Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls understands this having called for the reduction in VAT (sales tax on retail goods 20% nationally in the UK):

The shadow chancellor criticised Mr Osborne’s refusal to consider changing course on the economy.

“When I hear George Osborne refuse even to countenance a Plan B, I do not believe this is economic judgment at work, but a political gamble with the nation’s economy from a chancellor shaping his policies not around constitutional responsibility, sound economics and the protection of jobs, growth and homes, but around a fixed political strategy to win an election in 2015.”

[Source BBC News]

I suspect many in the Liberal Democrats are more inclined to John Maynard Keynes on the fool hardiness of cutting spending and keeping taxes high when the economy is in the doldrums. The emphasis should be on getting business going again, increase economic activity stimulated to increase revenues overthe medium term, measures to boost productivity and deal with structural issues.

Then reduce the deficit.

Am I more likely to hold the door for a woman than a man? No it really depends if someone is following me. However there are ways in which it may happen.

Today went to the aquarium in Plymouth with a zoologist. We were talking about kin relationships. I mentioned that I could see from birthdays I remembered and value of gifts given I was more disposed in giving to babies of female friends and female relatives as opposed to offspring of male.

Is this because I am certain of the mother in a way one cannot be of the father? I would like to think not consciously. “The Selfish Gene” is a good introduction to this topic that I can recommend reading.

So in a sense there could be a benevolent/altruistic sexism happening. Is this part of genetic disposition or cultural attitudes? It could just be good manners, and just maybe if it is genetic and helps your breeding chances it may still remain with us.

The reason for the financial crisis was a lack of liquidity based on short term loans that some investment banks used to make a profit on or tide them over. The credit crunch prevented that, and they become insolvent. The second part of the crisis was defaults and the inability to create new debt as a successful business model as in the good old days – because it was now too risky.

The second part features in people’s minds more then the first. Some banks did make bad loan decisions but equally some just had a poor business model to finance their deals; with no risk assessment to take into account changes in the financial market. Ring fencing retail arms was not the issue here; with the exception of Northern Rock there was no run on retail banks in the UK. Other banks like Royal Bank of Scotland or Halifax survived through mergers or public financing.

The benefit here is that an investment arm cannot take down it’s retail arm to bail it out. In essence this should mean that your savings are safe if over the threshold that the government guarantees (wait for detail to see). Peace of mind but this does not address the global financial meltdown that happened.

Capital ratios of 10% – higher than the international standard – addresses the issue of getting money quickly (liquidity) when needed. However, in addition scrutiny of operations of investment banks need to be effective – or at the least the deterrent of bankruptcy must be real. Perhaps the added stick of legal repercussions for not following good banking practises. Not fines but white collar crime incarceration. May focus the mind …

The ring fencing may end one arm subsidising the other in good times too. This will increase costs on customers by reduction in real interest rates on savings, charging for normal current accounts (when public mood can stomach it – it will happen if the banks can get away with it). How investment banks insure themselves too may result in less dividends and returns.

It is a first step in saying that an investment arm will be allowed to fail. The question is the cost on the banking customers, and whether if a domino shock effect on banks happened the over burden tax payer could be saved from bailing them out. The questions we need to ask is how will oversight be better more effective. The real solution is to allow them to fail, and not be able to get so big without adequate safeguards for that possibility.

More on the government’s response to reforming banking system here – ahead of the Chancellors’ Mansion Speech.

That hardly seems like the wall of separation between church and state being brought down by common sense. The part that may be of more interest on how people should act in society:

“For someone like myself, there is an ironic satisfaction in the way several political thinkers today are quarrying theological traditions for ways forward. True, religious perspectives on these issues have often got bogged down in varieties of paternalism. But there is another theological strand to be retrieved that is not about “the poor” as objects of kindness but about the nature of sustainable community, seeing it as one in which what circulates – like the flow of blood – is the mutual creation of capacity, building the ability of the other person or group to become, in turn, a giver of life and responsibility. Perhaps surprisingly, this is what is at the heart of St Paul’s ideas about community at its fullest; community, in his terms, as God wants to see it.”

