Evicting Rioters

Image via Wikipedia

Among the many knee jerks following the riots is the proposal that those convicted of rioting offences may be evicted from council housing.

Cameron backs plans to ensure that council tenants found guilty of taking part in the mayhem will be evicted. Ministers are re-drafting consultation documents to ensure that councils get those powers. The Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, was tightening the law to make sure that even if a rioter was convicted of a crime outside their borough they could lose their council home, something that is not possible at the moment. ”Criminal or anti-social behaviour in the local neighbourhood by a tenant or a member of their family can provide grounds for eviction,” he said. ”The government is looking to strengthen those powers and so anyone involved in the unrest should stop and think about the long-term impact that their actions will have on the rest of their lives.”

David Cameron told MPs it “should be possible to evict them and keep them evicted”. He said: “Parents have a responsibility to control the young people living in their home. If young people living in your home have been involved in the violence over the past few days, they are putting your tenancy at risk.”

Some sensibly pointed out that it would mean moving problem social-housing tenants to different areas, but there is a much deeper issue involved here. The whole idea of social housing is wrong and local government certainly should not own or let housing. However much you might try to avoid it, being a council tenant is stigmatising. Being is social housing labels people in a way that depresses expectations and and diminishes the chances of social mobility.

It will be said by some that housing is a fundamental right and it is necessary to subsidise the housing needs of poor people. Well food and clothing are just as essential needs, but not many people would say that the state should produce these needs. The truth is that the state is a very bad landlord and there is no more reason that they should be in that business than that they should be making jeans or baking bread.

There is very strong competition and highly efficient supply of functional clothing and basic food. Contrast that with long housing waiting lists, poor maintenance standards and enormous tax burden in the provision of council housing. What is required is for all housing to be privately owned and available in the same market irrespective of whether you are wealthy or poor. Supply will then meet demand, subject to it not being distorted by stupid planning laws, and people will be able to buy or rent accommodation that is suited to their means and needs.

Another aspect of the eviction proposal is the collective punishment involved. Stalin used to send the families of his political opponents to Siberia after he had shot the main irritant. This was generally regarded in the west as being a bit unfair, but it seems that we are happy with the principle. Is it really right that a woman and children could be put out onto the street because the man of a house is a looter. Not in my view.

We need clarity and to remain rational. It can be no part of a civilised justice system for a person and their family to be thrown out of their home as punishment for a crime unrelated to their use of that home. The state would not get into this muddled thinking if it understood its proper role and left housing to the the citizens who own and live in them.

Related articles

• Councils set to evict rioters (independent.co.uk)
• Evict the Rioters? (redbrickblog.wordpress.com)

You’re Crackers Vince

Image via Wikipedia

Big deal from Vince Cable‘s de-regulation initiative. Twelve year olds will now be able to buy christmas crackers instead of having to wait until they are sixteen, and children all over the country will be getting smashed on liqueur chocolates now that they are no longer covered by an alcohol licence.

The infants here are Vince and his department. I wonder how many eleven year olds are crying in their bedrooms at the moment because they still can’t buy crackers? Apparently this new arbitrary and completely idiotic age was chosen because that is the age specified by the EU. Big deal. It is often the case that the UK government is more daft than Brussels, but that doesn’t alter the fact that they are both daft and it is no reason to give in to idiotic regulation that has no purpose other than to get in the way of the increased business which we really need to drag our economy out of the gutter. Young children are not interested in buying christmas crackers, but if they were it wouldn’t matter. Just scrap the rule altogether.

Cable’s department apparently has a ‘one in one out’ rule for regulations as if that were progress for a part of government that is supposed to be bringing about de-regulation. It seems that Dave and Vince ought to be listening a bit more to Steve Hilton the policy adviser whose ideas have been ridiculed in the press today. They said his most controversial idea was to scrap maternity rights. ‘Steve thinks that they are the biggest obstacle to women finding work,’

You know what? He is dead right. Employers are very reluctant to take on women of child bearing age because it could cripple their business if a few of them in key roles became pregnant at the same time. The decision to have a family is entirely the responsibility of the parents involved and the implications should not be hived off to the taxpayer, employers and work colleagues. If you are not in a position to have and bring up a child with your own resources, the support of your family and any arrangements you make with friends or paid care, then you need to recognise that you should not be getting pregnant.

Instead of pussy footing around with ‘one in one out’ games or discontinuing licences to sell fly spray, Cable should get stuck into the real obstacles to economic recovery. Abolish all industrial and equality legislation introduced since the beginning of the 1974 Labour Government and ignore EU regulation.

