Longbridge 2

So it's all over, the employees get the statutory minimum redundancy, the directors retire as rich men (see Tim Worstall for details of how to make profits from a company that's losing money hand over fist) and the Rover pension fund will be bailed out by the brilliant new Pension Fund scheme.

Scott at Blithering Bunny responded to my Longbridge post.

Britain is regulating itself out of a lot of business, just not as fast as Germany and France are doing. And a combination of a poor state education system and a new generation of useless civil servants means that we aren’t as good as we should be at competing on the “international stage” (and things are likely to get worse the longer watered-down socialism remains in favour). But these problems are all caused by the state having too much power. So the last thing we want is to pay any attention to calls for the state to step in and help Rover survive.

Nothing to disagree with there. I just see our failure to compete internationally as meaning that Britain's relative decline will continue despite (or is it because of ?) free trade. Free trade is very good for those countries with high levels of education, technical skills, infrastructure etc. All these things being relative of course. You also need an government that doesn't hinder, entrepreneurial ethic among some and a work ethic among many. Britain in Victorian times had all of these and so was naturally keen on free trade.

Now we don't have the education system (with the implication for future technical skills), the government or the work ethic. Having a free market won't solve at least two out of three of those. After all, if it was possible to simply move into new areas easily, they'd have been able to make cars that people wanted to buy. Cars are as hi-tech an item as any these days, so if we can't make those what's suddenly going to make us turn out memory sticks or holographic videos ?

Conversely, with the right culture, technology and education, you can be successful with some pretty unfree markets. Japan 1960-1985 was protectionist and institutionally corrupt, but raised its game over that period from cheap plastic toys to the best cars, cameras and electronics in the world.

There's a quote from Adam Smith which I'll dig out tonight, of which the gist is : "Without the appropriate cultural setting, free markets are useless".

Bristol Police - Determined To Tackle Stereotyping

Nice to know - crime is so low in Brissle the police have time to take a dig at Barry Beelzebub. If only they were 'determined to tackle crime'. Stereotyping isn't a crime - yet.

I thought the column was spot-on, actually. Judge for yourself.

Time's Revenges

I've written before that Guardianistas, for whom immigration is just another weapon in the struggle to destroy the existing culture, are importing millions of Theodore Dalrymples into the UK.

I like the style of this Respect supporter.

'The election is important because we have a chance to change what is happening now,' Abdul tells me. Like his colleagues he is bearded, and wears a hat, but is in Western clothes. 'We have sex education that promotes sex because young children should not be exposed to these things; kids below 11 years are dressing up like adults, young boys and girls are doing obscene things. This never happened before sex education. Look at abortion - Britain has the highest abortion rates in Europe. Look at gay and lesbian rights ... this is not natural. And then you have television and movies and computer games promoting violence. Galloway shares the same moral values as us, he sees that religion is a stepping-stone to a moral society.'

Tell it like it is, brother ! Much more like that and I'll be voting for them myself.

Two Stories ...

From the Sunday Times.

The BNP Sikh :

“The BNP! But they want all immigrants driven out of Britain, Mr Singh.”

“Precisely.”

“But you’re an immigrant yourself.”

“Not immigrant! Thirty-three years I am living in Great Britain, paying income tax, voting Labour, listening to Queen’s speech on Christmas Day. I am number one British citizen and patriot. Also, like all Sikh peoples, I am working night and day and raising one family of the most respectable order. My son is chartered accountant, graduated and certified. In our family, integrity is there, respectability also. Why should we be compared to all these layabout fellows?”

And the Brick Lane Bangladeshi :

“In Bangladesh, yeah, when one person gets a job, everyone else like gives up their job and lives off ’im. They’ve got this mentality, innit. ‘I don’t af to do nafing; let my brother pay for everyfing.’

