The Prime Minister has decreed that there will be no opt out for “faith based” adoption agencies from a new gay adoption law. Ruth Kelly says the changes should be “welcomed by everyone”.

Huh?

WTF should I care what Ruth Kelly thinks? I’ve never met the woman; why does she have an opinion about what I should welcome?

Adoption is a matter between the parents, the adopters, and optionally an adoption agency if the parents think that would help. Why do Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly think it has anything to do with them? Apparently this is all in the name of “anti-disctrimination”. Parents shouldn’t be able to discriminate (i.e. choose) who looks after their kids, now? What kind of nonsense is that?

The whole mindset is screwed up. Politicians can’t concieve of anything other than a one-size-fits-all solution to any problem. Meanwhile, the media and their talking heads present everything as an either-or question. *Either* you’re in favour of gay people adopting kids *or* you’re not. And whatever 51% of the politicians want is what everyone gets.

What a load of rubbish.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties, News at 8:33 AM EST

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The government is to announce the site of Britain’s first super-casino. Eight small and eight large other casino licenses are also up for grabs.

Huh?

Has the UK government given up all pretenses of not being the mafia?

Why eight? Why not seven or nine? If you’re going to license casinos, at least judge each one on its own merit. This seems like rule by arbitrary decree.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties, News at 8:31 AM EST

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The latest sign I spotted with the mayor’s logo emblazoned at the bottom was at a tube station. It read, “Please consider others when eating food.” So it seems Ken Livingstone thinks it’s his job to teach us manners, now. It’s the logical conclusion of state as parent, I suppose.

I’m considering comissioning a sign that reads, “Please consider others when stealing their money and using it to pay for pointless signs.”

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft at 7:24 PM EST

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I’m reading a travelogue about a Will Ferguson’s trip hitchhiking through Japan. These bits tickled me:

“Do you have a gun?” the youngest asked, and his older brother, Toshiya, immediately chimed in, “Yes, did you ever shoot anybody?”

“No”, I said. “Only evil Americans shoot people. In Ka-Na-Da everyone lives in peace and harmony.”

It sure is great being a Canadian. You get to share the material benefits of living next door to the United States, yet at the same time you get to act smug and haughty and morally superior. You just can’t beat that kind of irresponsibility.

Quite. And this:

“Wild plates?”

“Not plates, monkeys.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “That would make more sense.”

The words for plate (sara) and monkey (saru) sound similar in Japanese, and for some reason I can never keep them straight. Another combination that gives me trouble is “human” (ningen) and “carrot” (ninjin) which once caused a lot of puzzled looks during a speech I gave in Tokyo on the merits of internationalization, when I passionately that “I am a carrot. You are a carrot. We are all carrots. As long as we remember our common carrotness, we will be fine.”

On another occasion, I scared a little girl by telling her that my favourite nighttime snack was raw humans and dip.

I also enjoyed the way Ferguson, on observing the behaviour of monkeys that a Japanese professor had previously explained to him exhibited similar social patterns to Japanese society, “…made an important social observation of my own: Monkeys are miserable little bastards. They spent their time biting, screaming, and picking on each other.”

While I’m on the subject: Don’t learn Japanese.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Reviews at 8:36 PM EST

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If the government would only get out of the way, people have an amazing knack for solving their own problems. I don’t think the environment is any different. If people really do want to reduce carbon emissions they will, by spending money on products that have a lower carbon impact and thereby sending a signal to the market to produce more of that type of thing.

Today the Globalisation Institute published a report entitled Positive Environmentalism: A Convenient Truth. In it, they point out that big government “solutions” rarely work, and how new technologies and business models can solve the problem.

One example of a bad government policy is the idea of taxing food miles:

The reduction of food miles, the distance food travels from the farm to the table, has been recently promoted as a way of moving towards a healthier and environmentally-friendly lifestyle in the UK. The basic argument is that globalisation and increased trade has led to food being imported from increasingly far-flung places all year round. Proponents, for the most part farmers and environmentalists, contend that the increased distance the food travels leads both to “more carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions” and “[reduced] freshness” that decrease the nutritional valued of the food that reaches our table. Furthermore, importing food from abroad reduces support for the UK farming industry.

However, this approach will make food more expensive and harm people on low incomes and farmers in developing countries.

More importantly, a tax, or any measure to limit the entrance of imported food will not reduce food miles or CO2 emissions considerably, given that a large percentage of food miles are accrued by transport within the UK and that airplanes produce less than 0.2% of the UK’s CO2 emissions. As the case of Spanish tomatoes and New Zealand lamb, dairy and apples shows, it is actually better for the environment to import them from countries whose climates favour their production instead of trying to grow them in the UK.