Instead of the pathetic 0.2% growth we had in the last quarter we would soon be on a fast track back to prosperity.

Related articles

• Coalition “Red Tape Challenge”: a victory for common sense (bigbrotherwatch.org.uk)
• ‘Ridiculous’ red tape to be axed (mirror.co.uk)

Cameron in Africa – Scrap The Aid Budget Now

Image via Wikipedia

David Cameron is in South Africa at the beginning of a visit which has been cut from five days to two as the size of the problems at home become clearer.

Cameron is apparently going to say that trade not aid is way to overcome poverty on the continent. Obviously I am glad that this obvious truth has finally dawned on Dave, but why hasn’t he realised that it is in direct contradiction with his commitment to maintain the international aid budget at a time when there is a desperate need for big reductions in government spending.

There are plans for a 26-nation African free trade area intended to cover 600 million people and more than half the area of the continent within three years. This is not only a a very good idea, it is essential for business within the African continent to develop.

Cameron  will say that an African free trade area could increase the continent’s GDP by £38 billion ($62 billion) – £12 billion ($20 billion) more than the world’s entire annual aid budget for sub-Saharan Africa. He cannot be any more sure about these figures than anyone else can, but it is absolutely true that the potential growth from building proper trade and enterprise will be far greater than the amounts of money that will ever be available from aid.

Given the history of corruption and incompetence in African governments, there cannot be any confidence that they will succeed in putting their free trade area in place, but what is certain is that it is the only prospect for real improvement in the lives of very poor Africans.

The best thing that the British government could do to help Africa is to bring an end to the dependence that has come with so called ‘development aid’. It is patronising and offensive to be telling African countries that they need to be told how to build their economies, but much worse than that, the result of aid is the opposite of what is claimed. Far from getting people out of poverty the aid helps to keep corrupt and often murderous tyrannies in place and produces dependancy which prevents people from going where genuine opportunities exist for work and community building.

British politicians would do well to read some of the excellent work by African economists such as Dambisa Moyo who have shown what damage is being done by aid from the developed world.

When natural and other disasters strike poor countries it is obviously right to provide the short term assistance that is needed to save lives and help people through conditions which they are not well equipped to meet. That is totally different from spending decades and enormous amounts of money claiming that you are helping people to develop when the reality is that you are getting in the way of any real chance they may have of improving their lives.

It is not a bad thing that Cameron’s trip has been shortened. The message is simple. We would like to do business and African countries should put in place the conditions for free trade so that we can trade in the interests of all parties. That is actually a message for the rest of the world too.  As soon as he has given that simple message, the Prime Minister should come home and abolish the Department for International Development (DfID). We must honour all existing contracts, but apart from that the international development aid budget should be run down to zero as soon as possible.

That is the way forward to a prosperous future for Africans and Britons alike.

Get back quickly Dave or the Coulson affair might mean that you won’t play a big part in that future.

Related articles

• David Cameron: The time has come for African free trade (guardian.co.uk)
• British PM Calls African Trip Short To Handle Scandal (huffingtonpost.co.uk)

Coastguard Confusion

Image via Wikipedia

We have just been through a ritual process of the government announcing spending reductions in an emergency service, a series of howls from vested interests that public safety will be put at risk and then a Commons committee hears ‘evidence’ from those same interests before recommending a reduction in the savings.

 

Is this really a sensible way to identify need and to see that this need is met as efficiently and effectively as possible? Clearly not.

 

I wonder how many people actually know what the Coastguard does and how it is organised. Well it is responsible for search and rescue offshore. It has no involvement in customs enforcement or any other seafaring matters. Most people will know that lifeboats are run by the RNLI which is not a part of government, but a separate charity which operates with volunteer crews.

 

The Coastguard is a part of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) which is a form of QUANGO attached to the Department of Transport. Apart from search and rescue the MCA deals with matters of maritime law. There might be some sort of logic to link shipping law with a transport department, but it makes no sense at all to tie up the emergency function of search and rescue to this bureaucracy.

 

If offshore search and rescue has any natural relationships at all it is with the Fire & Rescue Service, the RNLI and the host of volunteer mountain, moorland and other rescue organisations.

 

Instead of going through ridiculous processes of trying to rearrange the Coastguard as a semi-detached government department the state should get out of this altogether.