“The coupla times I’ve been back there, yeah, my relatives, yeah, they says to me, ‘Oi! Mr Ali. Give us some cash!’ So I tell ’em, ‘F*** off, yeah! Make it yourself!’ I’m telling you, them bustards wouldn’t last five minutes ’ere. Any’ow, ’Er Majesty, yeah, she shouldn’t let ’alf of them in.”

UPDATE - Ali's take on Bangladeshi society echoes precisely S.J. Masty's piece in the Social Affairs Unit blog. Jarndyce at Pseudo Magazine called it 'barmy nonsense', but the coincidence of views with Ali is striking.

Of the middle-class extended families that I know in South Asia, about one fourth of the men in each are incompetents and layabouts, while the rest of the men work themselves half to death in order to support the others. But if one brother dares to suggest that Anwar get off his backside and wash windows, if need be, the entire assembly of women attacks like killer bees.

In lands without so-called social safety nets (dole), this ensures that those unable to work are housed and fed - along with those who are unwilling to work. In return for this informal insurance-policy, the family takes a group decision on who you marry, where and what you study, and where you work. And if you rise through luck, brains or effort, they tell you who to hire - usually a spotty second cousin. Opting out means life without family in places where such a life is not worth living.

I have to disagree with Jarndyce on this one. There are some cultures where his question "would you as individuals, or a collective, like to have a say in how you are governed ?" would be pretty meaningless, but "whose man are you ?" would be instantly understood. Afghanistan for one, IMHO.

Wayne Rooney "had jumbo sausage"

The BBC - first with the big stories.

Just Another Day's Work ...

For our criminal "justice" system :

A 17-year-old jailed after a crash on the A47 in Norfolk which killed an unborn baby has been given legal aid to try to keep his name out of the media. King's Lynn Magistrates ruled the youth, from the Wisbech area of Cambs, should be named so the public could call police if he was behind a wheel.

But they said he should remain anonymous until his lawyers tried to challenge the ruling in a higher court. On Friday it emerged he was given legal aid to go to the High Court.

The theory is a little different :

The key goals for criminal justice are to help reduce crime by bringing more offences to justice, and to raise public confidence that the system is fair and will deliver for the law-abiding citizen.

But the practice ?

The Legal Services Commission, which assesses legal aid claims, said the Commission was obliged to look at every case objectively and base a decision on financial eligibility and a case's legal merits.

"We cannot differentiate between applicants for legal aid on the grounds that a decision to grant funding may be unpopular in a particular case," a spokesperson said.

In other words : "up yours, Joe Public".


UPDATE - and here's our old mate Lord Justice Woolf, "helping to deliver for the law-abiding citizen".

Shooting Parrots

Another for the sidebar - I wonder how long they've been linking ?

I must say I do like it when nice well meaning liberal types link to me - so much more fun to epater les guardianistas. Liberals are generally good people - working hard at paving the road to hell with their good intentions. It's just the consequences of their ideas that are evil.

Marcus The Bard ...

Seems to have been really riled by the Toynbees and Eagletons of this world as they perform the Shepherd's Hey on the Pope's grave. Joins Non-Trivial Solutions and Squander Two in dissing the liberati, but from an explicitly Catholic perspective. Good stuff.

Ben and Chloe Revisited

Even though she says nice things about me, Irene Adler's latest post needs to be read. Triggered by the Pub Philosopher's Ben and Chloe post, it describes an embarrassing moment at a California graduation ceremony. The keynote speaker ? Convicted murderer and left icon Mumia Abu-Jamal. The embarrassing people ? Friends and relatives of the police officer he killed.

It is only recently that I have begun to reflect on the small band of determined friends and relatives of Officer Daniel Faulkner, with their terrible, stupid-looking flyers -- people who would most likely never live in Marin County, send their children to the nation's top-rated public schools, or rub shoulders with Sean Penn; people who would wear black socks with brown shoes and sport Farrah Fawcett hairdos years before the newly married Duchess of Cornwall would make them fashionable again.

