Down with the arts establishment

One of my favourite books by the great economist Ludwig von Mises is The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality. Mises explains that highly educated intellectuals often resent capitalism precisely because it rewards those who satisfy the masses rather than catering for the elite. Therefore:

He (the intellectual) indicts society's economic organisation, the nefarious system of capitalism. But for this unfair regime his abilities and talents, his zeal and his achievements would have brought him the rich reward they deserve.

It is the same with many lawyers and teachers, artists and actors, writers and journalists, architects and scientific research workers, engineers and chemists. They, too, feel frustrated because they are vexed by the ascendancy of their more successful colleagues, their former schoolfellows and cronies.

In today's Scotsman, there is a fascinating profile of the Fife artist, Jack Vettriano. None of Vettriano's works are owned by any public institution in Britain other than the municipal gallery in Kirkcaldy. He is rejected by the arts establishment. So, is this artist a failure? Well, this week four of his paintings were sold for £100,000. He earns another £250,000 per year in royalties from Britain's best-selling fine-art print. The arts establishment clearly resents commercial success. Good luck to Jack, I say. He is earning an honest penny (lots of them!) in the free market. Let's hope he is laughing all the way to the bank. This is far more honourable than living off the taxpayer like his denigrators.

Incidentally, Vettriano, a successful capitalist, should be proud that his works are appreciated in Kirkcaldy which just happens to be the hometown of Adam Smith!

Unexpected radicalism

The Confederation of British Industry is not usually associated with radical thinking. I was pleased to read that CBI boss, Digby Jones, will have some interesting things to say about Scotland's economy at the CBI dinner here tonight. From the interview:

He added that business in Scotland has now lost patience with Mr McConnell’s failure to create a low-tax economic environment for business - and may move against the First Minister during next year’s Holyrood election.

In the full interview in the printed version of the Scotsman he says:

...anything that would lead to a Scottish Executive saying "I'm spending your money, not money that someone else has given me" would lead to more resposibility.

So now business leaders are joining the call for fiscal responsibility with the Scottish parliament having to collect its own taxes instead of relying on handouts from London. Scotland's parliament is up for re-election next spring. Fiscal responsibility looks like becoming the main issue and that spells danger for the Labour/Liberal coalition.

Jack Straw condemns the Scottish government

Our beloved foreign secretary was on the Channel 4 news a short while ago. He mocked Iraq on the grounds that "one part of the government says one thing and another part says something else." Well, well. It's exactly the same here in Scotland where cabinet ministers are allowed to campaign against the policies of their own government. I hope that Jack Straw is not going to call for a joint US/UK military strike on Scotland but a "regime change" would be most welcome.

The Johannesburg gathering

The Glasgow Herald prints a photograph of a local street vendor demonstrating outside the UN summit. This sensible gentleman has a badge bearing the message: "Freedom to Trade." Why isn't he inside the hall instead of the 60,000 useful idiots? The Herald also has a "Summit Briefing." I was pleasantly surprised to see mention of Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Understandably, this section of the briefing was headed: "Contrary View." The heading of the previous part of the briefing which gave the UN position was: "The Facts"!

He changed his mind - or did he?

Over on Samizdata, Brian Micklethwait writes about John Gray, the former libertarian and now collectivist. Earlier this year, I attended a talk given by Gray to the David Hume Institute in Edinburgh. After his speech, I spoke to him at length until the meeting's chairman insisted on introducing Gray to other guests. Mr. Gray recalled his libertarian period with enthusiasm but seemed completely unable to explain his change of heart. The only vague explanation offered was that people couldn't cope with freedom. As Brian Micklethwait suggests, John Gray is an incorrigable pessimist. That I can understand but it's no reason to give up the fight for liberty.

Labour's lackeys

It appears that Scottish Enterprise (sic) is using taxpayers' money to protect itself from Tory criticism. All the more reason to abolish this monstrous part of the Scottish corporate state.

Government environmental scandal

It seems as though the US Forest Service has turned down offers of Russian help in fighting the massive fires in the western states. The IL76 is the world's largest water bomber. But:

District IX FEMA director Buddy Young went to the fire and publicly announced, "You will not bring the Russian planes in here: We're not having any Russians coming here and fighting our fires."

I wonder what would happen if some of the folks who have lost their homes were to sue the Forest Service. Don't hold your breath.

Yellow bear beats red man!

Those of us of a certain age will recall watching Sooty on television early on Saturday evenings. (Sooty is the small, yellow, intelligent-looking guy second from the bottom). Well, an opinion poll has placed Sooty fourth as the people's choice for head of state. The Queen comes in as our first preference but poor old Tony Blair is an unlucky number thirteen. Apparently, "Sooty won votes because, as a puppet, he was perceived as being more honest than politicians." As a puppet! Surely, Sooty is real; it's the politicians who are the puppets.

