Bruce on politics

Monday 6 July 2015

Why the green belt must go

Bruce 22 June 2015 3

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Our green belts were a consequence of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, they were designed for controlling urban growth. In 1947 the UK population was 50 million, now it is 64 million. In England alone the green belt covers more than 1.6 million hectares, this encircles 14 urban areas and about 30 million people, forcing ever higher population densities, which means less room for everyone, smaller homes, often with no gardens, built so close to each other that there is no privacy, which results in a seriously degraded quality of life.

Not only that, our rabbit hutch houses cost utterly ridiculous amounts of money, especially when you consider that nice detached family homes can be built for just £100,000. The shortage of building land is the ONLY factor that has made our housing market into an out of control bubble that is the most serious single issue harming the people of Britain today.

The answer is glaringly obvious. Build on the greenbelt. Make planning permission a quick, rubber stamp procedure. Force all planning authorities to issue new planning permissions equal to at least 10% of their current housing stock every year. We need half a million new homes annually for several years just to start catching up with where we need to be. Our towns and cities should grow naturally and organically, just as they did for centuries before the 1947 act.

The NIMBYs will call this “concreting over” the countryside. But they lie. Here’s why:

What would you rather see, a charming Cotswold village or industrial rape fields extending to the horizon? So let’s build the villages. We could start work building 10,000 new villages of 3,000 people each and still have a green and pleasant land. That’s homes for 3 million people.
Our country is amazingly undeveloped. The best measure is from the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA), they calculated that 6.8% of the UK’s land area is now classified as urban, 10.6% in England, 1.9% in Scotland, 3.6% in N. Ireland and 4.1% in Wales. But in England 78.6% of this urban area is designated as natural rather than built so the percentage of England’s landscape which is actually given over to homes is a ridiculously small 2.27%.
National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Sites of Special Scientific Interest total 29% of the total area of England. These provide a high level of protection and ensure we keep our countryside.
The National trust owns more than 300 historic buildings, mostly castles and stately homes with their grounds. In addition they own more than 618,000 acres of farmland and many parks, gardens and stretches of coastline. The National Trust Acts grant the Trust the unique statutory power to declare land inalienable. So it will remain undeveloped for posterity. The National Trust for Scotland is a separate organisation and owns a whole lot more.
The Ministry of Defence owns about 230,000 acres of land. Much of this is open countryside. And they need to keep this for playing with their toys and for making loud bangs on.
In London there are the following parks (and very many large gardens). All British cities are similar. As we expand housing into the green belt we can create many new parks, which are far more pleasant than industrialised farms
- Green Park 16 ha (39.5 acres)
- St. James’s Park 34 ha (84 acres)
- Greenwich Park 73 ha (180 acres)
- Hyde Park 140 ha (346 acres)
- Kensington Gardens 111 ha (274 acres)
- Regent’s Park 197 ha (486.79 acres)
- Bushy Park 450 ha (1,112 acres)
- Richmond Park 955 ha (2,359.85 acres)
More of Surrey is now under golf courses – about 2.65% – than has houses on it. Which is criminal. The planners should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

So you can see that we can get rid of the green belt, most of which is unsightly industrial farming, and replace it with pleasant homes and gardens at very affordable prices. Whilst still keeping nearly all our countryside. This is what Great Britain needs.

Other articles in this series (click highlighted text to open article):

A simple solution to many of our national problems

Britain’s biggest political failure

Let’s shoot the NIMBYs

Why Osborne must REDUCE benefits

Bruce 23 June 2015 1

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Look at the above infographics and it becomes very clear that for a lot of people work really doesn’t pay. Our over generous benefits are a genuine lifestyle choice for many hundreds of thousands of people. Why work when other people (taxpayers) will pay pretty you much the same money for you to be on a permanent holiday? In fact after paying for transport etc these people would be worse off if they worked.

Osborne has to fix this and the best way is by reducing benefits so that work does pay.

The two greatest economists of the last century

Bruce 23 June 2015 0

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Sir John James Cowperthwaite, KBE, CMG

A British civil servant, sent to Hong Kong in 1945 and who rose to become Financial Secretary. Hong Kong then was one of the poorest nations on earth. But Cowperthwaite saw that capitalism was generating wealth without any government help. So he invented positive non-interventionism, an economic philosophy of minimum government. He deliberately didn’t collect statistics so that politicians would not have the information to interfere.

Hong Kong practices positive non-interventionism to this day and has gone from being one of the poorest to being one of the richest nations on earth, despite having no natural resources, as a consequence of this. Deng Xiaoping, the leader of China, saw the outstanding success and decided to do the same for his country. From 1979 he implemented reforms that brought Hong Kong style capitalism to China and their economy boomed, from a grindingly poor agrarian peasant country to now being the source of more than half of the planet’s manufacturing.

