Liberty Alone

I’m donating a cluestick to Dr Rowan Williams for his suggestion that there should be

new laws to protect religious sensibilities that would punish “thoughtless and cruel” styles of speaking.

If such a law came into being I hope its first use would be to lock up the good doctor for such thoughtless proposals.

Tim Worsall wonders if he’s gone insane.

Unfortunately not, its just that we’re ruled over by idiots.

The point of vocational education is that not everyone is suited to an intellectual education, so you tailor education towards the individual.
You let the nerds (like me) do our thing, study maths (or english, or history). Its what we’re good at. Let others study those things they’re good at - like my brother and his design and jewelery. Its not any lesser or greater in the grand scheme. To the individuals involved however the value of being able to pursue their own talents is huge.

Of course, forcing people to pursue vocational studies no matter what they’re good at is to be expected from a party of micromanagers with an ideological commitment against individual excellence.

I was rudely dragged into awakefulness this morning whilst checking my email to find an email from Mike Tuffrey suggesting that the London Assembly should institute a reward card to reward people for spending their money ’sutainably’.

Its hard to know where to begin in criticising this. Its illiberal, a big government solution, it seeks to impose ethics upon people from government and it is far too open to unintended consequences.

There is the civil liberties aspect - a government controlled means of monitoring your shopping habits- any civil libertarian should be looking to oppose this right now.

I dread to imagine how much it will cost the tax payer, and really, why should government be involved in our shopping habits so directly?

More seriously however, and more subtly is the real unintended consequences which will occur.
Who is to decide what counts as ’sustainable’? They will be open to lobbying by vested interests.
You can bet that the organic lobby will campaign for organic produce to be included - acting as yet more subsidy to them. Yet is organic farming sustainable? It certainly isn’t on a global scale.
Those who make the decisions will not be able to make fully informed decisions. There are many unintended side effects to many apparently environmentally friendly activities. Some recycling may use more energy for example. Or the rush towards corn derived ethanol in the US is pricing corn out of the reach of Mexico’s poor, leading to the staple of their diet being unavailable.

This card would amount to a subsidy on those who lobby successfully. It will not be based upon the complex environmental and humanitarian problems which it claims to deal with.

What we need, as the national party is saying, is taxation on pollution at cost replacing other forms of taxation. The taxation should be as close to source as possible. This will then be reflected in price, making the complex decisions about the pollution easy to make.

This sort of gimmick is expensive, ineffective, intrusive and a waste of money. It is illiberal and shames the Liberal Democrats to have one of our elected representatives suggesting it.