Words without meaning. Politics without ideas. [Updated]

 

Don't bother looking for meaning within the platitudes. The cliches are the meaning.

Christopher Luxon's acceptance speech reminds me of nothing so much as Peter Sellers' famous 'Party Political Speech' -- like that, it's utterly devoid of anything approaching substance.

UPDATE: Liberty Scott, bless 'im, outlines what a National Party political platform that meant something might look like; a realistic nine-point plan from Luxon, Willis et al that, first of all, would avoid backsliding on the National Policy Statement (NPS) on the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS), and then begins with:

1) A declaration of principles that form the basis for making decisions on policies...
2) Differentiation from Labour based on [those] principles.... [and]
3) Policy that is thoughtful not knee-jerk opposition.

Too much to hope for? Yes, probably.

Concerned, from Epsom [updated]

We each have our hot-button election issues.

Mine is property rights.

Has been for years.

For years I’ve been saying the Resource Management Act (RMA) is an abuse of property rights and has to go. It has empowered councils to take your property rights under all their thoroughly meddling district plans and directives, and has to go.

It has to go, I’ve said, to be replaced with common law protection of property rights – protecting private property rights and the environment, in which the common law can point to several hundred years of success.

No major party has followed that line. So, consequently, I’ve followed no major party.

But this year is different.

The ghost at the ACT party proposal [updated]

Dairy owner Virender Singh was stabbed as he fought back against intruders into his shop, only to have to fight back against police who charged him for having the temerity to defend himself.

Greg Carvell defended himself and the occupants of his family’s gun shop, and was arrested and charged for it when the police arrived twenty minutes after the fact.

Michael Vaimauga was arrested for assault after he stopped a burglar breaking into a shop.

As an Avondale dairy owner said when a colleague was stabbed in the neck and back by a robber, “When we protect ourselves, we get charged - and if we don’t, we get stabbed. What do we do?”

These people were the lucky ones.

Manurewa shop owner Navtej Singh was shot  and killed by thieving scum as he stood unarmed and defenceless behind the counter of his family's store – following the advice of police who tell shop owners what they should do is to simply follow instructions and hope armed intruders go away.   Mr Singh followed instructions,  and was then shot and killed.

The manner of his death hung briefly over the election last week when ACT’s Jamie Whyte quite properly suggested dairy owners right to defend themselves should be recognised and upheld.  John Key and his cheerleaders disgracefully and intentionally mis-translated the proposal to mean that every shopkeeper would  have a loaded shotgun under the counter.  Unable to defend his own overlooked right to life, the death of Mr Singh went unmentioned.

His ghost should have haunted the short debate, as his death should haunt everyone opposed to the very simple right to defend one’s life against one’s attackers.

UPDATE: Here's ACT's actual policy. Note, no mention of shopkeepers having loaded guns under counters…

[Hat tip Steve Wrathall]

Why Jamie Whyte can’t build an electoral fire under ACT

You know, I’ve waited nearly all my life for any party other than Libertarianz to say that, or anything like that.

To say that and actually mean it.

I’ve waited nearly two decades for any other party to say that recognising property rights means the Resource Management Act must go, must be abolished, must be repealed, binned, burned, destroyed. I’ve waited exactly that long for someone, anyone, to recognise that in binning it we don’t need to replace it with more town planning, but with the good old-fashioned protection of common law – protection for property rights and environment combined that has over eight-hundred years of sophistication in dealing with the issues the RMA purports to deal with, but doesn’t.

And when another party finally does say it, and really and truly mean it when they do, it’s all just too damn late.

Here’s ACT’s Jamie Whyte speaking at his party’s weekend campaign launch:

Like all successful countries, New Zealand was built on the rule of law, private property rights and trade. And our continued success also depends on them.
Chip away at these institutions and we will lose the prosperity and freedom that we now enjoy.
Labour, New Zealand First, the Greens, Mana-Internet and the Conservatives are all openly hostile to the institution of private property.
All want to ban the sale of land to foreigners. I have heard the leaders of all these parties justify this policy by claiming that “we should not be selling our land to foreigners”.
“Our land”?
When Lochinvar station was sold to Chinese buyers, we were not selling our land. The Stevenson family was selling their land.
Land in New Zealand is not collectively owned; it is privately owned. New Zealand is not yet a communist country.
Winston Peters lives in a street near mine. He cannot come knocking at my door demanding entry to “our house”. Nor should he presume to tell me who I can sell my house to. I own my house and Winston owns his.
That’s what John Key should have told David Cunliffe when the topic came up during their televised debate. Instead, Key quibbled that the National government already applies Labour’s proposed test for an acceptable land sale.
In other words, Key accepted Cunliffe’s assumption that the government should decide who a private property owner may sell to.
There is no virtue in meeting your opponents halfway when they have strayed miles off course. 

