist for Conservative candidate in the forthcoming by-election in Dunfermline. Indeed, one would have thought that Mr Randall would have had a very good chance of getting the nomination. But Stuart Randall was "far too old and middle-aged to fit the bill". (He was born in 1962.)

Local Tories aren't amused:

Many party members boycotted the selection meeting, as they were 'appalled' at the way things had been handled, the councillor added.

'It's been a shabby arrangement. There were three prospective candidates speaking to an audience of five. I've spent almost all day answering Emails and phone calls from people appalled by what has happened.

My Tory sources tell me that the anger goes well beyond Fife. Why should folk work hard for a party just to be stabbed in the back? David Cameron may be the darling of the London media but he is in the process of pissing off his party's natural supporters. Drinkin the blude-reid wine will only get them so far.

The pits

I came across this in my bedtime reading last night:

…tea, which had become a household staple in the Britain of the eighteenth century, but attracted import duties averaging 119 percent.

The plan:

He reduced the average duty to 25 percent.

The outcome:

In time, the huge reduction in smuggling which followed would in any case bring an increase in revenue.

Doesn't this sound rather like the Laffer Curve that I mentioned on Monday? Of course, I'm not one to welcome more money for the state - its income should be zero or pretty damned close - but if tax cutting were to result in the state getting a rising amount but a smaller share of our money one might think a Conservative party would be interested in such an outcome. But no, tax cutting's off the Tory agenda.

By the way, David Cameron may have come across the author of the words quoted above: his name is William Hague.