I remember the future Ben-and-Chloes (or Kyle-and-Jens!) of Northern California wildly cheering Mumia's speech, just before they left university forever, and went on to graduate school at Berkeley or UCLA, or to their stock options, their professional partnerships, their plain wooden frame-houses in Marin which will probably fetch far more than $1.5 million apiece by the time they are able to afford them. I think of them, and what the friends and relatives of Officer Daniel Faulkner must have felt when they heard those cheers, and I blush, embarassed, warm-of-face, remembering how I was afraid to be seen reading those awful, amateurish flyers describing how Mumia had murdered their loved one, one Officer Daniel Faulkner, a working class man who gave his life to clean up some of the mess left behind in a Philadelphia urban ghetto by Ben- and-Chloe (or Kyle-and-Jen!)

This reminded me of something I saw on the news a few years back, (I think) just after the Good Friday Agreement, where Gerry Adams and Bill Clinton were meeting together with a lot of concerned 'human rights' celebrities - Bianca Jagger was there - can't remember if it was in Ulster or Washington, though I think Washington.

There was one forlorn figure with a placard outside the security cordon, protesting against Adams red carpet treatment. As the beautiful people entered, some, assuming him to be a Loyalist, shouted things like 'Give up ! You lost !' at him. He was a father whose child had been killed by an IRA bomb.

Inside Information

According to the Today programme (RealAudio), the widow of murdered IRA solicitor Pat Finucane "has written to every judge in Britain complaining about the nature of the inquiry into his death which the government has promised".

Hmmm. I wonder where she got the names and addresses of every judge in Britain from ?

I hope they remembered to cross off Lord Justice Gibson.

Big Tommy

Another new Brit political blog, Big T likes to try and raise up impossibly difficult and dense objects. When he's not supporting the Tories, he's a powerlifter.

Nice posts on the CRE and lying. Welcome aboard.

A Few Early Bluebells

Remember all that fuss in the Guardian, Indie and BBC about voters being allegedly deprived of the opportunity to register ?

Couldn't happen here, of course. Since Labour came to power our previously corrupt election system has improved no end. What a pity that apparently 80% of the soldiers in Iraq won't be able to vote.

UPDATE - correspondent Nick tells me the non-appearing leaflets are discussed here and the election here at the Army Rumour Service site. Sir Tim Garden's appearance on Today is here.

The SNP claimed a delay in the distribution of information leaflets was designed to prevent Labour losing votes as a result of the Iraq conflict.

In January, minister for veterans Ivor Caplin told the Commons that 100,000 advisory leaflets would be distributed to bases in order that serving personnel could be included on the electoral rolls in their home constituencies.

The Electoral Commission confirmed the leaflets were dispatched to the MoD on February 4.

But Jeff Duncan, campaign manager of Save the Scottish Regiments, claimed they did not start arriving at British bases until March 1 – 10 days before the deadline.

Given that it can take more than two weeks for post to arrive from bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr Duncan claims many troops were given little or no chance to exercise their democratic right.

Mr Duncan said: “It is a travesty.

“What is going on when we are sending men out to defend the Iraqis’ right to vote but we are not defending their own right to vote?

“We have a situation where the MoD have, at least for five weeks, sat on a bunch of forms.

“It raises the suspicion that someone is trying to disenfranchise people who could unseat Labour MPs.

Back in the UK, all right-thinking people know that any attempts to link asylum and terrorism are desperate fictions of the deranged Right.

In the States, Liberal Larry celebrates the work of the late Andrea Dworkin.

And two terrific posts at the Social Affars Unit blog. Although I've lived in the sticks for 20 years, horsey people are still alien life forms to me. I see them at the races, with the stout shoes, binoculars, tweeds and hats, or on horseback coming past the house, but I don't really know them. So this post on the Hunt AGM is a great help.

And this one, on exporting Western democracy to non-Western nations, is good too.