As true as this is necessary:

ACT would also abolish the Resource Management Act rather than streamlining its consenting processes, as National plans to do.
The problem is not with the administration of the RMA. The problem is with the very conception of it. The RMA is an assault on property rights that stifles investment and economic growth. The restrictions it puts on using land for residential development are the reason housing is so expensive.
We did not have an environmental crisis in 1990 when the RMA was made law. But we did have affordable housing.  ACT would return to sensible planning laws based on private property rights.

Jamie Whyte has earlier noted that “there's no need for the RMA as the environment is already protected by common law;  said “parliament should admit it is a 30 year experiment that has failed and we should start again using the common law as the basis for environmental protections”; that there is "hundreds of years of common law" that can adequately protect the environment.”

Something not one of his predecessors ever either understood, or even tried to get their head around.

To hear it said, finally, out in the open, by someone other than me, is truly inspiring.

To watch him point out that all his electoral protagonists are “communistic” – to point out and explain – is tremendous.

To hear ideas like this,* finally and properly articulated, is a blessing:

So why do I say it’s too damned late?

Precisely because of those damned predecessors, who delivered to this new leader a party too toxic for any rational voter to touch.

Jamie Whyte is making a magnificent fist out of what he inherited.  But it’s the party he inherited that is proving his biggest problem. He is way better than this shambles deserves.

The ACT Party began badly, let’s face it, when right from its founding the party talked about values out of one side of its mouth while Richard Prebble talked politics out of the other – betraying ever value it claimed to stand for, and every voter who lent that way who lent them their vote on that basis.  The slide into permanent toxicity was cemented when Rodney Hide danced his way into ministerial perks before delivering to Auckland a super-sized bureaucracy from which it may only barely recover.

Not to mention the toxic and vindictive inner party squabbles that occasionally erupted forth onto the front pages, betraying the way values were valued in this petty fiefdom run so sourly by a fat and flaccid fool.

The toxicity was such that when Don Brash stooped to conquer, he discovered that the electoral effect of association with this visibly toxic cabal was not to raise the ACT Party up to some appreciable percentage of the vote tally he had earlier earned as National Party leader, but instead to drag down his own reputation to the nether regions of this party.

And then he delivered to the country John Banks.

I wasn’t there at New ACT’s campaign launch on Saturday, so I don’t know if those two toxic dwarfs Rodney Hide or John Banks attended, but I’d like to think they were invited just so they could be told to take a long walk off a very short pier. Or just to be punched in the face.

Because if Jamie Whyte needs in four short words the reason his many fine ones are failing to catch electoral fire, it is the names of those two worms – John Banks and Rodney Hide -- who have so poisoned the platform from which New ACT is attempting to launch – so poisoned the well for the classical liberal ideas they claimed to represent -- that I fear a misfire is the best now that can be hoped for.**

Because I would hate the fine ideas on which they are now trying to stand – after many years of much worse – to be themselves tarnished by association.

They deserve, and have always deserved, much better than that.

---

* No, not an ACT Party billboard if you look closely, more’s the pity. Hat tip for it to top Brit Oliver Cooper.
** I wish Jamie and David Seymour the very best, I really do. Because they’re both fine people. But I fear their own association with this toxic rump will make them and what they stand for just as untouchable as Don Brash.

Time to stick a stake through the heart of the Resource Management Act

I’ve waited twenty f’ing years for a mainstream politician to say this, and when they finally do it’s when their party is heading down the gurgler. But at least it’s finally being said:

Resource Management Act - It’s a failure - time to chuck it out – start again

"It is time the politicians admitted the RMA is a failure." said ACT Leader Dr Jamie Whyte. "

National's Nick Smith has promised another series of minor amendments to the RMA saying the law is holding back the country's economy.

