Tag: Politics

Posted on by Tim Worstall

How Does Anyone Think Political News Used To Work?

Having actually worked in politics, in the dissemination of political news even, there’s an important question to ask The Guardian here. How do you think this worked before online political news?

Now, in a first-of-its-kind election monitoring project conducted by the Guardian and research agency Revealing Reality, a group of voters have allowed their phone use to be recorded for three days – and the results from each individual’s phone show how the traditional media ecosystem is changing and disintegrating.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Spain’s Election Didn’t Solve The 600 Year Long Argument

Not all that much of a surprise to be honest, that a single election, or even four in four years, didn’t solve an argument that’s been running 600 years and more. The point to recall about Spanish politics being that there’s another axis running through it beyond left and right. Beyond the usual conservative/classical liberal divide, the modern normal of the social democratic left and the hippies into woo.

That’s whether there should be a Spain at all.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Just What, Really, Is The Austrian Corruption Scandal?

It is, of course, difficult to project British standards of fair play or clean government onto other countries. Foreigners do things differently after all. We Brits would be entirely livid if, say, Lebedev buying the Evening Standard had been accompanied by cash payments to the political party that allowed him to do that. For that’s not how we do things.

Anyone who thinks that a British company doing business in Russia isn’t making payments is naive.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

The Guardian’s Right – New Zealand Has Had Leading Government

The Guardian wants to tell us all how Jacinda Ardern is just great, gosh, absolutely fab. In doing so they tell us that New Zealand has always had a rather leading edge to its government. Which is, of course, true:

New Zealand has long been the social laboratory for progressive policy reform; it led the world into the 20th century with the introduction of female voting and the old-age pension. In more recent times it seems that for every policy success achieved by New Zealand, Australia has suffered an equal and opposite failure.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Dear Nick Cohen – All Politics Is Like This And Always Has Been

It’s perhaps a slightly jaundiced view but there’s much truth in it. And we’re not exactly overjoyed about it either but we don’t think there’s anything new in this:

Party democracy is the enemy of representative democracy. Party democracy stops MPs speaking out against racism and warning of the perils facing their country. Party democracy makes politicians put their members ahead of their constituents. Party democracy makes them flatter coteries of arrogant obsessives. Party democracy is the enemy of conscience and judgment.

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Posted on by Alex Noble

Heretics

It’s hard to think against the herd – there’s often a price exacted for doing so. But it’s easy to think like everyone else – no trouble there.

Nice quiet life.

Of course this means that if you are going to be a contrarian, you’ll probably only be one if you have good reasons.

Ones solid enough to make it worthwhile taking some pain.

A bit of light ostracisation.

Of course, just because contrarians have reached their beliefs through a process of reasoning, doesn’t mean they are right.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Government Owned Banks – Sure Politicians Use Them As Goodie Bags

On the one hand we could say that government owned banks merely allow the government to push forward the government’s agenda. Perhaps a useful addition to their powers to shape the economy. An alternative explanation of the very same actions would be that politicians get to use government owned banks as bribe buckets. That second being rather closer to the truth of what actually does happen:

Lending cycles and real outcomes: Costs of political misalignment
Çağatay Bircan, Orkun Saka 10 May 2019

Government ownership of banks can help solve credit market failures and stabilise the supply of credit over the business cycle.…

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Posted on by Lincoln Swann

Whistleblowers Should Be Sacked Says Government

Gavin Williamson has been summarily executed by the Prime Minster – for allegedly letting the cat out of the bag over something that the Government intended to do with Huawei that might well affect our safety.

In laymans parlance he is accused of being a whistleblower, and the government sacked him for it. Which is rather contrary to their official national policy here.

Worth noting also that he strenuously denies the allegations and said he welcomed a proper investigation instead of this kangaroo court.…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Aditya Chakrabortty – Correctly – Notes That Politics Is A Terrible Way To Run A Country

It’s clearly true that we need the politicians to decide upon something here. Are we leaving, when are we leaving and how are we leaving the European Union, obviously enough. They asked us in that referendum whether we should and we said Yea, even Yay! So, is this leaving happening? Not obviously, no. And as Aditya points out it has instead turned into a bunfight over which politician gets to advance their career of milking the rest of us.…

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Posted on by Alex Noble

Having Cake And Eating It: Resisting Tyranny

Rednecks say that guns are not about hunting or even self defence, but are about resisting tyrannical governments.

And of course this is hilarious – what reasonable person would imagine at this stage here in the 21st Century that the American government would ever become tyrannical and start arbitrarily murdering its citizens.

Ahem.

What do our Progressive friends have to say on this matter?

Well they say that no matter how well-armed a citizen you are, you would never be able to defeat agents of the State, so claiming that you need an AR-15 for that purpose is a frivolous defence, even if it was accepted that tyrannical government was even a remote possibility.…

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