Happy New Year

Best of luck to all for the New Year, we'll need it!

A special 'Hi' to the poor sods blogging from work today.

"Twins reunited after 35 years apart"

This actually nearly made me cry. The poor lasses. You can't do things like that as an experiment.

"UK's concerns over Kenya poll"

David Millipede has expressed concerns over alleged vote rigging by Mwai Kibaki in Kenya.

Pots. Kettles. Black.

"Pregnancy targets to be missed"

Targets are pointless and are there to be missed.

Let's just look at the numbers. Total births to under-18s in E&W according to this are about 23,000 a year. There are about 680,000 females aged 16 or 17. That means about one-in-thirty 16 or 17 year old girls have a baby every year, which seems pretty horrific to me.

What's the government doing to discourage teenagers from having babies? Well, setting up targets and spending £100 millions a year on quangos and advertising no doubt.

And, more pertinently, what's the government doing to encourage them?

Er ... offering them £175 a week guaranteed net income (plus other bits and pieces) plus priority in allocation of council housing? OK, under-18s get slightly less than that, but they only have to wait a year or two for the full amount to kick in.

And once you in the lone parent trap, the welfare system is designed to keep you there.

Which is why, if we are to have a welfare state at all (different debate), the least-worst system has to be a universal Citizen's Income system. If an unemployed 16 or 17 year old knows that they are entitled to a modest CI of (following the CIT's suggestion) £34 per week, whether they have kids or not; whether they stay on at school, are unemployed or in low paid/part time work; and if there were no means-testing so that they keep 67p for every £1 that they earn (CI claimants wouldn't get a tax-free personal allowance as a quid pro quo), then getting a job or staying on at school will become a much more attractive alternatives to lone parenthood.

In the Netherlands there are no extra benefits for teenage mothers, no first dibs on council housing, and the child benefit for the baby and the mother are paid to the mother's parents. Little wonder that their teenage pregnancy rate is only one-sixth of ours.

I rest my case.

" ... MPs demand inflation-busting 10% pay rise"

A reader's letter in The Times explained how the US Constitution deals with the problem of politicians voting themselves huge pay rises.

"Sir, Pay rises for MPs (letters, Dec 27) would be more publicly acceptable if Parliament were to follow the procedure enjoined in the 27th Amendment to the US Constitution, which simply states that “No law varying the compensation for the services of Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened”. MPs who voted a pay rise for the succeeding Parliament and personally benefited would then be answerable to the electorate, John Kentleton, School of History, University of Liverpool"

"Admiral’s dinner guests end up in hospital after fondue set explodes"

I don't actually have anything to add to this, I just thought it was a brilliant headline.

Climate change myths firmly debunked

The venerable Institute for Economic Affairs did a super pamphlet called "Global Warming False Alarms" back in March*, which I have added to my "stat's and stuff" section for future reference.

It's 48 pages long and pretty detailed, but a gripping read nonetheless.

Russell Lewis, you rock!

* Brought to my attention via a UKIP e-mail friend, who added "I once expressed doubts over man made global warming to an employee of the Environment Agency and was told I was 'no better than a holocaust denier'. Nice to have a bit of perspective isnt it?"

"Brown to 'step up' terror fight"

Why on earth is it any of our business to go meddling in another country's affairs? 

And if it's not our business, why does our PM believe it should be? And even it were our business, I don't see that there's much that we can do. And even if there were something we could do, it would probably backfire horribly, why bother?

Ah ... pragmatism. Like libertarianism but easier to explain.

8 for 2008

Via Simon Clark.

Items 1. to 4. are personal/family related and of no interest to wider 'blogging community.

5. DK, Vindico, Greg Beamann and I persuade UKIP to adopt pragmatic/libertarian policies.

6. This 'blog becomes most visited and most influential political 'blog in the UK.

7. The Goblin King carries out his ten New Year Resolutions.

8. UKIP forms governing coalition with LPUK and gets cracking with repealing most legislation.

I tag Henry North London, Lady Thinker, Longrider, Remittance Man and Trixy (links in side bar).

Jacob Zuma

Our Man In Africa, The Remittance Man, posted this a week ago.

If you follow the link near the end to the article in The Telegraph, you'll notice that it is dated only two days ago.

Hmm.

Either way, RM was right ... I hope that the SA prosecutors have better luck than we Europeans had with Berlusconi, Kohl, Blair, Chirac, Ahern, the entire EU Commission, etc etc.