The trial of Steve Wright confirms how dangerous prostitution is but legalising it would do nothing to aid the plight of women involved.
Prostitution is legal in the United Kingdom. There is thus no question of legalising it.
Be nice if you could get the sub-headlines right, eh?
Indeed, another quirk in the law, allowing smokers into establishments with separate rooms,
Eh? Smoking and non-smoking sections are "a quirk"?
In a piece on rising food prices Alex Renton says this:
But the factors behind the price rises in Leith are exactly the same as those in Mexico, or in China – where, last Wednesday, the government introduced price controls on dairy products, meat, vegetables and cereals. And while food price inflation hit 18 per cent last year in China, there\’s no good reason why they should not do that here. In fact, there are a lot of reasons why they should.
So there are no reasons why there should not be price controls on food and reasons why there should. A few paragraphs up he says:
Habits will change, although it\’s unlikely we\’re going to see Soviet-style queues at empty shelves.
A complete idiot, obviously. The fixing of prices below the cost of production means that no one will produce and thus we will get Soviet-style queues at empty shelves.
Why is it that journalists are ignorant of the most basic concepts of economics?
One in six British households is living in fuel poverty, the highest for almost a decade, according to new figures that threaten the government\’s target to eradicate the problem in England by the end of the decade.
Fuel poverty is defined as when a household spends more than a tenth of its income on utility bills. The consumer group Energywatch said yesterday there are now about 4.4 million of these in the UK, with just over 3 million in England alone.
We\’re worried about CO2 emissions, correct? That means that fossil fuel prices should rise, so that people use less of them.
Isn\’t it excellent to see how we\’re solving the problem?
That does now seem to have become a rather political question, doesn\’t it?
The Charity Commission has unveiled its understanding of the new "public benefit test". Introduced by the Charities Act of 2006, the test stipulates that to count as a charity, an organisation must prove that it benefits the public. Last week, the Commission claimed that private schools do not pass it because they benefit only those rich enough to afford the fees. Unless private schools can prove that they also benefit people who are not rich, the commission concluded, they shouldn\’t have charitable status.
The commission was widely attacked for failing to recognise that relieving the state of the cost of educating 500,000 children counts as a benefit to everyone who pays tax. But the real enormity is the test itself, which is political prejudice masquerading as objective assessment. "Public benefit", as applied to charities, is meaningless. No charity benefits everyone: women\’s charities benefit women, cancer charities those with cancer, and charities for animals don\’t benefit people at all. It cannot be an objection to a charity that it benefits only part of the population, for every charity does that. In practice, the question becomes: which parts of the population will be allowed to count as "deserving"?
There are two ways to answer that question. One is to say that they all count equally: it\’s not the job of the state to decide who should receive charity – citizens can donate their money to whatever group they choose, provided that group is not involved in harming others.
The other is to give an unelected quango the power to decide who counts. I thought that was precisely the result that democracy was supposed to avoid, but evidently not: it\’s the result that the 2006 Act has produced. The commission\’s view of who "counts" is inevitably an expression of political prejudice.
Actually, it\’s not democracy which is supposed to avoid this, rather, it\’s civil liberty. Democracy is in fact exactly what the Commission is doing: picking and choosing according to the political dictates of those who have the backing from enough of the population to gain power.
It brings us once again the distinction between democracy and said civil liberties. There are those who insist that democracy itself is the goal: I would insist that it isn\’t. Useful, certainly, the least bad method we have, but it is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end is the maximum of freedom and liberty that we can all enjoy without popping from the sheer pleasure of it all.
And that means that we have clear and simple rules, ones simply laid out, which apply to all. As noted, a charity raising money to treat ovarian cancer does not directly benefit men. Should it be stripped of its charitable status? Sure, there are indirect benefits to men (wives and mothers less likely to die of a foul disease) but then the same can be said, as above, of private schools: children are educated at no cost to other taxpayers.
The problem here is too much democracy (imagine that the unelected quango were replaced with a popular vote on each and every charity: anyone think this would make things better?) not too little.
Point one:
We will never go back to selection
Point two (the next part of the same sentence):
but you could have a situation where 11-year-olds with a particular talent in a certain subject or the potential to go to a certain university are encouraged at an early age.
Leading to:
Potential Oxbridge students should be identified at 11 and given special mentoring throughout their school years to help them compete for a place, the Government\’s access tsar has proposed.
So when is selection not selection?
Because of the cuts, the Compass theatre in Sheffield has cancelled The Dresser by Ronald Harwood, who said: "The Government has abandoned the arm\’s length principal of arts funding and is trying to use the arts for social engineering."
The entirety of the Arts Council budget is social engineering!
It doesn\’t matter whether you swallow the official drivel or take a more realistic view of the matter. The official line is that State support for the Arts increases the amount of art available (it being a public good) and is thus of general benefit. This is social engineering.
The realistic view is that it is indoor relief for show offs. This is also social engineering, as it buys political support for the State itself from those same highly vocal show offs.
Complaining that the subsidies going to one fom of theatre or another is social engineering is like complaining that people are eating apples not bananas: they\’re all fruits.
What?
Hopes of a deal to end the row over holding terrorist suspects for up to 42 days have increased after it emerged that the Conservatives had offered an olive branch to ministers which could save them from a humiliating defeat.