He is just tinkering with a wreck.

No one thinks these amendments to Marine reserves and the like will overcome the problems of cost, delay and green tape that now effects all property owners,

When National passed the Resource Management Act in the early 1990’s the country was promised faster more streamlined planning.

That promise has been forgotten by both Labour and National.. 

The RMA is been used by local councils to extend more and more entangling regulations giving Council’s powers that parliament never intended.

ACT believes Parliament should admit it is a [23] year experiment that has failed and we should start again using the common law as the basis for environmental protections.

It’s not like it would be difficult. Enact a codification of basic common law principles protecting basic property rights, and you’re away.

But it makes me wonder why every single ACT Party leader until this one lacked the fricking spine to ever say even this much.

Maybe Jamie Whyte was wrong

Was Jamie Whyte right to compare the legal inequality of Maori today with the aristocrats of pre-Revolutionary France? Probably not. The more accurate analogy might  be to compare the tribal leaders and their hangers-on to those aristocrats, busily eating cake while those they supposedly represent are getting their crumbs, if at all.

An even more accurate analogy might be to compare this Browntable of today with the nineteenth-century version of the British House of Lords – an unelected body with entry based solely on hereditary privilege having veto power over the parliament of the lower chamber. This fairly describes the position in law the Browntable have in many councils – Auckland’s Maori Statutory Board the most prominent example.  It fairly describes the position in law tribal leaders have over infrastructure and property development – the Resource Management Act giving them veto power over so much of what would otherwise happen, and Auckland’s new Unitary Plan giving them (slowly but surely) veto power over virtually every new project in the city. And it fairly describes the ongoing process embarked upon by tribal leaders to place their version of the Treaty as some kid of superior law above all other laws, with them as the Treaty’s sole interpreters.

Liberty Scott makes an excellent strategic point on Jamie Whyte’s ‘one law for all’ speech. “Jamie Whyte's "one law for all" speech was disappointing,” he says.  “Not because of what his end goals are (which are largely ignored by his critics because he gave them so much else to aim at), but because the rhetoric was clumsy and in my view, counter-productive.”

Jamie Whyte's [point] … got hidden under what I think was a major strategic error for those of us who want to move on from racial determinism and neo-Marxist structuralist interpretations of power, capitalism and society.  The mistake many have jumped on is misconstruing a detail of educational quotas (which is not where the debate should lie) and the pre-revolutionary France comparison (which was historically wrong); but I think his two biggest mistakes were:
- To not focus on how the current system privileges a few Maori over everyone else (including other Maori);
- To not sell the optimistic case for individual empowerment and diversity.

“Such an agenda would have got some traction,” he says,  perhaps even

broader support than the kneejerk vote that his speech was presumably designed to generate.  Strategically, it may also have gained Maori support, which is quite frankly, important if any of this is to get off the ground.

Scott argues that Whyte's approach however marginalised him, and made Hone look like the representative of his people instead of the marginal loon he truly is.

For when you look at political representation, it isn't the pro-violence racism of Hone Harawira (or indeed the Greens) that gets predominant Maori support, it is more moderate views.  It is about time that those of us who believe in individual freedom spoke to them more, and took on the venomous rhetoric thrown our way by the likes of Harawira, Sykes and their fellow rabble rousers.  Unfortunately, I think Jamie Whyte's speech. as well intentioned as it was, was poorly aimed, and a wasted opportunity.

Read his whole piece, and see if you agree with him.

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Devoid of Purpose [update 2]

Our roving correspondent Suzuki Samurai has some advice for Jamie Whyte, after the response yesterday of the Racist Relations Commissioner to his call for equality before the law.

Good on the Whyte man calling for Susan Devoid's resignation. But Baldy should grow some and make it ACT policy to get rid of that whole worthless commission; that would show us he means it.

Or, in other words:

Grow some balls, baldy.

UPDATE 1: And there’s more:  “ACT out your principles,” he says.

