On the "I'm not an atheist but...." argument

Shiraz Socialist has a good article in support of Daniel Dennett's piece in Comment Is Free .

What they are challenging is the "I'm not an atheist, but...." line of argument that some commentators use. These commentators they critique are saying that they don't believe themselves but that they have "belief in belief". They think it is a good thing that other people believe in religion, even though it is something that they themselves think isn't true. It sounds odd to want others to believe in something you don't, especially if you think that the factual basis of that belief is false. Surely truth is to be preferred to error?

Some of these commentators do seem to strike a patronising tone - such as Madeline Bunting's article in which she expresses scepticism for religion but thinks it is a good thing for the poor to believe in as it gives them psychological sustainance. It does echo what Marx and Engels said about the German bourgeois thinking "Religion must be kept alive for the people".

Of course, they may well have a point with this - religion may well have utilitarian benefits both for believers and for society as a whole. As such, there may be reasons not to want the continuation and spread of religious beliefs to stop, since it may increase social utility.

However, although religious individuals may be happier than non-religious individuals, it is far from clear that more religious societies are happier than less religious ones. Dennett highlights that, on some measures, the fairly secular society of Denmark can be seen as saner, happier and healthier than any other country - despite its low level of support for organised religion.

Budget deficits and the world economy

Paul Krugman writes about how government budget deficits have helped stop the recession being as bad as it would have been otherwise . The private sector's financial balance in the US changed by 8.2% of GDP. The private sector swung from borrowing massively to saving massively. This adjustment would have had a huge knock-on effect on the US economy and the world economy. However, the shock was counteracted by government spending - especially by the automatic stabilisers that kick in during a recession. If it hadn't been for these, we would have been in a worse state.

Barclays workers to ballot on strike action

The Independent reports that Barclays workers are to ballot on strike action following a management decision to stop their final salary pension scheme. Barclays seems to have enough money to pay its big bosses stratospheric salaries. It thus clearly has enough to give a decent pension to its ordinary staff. I wish them all the best in their struggle!

Bob Ainsworth is an exception to the trend towards ministers coming from a conveyor belt from Oxbridge through to the corridors of power

This article on Comment Is Free highlights that Bob Ainsworth is one of the few Cabinet ministers who seem not to have gone on the conveyor belt from Oxbridge, through being a special adviser, into politics. He was a former car worker and a local councillor before he became an MP. This will have given him a wider range of experience than some younger 'career politicians'. This is good as, surely, in a democracy those in elected office should come from humble backgrounds as well as advantaged ones. Any citizen interested and active in politics should be able to get involved and - if the pieces fall into place - enter the Cabinet.

School vetting database

The Independent reports that up to 11m people could have to pay up to £64 each to be vetted to go on a new school database. The aim seems to be to try and get data on everyone who has some involvement with schools. To my mind, this goes over the top. Several authors have been outraged that they have to register merely if they give talks in schools. It does seem excessively bureaucratic - given that the vast majority of these 11m people will not have sole care of children in school at all.

This register seems to me to have been created as a result of media panic about paedophilia. The fact remains, most children who are abused are abused at home - not in schools. Additionally, vetting people who won't have responsibility for looking after a child alone is taking the idea of vetting too far. It smacks of a "police state" mentality and poisons the relationship between adults and children. It smacks of a "guilty until proven innocent" approach to volunteers and non-teaching staff in schools. It will discourage volunteering and will cause problems for people who have a minor offence in the past that get picks up by the CRB. This is because schools will err on the side of caution and not allow people who have (for example) been convicted of theft decades ago to volunteer - even if it was an abberation and they have long since reformed.

Indian satellite malfunctions

This article reports that the Indian moon probe Chandrayaan-1 has malfunctioned. Its a shame, since it means a lot of hard work could come to naught.

Just as there was a space race between the US and the USSR, it now seems there is a space race between India, China and Japan. India does not seem to be coming out of this race that well so far. And, perhaps, it shouldn't prioritise it - especially as its economy is smaller than that of China or Japan.