Paul had quite a few things to say on social policy regarding the role of women, homosexuals, and the emphasis not so much on the recorded words of Jesus but faith in Christ. If only the Royal Mail had been delivering his letters so that theologians may have concentrated on what Jesus said and meant.

Williams goes on:

“A democracy that would measure up to this sort of ideal – religious in its roots but not exclusive or confessional – would be one in which the central question about any policy would be: how far does it equip a person or group to engage generously and for the long term in building the resourcefulness and well-being of any other person or group, with the state seen as a “community of communities”, to use a phrase popular among syndicalists of an earlier generation?”

Having criticised Cameron for not explaining the Big Society concept a shame he does not expand on how the concept of the state as a community of communities works. Commentators miss Williams’ praise for Iain Duncan Smith (Cabinet Minister on social matters) in seeing the need to empower the disadvantaged to affect real social change.

He criticises the left too for not having an alternative idea on society to add to the melting pots of ideas. There is only one part which could be seen as meddling in politics which the papers have missed.

For by criticising referendums as government by plebiscite, and that the government lacks a mandate from the people to govern (when in reality this comes from parliament) what he is hinting at is an early election – and the political parties had better spell out what they want to do.

That, not his views on social policy or how the coalition government has acted, is the breech in the Wall. He has used the concept of legitimacy founded on popular sovereignty to criticise the government that exists based on parliamentary democracy.

Perhaps not as eye catching for readers, but really Williams is hinting the government has no legitimacy to govern without endorsement by the public at an election. I have in earlier blog called for such a requirement after a year and a half of a coalition in the constitution. Should the Archbishop be making such undertones in a secular society?

We could deal with the question of jurisdiction over human rights; the basis on which the people of Scotland can appeal to the Supreme Court (as the interpretation of European Human Rights Act it is the court of last resort in the UK). Salmond would like to bypass it directly to Europe.

Further we can mention the particulars of the cases: that this was to do with the interview of suspects for up to 6 hours by the police without legal representation present. Not allowed in England or Wales; and the Supreme Court ruled it was a breech of human rights. A correct judgment but that has nothing to do with it either.

For this is politics – where “Braveheart” pushes nationalist buttons and membership of the Scottish Nationalist Party goes up. Shall we bet on whether this film may be on just before the referendum in Scotland? For those that can motivate the masses can control democracy.

The master of whom is Mr Salmond. If anyone threatened the Union of the island it is him. Without an army, without terror. Just competent administration and the ability to communicate policies and failings clearly. It is the mandate from the election this year, first using legitimacy of a majority government as a big stick to whack the Conservative Liberal Democrat Coalition UK government over their incompetent North Sea Oil tax. As a former economist on the black stuf before politics,it was almost too easy for him to hit for six.

This is not cricket. The boundary that could be over is one from the seventeenth century. Yet there could be a snake in the grass. That in the event that Scotland voted for independence than the rest of the UK would have to vote to ratify.

Whilst, baring a real political tussel that enflamed those north of Hadrian’s Wall with Cameron, I expect that the Scots would reject it. However, it bares the question of what happens when two people’s geographically separated may have an opposed view of their nation and how they as citizens should respond. Civil wars are usually the answer when diametrically opposed views are unresolvable and the will is there – Abraham Lincoln saved the Unity of the USA but at the cost of over 600,000 Americans.

I am not for one moment suggesting that red coats will be sent to keep order. My point is when you are a liberal and believe in the right of a people’s to govern themselves in accordance with the rights of humanity, what do you do when the ideal you believe in – a United Kingdom of home countries – is threatened by the mechanisms you agree with – the ballot box.

My confidence in the Scottish people’s common sense is not extended to the Scottish politicians routed by the Scottish Nationalist Party. They had better get their act together and start showing why the Act of Union is relevant today and for the future happiness of the peoples of this island.

They underestimated Salmond once. For the Unions sake do not do him the favour a second time. But I would never quash the right for someone to leave my nation, far less spill the blood of my fellow countrymen to prevent them. I would just possibly shed a tear …

Whilst I doubt that this science programme from the BBC with Professor Al-Khalili will satisfy any young earth creationist it does try to answer that question with science. Hope to get round to watching soon – enjoy! (Reposted videos from here).