The first principle you learn when playing squash is to return to (or hold) the 'T'; this is the middle spot on the court, thus the most strategic position being that it is equidistant to all four corners. The truth of this is evident when you see fat blokes that follow this principle winning games over much fitter, but less strategic, opponents.
    In politics one could say that the 'T' represents a political party's principles – have them, and stick to them, and you can snipe, defend, and be more likely to smash your opponents off the public court.
    ACT's Jamie Whyte has got himself some mileage out of Susan Devoy's response to his recent speech about special treatment for Maori. His calling on her to resign is a tasty morsel of political point-scoring, giving him and his party some unexpected media coverage.
    This is an opportunity for him to shake off the past weirdness of Archbishop John Banks -- and to show that, unlike Aunty Don Brash after Orewa, he'll not lose his nerve!
    So I say: Go on Jamie, show all of us that ACT has balls: show a full list of all the ministries, departments, commissions, quangos, and other second-hander groups your party will decommission, how much each one has cost, and how much the taxpayer will save once these moochers have been eliminated.
    I see a strategy. Come out this weekend and announce your party's principles on getting nanny government out of the way.  Announce with it your intention to not just get rid of Susan's non-job, but the whole worthless commission she doesn’t work for. Then poke a stick into another hole to get a reaction next week, following it up with the announcement they will be the next bunch of moochers to go. And then do it again, and then again, and then again, announcing one after another the quangos full of cockroaches that will be axed. 
    Have a go. It might be worth voting for your lot, if you have the gumption. 

UPDATE 2: From Lindsay Mitchell:

He just called for the role to be abolished on NewstalkZB. He explained how these quangos (and even charities) thrive on the very problems they apparently want to solve.

Looks like Suzuki is now obliged to vote.

This man is a racist [update 2]

ACT leader Jamie Whyte

is calling for a taskforce to identify and repeal laws which he says give special treatment to Maori, saying that "the principle that the law should be impartial has never been fully embraced in New Zealand.”

That’s enough for Maori Party leader Te Ururoa Flavell to play the racism card :

Dr Whyte is vying for the "redneck sector of the voting community,” [says Flavell] and there is "no doubt that there is an element of racism in those comments."

This from the leader of a race-based party, sitting in a race-based seat, elected to parliament by a race-based electorate to argue for race-based law.

This man is a racist.

UPDATE 1:  If you can get your head around this page of pseudo-academic jargon-ridden bile poured over Whyte’s position, you’ll be on your way to seeing how postmodernists can call non-racism racism, and vice versa.  (I’d say “make black white”…  but racism.)

UPDATE 2: More drivel, from alleged pundit Tim Watkin, who ‘argues,’ “Jamie Whyte's speech insisting "race has no place in the law" ignores the fact that the law has never been blind to race, let alone wealth, history and any number of other things.” And then proceeds to argue the law should continue not being blind to race.
Because, apparently, racism.

The New Zealand Left Needs To Reinvent Itself [updated]

Guest post by Hugh Pavletich

This week’s big local political news is NZ Labour’s Travails. A fairly balanced Otago Daily Times editorial summarises, asking rhetorically:

Can it get any worse for Labour leader David Cunliffe … six months out from the September 20 general election?
    The results of the Herald DigiPoll survey released this week put Labour's support down to 29.5%, the lowest it has been since Mr Cunliffe took over the leadership from David Shearer in September last year, and Mr Cunliffe's individual support down to 11.1%, lower than the worst DigiPoll rating of former leader David Shearer (of 12.4%).
    The results will be frustrating and concerning for the Labour Party and Mr Cunliffe. His popularity has taken a major dive from the early days of his promotion (where he polled 37.7% in a DigiPoll survey).
    He has also been criticised for his performance in the House, where deputy leader David Parker, Grant Robertson and Shane Jones are the Labour MPs most visibly making an impact and confronting the National-led Government on issues. Even in election year, Labour seems to be stuck in the one role, that of attacking and denigrating, while failing to offer viable alternatives…
    In contrast, National's popularity remains strong (50.8%) and it seems Mr Key can do little wrong - his personal popularity is up to 66.5%, his best second-term rating, albeit down from first-term highs of more than 70%. And even with the fallout from Judith Collins' Chinese business meetings, the Government's continued asset sales push despite their substantially reduced revenue, controversy over the SkyCity deal and illegal spying, several contentious education sector issues, privacy breaches, and continued heartache and frustration for many Christchurch residents still battling with post-quake bureaucracy.
    How can National remain so popular, Labour must wonder?