Linda Walker Starts Hunger Strike

Teacher Linda Walker, jailed for six months for the hideous crime of discharging an unloaded air pistol into the ground near a group of young criminals, has reportedly begun a hunger strike, after being refused bail by Mr "Justice" Royce pending her appeal.

The Justice For Linda Walker site is here.

She Never Hated Men

Most of the UK will never have heard of the American writer and campaigner Andrea ("I have no problem with killing paedophiles") Dworkin, but that didn't stop the Today programme wheeling out Lisa Jardine yesterday (RealAudio).

In the Guardian Katharine Viner writes :

As Julie Bindel, feminist and Dworkin's friend of 10 years, says: "She was the most maligned feminist on the planet; she never hated men."

As Peter Briffa says, judge for yourself.


Next week in the Guardian - "Oswald Mosley not anti-semitic, says Goebbels".

Way To Go, Son

The Spinster Of This Parish writes on how he came to love New Labour. An honest and touching tale.

Some of it might have been that I got burgled for the first time and that changed my attitude to all that tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime rhetoric that I'd hated as glib and meaningless.

Whereas the millions of poor people burgled during the 1980s and early 90s were punitive morons driven by a tabloid agenda. But you were right, Spin. In practice they were glib and meaningless. Tough on crime ? Let's just forget about that, shall we ? Tough on the causes ? Of course - crime is caused by an absence of Sure Start schemes !

Then I began to see the reasons that had stopped people voting Labour weren't as selfish as I'd thought. A strong economy means being able to afford your home, means not losing your job, means being able to give your family a pretty decent start in life.

Hey ! Dad ! You're not a square after all !

I guess I was a little ahead - having looked at the crime figures before 1997, and noted what had happened under Michael Howard, I really thought those glib and meaningless phrases meant something.


Let me tell you all about it.


In the early hours of May 2nd, 1997 a heavily pregnant wife comes downstairs, wondering why her husband, whom she had left before midnight watching the election coverage, is still up. In the kitchen, the chatter of simultaneous coverage from the television and Radio Four. On the table, a half-empty bottle, a glass and an overflowing ashtray. At the table, her husband, with the kind of fixed ear to ear grin that comes from the conjunction of great joy and Glenlivet, slurring "It's fantastic ! They're being slaughtered ! Labour might finish a hundred seats ahead! Portillo's just lost - to a gay guy ! And they're saying Norman Lamont might not hold Kingston ! Every time I think about going to bed they announce another recount in a safe Tory seat - it's an absolute massacre !".

What a night. After 1978, 83, 88 and perhaps worst of all 1992, victory at last. Although I didn't carry things as far as an old Militant comrade who tragically drank himself to death in celebration, I sat and drank on, moist-eyed and maudlin as Tony Blair made his emotional victory speech.

Cut to almost exactly three years later. It's 5.30 in the office and I'm packing up to go home. I browse the late news items - what's this ? "Blair slow-handclapped at W.I. conference". I click on the item and smile as I read - 'seen this ? Brilliant !'. On the drive home I am full of an angry happiness as I listen to the speech faltering, hear the audience unrest - see ? You can't bloody well fool everyone ! A thousand Diana Goulds are telling you what they think of you and your New Britain ! And over the following days I lapped up the press coverage with an unholy joy, becoming aware as I did so just how much I hated the Government for which I voted and for which I had longed. I first campaigned for Labour (the 1971 Bromsgrove by-election – Terry Davis won) when I was at school and have been voting Labour ever since.

In the words of Talking Heads 'How Did I Get Here ?'. Is it just old age and parenthood, a comfortable job and a nice (though tumbledown) house, inevitable ossification and selfishness ? I have pondered these questions at length but it was bit by bit, policy issue by policy issue, and through my and my friends' personal experience that I found myself inexorably moving to what before I would have certainly called 'the Right'.