Cowperthwaite knew two truths, the first is that everything that government does it does badly, so the less government the better. The second is that government can do very little to improve an economy but can do a great deal to harm it, so capitalism with minimum intervention will always give the best result.

It is hardly surprising that today bronze busts of Cowperthwaite are common in those countries that have become rich by following his economic philosophy.

Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS

Elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in May 1979. She took over a battered and damaged country, the “poor man of Europe”. During Labour’s winter of discontent in 1979 an incredible 29,474,000 working days were lost. Hospitals were picketed to prevent patients getting in, dead bodies were unburied and were stored in shipping containers. The economy was trashed. Britain was in a downwards spiral to oblivion. A huge chunk of the economy was nationalised monopoly industries which were utterly abysmal in everything they did. Execrable service to the public at exorbitant prices whilst making huge losses that had to be funded by the taxpayer.

Thatcher was a keen student of economics and read both the Austrian School and Chicago School academics. She distilled ideas from many different people to come up with her own economic philosophy, Thatcherism. Hers was the first government to apply this knowledge for the good of the country. For instance by using monetarism she reduced inflation from 10.3% to 4.6%.

Thatcher was incredibly brave. Our economy was so incredibly inefficient because it contained millions of non jobs. People, many, but not all, in nationalised industries who were being paid but who were unnecessary. This made everything any business did in Britain uncompetitive internationally, it dragged the country down. Thatcher exposed all of these industries to competition from the market, both internally within Britain and globally. Often by denationalisation but often by other means, big bang in the City broke up many cartels and “old school tie” networks, for instance. This, inevitably, led to mass unemployment as the non jobs were shaken out of the system. But it also created many new jobs as the economy started to boom. It also laid the foundations (not built on by Gordon Brown) for our current competitiveness in the world and our great national prosperity.

Margaret Thatcher was incredibly popular for bringing so much wealth to so many people. She won three consecutive elections with big majorities. And her economic policies, Thatcherism, were copied around the world by virtually every country (even Cuba is starting to do it now). This brought greatly increased wealth and quality of life to billions of people

Cowperthwaite and Thatcher had such huge impacts on the quality of life of so many billions of people that no other economist comes remotely close. They are the creators of our modern age of luxury for all, luxury we now take for granted. We must be very careful to remember the lessons and not lose sight of what brought us here. Also there is room for us to make even greater progress by applying these proven methods even more. The market and capitalism generate all the wealth on earth, we should not let government get in their way.

Neosocialism

Bruce 25 June 2015 1

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When I was young you knew what socialism was. Men in cloth hats and strong regional accents ranting on TV about “the workers” and going on strike all the time. Politicians trying to micromanage every aspect of the economy: prices, wages, exchange rates, interest rates, ownership of industry etc and making a huge mess of it. Huge taxation (98% income tax under Wilson/Callaghan) of anyone who was successful. And a succession of political and economic disasters.

This has all gone. Now we have a new socialism which I am calling Neosocialism and it has certain distinct characteristics.

Professional politicians with little or no real world experience. Mostly from a metropolitan “elite”. Never had a proper job. Go “Up North” as rarely as possible. Avoid Scotland like the plague that it has become for them.
Very friendly with bankers and other City types. No nationalisation. Oppose all industrial action. Hands off approach to the economy.
Rich, middle class leadership and upper ranks. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Harriet Harman, Chuka Umunna, Tristram Julian William Hunt, Hilary James Wedgwood Benn.
Becoming very rich indeed out of politics. Neil Kinnoch, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown.
Amazing hypocrisy. Hiring people on zero hours contracts whilst denouncing these. Avoiding tax whilst criticising everyone else who does. In fact an all encompassing culture of “do what I say, not what I do”.
Utter and total contempt for their voter base. The obvious examples are Gillian Duffy and also Emily Thornberry’s white van Tweet, but Ed Miliband’s persistent litany of lies in the recent election campaign showed that he thought potential Labour voters are all idiots.
Embracing “diversity” and “multiculturalism” at the expense of traditional British values such as decency, free speech and the rule of law. Resulting in mass organised sexual abuse of many thousands of children around Britain. And many other societal problems.
Avarice. We all know about the MP expenses scandal. But what most people don’t realise is that there were very thorough investigations of every MP and only six were prosecuted for criminal fraud. And all of these six were Labour; Elliot Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine, Eric Illsley, Margaret Moran, and Denis MacShane.
Being in America’s pocket. With Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher the UK and USA were equal partners on the world stage. In sharp contrast Blair/Brown were poodles to Bush, taking us on an illegal hare brained war which resulted in a million deaths.
Destroying the fabric and cohesion of British society with mass immigration of huge numbers of people, many of who refuse to integrate and who try to enforce their primitive barbaric beliefs on us.

Any cogent, sentient, erudite person who has lived in Great Britain over the last 20 years will recognise all of the above. So Neosocialism it is then. And it is not just a UK phenomenon, it can be found in most European countries.

