Liberty Alone

I’ve seen little about this.

The German government is annoyed that some of its citizens avoid the high taxes it imposes by putting money in banks in Liechtenstein. So annoyed is the German government that they illegally paid for account details stolen by a Liechtenstein bank employee.

As Crown Prince Alois declared:

Germany will not solve its problems with its taxpayers by attacking Liechtenstein.

I can’t believe that this mess was allowed to develop so far.

I do agree that the Lisbon Treaty is not the same as the constitution. We should not be bound by the manifesto commitment to a referendum on the constitution, that much is clear to me.

My personal opinion is that we should call for a referendum on Lisbon, just as we did for Maastricht. This is especially true since we cannot get our preferred referendum.

The question is why on earth was it deemed necessary to put a three line whip on this issue? Surely Clegg could have stuck to the previous policy but allowed a free vote. Its not some great matter of Liberal Democrat principle. It doesn’t define the party. Why on earth was it necessary to force the issue like this? Clegg doesn’t need to prove he’s a ’strong’ leader, he doesn’t have anything to gain from this. We just come out looking divided and frankly very silly.
What’s worse is that this conclusion has been obvious for weeks, yet we still allowed it to come to a head.

All I can ask is what on earth were they thinking?

It seems the powers that be (in Brussels this time) want us bloggers to blog about environmental matters. Apart from my irritation at anyone suggesting that we should have such ‘blog action days’ this is incredibly hypocritical of the planners that run much of the EU.

Tim Worstall has a good summary of the idiocy of EU environmental policy. He is of course a euro-nihilist, not a position I hold, but the environmental damage which the EU’s environment programs do is horrendous.

This is rather a failure of central planning, if it didn’t come from the EU it would come from Westminster or from local government. These highlighted problems are often caused by good intentions although some (like the CFP) are driven by vested interests and a government pressure from some member states.

This does highlight the need for more market based solutions to environmental problems, based upon property rights where possible. Recycling should be done where profitable - perhaps a discount on your council tax if you spend the time to recycle? Landfill and incineration should be used where its not.

There should be no targets set for biofuel use or other forms of energy creation - its too early to back a particular horse, solutions could come from very unexpected directions. I would suggest that the reason for the biofuel mandate comes from farmer’s lobbying, as it has in the US (where it is causing immense problems for the mexican poor whilst being inefficient).

The Common Fisheries Policy is possibly the worst example of EU driven environmental damage - if we simply had privately held fishing rights then there would be an incentive to ensure the future of the fisheries. This is the most obvious example of the tragedy of the commons today. Its as bad as the lack of property rights which led to the wholesale slaughter of buffalo in the US.

Of course, the planners and bureaucrats think they know best and seek to impose top down solutions. We must push for a more liberal EU, one in which the principle of subsidiarity actually exists, where EU legislation is low in quantity (and higher in quality) and in which central planning has no role to play.

EuObserver reports that M. Sarkozy has backed the idea of reforming the Common Agricultural Policy, one of the most ludicrous, expensive and inefficient EU policies.

The fact that the French government is even thinking about shifting their position of just saying ‘Non’ to reform is a large step, and he’s phrased it fairly well-

I do not want to disappoint farmers who do not want hand-outs, farmers who do not want to live off subsidies and farmers who do not want to be subjected to regulations on their livestock’s hair.

Admittedly rhetoric is easy (although in France with the farmers seemingly ever ready to join the students in rioting or burning sheep it may not be quite so easy) and I’m sure any deal will fall short of abolishing the CAP, but this is at least a step in the right direction.

Now all we need is for some real action on the Common Fisheries Policy, if anything a greater disaster for the environment and people than the CAP…

lightbulb protectionism

So, having said that incandescent bulbs should be replaced with energy saving bulbs, the EU commission, or more specifically Peter Mandelson, has given into industry pressure to keep tariffs on cheaper imported energy saving bulbs meaning that energy saving light bulbs will continue to be more expensive than they need to be for at least another year to preserve the profits of Osram.

What a great way to help the environment guys. Discouraging people from using less energy is a great way to go about things.

Next they’ll decide that blacking out the sun is a good idea as its unfair competition for the light bulb manufacturers. I think people should be sending the commissioner copies of Bastiat’s Petition of the Candle Makers…

Update:
You can find the commissioner’s contact details here. I do encourage people to contact him.