Time permitting, I'll pick up on some of these during the next week. Education, transport, the economy, welfare, crime, immigration. That's a long enough charge- sheet. And this isn't a Tory manifesto. Many of the disasters Labour preside over began in the 1980s.

White Guilt = Black Power

The world and his significant other are rightly raving about Jane Galt's essay on 'gay marriage', which brought to mind a fine essay on the same subject from Hoover fellow Shelby Steele. It's here. The piece was written in response to Andrew Sullivan's friendly fisking (that's a 'k') of Shelby Steele.

I'd forgotten what a good writer Shelby Steele is. If there was a decent links page for him he'd be on the sidebar. Here's his take on white liberal guilt.

"institutions today lose their mainstream legitimacy unless white guilt defines their approach to racial matters"

"White guilt is best understood as a vacuum of moral authority. Whites live with this vacuum despite the fact that they may not feel a trace of personal guilt over past oppression of blacks. Whites simply come to a place with blacks where they feel no authority to speak or judge and where they sense a great risk of being seen as racist. It is a simple thing, this lack of authority, but it has changed everything.

One terrible feature is that it means whites lack the authority to say what they see when looking at blacks and black problems. Political correctness is what whites have the authority to say about blacks, no matter what they see. It is a language of severely limited authority, of euphemisms that steer whites around associations with racism."

While we're at it, a rare sighting on the Web of Richard Littlejohn, interviewing Michael Howard in the Spectator.

Ignore The Pop-Ups

They seem to come with iWebtunes, providers of music to webbies. I'll drop it tomorrow, but for Sunday get your ears round Sinfonye, performing Hildegarde of Bingen's Favus Distillans, recorded at Toddington Church in Gloucestershire. From this CD.

DRIPPING HONEYCOMB (Favus distillans)

A dripping honeycomb
was Ursula, virgin,
who yearned to lie with
God's lamb,
honey and milk beneath her tongue.

For she gathered around her
a flock of virgins,
a fruit-bearing orchard,
a garden in bloom.

Rejoice, daughter of Zion,
in the exalted dawn!

For she gathered around her
a flock of virgins,
a fruit-bearing orchard,
a garden in bloom.

Glorify the Father,
the Spirit and the Son.

For she gathered around her
a flock of virgins,
a fruit-bearing orchard,
a garden in bloom.

Grrrrr !

(via Adrian Warnock).

Latigo Flint

Via Cobb, the adventures of the Squinty-eyed Gunslinger and his sidekick Kid Relish.

This morning even before my steel gray eyelids snapped open, my blazing hands had already instinctively slapped thigh, shucked iron, and were in the process of obliterating the fish tank on the far wall. A sharp head snap sent pillow (a pair of shear stockings filled with empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans) flying backwards, in case an assailant was charging from behind. Legs scissored then flung blanket into air for distractive cover. Two tuck rolls. Exploratory shot through window. Toe clench on bowie knife handle, kick ball change and knife whips into bathroom, slicing through shower curtain. Three preemptive rounds fired in direction of closet, two into recently vacated bed and two shots fired directly overhead for no particular reason.

Time elapsed: 1 point 9 seconds. It was probably quite a sight to behold. But if it impressed Kid Relish, my relatively trusty sidekick who was lounging in the doorway, he didn't show it.

"Mornin' Latty."

Longbridge

When I was a child, every other house in my street contained someone who worked at "the Austin". The nearby Charford council estate was divided between Austin workers and employees of Garringtons, at the time the world's largest drop forging manufacturer, whose hammers lulled me to sleep. Those were the days when 'social housing' contained people who worked for a living, the days when the middle-class complaint was of a working class earning too much - the Jag parked outside the council house syndrome. Garringtons closed in 2002, leaving a large hole in its pension fund. The site is a housing estate for Native Brits fleeing Birmingham. And Charford is now the kind of place where they kick disabled people to death for fun.

