FGM, aliens and Arnold Schwarzenegger - all in one post

Just very occasionally I have cause to think of that little celebrated Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Last Action Hero, in which a young fan is thrust into the world of his screen idol, a daredevil steroid-pumped bicep-flexing meat head with a dubious Austrian accent.

This film was not well received by Schwarzenegger's fan base, being too long and developing an unhealthy film buff's interest in the philosophical niceties of cinematic reality (as opposed to car-chases and shoot-outs); the climactic scene, as I remember, takes places in a theatre showing a re-run of Bergman's The Seventh Seal, with Ian McKellen playing the scythe-wielding Death figure.  But there were moments to treasure (other moments to treasure), one of them in a video store where a poster advertises The Terminator, featuring Sylvestor Stallone.  Yes, you read that right.  And I always liked the police station scene where a special unit pairs up, this being a movie, oddball detectives - the couple I particularly remember were a stripper and a Hasidic Jew.

Which brings me, circuitously I admit, to female genital mutilation.  And aliens.  To be exact, the Raelians, the world's largest UFO religion.  To explain about Raelians I can do no better than quote from Wikipedia, which states that "The Raelian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestials, which they call the Elohim".  The movement was founded by a former motor racing journalist, Claude Vorilhon, who claimed that in 1973 he came upon a UFO on a hilltop in France.

If you are bored or need cheering up, it is well worth reading about the Raelians.  I particularly enjoyed the revelation that the Raelians "frequently use the swastika as a symbol of peace, which halted Raelian requests for territory in Israel, and later Lebanon, for establishing an embassy for extraterrestials". For them that would have been a no shit Sherlock moment, one would hope. It can't have helped their Israeli ambitions that "the religion also uses the swastika embedded on the Star of David".

More alert readers will have noticed that two paragraphs ago I mentioned female genital mutilation.  What does this have to do with the Raelians?  Well, like many a cult - sorry, religion - the Raelians are quite keen on sex, particularly a woman's right to go topless, as the following picture of South Korean Raelians makes clear:

So keen are they on sex, that the Raelians, for all that their eyes must perforce often be turned skywards in search of further UFOs, are laudably enthusiastic about extending its charms to all.  Including Muslim women who have been hacked about by evil co-religionist killjoys.  And the Guardian reports this morning that Raelians are now putting their money where their - but I see I'm treading on thin ice - they are putting their money, shall we say, into a hospital project in Burkina Faso which will specialise in genital repair.

The Raelian backed NGO which is to pay for this facility is called Clitoraid.

FGM is a desperately awful thing, but amidst the lowering stench of human meanness and stupidity emanating from this story, comes a joyfully unlikely pairing, too implausible even for the writers of Last Action Hero. FGM and aliens. Thank God we can laugh.

Oxfam, inequality and the bitter truth about tax

The other day Oxfam shocked the world by reporting that, amazingly, a very small number of people in the UK own an awful lot of its assets.  To be specific, five of Britain's richest families "own more wealth" than the poorest 20% of the country put together.

I don't doubt that Oxfam are broadly right, and that there are some terrificly rich people out there.  I do however rather doubt the conclusions Oxfam and its political allies draw.  In his Budget tomorrow Oxfam calls on George Osborne to launch "a fresh assault on tax avoidance and introduce a living wage . . . and explore the possibility of a wealth tax".

Firstly, I very much doubt whether Oxfam understand the way statistics work.  When you take any group of data, almost all the results tend to clump around the middle.  Away from the middle, there are outliers.  Any statistician will tell you that in a graph of asset distribution there will be a few people at the rich end who are are enormously rich (and a few at the poor end who are terrificly poor).  It's not news.  It's called a bell curve.

Secondly, when it calls for "a fresh assault on tax avoidance" Oxfam makes a revealing mistake.  Tax avoidance is legal.  Anyone who puts some money in an ISA is engaging in tax avoidance.  What Oxfam is really asking for is tax rises, which is fair enough.  But you can't have a "fresh crackdown" on something that's perfectly lawful.  It's like calling for a fresh crackdown on cycling.

Thirdly, by calling for a "living wage" Oxfam is effectively calling on employers to sack staff.  It works like this.  Employers have to put up wages.  They put up prices in order to cope.  People buy fewer goods.  The company's turnover falls.  Employees get laid off.

(Incidentally, inflation goes up too, so interest rates have to be higher.  Some people can't afford to pay their mortgages and some of them lose their houses.  Happy now, Oxfam?)

Fourthly, a "wealth tax" is essentially confiscation.  That's to say, you earn money and pay tax on it; the Government thinks it might not have taxed you enough, so it then takes some of that money away.  Some people hate the rich so much that they would be happy to see the Government just confiscate the assets of the wealthy.  Personally I prefer to live in a society where the Government tells you when you'll be taxed, taxes you and then leaves you alone.