What is Government for?

Bruce 29 June 2015 0

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Government is an integrated part of our lives, like cash money or the air that we breathe, so the vast majority of people don’t stop to think about what it is, why we have it.

The first possibility is that Government’s job is to provide us with the services we can’t provide for ourselves. Such as defence, law & order, a road system and keeping markets perfect. But in reality all of these can be provided without Government. Look how security firms now provide much of Britain’s policing or how defence contractors increasingly do the job of the military.

Obviously if the Government is providing us with services they need money, so they tax us. They also need power, so as to do their job. Add these two together and you have a lethal combination. Who is to decide how many services Government is to provide and how much they can tax us? Government, of course! So it is no surprise that we have vastly more Government than we want or need. And no surprise that we spend half our lives working for ourselves and half our lives working to pay taxes.

So how do we bring the Government back under control? You might think General Elections would be a good start. But really the only choice we are offered is between profligate Government or very profligate Government. There is no choice for minimum Government, allowing us to keep the money we have earned to spend ourselves. Gordon Brown took the Government up to 52% of the economy, Osborne has reduced this to the low 40s% and says he is going for 35%. Lefties call this sensible prudence “austerity” which is a lie.

It is a proven fact that countries with small Government spending and thus small taxation are far more successful economically. China, Singapore and Hong Kong, for instance. This is obvious. More resources are being used to create wealth and less of the economy is devoted to wasting money. 20ish% seems to be the sweet spot for how big Government should be. But less would always be better.

The second possibility is that the Government owns us, that we are the property of the state. This was certainly true when we were an absolute monarchy. It is certainly true today in places like Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea. But in Britain? The rot first set in with WW1 conscription. This basically said that the Government owns your life, for you to be killed at their will. But things got a whole lot worse with Labour Governments. Their failed dogma requires authoritarianism. For the state to be in charge of every aspect of your life. So they brought in legislation to make this so. And the Conservatives don’t get rid of it (the notable exception being Margaret Thatcher, who understood freedom).

Now you have very restricted freedoms. We see people going to prison for tweeting. We don’t have freedom of speech or freedom of thought. And your Government employs illegal mass surveillance, watching and listening to every aspect of your life.

“Political correctness” is a mechanic often used to make you even more a slave to the state. It enforces authoritarian controls over vast areas of social behaviour and tramples over what were once our rights. “Terrorism” is the perfect excuse for increasingly oppressive and controlling legislation.

So, yes, the British state owns you.

We are in a bad way really. Owned by an authoritarian state and paying them half of all that we earn. But things could be much worse, we could have had a Labour government.

Cameron has a very bad day over Tunisia

Bruce 30 June 2015 0

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It seems that we never learn, Cameron seems to be headed for exactly the same mistakes as Bush, Blair and himself.

Firstly he says that the Tunisia killings are nothing to do with Islam. This is a lie. He says this to prevent trouble in the UK between our 6 million Muslims and our 58 million non Muslims. But it is still a lie. There is a website that lists Muslim terrorism and atrocity (click to see it here). Please show me the equivalent website for Buddhists or Roman Catholics.

Then he says that our Islamic citizens should act against radicalisation. When a quarter of them in the UK approved of the Charlie Hebdo killings! And worldwide in a recent Aljazeera online poll with 56,000 respondents, 80% of Muslims support Islamic State. Islam in the UK covers very many shades of grey. Some are as liberal and Westernised as me, others are primitive, barbaric, tribal peasants. And Islam itself is not one religion, it is very many religions after hundreds of years of schism.

Next Cameron blamed the Tunisia bombings on Islamic State, when there is no proof. It looks more like a lone wolf did it, or at most a very small cell. Islamic State just now is too busy nation building. This is the same mistake that George Bush made with his “axis of evil” blaming Iraq for 9/11 when nearly all the bombers were Saudis. Of course Islamic State are happy to take the credit, it does wonders for their brand resonance, but that doesn’t mean they did it. And Tunisia is happy to round up the “usual suspects”, anyone who has watched Casablanca was expecting this.

Then Cameron says we should not call Islamic State by its name, we should call it ISIL instead. But Islamic State is bigger than Great Britain, it has the rule of (Wahhabi) law, just as Saudi Arabia does, and is the best civil government that most of its citizens have ever seen. Denying that it exists as a country is a bit futile.

Finally Cameron says that we should be attacking Islamic State more. Using £105,000 Brimstone missiles to destroy trucks is just wasting tax payers money and causes no real harm to Islamic State. If anything it helps recruitment. You can’t destroy an idea with missiles. And Islamic state did nothing to harm us until we started bombing them. James Wright Foley was killed on 19th August 2014, we started bombing Islamic State on 8th August 2014. We are idiots, we should be talking to them. We talk to other barbaric regimes. Cameron should learn from his own huge mistake in bombing Libya, look how well that has turned out. The Tunisia gunman trained in the anarchic, destabilised Libya created as a direct result of Cameron’s actions. Great Britain has reaped what it has sown.