 

What needs to be done is for the countries and regions of the UK to make their own decisions about the standards of service they expect from an off shore rescue service and then for them to make their own arrangements to provide such a service. In some places it might be the best option to combine what is now being done by the coastguard with the local lifeboat service. In others ther may be a volunteer search and rescue organisation that has seafaring skills and wishes to take on an extension of role into offshore search and rescue. Some Fire and Rescue services already have inshore rescue responsibilities and may be well placed to incorporate the Coastguard role into their operational range.

 

It is also possible that some authorities might want to invite tenders from private companies, community groups or charities.

 

Whichever solution is adopted they will still be able to lease the types of helicopter and other support that the Coastguard does now and which would not be appropriate to be locally owned.

 

Let us be clear, the requirements for the Thames estuary have very little relationship to those around the western isles of Scotland. The Scilly‘s have different needs the north Cornish coast. None of us has any need for a government bureaucracy working hardest to preserve its own jobs and power.

 

The message for Cameron must be to do what he said he would do in the election and return responsibility to local levels to organise their own communities in their own best interests.

Where The Spirit Takes Them

Image via Wikipedia

After the dreadful blast in Lincolnshire in which five men lost their lives, we can expect lots of outrage about illegal immigrants, illegal alcohol production, tax evasion, poisonous drinks and much more.

 

One thing that we will not hear anything about is that if you pay twenty quid for a bottle of vodka, about £13.50p of that price is tax. For the manufacture, wholesaling, distribution and retailing of your vodka you have paid £6.50p. That includes all the raw materials, labour, diesel and everybody’s profits. For doing precisely nothing, the government has taken twice as much as the people who were responsible for getting your vodka to you.

 

This is not enough for the anti-drinking lobby. They are lobbying to have minimum prices fixed for booze so that you will have to pay even more for every unit of alcohol that you buy. This is despite the fact that Britain has higher alcohol taxes than most countries.

 

You all know the supposed justification. Excessive drinking is damaging to health and ‘binge’ drinkers are responsible for crime and disorder. Advocates of minimum pricing claim that 3,000 lives each year could be saved if a minimum price of 50 pence per unit were imposed.

 

In my view the people who are trying to tell us how to live our lives are talking complete rubbish as usual. First of all, the people whose lives are substantially shortened by their alcohol consumption are generally very heavy drinkers. This is not a case of going a bit over nanny’s guidelines, but those who consume high alcohol volume drinks for most of their waking time. A significant proportion of these people have actually made a decision to end their lives with the help of alcohol or they suffer from a serious medical condition (not alcoholism, which may be an aspect of personality but it is not a disease) which makes it very difficult or impossible for them to manage their alcohol use. It should be self evident that pricing will have very little effect on these drinkers although it may mean that they are more likely to engage in crime to be able to maintain their alcohol intake.

 

The other effect of excessive taxation of alcohol is that the production or import of untaxed products will increase. This will in turn have several effects. The two most significant ones are that low grade drinks will cause very much more serious health damage than those retailed through reputable outlets and so far as price is significant at all, those who buy the very cheap, untaxed products will be able to drink more. When covert distilling goes wrong, which it is bound to do because of the inadequate skills and materials of those doing it, the health consequences are terrible. Blindness, paralysis and death are outcomes which can occur from a single drinking bout with contaminated products.

 

As we have seen at the industrial unit in Boston, when the state makes it worthwhile to create a black market in distilling there can be other tragic consequences too.

Related articles

• Illegal alcohol clue to death blast (mirror.co.uk)
• Five killed after explosion at suspected illegal vodka factory in Lincolnshire (mirror.co.uk)

Public Services Policy – Postcode Precision

Image via Wikipedia

Cameron said it was about “ending the old big-government, top-down way of running public services, releasing the grip of state control and putting power in people’s hands. The old dogma that said Whitehall knows best – it’s gone,” he said. “There will be more freedom, more choice and more local control.” Replacing a “take what you are given” culture in public services with a “get what you choose” ethos was vital to making the UK a fairer and more competitive country.

 

These are brilliant words Dave. If only you meant it or, probably more accurately, had the balls to go through with it.

 

 

The key elements of the plan are:

 

“Companies, charities and community groups to bid to run everything from local health services to schools, libraries and parks.”

 

About bloody time. What sort of democracy is it in which you have a choice about what loaf of bread or pair of socks you can buy, but if you need your hip replaced or your child needs educating you must take whatever uncaring, incompetent or dangerous provision there is in your catchment unless you are rich enough to pay twice?

 

“Citizens to be given new legally-enforceable “right to choose” services.”