The question is particularly pertinent in a media environment so saturated with the same big-government sympathies as the Labour left that they find the very question incomprehensible.

Perhaps the divergence is in large measure due to the expansion of the internet, with people having access to better quality information, and the enhanced ability to converse and debate public policy issues.

The declining heritage media is increasingly losing the capacity to control the flow of information, to push its own political agendas (most often favouring the failed interventionist  Left) and to protect institutional power and special interests.

The tool of the internet could be described as a “disinfectant for democracy.”

One result is that government is increasingly being seen as the problem, not the solution. (The irony, given the National Government’s own big-government failures, is that they are increasingly seen as best representing this growing view.)

As just one glaring example of obvious failure, the Christchurch earthquake non-recovery has been a cruel lesson for many in the incompetence of Government, both at central and local level. An lesson obvious to everyone except the media and political elites.

It’s time to put a stake through the heart of the RMA–and time a politician finally said that [updated]

“When the productive have to ask permission
from the unproductive in order to produce, then
you may know that your culture is doomed.”
- Ayn Rand

It’s taken twenty years for a mainstream politician to finally say this:

ACT wants to repeal the Resource Management Act, new leader Jamie Whyte told the party's annual conference in Auckland.
    Mr Whyte said if  part of the next government, ACT would try to scrap the 826-page law, which he says infringes on New Zealander's ability to use their property…
    "People have tried to fix it, fix it, fix it - but it is inherently an ill-conceived piece of legislation."
    The only justification for law of its kind would be to address a serious market failure and if there was no remedy through the common law, he said.
    Details of what regime would replace the RMA were sketchy.
    There needed to be environmental protections in the law, but they shouldn't violate property rights, Mr Whyte  said…

It’s not just details of the regime to replace the RMA that are sketchy – so too are details of Jamie Whyte’s speech delivered Saturday. (Old ACT would have had the speech up on their party website even before it was delivered; not so New ACT, who have still not got speeches posted at the time of writing [and have at the time of this update posted the wrong speeches.]

But on radio this morning, Whyte was outlining his view that the replacement for the twenty years of failed RMA law – law that has delivered property rights abuse, greater local government control of land and sky-rocketing land and housing prices – should be the several hundred years of common law laws of nuisance.

Glory be! A politician finally acknowledging that!

So if you’ll excuse me quote myself from the Free Radical of 2004:

Key the Expedient

The New ACT Party, in the form of Jamie Whyte, says in announcing yet another rise to the minimum wage the Nats have bowed to the old minimum wage myth that “minimum wages protect the poor.”

But that’s not quite true, is it, not when you read Key’s announcement yesterday, where he said that “advice considered by Cabinet when it made its decision … was that the increase would result in a ‘relatively negligible’ loss of jobs.”

That advice said a rise to $14.50 an hour would result in the loss of about 2,300 jobs.

So what Key hasn’t done is bow to the minimum wage myths at all. He understands perfectly well that raising the minimum wages costs jobs. He understands, as even the US Congressional Budget Office does, that raising the legal minimum wage

raises the incomes of low-wage workers who remain employed while lowering the incomes of low-wage workers who lose their jobs.

So he’s not truly as dumb as Jamie Whyte makes out.  He’s simply happy to sacrifice 2000 or so young and marginal for political expediency.

That’s just the kind of political leader he is.

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Just thought you should know

This announcement will affect some of you more than others:

PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release
Libertarianz Party

Libz Announce Deregistration

Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath today confirmed that the Electoral Commission had last week deregistered the party at its own request.

"Senior party members had been discussing for several months how we might get more bang for our buck, and it was decided to continue as a ginger group and/or think tank rather than as a registered political party… The Libertarianz Party is realistic, and accepts the enormous difficulty faced by a party operating on limited finances and without a high profile figurehead to win an electorate seat or 5% of the party vote. The bar is set almost impossibly high for fringe parties such as ours, so we have to look at other ways to influence the political process."