So here’s a big government “solution” that makes everyone’s (except a few select farmers) lives a misery and doesn’t solve the problem. The market solution? Grow food where it is most efficient to grow it, and

the adoption of home delivery services is perceived as the best way to reduce the costs associated with car food transport between retailer and household. One study shows that “a direct substitution of car trips by [delivery] van trips could reduce vehicle km by 70% or more”.32 As mentioned earlier, cars account for 40% of the social costs of food related transport, as well as 50% of the congestion costs and 13% of the CO2 emissions. Therefore, the use of such service would reduce the total food miles and the ensuing externalities.

While we’re at it, abolish the CAP, abolish the CAP, abolish the CAP!!! It distorts the food market beyond anything rational. Why are we subsidising local farmers to leave their fields empty when we should be importing cheap food from wherever it’s grown cheapest and using the land for something useful like, I don’t know, houses, or

Diversifying into non-food crops can prove both a profitable and environmentally-friendly strategy. The study found that “growing crops for energy use is the most viable option at present,” and it is worth noting that though still in an infant stage in the UK, ethanol distilleries have already been successfully established in the US.

All these good things would happen automatically if governments didn’t screw around with everything all the time.

Above all, it is vital that we recognize that continued economic growth and prosperity is essential to resolving the problems we face. Any measures that would restrict it will do more harm than good. Wealth is vital if we are to adapt, and help poor countries adapt, to climate change if that becomes necessary. And wealth is also essential to the development of those new technologies that truly have the potential to set us free from environmental danger.

The convenient truth is that becoming wealthier and more prosperous in the coming century is not the enemy of environmental progress: it is its very heart and soul.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft, Enviro-Mentalism at 8:25 PM EST

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Samizdata has a post entitled Young people to be banned from working about a Guardian article entitled School leaving age may be raised to 18. Interesting how differently the same thing can be described, eh? No critcism of the idea at all is forthcoming from the Guardian article.

The BBC has is as, School leaving age set to be 18, with the subtitle, “Young people will be required to stay in school, training or workplace training until the age of 18.” The key word here is “required”. Oddly enough, though, the BBC article fails to mention any criticism of the idea, too. The article states, “The proposals would seek to tackle the problem of young people leaving education without qualifications or workplace skills.” The strange assumption is that being on a course is a better for getting work skills than, er, working.

Education secretary Alan Johnson is quoted as saying: “I regret not staying on in education… when I left school there were loads of jobs you could could walk into without qualifications. That’s not going to be the case in the future.” Presumably he went on to say, “we’ll make damn sure of it!”

There are some people on the Have Your Say thread with a clue. Some of them have all kinds of interesting ideas about how education should be run.

The key mistake is the one-size-fits-all approach. Get the government out of education and let people have a personal choice about how they educate themselves and their children.

Incidentally, the single most valuable learning experience of my life so far was my two weeks’ work experience, aged 14, at IBM. These proposals will impede companies like that from taking on youngsters by enforcing brain damaged regulations about what is and isn’t an “approved training course” and generally making it not worth the bother.

More insight in the comments to the Samizdata article, including this, from Jonathan Pierce:

My old man enlisted in the Royal Air Force at 17 and by the age of 20, was navigating jet fighters 40,000 ft above the North Sea. Clearly an irresponsible and shocking example to our yoof. He should have been studying some soft-humanities degree instead.

I actually think that the school-leaving age should be reduced, not raised, and the regulatory burdens on employers should be cut to make it easier to take on 15-year-olds, for example, as apprentices. It would surely help reduce some of the boredom many youngsters feel, give them a sense of pride and focus, and reduce crime and anti-social behaviours. The education system - through vouchers or tax credits - should be adjusted so that such teenagers can pick up their education later on.

The whole thrust of social/education/other policy in recent decades has been to infantilise the young population, reduce the initiative of people to go out and learn the value of money. No wonder problems of indebtedness, crime and the rest are getting worse.

But hey, it will create lots of jobs for civil servants and other members of Labour’s client state, which of course is the whole reason behind this. We have to give those Guardian-readers something to do for a living. (sarcasm off)

to which Paul replies:

Exactly — cut them free and let them get on with life, rather than insisting they languish in boredom until the Devil finds work for their idle hands. Allowing the more restless youngsters to start work as an apprentice at fifteen (or even fourteen) is not irresponsible or inhumane. Ask any member of the generation who left school at that age what they thought of the old system. In fact, giving them this option is a good bit more humane than forcing them to remain shackled to the state education project, learning next to nothing and becoming ever more unemployable. Create a system which teaches them to read, write, calculate and reason, then allow them to escape and make their own way. …You just know, though, that were anyone to table such a proposal, it would be swiftly denounced with much affected outrage and rhetoric about “child labour”.