Part One – Something

Part Two – Nothing

However will try and tweet on iPhone – have added the follow button on the blog side bar. Otherwise I am on Twitter JPSargeant78

Why do people get angry when what I need is soup!

The Central Arkansas Transit Authority (CATA) declined to allow the above advert on their buses, if you look at the Dawkins website – The Atheist Billboard That Was Banned in Central Arkansas – . Howls about freedom of speech will duly follow with this report by the Friendly Atheist blog.

However, as I say quoting on my blog Einstein do not condemn without investigating unless you are ignorant. The Transit Authority says that they approved the art work in March; the sticking point is that though the adverts would cost $5,000 approximately the advertising subsidiary of the CATA asked for $30,000 insurance for vandalism. CATA is public but the advertising arm is a profit venture. [Source]

The issue seems to be the price of free speech and whether this deposit insurance amounted to discrimination compared to what would be required of other groups wanting to advertise. The courts will no doubt decide as the United Coalition for reason (UCR) has filled a lawsuit. Their press release is here.

The lawsuit will generate more publicity than $5,000 ever could. CATA may have a point there about publicity but should advertising charge or make financial demands based on supposed public reaction of criminality? The other issue is would not existing insurance for the buses cover vandalism – and the above advert cannot be considered a potential incitement to criminality not least because many believers would agree you can be good without god.

Perhaps not saved without, or even able to exist without god, but that is another argument.

Let us be clear that it was the financial obligations being imposed on the atheist coalition for advertising which is the contention, and not an outright ban by the Transit Authority. The advert was not banned and we need to be clear on this because the argument is essentially whether price discrimination (assuming this is the first time they have made this demand) was used to hinder free speech or whether it was a legitimate requirement for the public company to make.

The young man that he is today bears no comparison to the shadow that he was 6 years ago. Traumatised running round the house crying, malnourished, terrified of baths (covering his head) refusing showers. His bubbly personality came back; social interaction and expression of what he wants (and does not want). I cannot ever show my gratitude for what my mother stubbornly achieved.

So when talking to her and finding out that, as she headed towards her mid 60s, it was becoming too much, I decided to move back to the family home 12 years after having moved out. I had been proven wrong about how my brother would be looked after in residential care, and did not want to make the same mistake again.

Panorama does not surprise me on it’s report of care home abuse in Bristol; but I hope the shocking degrading images will bring to ahead what words from families like ours can testify too. That unless complaints and concerns raised by staff and relatives are listened too and investigated properly these things will happen. That we need a system that holds people to account. This was what was happening in Bristol:

One care worker was secretly filmed poking a patient in the eye; another repeatedly slapped a patient in the face; one patient was dragged out of bed and along the floor into a corridor; another was pinned beneath a chair while a second care worker wrapped a blanket round her head and another put her in a headlock

For those that missed the programme you can still catch up with it on BBCiPlayer here for the next 6 days. Four people have been arrested as a result of the investigation. BBC journalism alone justifies the licence fee.

Christopher Hitchens on the west’s dithering over former Yugoslavia below. I remember while in Germany having a go at protesters that did not want NATO to be involved that at what point would they like the international community to use force to prevent genocide? They became slightly less peaceful when I suggested that of all the people’s of Europe they should know better. Humanity must stand together when monsters come.

Mladic the Monster

Our failure to respond to the Serbian atrocities prolonged the slaughter.

By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, May 30, 2011, at 12:48 PM ET

I suppose it is possible that the arrest of Gen. Ratko Mladic is as undramatic and uncomplicated as it seems and that in recent years he had been off the active list and gradually became a mumbling old derelict with a rather nasty line in veterans’ reminiscences. His demands would probably have been modest and few: the odd glass of slivovitz in company with a sympathetic priest (it’s usually the Serbian Orthodox Church that operates the support and counseling network for burned-out or wanted war criminals) and an occasional hunting or skiing trip. Though there is something faintly satisfying about this clichéd outcome—the figure of energetic evil reduced to a husk of exhausted banality—there is also something repellent about it.