"It's a real pity in some ways that we are ceasing our registration, as I continue to receive emails from people wanting to join the party, and we still have a war chest of several thousand dollars."

Mr McGrath said Libertarianz members would continue to be involved in political debate… "We will continue to be available to the media for comment, and will endorse candidates at elections who we believe adequately champion the libertarian ideals of limited government, personal freedom and individual responsibility."

Mr McGrath added that Jamie Whyte's rise to the ACT leadership was an exciting move, and he was hopeful Mr Whyte would be able to more clearly articulate what he called the "radical capitalism" of ACT's early days. "It was their deviation from core principles that was the major catalyst for the formation of the Libertarianz Party."

"Some Libertarianz members will decide to stand for, or become activists for, other parties. That is fine by me; all I ask is that they remain true to the tenets of classical liberalism. There will undoubtedly be individuals and parties better poised than ours to market libertarian ideas in Parliament."

"At this point I would like to sincerely thank those who helped set up the Libertarianz Party, who stood as candidates, who assisted with election campaigns and all those who voted for us. Over the years it has become obvious that registered party status was not going to be a successful approach for the people involved in libertarian politics in this country. We re now moving on from that. Watch this space!"

ENDS

Richard McGrath
Libertarianz Party Leader
richard.mcgrath@libertarianz.org.nz

Here’s Graham Brazier and his Legionnaires…

It must be election year

The shadows fall across our summer earlier this year.

One unwelcome sign that this must be election year is that politicians who are normally still at the beach until the dog-and-pony show in late January at the Ratana Church, are instead already cluttering up summer news broadcasts with pretentious, confusing, and probably disastrous election promises – promises and platforms they each hope will set the tone for this election year.

A few years ago Russel Norman was telling us we needed to retrench and change our ways, because “peak oil’ was upon us. Now however that oil continues to be found despite Russel and his predictions, he’s skiting this morning that the Greens are now the only party opposing oil drilling off New Zealand.

So I guess this signals a(nother) year of dog whistles to the deluded and self-contradictory.

Another clear sign it’s election year is Labour producing their tri-yearly magic money pot – this time be taking back a tax cut for the poor, something they once claimed to be for. Making a virtue out of what they calculate has become an electoral necessity, they are talking about “freeing up” $1.5 billion of tax revenue by abandoning what I thought were sensible plans to cut low-income earners some slack by exempting their first $5000 of income from tax. As PM of NZ says however, “that fabled money pot is not 'freed up’' it is already being used to service the black hole of a 'decade of deficits' left by the last Labour magicians' smoke and mirror act.”

Labour are clearly gambling that the sleight of hand won’t be noticed, and that there are more votes in higher impact “game-changing” election bribes to be announced closer to the election date – their voters, they think, having short memories.

Meanwhile, instead of going to Orewa John Key is going to smile and wave at a school – which he obviously hopes will be a winning battleground for him this year.

And Kim DotCon, first out of the blocks this election year by virtue of Martyn Bradbury’s sterling work at launching DotCon’s party by leaving his strategy document lying around for Cameron Slater to pick up, is perhaps hoping the launch of the new DotCon album in all formats will generate the momentum they need to get them into parliament and hopefully into coalition. According to reviewers however, the music doesn’t even have enough momentum to glue itself together.  “If indeed Good Times is to be taken seriously, then good luck to it, but don’t expect it to steamroll the charts,” says one.

Or to help steamroll Mr DotCon’s team into parliament. If he still has one.

And what of the Zero Percent Party? ACT acolytes hope the sharp and literate Jamie Whyte can lift their support several-fold and make them a game player again, using the publicity of a bogus leadership “race” to help catapult him to media prominence. The problem for the acolytes though is not any lack of smarts in the new man, it is the toxic environment of their own party – which, instead of being raised last time to the levels of electoral support achieved by Don Brash when leading National, managed instead by feat of arms consisting of an orgy of internal backstabbing to drag him down to theirs.

It will be an entertaining election year, that’s already started way too early. But a crying shame at the end of the day that you and I will be paying for it all.

Treasury credibility [updated]

I’m not sure why it comes as a surprise that Treasury made an error in their figures.  After all, they’ve made an error every year for the last nine when they projected how much tax the government would collect, giving Michael Cullen an excuse not to deliver the tax cuts that were then (and still) so desperately needed.