Many free-market, libertarian bloggers have seen the Rover receivership, if not as a good thing, at least not as a bad one. Only Mr S&M has reservations. After all, if other people can make cars cheaper than we can, so much the better. We get cheap cars out of it - good for us. Let people do what they're good at. The workers ? They can get other jobs - perhaps those fabled high added value jobs that I hear about every time a cheese factory closes in Goole.

As the ASI Blog said, "Adam Smith's dictum that the end of all production is consumption is now more widely accepted, and the main purpose of industry is seen as the production of goods and services which people will freely and willingly buy.

This no longer, alas, includes Rover cars, but there are new products and services taking their place every year for which the UK can find ready markets. Better, perhaps, to be part of a viable and vibrant future than to lock ourselves into a past of outmoded and unwanted products."

Well, yes. Better indeed to be part of a vibrant future. It's just that isn't the place where the Rover employees and their suppliers find themselves. That little weasel word, 'perhaps'. After all, it's better to have a nice Georgian house with an acre of lawn than a three bedroomed semi. Try knocking dowm someone's semi and then telling them what an opportunity they have.

So, the good folk of Bromsgrove, Rubery and Longbridge can create the new products and services "for which the UK can find ready markets". Let's start by taking a look at the new products, shall we ?

Well ?

I'm waiting.

Can anybody tell me what these new products are ? That we're going to sell to the world ? My new Pentax comes from the Philippines. My PC was assembled in Thailand from Chinese components. When we do invent something, like the Dyson vacuum cleaner, production is offshored and the UK operation consists of 50 highly paid designers and a few bean counters and marketing men. Actually I made those figures up. Halve the number of designers and add 50 marketers !

In the 20s and 30s, the height of the Depression, huge new industries were emerging in the UK. Chemicals, aircraft, electronics, cars. Where are today's equivalents ? Double-glazing that we don't export ? Perhaps pharmaceuticals and biotech stuff, if the animal rights boyos can be kept at bay. Anything else ?

"Oh alright then - we meant services. Look at the City."

I suppose the theory is that a combination of lethargy and convenience (between time zones) will keep the dosh rolling into the City, even when world manufacturing is centred in Asia. Just the way that Florence and Antwerp remained the capitals of world banking despite the rise of Britain, the USA and Germany, eh ? It may take time, but inevitably the services will follow the manufacturing. Ah, but think of the expertise we've built up ! I don't know about you, but when I've opened my commercial insurance company in China I think I'll get the underwriting done by Chinese rather than imported Brits. Who's likely to be able to gauge the risk best ?
Already lower and middle level (like research) City and legal jobs are being outsourced to India. IT jobs are going there too.

"We mean cultural services - books, music, plays, films"

The Churchillian phrase is "the acme of gullibility". The reason American popular culture dominates the globe is connected with the fact that the US is currently the most powerful nation, economically and militarily, on earth. Lose that and see how many people want to see your movies. Percentage wise, it'll be something like the European audience for Chinese films. The market for our stuff in Asia in 50 years will be on a par with, say, the Edwardian Brit market for Spanish novels and music. It'll be interesting to see how a nation of 75 million (remember the new immigrants have a high birth rate) survive on selling the equivalent of So Solid Crew CDs.

And we'll be as a nation on a par with Edwardian Spain. If we're very, very lucky.

Let's just revisit the "high value jobs" theory. This, of course, presumes a highly educated nation. Next question ?

Last, the "cheaper cars" idea. From that perspective, Burkina Faso must be a fantastic place to live. You see, just about everywhere in the world can make cars cheaper that the Burkinistas. What a paradise !

Trouble is, no one in Burkina Faso has got any money.





UPDATE - I posted this, on a similar theme, nearly two years ago. Spot-on with the prediction about call centres, less so on Labour's doom.

UPDATE 2 - the future ? Via Black Informant, the World Intercollegiate Programming Championship results paint a gloomy picture. Nice to see Bangladesh in the top 30, but China, India and the old Eastern Bloc seem to be where the cleverclogs are.