As a confused old pensioner or retiree, Mladic is in danger of arousing local sympathy in rather the same way John Demjanjuk did but of doing so within a few years of the original atrocities and not several decades. Moreover, Mladic was a director and organizer of the mass slaughters at Srebrenica and Zepa (as of the obscene bombardment of the open city of Sarajevo), and not a mere follower of orders. The new and allegedly reformist Serbian government bears some responsibility for this moment of moral nullity and confusion, since it seems to regard the arrest of Mladic and his political boss Radovan Karadzic as little more than an episode in the warming of Belgrade’s relations with the European Union. You don’t have to be a practicing Serbo-chauvinist to find something a bit trivial and sordid in that calculation. (And what if it doesn’t prove possible to stretch the increasingly inelastic Eurozone to accommodate Serbia’s pressing needs and add them to those of Greece and Ireland? A possible hostage to fortune here.)

There’s another deplorable consequence to the presentation of Mladic as scruffy and pathetic. It will become almost impossible for people much younger than I am to understand what a colossal figure he used to represent. I use the last eight words very carefully, because at the time I considered him a vastly overrated individual, credited with political and military abilities that he did not, in fact, possess. But if you tried, in Washington in the early Clinton years, to suggest that Mladic’s blitzing of Sarajevo ought to be met with a military response, this is what you would get. It was a sort of large-print version of the “Arab street,” rewritten so as to replace Arab or Muslim with Orthodox or Russian:

If we fire on Serb positions, they will abandon all restraint and obliterate Sarajevo. … The Yugoslav National Army will go on the offensive nationwide. Milosevic will appeal to Moscow for weapons and diplomatic support and will get them. … You have to remember that Tito’s wartime partisans pinned down 20 of Hitler’s divisions …

On and on it went, not always with all of these points made in one burst (though I do recall Defense Secretary Les Aspin managing to compress them pretty neatly, not to say hysterically). Of course, in the end, the Mladic forces did what racial and religious fanatics always do and went too far. At that point, there had to be some kind of Western punitive retaliation. And then it turned out that the Serbian gunmen were not “crack” forces or “elite” troops at all, but a sordid militia with an unbroken record of victory against civilians. And, though Russian demagogues like Vladimir Zhirinovsky did turn up in Serb-occupied Bosnia, Russia showed little inclination to stake much on its sentimental history as Mother of the Slavs.

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Even after the exposure of these and other chronic weaknesses, the Serbian leaders were offered concession after concession at Dayton and over Kosovo, until the entire myth was dissipated by Milosevic’s insane attempt to extend ethnic cleansing into Albania and Macedonia. By the time it was over, the iron logic of European fascism had triumphed again, as it had after 1945, and large Serbian minorities in Krajina and Kosovo were being cleansed from places where they had long residence and deep roots. If anyone should have been agitating for the arrest and arraignment of Mladic over the past few years, surely it should have been the Serbian rank and file?

At times like this, we are always reliably reminded of what John Quincy Adams said about the risk to the United States of going “abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” The monstrous character of Mladic and his movement needed no exaggeration. To this day, a lot of people do not understand how much misery and chaos and suffering it purposely inflicted. But the monstrous nature of his power and reach was paradoxically and enormously exaggerated—not by those who wanted to confront it, but by those who did not! This meant that the whole nightmare was needlessly prolonged and the expense of concluding it greatly increased. On whatever basis the post-Tito Yugoslavia was to be reconstituted, there was one that was utterly impossible as well as unthinkable: a “Greater Serbia,” whereby smaller republics and their populations were forcibly cut to fit the requirements of a dictatorial tailoring. It will one day seem incredible that the NATO powers did not see this right away and continued to treat Slobodan Milosevic as a “partner in peace,” thus opening the road that led straight to Srebrenica and the murder of people ostensibly under our protection.

Srebrenica is one of the best-documented atrocities in modern history. We have everything, from real-time satellite surveillance (shamefully available to the United States even as the butchery was going on) to film and video taken by the perpetrators, including Mladic himself. The production of this material in court will, one hopes, wipe any potential grin from his face and destroy the propaganda image of the simple patriotic man at arms. Whatever our policy on monsters abroad may turn out to be, at least we should be able to recognize one when we see one.