They’ve made an error every year when they’ve “predicted” the country’s growth.  Or the effects of the Reserve Bank’s economic dictation.

So frankly, the very phrase “Treasury credibility” looks increasingly like an oxymoron -- their credibility is almost on a par with that of their colleagues in BERL who they were so recently beating up.

At least this time, for once, their error has caused some belt-tightening where it’s most needed.

UPDATE:  The inimitable Jamie Whyte, the NZ philosopher whose best-selling book Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking is around here some place, writes in the London Times on the effects of central banks’ economic dictation.

Rather than giving the Bank of England more powers as Bank of England governor Mervyn King is calling for -- just as every other central bank and central banker around the world is calling for more powers for their bailiwick --  they should instead be given less power, says Whyte, who’s clearly been boning up on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.  Just like you should by reading his column: Strip the Bank of England of its power.

NOT PJ: Smoke and MRIs

This week in his regular column, Bernard Darnton has scientifically calculated the amount of bullshit in the newspaper -- and finds it’s increased by 76.29% since records began!

EVERY MORNING I ASK MYSELF how much crap there is in the newspaper.

Readers of yesterday’s Press and Dominion Post were greeted with a Clockwork Orange image from a cigarette package to illustrate a Ministry of Health press release dressed up as reporting. The headline said, “Warnings credited with smoking fall,” which was good sense on the part of the newspaper because it left the logical fallacy in the hands of the author of the press release rather than in those of the newspaper that was regurgitating it.

National Director of Tobacco Control – a job title that no doubt comes with a spiffing uniform – Ashley Bloomfield was noting that a “dramatic drop” in smoking rates has occurred since the introduction of compulsory gory photographs on cigarette packets.

The idea that because one event follows another the relationship must be causal is known to philosophers as the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. That’s Latin for “we just make this shit up.”

Bloomfield admits that it’s “hard to attribute specific drops … to specific interventions” but is confident, even without evidence, that the gory photographs are effective. Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), a branch of the Ministry of Health, agrees with the Ministry of Health. They apparently have “anecdotal evidence” that the new warnings work.

I have anecdotal evidence that people think the warnings are a joke. I know a single male in his forties who regards children the way most people regard termites, who always asks for the “Smoking may harm your baby” packs. More tobacco-advertising-related wishful thinking.

I’m surprised there hasn’t been a huge increase in smoking amongst teenage boys – just so they can get the warning labels. “I’ll swap you a clogged artery and a gangrenous toe for the eye operation and the bleeding brain.” Kewwwl.

Given the Ministry’s statistics, the warnings may well have increased smoking; we just don’t know. Jamie Whyte, author of Crimes Against Logic, calls statistics “the chemical weapons of persuasion.” “Just release a few statistics into the discussion and the effects will soon be visible within moments: eyes glaze over, jaws slacken, and soon everyone will be nodding in agreement.”

Dr Bloomfield isn’t so much nodding in agreement as babbling in confusion. The same man who noted the “dramatic drop” in smoking over the last two years also notes, in a part of the press release not copied into the newspaper, that the drop in adult smoking, from 24.3% to 23.9%, is “not statistically significant”. I.e. it may not even be a drop – it may be so small it’s just a measurement error.

Indeed, if some recent research proves valid he should be exhibiting another symptom of chemical weapons poisoning: namely, crapping himself. Recent brain imaging research has suggested that seeing the warnings stimulates the desire to smoke rather than puts people off, presumably because the emotional brain lights up in desire for more nicotine far faster than the rational brain plods to the conclusion that it’s a bad idea because you might get a gammy toe in a few decades.

The brain imaging research is new and has plenty of critics but at least doing an experiment is a better approach than wishful thinking. Assuming that whatever you do is brilliant and guaranteed to work isn’t what scientists call “scientific”.

The hard science of cause and effect is slowly creeping into territory currently occupied by the social “science” of coincidence and reportage. The question is not how much crap is there in the newspaper, but when will they finally get too embarrassed to print it?

* * Read Bernard Darnton’s regular column ‘NOT PJ’ every week here at NOT PC * *

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