The State and the Left

I haven't linked to an article on political philosophy for a while. This article is an interesting one on this topic.

It tries to explain the connection between the Left and the idea of an active state. Writing from what seems to be quite a left-libertarian anti-statist perspective, the writer gives a convincing argument for why much of the Left [myself included] wishes to use the State as an instrument of achieving social justice.

To quote:

Now, we might suppose then that this would produce a lot of people who can see what’s wrong, who can see the problems and the unhappiness in class society, but who don’t know what to do about it. They may be confident of its eventual self-defeat in a century or so, but not patient or callous enough to just sit and wait. So what they’d really like would be an easy way to ‘paper over’ the cracks, to take problems as they appear and either solve them or conceal them or a mixture of both.

And guess what! That’s just what states do! That’s what ‘politics’ is: the place where conflicts appear and get resolved. And the state justifies itself, and makes itself functional, by being the mechanism that can enforce such ‘solutions’. If religion is ‘the heart of a heartless world’, the state is ‘the unity of a divided society’.

The result is that under normal (i.e. non-revolutionary conditions), people who notice that society is grossly unfair and a lot of people are being made very unhappy, naturally gravitate around the state. They write letters, they present petitions, they announce initiatives.


To my mind this is a logical course of action to pursue. It seems to me highly unlikely there is going to be a revolutionary transformation of society which will eliminate injustice. Instead, we have to take measures to patch things up in the here and now. We thus have to organise and agitate for reforms. And, the agency that will deliver these reforms is the State. The social-democratic state, to my mind, is there to paper over the cracks and to improve the position of the poorest in an unequal, class-divided capitalist society. And the Right - or most elements of the modern Right in the democratic world - are anti-statist [where the state serves those purposes] because they feel the state is going too far in this direction. They fear that its ameliorative measures harm economic growth and harm the class interests of certain advantaged classes. Any ameliorative measure has pluses and minuses and the social-democratic Left is there to point out the pluses and the Right, the free-market Right, is there to point out its minuses.

Was the Roman Empire in its decline really that decadent?

With the title Porn and Rome [which is sure to get it a lot of hits via Google !], Gene Expression has an article about morality in ancient Rome.

It is taking issue with the idea - often spread by socially conservative critics of today's more liberal societies - that the Roman Empire fell because of its 'decadence' and its moral corruption. The fact is, as the Roman Empire declined, the influence of Christianity increased. There was thus more of a social stress on sexual morality than there might have been in the earlier Empire. So, the Romans' decline seemed to coincide, not with the period of their greatest decadence, but with a period of moralism!

A debate on Fruit and Votes about AV

This thread is a debate on the merits of the alternative vote. It is interesting to see what people have to say. There is some concern that, based on the Australian experience, that AV will not lead to a broader range of parties in the legislature and that this is a bad thing.

To my mind, though, it is not necessarily. The major party on the Left in Australia is the Labour Party. The major party on the Right is the Liberals. AV allows people to vote for minor parties for their 1st choice but then gives them the chance to use their 2nd preference for their favoured (or least disliked) major party. This extra chance to have a say, to my mind, is not to be sniffed at. And the fact that Labour and the Liberals still dominate the system suggests to me that - for all the talk of party identification breaking down - that no minor party is able to have build as much enthusiasm for itself as the 2 main parties can. Thus, it is the smaller parties that are eliminated first in the count and so their second preferences come into account. These still have a big impact on the election in many constituencies. The minor parties may not have a say, but their voters have more of a say [with their 2nd and 3rd choices] than they would do under first-past-the-post.

Curbing the excesses of those who run the banks

Robert Peston writes about the review of bank's governance structures . The aim is to find out what went wrong and see if changes in the way private banks are run can stop them repeating their follies.

The key points seem to me that a lot of bank executives did not fully know or understand what their bank was doing. In addition, the remuneration structure encouraged people to take excessive risks. And, furthermore, non-exec directors were not doing their job properly. They should have been supervising the board and giving an independent view. They failed to do so. Some proposed reforms are outlined - such as the establishment of risk committees and more work/knowledge/participation on the part of non-execs [who seem to be ridiculously part-time at the moment].