They\’re negotiating over this? A basic principle of civil liberties, and they\’re going to do a deal?
Sheesh.
The battle over the EU Reform Treaty has been reignited after an influential committee of MPs said that the document is no different to the defunct EU Constitution.
Nice to see the truth, not that it will change anything.
OK, I know George Orwell died of TB. Looking it up it was in 1950.
I\’ve also been aware that although penicillin had been discovered in the late 20s (? That right?) it wasn\’t in anything like regular supply until after WWII. Looking around I see that he first antibiotic for TB treatment was Streptomycin.
The first randomized controlled trial to be completed and, therefore, the first to be published, it was run by England\’s Medical Research Council and pitted streptomycin and bed rest against bed rest alone, which was then the standard TB therapy. It accrued its first patients in January 1947.
So Orwell was alive at around the time that the first effective treatment became available…..at least, available to some.
So, does anyone know whether he was treated with it? Or was it just one of these things, he died while the treatment was still in testing, not in general use: a little like if Freddie Mercury had kept going another year or two he would probably still be with us?
Not hugely important, I know, just be interesting to find out.
Of his drinking, I have personal experience of Livingstone\’s incapacity to keep off the booze during working hours. I have attended two afternoon receptions with Livingstone, and he was drunk at both of them. At the first, for international designer Jan Gehl, he turned up 40 minutes late and slurred his way through a rambling introduction in which he made frequent references to the current work of the \’GLC\’ (sic).
As the weekly news cycle comes to an end and darkness descends on a gloomy Friday, there are two great news stories doing the rounds, neither of which the great British media can report. One involves a famous broadcaster and his love child by another journalist and is covered by an injunction. The other is covered by a D-Notice. Good to live in a free country, isn\’t it?
OK, the journo and the love child I\’ve got over at Guido\’s.
The D-Notice one I\’ve not. Apparently something about a young royal? Some reference to Popbitch perhaps? In entirely unrelated news they said something about the Hotel Serena in Kabul getting hit again?
Guido\’s comments seem to have mutterings about paternity…..
A very, very, sad list.
They have room for Hanif Kureishi, but not for Alan Coren, Tom Stoppard nor Terry Pratchett.
Don\’t bother with it.
Equally, as a member of the WTO, China has made considerable progress in establishing systems of law and accountability. But these systems of accountability and governance are not just weak and underdeveloped: they are also hampered by the Party\’s overriding concern – to continue to monopolise power in a vertical, authoritarian system. To have real accountability, transparency and rule of law – of the kind that Gordon Brown, no doubt would like to do business with – requires independent institutions, a free press, a citizenry with rights and equal access to the law, all of which contain potential challenges to the Party\’s monopoly of power and the spoils that come with it.
Who is this Gordon Brown who will be doing business?
Aren\’t we a country with independent institutions, independent businesses, a free press, a citizenry with rights and equal access to the law, rather than a one party state with a monopoly of power and the economy and the spoils that come with it?
Chicken should be higher in price because:
That includes a fairer price for the farmers, who are struggling to stay in business as their grim product sells for insultingly low prices.
Bit of a change for The Guardian, isn\’t it? Calling for higher profits for businessmen, when we all know that profits are the surplus value stolen from the righteously labouring classes.
They\’ll be calling for interest margins to go up to preserve bankers jobs next.
The trouble is that the politician\’s job is not to generate good vibes: it is to manage useful public projects competently.
And if they can\’t manage that then they shouldn\’t be there, should they?
I think I know howthis will play out:
She faces 13 charges which are set out in a document that runs to 67 pages. They include two counts alleging that she used imperial weighing scales without an official stamp. The charges were brought by Hackney Council.
Great emphasis will be placed on the fact that her scales did not have the requisite stamp (and checking weighing equipment and measures has long been a function of local government). That they were Imperial will be played down.
However, I doubt very much that Hackney will stamp as being accurate Imperial only scales, so everyone can say with a straight face that of course you can use Imperial, only you must have stamped scales, which you can\’t get.
The interesting question will be whether the jury buys this or tells them to bugger off.
Relatedly, I must admit that I hadn\’t known this amusing detail:
Julian Harman, of Camelford, Cornwall, was ordered to pay costs for selling Brussels sprouts using imperial measures.
Sure, it\’s nice to have more trade, nice to have more investment here (which of course raises the productivity and thus wages here).
Tens of thousands of jobs could be created in Britain by Chinese companies, Gordon Brown said, as he hailed an historic deal which he hopes will increase trade between the two countries by £10 billion over the next two years.
£ 5 billion a year, eh? 0.003% of the economy? Even with our rather anaemic trend growth rate of 2.5% or so, that\’s simply noise, not something we could actually identify. And we could probably get that sort of boost without flying hundreds to China on the taxpayers\’ penny: simply abolish a hundred or two restrictive regulations instead.
Another way of looking at it. If boosting trade is indeed so important, then we should be looking at ways to do it in the most efficient manner. Patrick Minford has pointed out that leaving the EU and having free trade would boost the economy by 3%.
So, again, if boosting trade is such an important point, we could get 100 times the bang for our buck by leaving Brussels, instead of going to China.