What is mortocracy?

You will not find the word mortocracy in a dictionary, because I have just invented it.  It means government by the dead.  Take the Geneva Convention.  The people who wrote it back in 1949 are presumably now dead, and so by obeying the Geneva Convention we are allowing ourselves to be governed by people who are no longer alive.

This is not wrong in itself, but I believe in democracy - government by the people.  If our political leaders are going to be constrained in their actions by the dictates of corpses, then they should do so only because those dictates remain relevant in the present day.

The Geneva Convention is in the news at the moment because a man called Haidar Ali Hussein is suing the British government for acting in breach of the convention during its illegal occupation of Iraq.  Of course the government could respond by saying that it has no regard for the Geneva Convention on the grounds that as an elected government they are guided by the wishes of the electorate.

I don't suppose they will make that case however, and also I see no reason to believe that the British electorate wants the government to ignore the convention.  Nevertheless it is fair to point out that the government may lose the lawsuit, in which case it will have to choose between honouring the ruling of the court or turning its back on the Geneva Convention.

I very much hope that the lawsuit will be successful.

The High Street and the economy

A lot of news items today relate to the economy.  A Nobel laureate has decided that the Euro is no longer a good idea, which makes me wonder if the Nobel Prize for Economics is any less of a farce than the Nobel Peace Prize.  After all, giving the Economics Prize to someone who has not yet figured out that the Euro is doomed to failure makes about as much sense as awarding the Peace Prize to a vile warmonger like Barack Obama (who won it in 2009).

Another news item is the ongoing decline of the High Street, which is linked to internet shopping.  Apparently the British spend more money online than any other country in the world, which may seem surprising.  We are a densely populated country in which very few people do not live within walking distance of a shopping centre.  We might therefore expect that internet shopping would be higher in sparsely populated countries like Canada or Australia.

For me, one of the advantages of the internet is that I can buy almost anything.  Nevertheless I do not buy my groceries online, which many people do.  I do however buy most of my groceries in supermarkets, because they stock a wider range of goods than independent shops, and also tend to be cheaper.

I have said before that saving the High Street is a case of use it or lose it.  If we shop in supermarkets, then our political leaders will assume that people want supermarkets, and applications to build new supermarkets will tend to get the go ahead.

One of the main arguments in favour of large new supermarkets is that so many already exist.  If Town A has a bigger and better supermarket than Town B, then it will not be surprising if people from Town B go to Town A to do their shopping.  This in turn creates a case for opening a new supermarket in Town B so as to keep the Town B customers from travelling to Town A.  Then Town A "needs" a bigger supermarket.  Ultimately the High Streets in both towns lose out.

It would also help if we vote for political parties, and ideally join political parties, which want to save the High Street.  Perhaps the best thing that our political leaders can do to help save the High Street is to boost the economy so as to minimise the number of people who have to count their loose change when going shopping.  I for one would happily spend more money in the High Street if I had more money to spend.

Previous posts on the economy include:

Goliath comes to Margate Does the High Street have a future? The fakery of Bushmills

We get monkeys anyway

Once again I return to the subject of fat cats.  Some of you may have read the Daily Express comment which argues that MPs are entitled to a pay rise.  It begins by comparing the salary of an MP with the salaries of people who earn more:

the director-general of the BBC gets £450,000, the chief executives of major firms can pocket millions in shares, and footballers regularly pick up more in a week than most of us can expect to earn in a year

However as I noted in a previous post about MEPs (who earn the same salary as MPs):

Nevertheless  £66,396 is more than the salary of a university professor, and also more than the typical earnings of road maintenance workers - but of course they do an important job and do it well.

I have also in another previous post discussed the comparison between fat cat salaries and those of football players and pop stars.

The DE comment also argues that If we pay peanuts we'll just get monkeys in Parliament, but we get monkeys in any case.  If Britain's legislators are fit for purpose, then why has Britain not had full employment in more than forty years?  Why is violent crime no longer shocking?  Why is the nation drowning in debt?  I could go on, but I think you get the point.

If you feel that MPs do not earn enough, then feel free to keep on voting Labour or Tory or LibDem.  If however you want a change, then feel free to JOIN a political party which actually seeks change.

Previous posts about fat cats include:

The cats stay fat

Energy sector fat cats

Fat cats and commies

Stamp duty: no hypocrisy please

A national newspaper is reporting that rising house prices will result in more people paying more money in stamp duty.  Stamp duty is a tax payable on the purchase price of a house, and has the clear advantage to the government that it is hard to evade.  Non-collection rates are routinely low.  In fact I am not aware that non-collection rates even exist.

Does anyone like paying taxes?  Tax revenues meet the cost, or some of the cost, of government and local government spending.  The balance is met by borrowing at interest, which requires ongoing taxation to meet the interest payments.

It is easy for someone who is affected by one particular form of taxation to complain, but taxation needs to come from somewhere.  It is easy to adopt an attitude that someone else should pay tax instead of yourself, but I repeat that stamp duty is hard to evade. It is therefore arguably the last tax that the government should seek to abolish.

If you do not like paying taxes, then join a political party which has realistic policies for reducing public spending.  If you vote for high levels of public spending, then please do not complain when you are taxed to pay for that spending.

Mandela was a communist thug

Those of you who follow me on other sites may well know that I never buy national newspapers.  This morning I am reminded of the reason why not one national newspaper is deserving of my money.

All, it seems, are leading on the death of Nelson Mandela, but so far as I can make out not one of them is even hinting at the fact that he was a vicious terrorist who led a criminal gang called the ANC.  A favourite trick of the ANC was to abduct South Africans who hindered their plans, take them to secret training facilities in Angola, and torture them.

Thousands of innocent people died at the hands of the ANC.  This link contains photos of the Church Street bombing, and this link contains more information about the ANC.

Tributes have been paid to this vicious communist thug by the war criminal Barack Obama and by the South African president Jacob Zuma - a man who enriches himself and his harem at the public expense, despite widespread poverty in his country.

One communist is dead, but communism is still flourishing.

The shooting of Mark Duggan

A witness to the killing of Mark Duggan has described it as an execution.  I do not know how accurate a description that might be, but I recall that witnesses to the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes gave testimonies which differed significantly from the police account.

Either we are to believe that lightning does occasionally strike twice, or we must accept that there are a lot of sadistic (and possibly even murderous) liars in the Metropolitan Police.

The death of Mark Duggan in 2011 led to the August riots which claimed the lives of five people.  It also resulted in 186 police officers being injured.

My previous posts about the police include:

Police priorities
Police get shot at in London
Police and Muslims: get real
The story of Peter Francis

Crime and censorship

Censorship is always a tricky subject.  There have been a lot of cases in the press in the past year about people committing serious sexual crimes, including child rape, because they were obsessed with violent pornographic films.  It is tempting therefore to argue that violent pornographic films should be illegal.  (Maybe they already are.  I'm not sure.)

A related news item is the attempted murder of a homeless man in Newport in Wales by two teenagers.  The crime is being likened to the film A Clockwork Orange in which a homeless man is attacked by teenagers.  This film was withdrawn from circulation in this country for many years by its producer and director Stanley Kubrick following at least three apparent cases of copycat violence.

So far as I am aware, there is no reason to think that either of the teenage attackers in Newport were influenced by Kubrick's film.  What I am sure about is that as a society we should not be listening to excuses where serious violent crime is concerned.

People who commit rapes or attempted murders should be punished severely.  Whether or not their criminal behaviour was influenced by violent pornography or 1970s films is not a matter which should have any impact on the sentence handed down by the judge.