The five richest families identified by Oxfam fall into two categories.  The first is the hereditaries, one of whom, the Duke of Westminster, owns a good deal of land in Central London.  I don't have much sympathy with the Duke, who will have inherited property from his parents and whose contribution to his continuing good fortune has probably been limited to putting his affairs in the hands of competent experts. However he will have paid very large sums in inheritance tax when he came into his money, and I'm absolutely sure he will have an annual tax bill that would make you and I gulp (Think he's not paying enough?  Fine.  Put rates up and see what he does).

The other category includes businessmen, including the Hinduja brothers and the owner of Newcastle United FC, Mike Ashley.  Ashley is a particularly interesting case, because he started a business from nothing , risked his own money and made a fortune, along the way employing many thousands of people, providing the public with a product that they apparently want to buy, and creating dividends for thousands of people with savings they need to invest.

That isn't to say that people like Ashley couldn't endure higher tax rates (although as I've pointed out that isn't what Oxfam is asking for), but nevertheless to portray people like him as rich parasites bleeding society dry is a very, very partial and misleading portrayal of someone, who, given capitalism's limitations, on the whole benefits a lot of people.  I couldn't be bothered to go about trying to acquire riches on the Ashley scale, but I'm quite glad to live in a society where people are free to do that if they want, partly because I know a lot of other people, including perhaps myself, will benefit on the way.

The difficulty with Oxfam's analysis of Britain's problems of inequality is not that they're wrong to pinpoint that inequality per se.  It is that their prescription is economically illiterate.

Wage growth happens because companies need to compete with each other to attract staff.  That happens best when an economy is growing and the labour force isn't.  Inequality increased dramatically under New Labour because the pool of available workers increased dramatically from 2004, as Britain took on the best part of a million East Europeans.  The consequences of this intake, depressing wages, depressing inflation, depressing interest rates and thereby increasing private borrowing and pushing up house prices, are incalculable.  Those who really dislike inequality should now be thinking wistfully about what might have been if the Blair government, like those of all the other richer EU countries, had not suspended the right to work for new immigrants.

The bitter truth about taxation is that if we want to increase the overall take in a way which will take pressure off those at the bottom end, those in the middle will have to pay a lot more.  There aren't enough very rich people.  Their assets generally take a form which is easy to move around.  They have ingenious accountants who recognise that a hurdle is there to be circumvented.  Some of them also benefit society by creating wealth for others.  Why would we want to discourage them?

Losing your shirt on Liverpool

My friend Mark the butcher offered me a couple of quid on United to beat Liverpool on Sunday.  In a rare fit of prescience I refused.  "We're going to get battered", I said.  And thus it came to pass.

Amidst the distressing signs that Liverpool, having been knocked off their effin' perch by Alex Ferguson, are intent on climbing right back on it again, there is one consolation for United fans.

Liverpool's away strip is terrible.

There.  That makes me feel a lot better.

RIP Bob Crow

Since I haven't lived in London for nearly fifteen years (thank goodness) I have almost no opinion at all about Bob Crow, who died yesterday.

Friends and foes alike have been generous about Crow, and although it's easier to be nice about someone you know you'll never have to cross swords with again, Boris Johnson spoke in a way that suggests in a better world it might be possible to disagree with someone in a civilised fashion.

Amidst the hagiographies this morning, two interesting facts emerge.  

Firstly, Crow lived in a Council house. I don't know how he managed to get one, but amongst other things you're more likely to be pushed up the waiting list if the place you live in at the moment is overcrowded, unsanitary, lacks basic washing and cooking facilities or is in serious disrepair. According to the Grauniad, 1 in 10 Londoners are presently waiting for a Council house.

Secondly, Crow's salary as a Trade Union leader was £145,000.

Broadly liberal - John Humphrys and the licence fee

In the context of the announcement a couple of days ago that from 2015 BBC3 will be an online service, with all the questions about funding that decision raised, John Humphrys' remarks in the papers today about the BBC's alleged bias can't have made welcome reading for Director General Tony Hall.

Humphrys told the Radio Times the BBC wasn't "sufficiently sceptical" in its coverage of the immgration debate because it had "bought into the European ideal . . . We didn't look at the potential negatives with sufficient rigour . . . the BBC has tended over the years to be broadly liberal as opposed to broadly conservative for all sorts of perfectly understandable reasons. The sort of people we've recruited - the best and the brightest - tended to come from universities and backgrounds where they're more likely to hold broadly liberal views than conservative".

Humphrys continued, "If an organisation recruits from a fairly narrow - in educational and class terms - band of people, it will tend to get people with a fairly similar outlook.  To be specific, the BBC tends to recruit intelligent, well-educated middle-class people with a Humanities degree from a good University.  Who could possibly have thought that they would tend to be Left of centre?"

Actually I'm being mischievous.  Humphrys didn't say that last bit. It's from a post I wrote in February 2013 entitled "James Purnell - liberal humanities graduate".

The thrust of that post was that the BBC's ethos, like that of any organisation, was the predictable consequence of its recruitment policy. I'm glad Humphrys agrees.

"I think we're out of that now", said Humphrys. "I think we have changed".  That's interesting.  If as he says the BBC has a broadly anti-conservative outlook, and if that outlook is a consequence of its recruitment policy, the Corporation could only have changed if recruitment policy has changed. And of course sufficient time would have to elapse for the effect of any changes to work through the system.