No wonder the EU is unpopular amongst many people - it cannot resist meddling. Its bad enough with Westminster sticking its fingers where it shouldn’t but the EU is getting more and more silly.

Not only does Germany want to set a minimum corporate tax rate and other EU countries want to take action against Switzerland and other for ‘unfair tax competition’ but now there’s calls for an EU wide minimum wage

That’s just recent economic ideas. What about the proposal of EU widefertility treatment regulations or internet censorship?

This is getting ridiculous, it smacks of making rules up because you can combined with short sighted nationalism. I thought the EU was meant to be a free trade area with free competition. It seems instead to be an attempt to create an even larger economic isolationist (aka protectionist) block.
It is surely time for the LibDems to start speaking out against this dangerous nonsense. It is not in the interests of the UK or the rest of Europe, or even the world, especially with the rise in populist economic isolationism in the US.

The European Union offers great opportunities to expand liberalism and to liberalise Europe for the benefit of Europeans and the rest of the world. However, the EU appears to be regressing even further into a protectionist talking shop where governments conspire with each other and with business against the citizens of Europe and against the masses in the whole world.

Will the time come to stop feeding the illiberal machinations of some of Europe’s politicians? For some this time has come already, for others the benefits of the EU outweigh the problems. Estonia, one of the world’s most liberal nations obviously thinks that it is best to be within the EU, even though it meant imposing tariffs and contributing to the obscene Common Agricultural Policy, many British liberals are staunchly opposed to Britain’s membership and advocate withdrawal a

Part of the UK’s problem with the EU derives from the problems we have with our system of government. The legislature fails to hold the executive to account. In the European context it fails to monitor what the government’s representatives in Brussels agrees to. The EU should be a great opportunity, but we haven’t used it as such, unless you count its use as a scape-goat for British politicians to blame things on.

Is the EU and the UK’s relationship to it beyond repair? If not, how can we fix it? When will things have gone too far for liberals to support the EU?

If Liberal Democrats are to continue to support the EU we need to answer these questions. We need to provide solid reasons for British membership of the EU whilst pointing out the many flaws and solutions to those problems.

There are some signs of hope. Many of the new entry countries are more liberal, or at least less statist than old Europe. With (a lot) of luck, Sarkozy will provide the start of a road to a more liberal future for France (although it seems unlikely they’ll rediscover Batistat). Barroso has started talking in a more liberal manner as well. There are voices in the EU establishment talking about things liberally, notably Charlie McCreevy the commissioner from Ireland.

Will this be enough? I don’t know. I’m not convinced either way, and I’m instinctively an internationalist and support international institutions where they have further liberal policy.

The Globalisation Institute has something on the latest absurdity of the CAP, and Tom Papworth expands on it.

Will the LibDems call for scrapping it yet?

The EU has given €9.6 million to fund a trial of Broadband over Power Line (BPL).

This technology pollutes the radio spectrum as has been shown by numerous trials. It emits radiation across the HF spectrum, disabling communications in that part of the spectrum and potentially causing interference across the world. HF is not only used by Radio Amateurs (my particular angle on this) but also by the military, international broadcasters, ships and provides long range emergency communication in disaster areas.

This technology is pushed by energy companies seeking to extract more money out of their infrastructure (as is their right) but they form powerful lobbies, lobbying for an unneeded, polluting technology. If they want to develop it, they can do so without state subsidy and stop interference (or buy the rights to the spectrum they wish to pollute - but that’s not possible).

Many people claim this, but I think it is completely wrong.
Firstly, cultures are not static and unchanging, they are fluid and accept some influences and reject others, not through some grand plan (as much as the French Government and other statist culture organisers would like to think) but through the interactions of the individuals who make up society.
This makes talk of losing a culture nonsense, culture changes, if people think something worth preserving they will do so themselves.

Secondly, lets look at an example of some countries which have different cultures but have been unified politically - The United Kingdom. Scotland and Wales have their own cultures - arguably they have different cultures within themselves, this is certainly the case with England where there are differences in culture between cities and rural areas, between east and west and north and south, even in today’s hyper-connected world.
Even in Brittany, despite the attempts of central government to impose ‘French Culture’ upon the Bretons they have a distinct culture.

It is true that English culture has changed, for example the curry is arguably central to our culture, but we still have elements of an older culture and a distinct culture. We still interact with the rest of the world, we have not lost our culture and never will, it will simply change, but remain distinct.