[”The education system - through vouchers or tax credits - should be adjusted so that such teenagers can pick up their education later on.” — JP]

Freedom, flexibility, convenience — an excellent idea, but pure heresy in the eyes of the statists.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft, Civil Liberties at 6:06 AM EST

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Recently TfL changed the rules on Oyster cards. They now charge you the maximum cash fare for incomplete journeys — those where you fail to touch the card against the reader at either the beginning or the end of the journey. That means you will be charged £4 instead of the £1 - £1.50 or so of a typical journey. I have no idea how they justify that amount of penalty, considering how easy it is to do.

Tube travel was supposed to be free on New Year’s Eve, something to do with NatWest sponsoring tube travel. On the way home the gates were open but I touched my Oyster card anyway because we are constantly told to “*always* touch in and touch out” on posters and in P.A. announcements. I didn’t want to find a closed gate and have to pay the £4. When I got to my destination the gate announced that there was not enough credit on my card. What? Not enough credit to pay for a free fare? I was tired and no-one was around to help, so I walked through the open gate.

When I checked a few days later, it turned out I had been charged for an incomplete journey on that New Year’s Eve. £4 for a free journey seems a lot. When I challenged it at the counter, I was told that I could only be refunded £3. So that’s £1 for a free journey. I am sure that NatWest would not be happy at their money being stolen by TfL in this way.

Then today, as I was leaving a station, the gate closed before I could walk through it. I touched the card again and was let through. But something didn’t seem right. I checked at a machine, and sure enough, I’d been charged £4 for an incomplete journey to no-where. Presumably the machine thought I was starting a new journey (just 5 seconds after finishing the old one), rather than trying to escape from the gate that had trapped me in. I was able to get this refunded at the counter, but it was a hassle.

Why are TfL doing this? Why can’t the machines tell the difference between entering and exiting a station? Why was I charged for a journey starting and ending at the same station when I got to the platform to hear an announcement that trains were severely delayed and decided to take the bus? Why is there only one card reader to serve hundreds of passengers transferring from the train to the tube at Richmond? Why are they so keen to charge £4 for a journey at the slightest mistake using the card?

I can only recommend that you regularly check your Oyster usage and challenge any incomplete journeys at the counter. The counter clerks *do* have the ability to cancel the penalty.

Update: Nice article on Software Reality about why the Oyster card sucks from a UI perspective.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft, General at 6:59 PM EST

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In a comment on a Samizdata post about organic food, Pa Annoyed has some interesting things to say about the chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves. Here’s a snippet:

There are an estimated 10,000 such chemicals in use in the plant kingdom (about 10-20 of them typically used by each individual species of plant), virtually none of which have been tested for human safety, but for which roughly half of those that have been tested have been found to be carcinogenic. Many give vegetables their characteristic flavours or odours. A lot of plants are not eaten because they are well-known to be toxic; those that we do eat often have a few nasty surprises. Potatoes and tomatoes are both part of the Belladonna family, containing the neurotoxin alpha-Solanine, which acts in a similar way to nerve gas, and has been associated with Spina Biffida birth defects. Lettuce contains Caffeic acid, at levels which give you an estimated 20 times the carcinogenic effect of DDT before it was banned in 1972.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Enviro-Mentalism at 6:40 PM EST

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The Royal United Services Institute wants to come up with a central plan for the security of what it calls the “critical national infrastructure”. Guy Herbert explains why this is wrong-headed on every level. Here’s a snippet:

How dare the planners decide for me what it is I want, as they do implicitly when they define some workers, some structures, as “key”? Well there’s a confirmation bias at work. What the state can best monitor is important (invisible, uncontrollable processes couldn’t be); so those who work for it are. Chaos is bad. State plans are designed to control chaos; therefore they do, and any unfortunate or unforseen consequences are just the remnants of chaos uncontrolled. Bad things are not in the plan, so not of the plan. They are part of the failure to squeeze out doubt, never caused or exacerbated by wrong or unnecessary decisions by the authorities.

The misunderstanding at the heart of planning is a fundamentalist belief that order and simplicity are public goods. They aren’t. It may be good to have them in your own life - if you want them. It is probably necessary to have them in managing a task, running a business, playing a game; to make any well-defined single goal attainable. Clarity in shared procedural rules is highly desirable. But if we want to live in a world where the goals and threat aren’t well defined, where we have a choice, and where how we live is not vulnerable to simple shocks from unexpected angles, then universal order and simplicity are bad. Conflict and competition, difference and redundancy are good. The more disorder, uneveness, and complexity our society has, the richer our lives, and the better equipped we are collectively to meet disaster by routing around damage.

It’s the same reason that the invisible hand of capitalism is more successful than the planned economy of socialism. As knowlege is distributed, so should decisions be. Read the whole thing.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Links at 11:56 AM EST

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