I’ve just this minute caught the tail end of a programme on BBC Two called Safe as Houses. It followed the fortunes of Annabel Claridge who wants to build a New England-style wooden house in the English countryside.

She spent a year designing the house, building a model and preparing her planning application, only to have her efforts judged by a bunch of stuffy, self-important, jumped-up, fascist busybodies who proclaimed on her design’s architectural merits as if anyone cares what they think. Who appointed these people masters of who gets to build what, and where? I certainly did not.

If someone owns a plot of land they should be able to build whatever they want on it, otherwise what is the point of anyone who doesn’t have friends in the right places owning land?

Annabel is going to appeal to the council in a year’s time. I wish her good luck, but I suspect she has little hope.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 9:15 PM EST

2 Comments »

What’s this? Is David Blunkett really echoing exactly the same sentiments I wrote in this blog back in July of last year? Let people come to this country, but don’t let them claim benefits.

While I’m sure there’s plenty I’ll disagree with in the details (it doesn’t go far enough; only applies to immigrants from certain countries; only applies to immigrants full stop; etc.), and I’m certain it will end up being another excuse for ID cards (well how else to prevent benefit fraud?), but it’s about the first thing I’ve heard David Blunkett say that I even vaguely agree with.

Who knows, perhaps when Polish immigrants become one of the most productive groups in British society the idea that getting rid of the welfare state might be a good idea will occur to a few more people.

Update: More on this over at Samizdata. Perry de Havilland writes:

So in other words, they are welcome (and they certainly are welcome by me) to come here and work just so long as they leave the theft of other people’s money (via the state, of course), to native English people or resident French, Germans, Italians etc… or our very own local Arab terrorist supporters, come to think of it.

Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 11:50 PM EST

1 Comment »

There are some web pages that you really shouldn’t read at work, even on your lunch hour. The Diary of Indignities by a chap named Patrick is one, mainly because your colleages will look at you funny for laughing out loud so much.

Here’s a sample from a list of advice for children:

Yes, you got grounded for having the very same porn stash that turned up in Dad’s closet six months later. You still can’t bring it up. The cosmic scales of justice will never tip in your favor on this one, trust me. Bide your time patiently, and one day you might get the chance for revenge. Like, by unplugging his dialysis machine. Or something.

It’s not the kind of one-liner humour that’s easy to quote without quoting entire articles, so go and read the whole site.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Links at 8:04 PM EST

63 Comments »

I stumbled across The James Randi Educational Foundation while looking for books and websites that debunk spiritualism.

James Randi opines about all kinds of mumbo jumbo, and importantly, has got together a million dollars as a prize for the first person that can demonstrate any kind of supernatural phenomenon in a lab. That the prize is so far unclaimed is a useful snippet to use in discussions with believers in nonsense.

Best of all, there is a weekly commentary with archives going back to 1999, and Randi is an entertaining writer so there’s plenty to keep you busy during those quiet periods at work! Don’t miss some intriguing puzzles [scroll to the bottom] in some of the earlier articles.

Finally, I wish I’d known about Randi’s site when I wrote about magnet therapy back in April. Randi expounds on this very topic in several articles, including one in which shoemakers Florsheim withdraw claims about their magnetic shoes. This last one includes a link to an Onion peice entitled, Revolutionary New Insoles Combine Five Forms of Pseudoscience. Enjoy!

Posted by Rob Fisher as Imaginary Friends at 7:45 PM EST

64 Comments »

If you go on a BBC discussion program, and suggest that racial equality laws are not the only thing stopping white people from killing black people, you will get thrown out. At least, that’s what happened to Dr Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance.

I find it particularly irksome because Dr Gabb has very similar views on immigration to me. And while any privately owned television station can broadcast whatever views it wants, because the BBC is funded through taxation its silencing of certain viewpoints amounts to cencorship.

The Samizdata commentariat have a wide range of views on this.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft at 7:26 PM EST

3 Comments »

I just caught a few moments in the middle of a TV documentary about illegal taxis. It was going on about how there are 150 sexual assaults in unlicensed cabs every year, and there were two policemen harassing some guy who they thought had tried to offer someone a lift for money, and needless to say I started ranting about how they should leave him alone because he’s only trying to earn an honest living.

And then I found myself trying to explain to someone else in the room why entering into a voluntary transaction with someone to provide a service, such as giving them a lift home, is honest, no matter what the law says. How can it be honest if it’s illegal? Because the law does not define morality. It’s a bunch of rules thought up by third parties. Making it illegal to give people lifts for money is what Perry de Havilland would call replacing social interaction with politically derived formulae.

Sure, there is a need or, I should say, a market for licensed taxis. With a licensed taxi you get various guarantees and reduced risk. But if people are using unlicensed taxis then that shows that there is a demand for more taxis, or cheaper taxis, or both, and frankly it’s no-one’s business except the people involved in the transaction.

Now whether it’s advisable to get into an unlicensed taxi, especially if you’re a girl alone or even an unarmed man, is another matter entirely. The statistics are there and everyone who is interested can weigh up the pros and cons and decide for themselves. Just because a few people posing as taxi drivers are predators is no reason to harass all unlicensed taxi drivers. Most of them really are trying to earn an honest living.

Update: I’ve just thought of something else. This isn’t just about licensed vs. unlicensed taxis. It’s about the government having a monopoly on licensing taxis. Let’s say we all agree that taxis licensed by the government are too scarce and too expensive. Also, unlicensed taxis are too dangerous. There’s an obvious niche here for me to set up Rob’s Taxi Vetting Company PLC.