I must have missed their announcement.

People are fond of saying how much they love the BBC and what a great institution it is. My take is slightly different. I think the BBC is an over-managed, borderline corrupt (at senior executive level) and anti-conservative organisation, funded in an indefensible manner, in which devoted and creative staff somehow manage to make some absolutely terrific programmes.

The idea that such an institution can - without reform - to carry on being funded by a broadcasting poll tax, protected from future inflation, or by a new tax on computers and mobile phones, is absolutely ludicrous.

Of course by the time the licence fee is up for renewal at the end of 2016 we may well have a Labour government.  For Labour a broadly liberal BBC would be politically convenient.  And there's no reason why the BBC and a new Labour government can't climb into the bed where "politically convenient" sleeps comfortably with "absolutely ludicrous".

Ed Balls, the bank levy and the Titanic

Last autumn I wrote about Labour's plan to give parents of three and four year olds 25 hours a week free childcare ("Labour's free childcare policy", 24th Sept, for the curious).  Ed Balls said the childcare scheme would be funded by increasing the Bank levy.  This was a curious state of affairs since he had previously said similar taxes would pay for other policies including VAT cuts and Regional Growth Funding. I described the Bank levy then as "the gift that keeps on giving".

I've rather missed the Bank levy in the last six months and am pleased to find it's back. It is a guarantee of political amusement.

Yesterday Balls announced a compulsory jobs guarantee for the young unemployed which will be partly funded by "a one-off levy on bankers' bonuses". As the Guardian notes this morning, Balls' plan immediately "came under attack from some think tanks, who said it was too complex and unlikely to be securely funded". Well maybe. But that isn't the funny thing.

What's funny is that Balls said (according to the Graun) that the levy on bonuses "will not be used for any other purpose". Putting aside the VAT cuts and Regional Growth Funding for which the levy had previously been earmarked, this came as news to Balls' colleague Stephen Timms, shadow employment minister. Timms was asked to explain how Balls' promise of exclusivity squared with previously-announced plans to fund 25,000 new homes using, er, a Bank levy. He had to concede that funding for the 25,000 new homes "may have to be rethought".

I particularly like the use of the word "may" in that sentence.  That's "may" as in, "Following the sinking of the Titanic, plans for a lavish dinner to celebrate arrival in New York may have to be rethought".

I like Balls, who is master at defending the indefensible.  But is Labour prepared for Government?

Tony Hall - Subscribing to BBC3

BBC Director General Tony Hall announced yesterday that in a few months BBC3 will become an online-only channel.  As someone who has never knowingly watched BBC3, my reaction to this is one of near indifference. But consider.

The BBC is paid for via the licence fee. There are many arguments against the licence fee, the most cogent being that it is effectively a broadcasting poll tax which takes no account of ability to pay. There's nothing the Corporation can do about that, but it has tried assiduously to disarm another objection - that the licence fee forces people to pay for something they may not in fact use - by providing programmes to suit every taste. There will be few TV watchers who can't find anything to enjoy, and as commercial TV has gone downmarket, the BBC has followed it conscientiously. It's been an impressive attempt to outflank the Corporation's opponents.

Last night I watched the final episode of Outnumbered on iPlayer. As it happens, I have paid the licence fee, but I could have watched it legally without having done so. That's an annoying anomaly. But by sticking BBC3 online Tony Hall has gone one step further.

It's one thing to make available online a programme that's previously been broadcast on TV, where the licence fee for that device has paid to produce the programme. However making people pay, via the TV licence fee, for something that isn't even going to be broadcast on TV is another matter.

It seems to be blindingly obvious to me that the future of the BBC lies in subscription. By that I mean, that's where we'll end up, for good or ill. As soon as it became possible to watch programmes on a computer the argument for the licence fee became impossible to sustain.  Making programmes to watch on computers only is, in that context, frankly ridiculous.

According to a report in the Torygraph today, Tony Hall "would like the licence fee to be extended to iPads and other tablets, as well as smartphones and all other devices capable of gaining access to BBC content". If true, this is a mad proposal.  Firstly, can you imagine any politician telling people they needed a licence to have an iPhone?  Electoral hari kiri.  Secondly, "all other devices" would presumably include laptops and PCs.  Would we be the only country in the world stupid enough to licence ownership of computers?  What about the computer user who doesn't watch BBC programmes?

All this leads me to the rather gloomy conclusion that if Hall understands the import of the BBC3 decision at all, he has drawn the wrong conclusion from it. For the licence fee to be justified the bare minimum requirements are that the licence should be for the device via which the content is accessed and that without the licence it shouldn't be possible to access the content legally. Ironically the BBC itself drove a coach and horses through this principle by coming up with the iPlayer. Post the BBC3 shift online, that argument is in tatters, and the news that Hall is seeking to square the circle by licensing the other content accessing devices looks to me a desperate flailing around to avoid the inevitable.

Subscription. Be afraid.