Let's hope that the remaining private banks [and those with a UKFI minority stake] take this on board in the way they organise themselves.

The need to have a positive conception of what can be done in the economic sphere

Duncan points out that, despite the crisis of the neo-liberal economic model, there does not appear to be a strong counterveiling force putting forward the case for an activist policy on the part of governments to revive economic growth and to tackle unemployment and inequality. With a positive conception of what the state can do, the Left will be able to make more progress in the current, unusual, political climate.

Charles Taylor on trial

This article reports that the former dictator of Liberia, Charles Taylor, is on trial for war crimes. It is good that he is being held to account for what his regime did. However, there is also the danger that - if they think they will be prosecuted - dictators may be reluctant to leave office.

The danger of a semi-slump

David Blanchflower, who was one of the most progressive members of the MPC, warns of the danger of a semi-slump. At the moment, we are in a recession. But when the recession ends, it does not mean that we will go into another boom. There could be a prolonged stage of anaemic growth.

Blanchflower is particularly concerned about unemployment. It took 20 years for unemployment to come back to the level it was in 1980, before the start of the Eighties recession. It took seven years to get back to the unemployment rate in 1990 - the level it was at before the Nineties recession. There could thus be a long period of time when a significant fraction of the labour force is without work. That is bad for those individuals and bad for society as a whole. Government needs to take positive action to try and alleviate the situation, not rely on the neo-liberal myth that the market tends to full employment.

Could Tony Blair become President of the EU?

This article suggests that, if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified and a post of President of the EU is created, Tony Blair could be the first holder of that post.

Personally, though, I think it is unlikely that he would get the job. The EU would be unlikely to give what would most probably be its top job to a person who, when he was prime minister of the UK, did not join the EU. The UK is probably seen as more of a semi-detached member of the EU by many Eurozone countries and so, perhaps, they would rather that the president came from one of them. Additionally, of course, Tony Blair is associated with taking a pro-American line on the Iraq War issue at a time where France, Germany and the Benelux countries were opposed to the war. As such, perhaps they think he would take too pro-US a line in foreign policy - and thus perhaps end up at odds with what the governments of many member states want.

Openness about taxes in the Nordic countries

This article on the Tax Justice Network's blog points out that in Finland and in other Nordic countries some information about what taxes people have paid is public. This openness is a good feature of their societies.

This culture of openness makes it harder to hide tax evasion, as people will notice if someone who has a high standard of living seems to be paying suspiciously little in taxes.

On public reactions to evidence of divided parties

The BBC's Open Secrets blog has an article up on the debate about whether Cabinet minutes should be made public. The article makes the good point that one of the reasons why politicians are reluctant to have them released is because they can give evidence of how the governing party was divided on a question that came up before Cabinet. This is because it seems that the electorate react badly to a party that is seen as divided. It thus makes politicians reluctant to reveal when they have had disagreements with Cabinet colleagues. In reality, though, every policy has its pluses and minuses and most Cabinet ministers are aware of this and raise this in Cabinet. However, it is a shame that this isn't being made public and, if it was, it is a shame that the media and their political opponents would spin it as a party split and that the public would react negatively to this. It would be better if the public reacted postively to it as a sign that a party was genuinely considering the downsides and pluses of policies.

The budgetary crisis in the US state of California

This article makes a few comments on the budgetary crisis in California . It seems the budget requires a two-thirds majority to be passed by the state legislature - thus giving a one-third minority veto power. This has stopped them from agreeing a budget since, even if the majority of legislators agree on it, the majority is not large enough.

As such, the State of California has had to issue IOUs. The richest state in the US is resorting to measures that you would associate more with economies in poverty and a deep crisis.

Charlie also points out that issuing IOUs could well be in violation of Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution. States aren't supposed to issue their own bills of credit.