The real problem is mass Islamic immigration into Britain. We should take this to zero immediately. Then we should kick out the many hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, they are nearly all Muslim. And finally we should Westernise the ones we are stuck with. Make them integrate and become liberal Brits. No more leftie multiculturalism, political correctness and diversity. Socialism is one of the main reasons we have such a big Muslim problem.

And finally don’t believe all you hear and see about Islamic State, much of it is CIA/Mossad/MI6 propaganda, regurgitated by the BBC. Look at this photograph. As you know Mecca is in one direction, the spooks have dressed up some dusky actors for propaganda shots but they don’t understand how to pray! You are being brainwashed.

Greece has an amazing opportunity

Bruce 3 July 2015 0

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The people of Greece are fantastic. Amazing. Hard working and entrepenurial whilst still valuing the quality of life. Their business skills mean they own a big chunk of all the world’s ships, and people like Stelios Haji-Ioannou (serial entrepreneur and founder of Easyjet) are just the tip of an iceberg of strivers.

They have been let down by a succession of venal governments who have trashed the country with gross ineptitude. The bankrupt economic theories of Keynes and Krugman have been applied andthe lessons of Hong Kong and Singapore ignored. It is difficult to imagine how Greece could have been more badly governed.

In life I am an optimist, so if you have a lemon you make lemonade. Apply this and Greece is in a position of amazing opportunity. Being at rock bottom they can do literally anything. With the right policies they could very rapidly have a booming economy. There is nothing to stop them from becoming the richest nation in Europe. Concentrate on generating wealth instead of on stopping the economy from working. Here is how:

Leave the Euro currency immediately. It is a structural millstone that stops the Greek economy working properly. All values are false and markets cannot work. Being in the Euro has been one of Greece’s biggest problems. Money became far to cheap and the currency far too stable. Markets just didn’t work as they should.
Remain in the EU. But work with Cameron to make it a more useful trading organisation and a far less powerful political organisation. Seek the maximum help from the EU contingent upon the reforms listed here. Debt write down is inevitable, as is a further bailout and ongoing grant aid. If the EU won’t play ball then just leave.
Replace the Euro with a crypto currency, the Bitdrachma. Have no paper or coins. All transaction would take place using phones, smart watches, computers and other such devices. Bitdrachma debit and credit cards would also work. Pay all government salaries, pensions and all other internal bills with this currency starting immediately.
Get rid of all existing taxes (except for health taxes on tobacco and sugar, which need to be far higher than they are now). Greek taxes are currently largely uncollected or uncollectable, over 60% of the population is in tax arrears. Replace these taxes with a transaction tax on the Bitdrachma. This would be impossible to avoid, except by barter. It would only have to be at a very low rate, just 3 or 4% as an absolute maximum. The collection would be totally automatic and would be on EVERY transaction. Ensure all large transactions (house sales) and all internal business transactions use Bitdrachma.
Contract an international firm of accountants to forensically audit the personal accumulation of black money over the last few decades. On a commission only basis. Say 25% of everything collected. Looking at all the London homes owned by Greeks would be a very good start. Nobody to be exempt.
Privatise everything that can be sold off. Every state asset except for the absolute minimum. This has to be done ruthlessly. It doesn’t matter if things go for fire sale prices, they will become so much more productive in the private sector.
Minimise the number of state employees, once again ruthlessly. Only provide the minimum services required to keep the state working. Using a cryptocurrency vastly reduces the number of state employees needed. No finance ministry, no tax collectors, no central bank.
Set up an organisation to eliminate the evils of cronyism, corporatism, socialism and corruption. There is a lot of these in Greece and they cripple the country. These are the four utterly immoral economic forces that punish working people and entrench unfairness in society. Lots of vested interests will need to be trod on. Good. Margaret Thatcher did it and it worked for Great Britain.
Pensions. Move the state pension age to 67. Allow no more new pensions effective from today’s date, then roll it till the 67 age is reached. Progressively remove pensions from the state system. Let people buy their own.
Maximise free trade with other countries. This is where Greece, strategically placed between East and West, has the potential to become an economic powerhouse.

It would be necessary to implement all the measures fully to get synergy. Treating this as a menu to pick from would help a bit, but wouldn’t deliver the startling results that are possible.

With these measures in place Greece would instantly have no budget deficit before interest payments. A surplus would be guaranteed. Then the foreign currency brought in by tourism and trade would be used to steadily pay down the government’s external debt. As this happened the economy would just motor away. Using the economic lessons we have learned from Thatcher and Cowperthwaite we know that this would happen. And Greece would very rapidly be rich again.