 

Stuff your legal rights Cameron. We don’t need new laws, more bureaucrats and the happy hunting ground that this will produce for all sorts of parasites. What is required is for state monopolies to be ended. Providers of every kind must be able to offer their services in a free market so that those who best meet the needs of individuals and communities will thrive.

 

“State to have to justify retaining monopoly service in most areas.”

 

The state exists only to ensure the safety of citizens from crime and external threat. The state has no entitlement to hold a monopoly of services of any kind outside of the military and criminal justice system. In fact there is no reason at all for the government to be taking taxes from people for those things which they could buy or take out insurance.

 

“Councils to be given new funding streams.”

 

The main reason that Councils fail so badly to meet the needs of the communities that they are meant to serve is that most of their money comes from central government and almost all of what they do is dictated from Westminster. To be serious about localism, Cameron and his government need to recognise that genuine decision making must be made at a community level. For years, all governments have been in fear of the media accusation of postcode lotteries in relation to health and other services. This absurdity must be confronted. Instead of the one size fits all demand which has resulted in crazy targets, we need the precision with which markets can meet the specific needs of local areas with tailored products.

 

Instead of new funding streams being extracted from taxpayers and distributed from Westminster, high quality services need local providers who know their consumers and work on a human scale. Cameron is offering ever more control when what is needed is much greater devolution of power and real autonomy for the towns and villages in which we actually live.

 

“Providers to be able to make profits in some areas like getting people off benefits and into work, but not in others such as health care.”

 

Why on earth is it OK to make a profit out of getting somebody off benefit, but not to fix their varicose veins? This stupid statement just panders to the belief that has been built over generations that there is something distasteful about running a commercial organisation. The opposite is the truth. When people are motivated by the sensible need to make a living, they really care about providing such a good service that their organisation will grow and they will be secure in their livelihood.

 

What we get from public sector organisations is a focus on building empires and meeting the demands of out of touch managers and politicians. The ordinary citizen who is forced to use these state operated organisations must put up with whatever is provided. All too often that is remote, uncaring, dirty and even dangerous.

 

There is a simple message for the Prime Minister. You have uttered all the right words and promised none of the necessary actions. Having been elected on a programme of localism you have a responsibility to deliver it.

Related articles

• You: David Cameron promises to ‘end state’s monopoly’ over public services (guardian.co.uk)
• David Cameron: public services to be opened up to competition (telegraph.co.uk)
• PM: Changes will end state monopoly (mirror.co.uk)
• Competition plan for state services unveiled (independent.co.uk)

Strike At The Heart Of Freedom

Image via Wikipedia

Today most schools are disrupted, some emergency call handlers are not working and many other public sector workers are striking in a struggle with the government over pensions.
LibCon ministers and the London Mayor are muttering darkly about how most trade union members did not vote for the strikes and that it might be necessary to change the law if workers persist in disrupting public and emergency services in this way. But what is the legal position and would it be right to make striking more difficult?
These problems have a long history. The Combination Act 1799, and the Master and Servant Act 1823 stipulated that all workmen were subject to criminal penalties for disobedience, and calling for strikes was punished as an “aggravated” breach of contract. But then the position was slowly liberalised and through the Trade Union Act 1871 and the Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875 trade unions were legitimised. Toward the turn of the century the House of Lords emphasised that businesses should be free to organise into trade associations in the same way that employees organised into unions. However, with growing unrest and industrial action the House of Lords changed its mind. Soon afterwards the Taff Vale judgement made unions liable for the costs of industrial action. Although employers could dismiss employees without notice, employees in a trade union were open to penalties for withdrawing their labour.
This case led trade unions to form a Labour Representation Committee, which then became the Labour Party, to lobby for the reversal of the law. The Trade Disputes Act 1906 prescribed that any strike “in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute” is immune from civil law sanctions. The Trade Boards Act 1909 created industrial panels to fix minimum wages.
Discrimination in employment was prohibited on grounds of race in 1965, gender in 1975, disability in 1995, sexual orientation and religion in 2003 and age in 2006. Starting from the Contracts of Employment Act 1963, workers gained a growing list of statutory rights, such as the right to reasonable notice before a fair dismissal and a redundancy payment.
From 1979, the Conservative government enacted laws reducing the power of trade unions. Reforms to the internal structure of unions required that representatives be elected and a ballot is taken before a strike, that no worker could strike in sympathetic secondary action with workers with a different employer, and that employers could not run a closed shop requiring all workers to join the recognised union. The wage councils were dismantled. In 1997 the new Labour government brought the UK into the European Union Social Chapter, which has served as the source for most reform in UK law since that time. The National Minimum Wage Act 1979 established a country-wide minimum wage. The Employment Relations Act 1999 required employers to compulsorily recognise and bargain with a union.
A ‘repeal of all anti-union laws’ is official TUC policy. A ludicrous objective since it would be impossible to get agreement on what laws are anti-union, but they are on to something. What is needed is for the repeal of all laws relating to the workplace or industrial relations. The common law that applies to all of us for activities outside work is just as adequate for our needs when we are working as it is when we are not.
When a person enters into a contract to work for somebody else they have all the same rights and responsibilities as a person contracting to buy a house, borrow money, go on a holiday or make any other commercial transaction.
It is nonsense to have special laws for picketing when the common law of public order is long established. A workplace dispute which spills onto the public highway is no different from a possibly unruly gathering outside a football match, pop concert or night club.
Just as it was wrong for the state to prevent the formation of unions, it was wrong to protect contact breakers from the consequences of their actions and the huge body of industrial law since then has only confused and worsened the situation.
The reason we need government is to protect the life and property of citizens from crime and external threat. The police have not been on strike because it is illegal for them to do so, and those who have chosen to join the military do not have trade unions. As far as the rest of the public sector is concerned there is only one solution to their pension problems. That is to transfer all of these ‘services’ to the private sector and let the new employers work out the right package of remuneration for their staff as determined by the market in which they operate.