The Scottish economy

This analysis of the Scottish Economy makes depressing reading. The spokesman for the Federation of Small Business Scotland is correct to point out that business red tape is imposed on us by Westminster and Brussels rather than by Holyrood. Nevertheless, we must ask why Scottish growth is consistently below the UK average. To some extent the answer lies in Scotland's declining population compared with England's rising numbers which are boosted by sizeable immigration.

But over on the Daily Mail, Tim Luckhurst suggests that the lack of entrepreneurship in Scotland is cultural:

The problem is the culture of contemporary Scotland, not the attitudes of modern Scots (many of whom excel outside Scotland). If we are honest, we all know what that culture means. It is defined by a bloated public sector in which respect for red tape, and deference to authority, take precedence over any notion of ambition or true public service. So vast is that state monopoly over wealth and power that it creates an atmosphere closer to the one that prevailed in communist Eastern Europe than the vibrancy of an ambitious modern nation.

I think that Luckhurst is correct. That is why I support calls for full fiscal freedom - all taxes being set and collected here with an agreed sum sent to London to cover items such as defence. If we count all revenues and expenditures, it looks as though Scotland has a balanced budget but Scotland's politicians have no reason to think in financial terms under the present arrangements. This lack of accountability feeds through into the general population creating a non-entrepreneurial society. It's time for a change.

Tranzi Delenda Est

According to James Bennett, the cultural and political differences between "ordinary" Europeans and Americans are not as great as we have been led to believe:

Rather, it reflects the fact that a relatively narrow political-intellectual class has come to hold power in many of the industrialized democracies outside of the United States, devoted to an ideology dubbed "transnational progressivism" by Hudson Institute researcher John Fonte.

I suspect that the Tranzis can be defeated. It may seem that they dominate Europe at the moment but as Bennett says:

This ignores the fact that this supposed consensus is actually quite thin. In fact, public opinion in most of the rest of the Anglosphere tends to track American opinion closely on most of the issues that supposedly reflect a values gap between America and the world.

Rising EU expenditure

It's all explained here.

Scottish Tories

Bill Jamieson has much to say about the sad state of the Scottish Conservatives. In today's Scotsman, he writes:

On the economy, there has been no cutting Conservative attack on the arrival of formal recession, still less a coherent set of policies and proposals to create a better climate for business formation and growth in Scotland.

Instead of a robust Tory critique of the Scottish economy we find that:

All the opposition running has been made by Andrew Wilson, the economy spokesman for the SNP. In combination with Jim Mather at Business for Scotland, he is at least putting up a credible alternative and a platform for business support.

Over on Business AM (registration required), we read:

A small but growing band of Tories, mainly free-market thinkers from the Tuesday group, are seeking to convince their colleagues of the need for full tax powers.

The (Tory) MSPs Brian Monteith and Murdo Fraser are leading members and both favour a Scotland of low business and consumer taxes.

Business AM goes on to say that Andrew Wilson of the SNP has tried to get the Tories to join him in a cross-party low tax campaign but without success so far. There is a gap in the political market in Scotland for a low tax party. The Tories should note Jamieson's last paragraph:

Without change, and change soon, these questions will resolve themselves into a single fundamental one - wanted on the Right: a new party.

Sociopaths

I suggest that everyone reads this article.

Another letter in the Herald

This one proclaims:

The biggest crime in the UK today is tax evasion. The higher earners who can employ accountants tend to pay only a fraction of the income tax they are liable for.

The writer clearly doesn't understand the difference between tax evasion, which is illegal, and tax avoidance - arranging one's affairs within the law so as to minimise one's tax liability - which is perfectly legitimate. It is the latter for which accountants offer help. If the writer had used a more precise term, say, Chartered Accountant, I suspect that he could be sued for libel. And who is the writer of this letter?

It's Bill Miller, Member of the European Parliament!

You couldn't make it up!

A letter in today's Glasgow Herald starts off:

As authors of the academic report for the Scottish Socialist Party's Scottish service tax proposals...

Now, the Scottish Socialists are not stealth-tax-and-regulatory Tranzis of the Blair and Brown variety. No, these guys are the real McCoy. I quote from their manifesto:

The SSP is comitted to building a new, democratic socialist Scotland which will stand up (sic) the forces of globalisation, privatization (sic - note the US globalised spelling!) and capitalism. In the meantime we will fight for: * The bringing back into public ownership - under democratic workers' and community control and management - those industries, services and utilities privatised over the past 20 years. * The extension of public ownership to include other key sectors of the economy including North Sea oil, the big banks and financial institutions, and the major construction, transport, and manufacturing companies. * Confiscation of the assets of any company that pulls out of Scotland in search of more profitable environments; and legislation to force these companies to provide redundancy payments equivalent to two years salary to allow a reasonable time frame for retraining and redeployment. * The replacement of unelected boards of directors with democratically elected boards, made up of representatives of the workforce and the wider public.