The Chinese trade surplus is going down

Duncan has an article on economic statistics relating to China's foreign trade . People have been saying that China has a huge surplus. However, this surplus seems to be decreasing. In January 2009, it was $42.1bn. In June it was $8.25bn. If correct, these figures show dramatic movement. The recession in many large importing nations like the US and the UK must have damaged demand for China's exports.

On another measure, it seems that China's exports have gone down 28% from August 2008. Its imports have gone down 18.5%. This is another way of illustrating that its trade surplus has fallen - since its exports are going down faster than its imports.

Duncan points out that some of the products China is importing are commodities like copper. This could be for domestic industrial use, but they can also be used to diversify the country's reserves. Instead of holding more and more US-dollar denominated securities, they are putting some of their reserves into metals.

Moving people onto JSA from incapacity benefits

Don Paskini has a good article up on Liberal Conspiracy on the increasing numbers of people who would probably have got the old sickness benefits but are not getting the new Employment and Support Allowance . The ESA would give people £95.15 per week rather than the £64.30 for JSA, so bringing people down to the JSA rate would be taking away more than £30 a week from some of the poorest people in the country.

Don estimates that up to 1.8m extra people could be moved onto JSA from sickness benefits by the time the process is completed in 2013. This will be making some of the most vulnerable people in society worse off.

The point has been made in the past that, during the 1980s and 1990s, people were moved onto sickness benefits from unemployment benefits to keep the headline unemployment figures low. There is thus a case for reversing this process. However, people should not be worse off as a result of moving from sickness benefits back onto unemployment ones. The JSA level needs to be raised to ensure that people have enough to live on.

China and Turkey

The BBC reports that the Chinese government has demanded that the Turkish Prime Minister retract his comments that there is a 'genocide' in Xinjiang. The use of the term "genocide" does seem to be rather overblown in this situation.

It seems that, given that Turkey seems to be quite concerned about the fate of the Uighurs, that there is still strong pan-Turkic sentiment in Turkey. I thought that idea had somewhat declined since the time of Attaturk. However, it seems a vein of pan-Turkic sentiment does still exist in Turkey, even in the Islamist government of the AKP. They are not happy with the way that the Turkic-speaking Uighur people are being treated by the Han-dominated Chinese state.

On defence spending

Larry Elliott has an article in today's Guardian on the defence budget. Defence spending has fallen as a percentage of GDP from 6.5% in 1967 to 3% this year. Elliott points out that, with these falls in spending relative to the size of the economy, it makes it more likely that the army will be under-manned and that soldiers will be short of equipment. There has been recent media coverage of the concern that soldiers are short of helicopters to fight safely in Afghanistan. If the defence budget was higher, it is likely there would be more helicopters available.

Obviously defence spending has to be weighed up against other spending priorities and against the public willingness to pay tax. As such, it is understandable why defence spending is shrinking as a percentage of GDP. The ordinary voter, in a democracy, would prefer tax cuts or increases in spending on services they actually use to defence spending. The electorate in a democracy, unless misled and stirred up by demagogues, is normally quite pacifistic and does not have enthusiasm for military action. This is a good thing. Hence defence spending is a low priority.

However, if it is a low priority then a government must be clear about the limitations this poses for the ability to operate militarily throughout the globe. The Wilson government withdrew from East of Suez because they realised Britain could not afford to stay based beyond there. An assertive military policy can not be achieved on the cheap. It was a mistake for the Blair government to commit soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan without the wherewithal to financially support them.

As Larry Elliott says: "Would we be happy to see Alistair Darling jack up public borrowing if that meant, as it might, that the cost of mortgages went up? If the answer to all of the above is no, we have no right to expect 18-year-old squaddies to die for us."

We must recognise that defence spending is a low priority and must therefore adjust our foreign policy and our military commitments to reflect this. To do otherwise is very unfair on the ordinary soldiers who have to go out and fight while we sit safely at home.

No chance of a quick sale of the government stake in RBS and Lloyds

Robert Peston says there is no chance of a quick sale of the government's stake in the banks . I think this is a good thing since, for my part, I think that the state should permanently keep hold of a big share of the banking system.