I will issue a certificate to anyone who comes to me and satisfies me that they are a safe taxi driver. I’ll give them a driving test, inspect the vehicle, and do background checks. I will also provide insurance. And I’ll do it all faster and cheaper than the local government can do it. Furthermore, I won’t artificially limit the number of certificates I hand out; anyone can apply. I’d better make sure I do a good job, because if too many taxis with my certificate are involved in accidents or too many of the drivers I certify turn out to be rapists, my certificates will lose value and people will start using taxis certified by Joe’s Taxi Insurance Company Ltd.

So you see: by insisting on being the only ones able to say who is allowed to be taxi driver and who isn’t, the government is forcing an artificial choice onto people. A choice between government licensed and illegal taxis. Instead, they could have a choice between myriad taxis of variable repute and cost.

Could the problem of illegal taxi assaults be the law of unintended consequences at play yet again?

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft at 12:12 AM EST

70 Comments »

Being a computer programmer, the idea that programming jobs will eventually all be outsourced to India cuts close to my wallet. Brian Micklethwait has written about what he calls the fixed quantity of programming fallacy. It’s essentially like the lump of labour fallacy turned inside out.

Since those who think that immigrants take local jobs are falling for the lump of labour fallacy - because in reality there is not a fixed amount of work to go around - could not those who think that outsourcing jobs to India is a bad thing be making a similar mistake? (We know there is not a fixed amount of work to go around because since the dinosaurs left there have been about 10 billion immigrants to planet Earth and there are less than 10 billion unemployed).

I can see various possible outcomes to outsourcing. One is that software is produced at the same rate but for less money. This is the outcome that may well hurt my wallet.

But there certainly is not a fixed amount of programming to go around. There will always be demand for more software. There are plenty of far fetched things that we would like computers to do, and one of the reasons they don’t do them yet is that people haven’t had time to get around to doing them. Or in other words, the hard to do things are too expensive to do now. Making software cheaper makes harder to do things affordable. So we get the second possible outcome:

Investment in software stays the same but more software is produced. This outcome might hurt my wallet a bit, since the same investment is shared between more programmers. But at least I keep a job this way, and those Indians aren’t going to stay competitive forever. The more investment goes into India, the richer the country becomes and the more expensive their programmers get. But wait a minute, this leads to a third possible outcome:

Since there are more people doing software, there might at some point become more people who want to invest in it. I’m no economist, as you can probably tell, but total investment in software might just increase at about the same rate as the size of the programming workforce increases. Software gets cheaper, there is more software, this software is used to make processes more efficient, productivity increases, commodities get cheaper (which is good for my wallet), economies grow, India gets richer, India demands more software, the UK gets richer, the UK demands more software.

So not only is software cheaper, but so is everything else, and there is more demand for my services than before. I certainly hope it works out that way.

Update: There is commentary on this very topic over at Samizdata.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 12:10 AM EST

73 Comments »

You might not have much sympathy for a girl who jokes to a baggage attendant that she has three bombs in her bag, but consider this:

Asked to repeat herself, she repeated the same statement twice and was arrested and charged.

As Greg of Life Examined points out, if the baggage attendant really thought she had a bomb, why did he ask her to repeat herself to gather more evidence? Why not take the bag away, run away, or ask the terrorist what her demands were? If he didn’t think she had a bomb, then…?

Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 9:35 PM EST

2 Comments »

I’m normally highly suspicious of those who go on about the good old days, prefering to remember how much better modern life is thanks to technological progress, but 50 days a year? Why, that’s, “rather less than most of us today work to pay our income tax.”

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft at 9:15 PM EST

62 Comments »

I’m thinking of starting up a separate category in which to quote the wisdom of David Carr. It’s not so much that what he says is particularly new, it’s just that he can state the obvious in such a concise way as to make you go, “oh yeah!”

Here he is on the ubiquity of government advice:

At Christmas it’s the dangers of overeating, overdrinking and faulty electrical goods. In the summer it’s skin cancer, sunstroke and cornea-damage. Now, the season of romance invokes finger-wagging and tut-tutting about STD’s. I think what the Department of Dour Presbyterian School Ma’ams is trying to tell us is that life is a bitch, no good will come of it, pleasure is sin and we will all be jolly well sorry we ever started.

It’s one thing to go around giving out advice - and very good advice some of it might be - but it’s quite another to spend other people’s money doing it. Doesn’t it ever occur to these people when they get a new idea about how they can Do Something About It to stop and ask whether they should? Of course it doesn’t. The only thing that’s important to them is to be seen to Doing Something About It, whatever It is and whatever that Something might be.

As long as this mindset prevails there will always be new things to Do Something About, government spending will always go up (it’s not just the ad campaigns but the armies of staff needed to co-ordinate everything and come up with yet more things to, well, you get the picture) and people will become less and less able to think for themselves because, after all, that’s what the government is for isn’t it?

Here’s how I think the world works, in four steps:

1. A scientist publishes a paper highlighting the dangers of X;
2. a reporter for a newspaper reads the paper, and translates it for the general public, so that they might be aware of the dangers of X;
3. the newspaper and assorted lobby groups and busybodies, lobby the government to Do Something About It;
4. politicians see an opportunity to be seen to be Doing Something About It and duly legislate or start a poster campaign that will ultimately end up being legislation when the poster campaign doesn’t work.

I ask you: what is the need for steps 3 and 4?

While I’m linking to Samizdata, it’s only right to point out that libertarian women are hot! (You wouldn’t get anyone saying that on any lefty, politically correct web site).

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft at 9:04 PM EST

2 Comments »