So who are the authors of the pro-SSP academic report? Both are from Paisley University. The second name is Professor Mike Danson. The first:

Geoff Whittam senior lecturer in entrepreneurship!

Britain's obsession with class

According to this, the proportion of British people who are "working class and proud of it" has increased from 51% to 68% since 1994. The MORI opinion pollsters say that only half of us are working class. Meanwhile, Joe Ashton, a former Labour MP, thinks that Cherie Blair is working class. I detect much confusion here.

I can think of three ways of describing "class".

The Marxist Way:

Those who live off capital are the exploiting class. The rest are working class, whether they work "by hand or by brain". By this definition, Cherie Blair, an extremely rich lawyer, is working class and exploited by my mother who lives off savings earned by my father through a lifetime of hard work. Marxism is, of course, nonsense and has been fully refuted by the Austrian School of economics.

The British way:

Social background is the key. Members of the aristocracy are the upper class. Middle class people wear suits and work in offices, own their own homes, stay at school until aged 18, have professional or academic qualifications and speak grammatically or at least exhibit some of these characteristics. The working class are to be found in factories, rent their homes, don't value education and speak "differently". Using these definitions, Cherie Blair is clearly middle class.

Well, of course it's not quite that simple nowadays. Most people are homeowners, albeit with mortgages. Half of children here in Scotland go on to higher education and when I lived in east London the blokes in the pub wearing jeans were City bankers and the ones in suits worked at the docks. The British definitions of class are now quite meaningless. I propose a "third way".

The libertarian way:

Credit for the idea of libertarian class analysis goes to Franz Oppenheimer. He writes:

There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others. The State is an organization of the political means. No State, therefore, can come into being until the economic means [private sector] has created a definite number of objects for the satisfaction of needs, which objects may be taken away or appropriated by warlike robbery.

This libertarian view of class is the only one that makes sense. Those who work in the free market are, well, working class. Those who live through the state - as public sector employees or as welfare recipients - are exploiters. They are the true ruling class and Cherie Blair is at the very pinnacle of that class.

Here comes the judge

Aye, it's time to privatise the legal system!

Another political boob

At a time when the Scottish economy has gone into recession, it's good to read that our politicians have their priorities right.

The pension scam

John Birkett's letter tells us that the "retirement" package given to Scotland's senior civil servant would require a pension fund of £1,500,000. Sir Muir Russell is not actually retiring but is to become the new head of Glasgow University from which he will no doubt obtain another tax-funded pension.

Mr Birkett asks whether the Scottish Executive has set aside the necessary £1,500,000. No, of course not. Mr Birkett correctly suggests that future taxpayers will have to cough up. The next generation of taxpayers will also have to pay for the unfunded state pension liabilities of an ever ageing society not to mention the coming bailout of the bankrupt continental pension schemes. That's why they want us in the Euro.

The green scam

In his Monday article, George Kerevan writes sensibly about the extraordinary gathering of 60,000 "utopians" about to take place in Johannesburg.

Mr Kerevan also tells us that Professor Arthur Herman sees the Cold War as having been:

a contest between the Scottish Enlightenment and the French Enlightenment.

and that the Scots won!

Back on the environment question, George thinks that the world will face problems with fresh water supplies. We in Scotland have solved the problem of finding enough water - especially this "summer" - but our Stalinist water industry hasn't quite managed the quality thing.

More doctors, please

Katie Grant despairs of the all must have prizes exam culture

Ms Grant says:

But leaving that aside, we do need to look at simplifying the exam system and reinstating the basic principles of pass and fail.

Pass and fail! That's divisive. It's socially excluding. Who could want such a thing? (Actually the answer to this question is in the previous post.)

I have a better idea. Every newborn child in Scotland should be given a PhD, signed by "education" minister Cathy Jamieson. All teachers can be fired; the rest of us can enjoy a huge tax cut. School buildings could be used as places where computerphobes can work out their anger. Oh, sorry. That's happening already.

The real enemy

Thanks to David Carr on Samizdata for the link to the John Fonte essay. David's term "Tranzis" is perfect.

Is it all about oil?

Here is an interesting analysis of the Middle East situation from the perspective of someone "down south". No, not England. Dixieland!

By the way, I hope that the authorities are keeping an eye on the North Sea oil rigs in these troublesome times.

US elections

It is being suggested that Hilary Clinton is planning to run for the Presidency. We have been warned!