However, even those who want a sell off will be unable to do it soon. The government has a significant paper loss on its holdings in the banks and so it would be folly to sell now. Those who want a sale should wait until the shares have increased significantly in value before they try to sell any of them off. A failure to do so would be cheating the taxpayer.

Another thing Peston points out is that the arms-length organisation the government has set up to manage its stakes in the banks - UK Financial Investments - seems to be very modestly run. Its boss is on a salary of £143,000. This is far less than those in senior positions in the banks it (largely) owns and far less than those former bosses of these firms who got them into trouble in the first place 'earned'! I am sure he does his job as well as the bosses of the banks do theirs [if not better] and thus shows that it not necessary to pay people stratospheric salaries to do important jobs.

Japan to go to the polls on 30th August

This article reports that the Japanese Prime Minister, Taro Aso, is to call a general election for 30th August. His Liberal Democratic Party is currently doing badly and it will be interesting to see whether, for the first time, they will be pipped to the post as the largest party in the new parliament. The opposition Democratic Party would then be able to form one of the new non-LDP governments Japan has ever had.

What makes people return a lost wallet?

In what could be an interesting insight into human psychology, this article reports that people are more likely to return a lost wallet they find if it has a baby picture in.

Has use of the 'dark arts' of journalism helped the NOTW escape police prosecution?

Liberal Conspiracy has an article from Septic Isle on the scandal of the News of the World and its phone tapping. Given that it would be illegal if I started tapping my neighbours' phones without their consent, it would appear that the NOTW would have broken the law in quite a spectacular way.

However, as Sceptic Isle points out, the Met seems to have been very quick in deciding not to bring charges against the NOTW. This is most probably because they do not want to be seen to be hampering investigative journalism and it would be tricky to gather the evidence together for a prosecution. If so, then it is perfectly reasonable and shows the Met understands the value of a free press and recognises that it may sometimes have to hold back on prosecuting it for individual crimes in order to ensure that there is still a vibrant and free investigative media that feels able to do investigative reporting. That would be the positive way to look at things.

However, there is a worrying alternative reason why this could be the case and why News International is not being held accountable for crimes it could be implicated in. Perhaps the very 'dark arts' News International used to spy on celebrities, they also used to spy on police officers. Perhaps there is some dirt on senior officers that they have dug up and would dish out if the police suddenly started to hold them accountable for crimes that may well have been committed. If so, then this is worrying. News International should not be above the law.

On the ethnic and linguistic demographics of China

This article on Gene Expression highlights the fact that over 90% of the inhabitants of China see themselves as 'Han' ethnically - although in the south they sometimes refer to themselves as Tang. However, the number of people who identify themselves as belonging to a national minority seems to have increased. This could well be due to better recording and data-collection from the census and so it might not really mean much. However, if it is significant it could be because people who considered themselves Han no longer do so. Or the birth rate could be higher among national minorities than the Chinese average.

Although there is this strong sense of common ethnicity which is held by the clear majority of the population of China, this doesn't stop there being large variations in the dialects spoken in different areas. It is only for political reasons - and because they use the same script - that Chinese is considered one language.

Mandarin is spoken by about 53% of the Chinese population. It is lower in rural areas. This does suggest that about 40% or so of the population consider themselves Han but are only familiar with their local dialect and can not communicate in the national standard form of the Chinese language.

Should state funding really go to Steiner schools?

Michael Gove, the Tories' Shadow Education spokesman, has been keen on saying that a future Conservative government would be keen to support "alternative" forms of schooling. Over at the Ministry of Truth an article lays out problems with the way Steiner schools teach and the very questionable beliefs/thoughts of Rudolf Steiner.

Amusing story to come out of the News of the World bugging scandal

Amusingly, it seems that the News of the World may well have been bugging the Sun editor Rebekah Wade . It is nice to see one of News International's bosses getting a taste of their own medicine!

Frances issues hypothecated bonds

Duncan writes that France is planning to issue hypothecated bonds. It does sound like a good idea - since it connects the taxes people pay with what it is being spent on. However, it does reduce a government's freedom of manoeuvre and flexibility in budgeting.