Related articles

• Strikes hit 11,000 schools in England as public sector workers protest pension cuts (mirror.co.uk)
• Hundreds Of Thousands Join Pension Strikes (news.sky.com)
• Britain faces summer of civil service strikes (theglobeandmail.com)

Population Growth – Welfare Not Immigration

It was announced today that the UK population increased more last year than at any time in almost half a century. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, the number of births in the UK is now at its highest since 1991, with 797,000 during the year to mid-2010 and this contribution to overall population growth is greater than that from net migration.

So why has there been a new baby boom without a war for an excuse?

Increased government support for families – notably the introduction of the Working Families’ Tax Credit (WFTC) in 1999 and greater generosity of means-tested Income Support (IS) payments – has coincided with a rise in births among couples who left school at 16 relative to those who stayed in education after 18.

According to research summarised in the Autumn 2008 issue of Research in Public Policy, the probability of having a birth increased by 1.2 percentage points among women with low education, which equates to nearly 45,000 additional births. The study also finds that the decision whether to have children – or when to begin having them – seems more susceptible to financial incentives than the decision over how many to have. The UK birth rate has increased steadily since 2001 and now stands at an average of 1.9 births per woman, the highest level since 1974.

Some women told researchers they had stopped using contraception. The more generous welfare system is being credited with contributing to an increase in the overall UK birth rate, which is now at its highest level since 1974. The report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies concludes: “We have shown that more generous Government support coincided with an increase in births among the group most affected by the [welfare] reforms.

The study says that the introduction of Working Families Tax Credit and an increase in Income Support between 1999 and 2003 triggered a rise in taxpayer spending on children “unprecedented” in the previous 30 years. Because the reforms were targeted at the poorest families with children, the value of their state handouts increased by 10 per cent of their total household income. For couples who both left school at 16, the reforms meant an increase in benefits of 45 per cent, from £39 a week to £56.76. This is a rise almost twice as much as the handouts for which a couple who went on to sixth form college would be eligible, which increased by 25 per cent to £37.27 a week. The researchers then looked at fertility rates both before the reforms were announced and after, for a sample of 101,330 women aged between 20 and 45. They found a large increase in the first year after the benefits were made more generous, particularly among women who had left school as soon as possible. The results show a 15 per cent increase in the probability of having a baby in the “low education group”.

People will have different views about whether a larger population is a good or bad thing. What cannot be rationally disputed is that dipping into taxpayers pockets to encourage the births of a whole new generation of welfare dependants can only take us closer to the economic collapse that state spending and borrowing has speeded us toward. Labour justified this handout on the grounds of reducing child poverty. The result will be lots more children in homes where inadequate parents don’t have the will or the ability to raise these children to be responsible and contributing members of society.

Related articles

• Britain adds half a million to population (ctv.ca)
• Population growth hits 50-year high (mirror.co.uk)

Oxfamine Panic -Everyone Will Starve

Image via Wikipedia

Fake charity Oxfam, 29% of its income comes from the government, has now appointed itself as an expert on agriculture and climate change to give us a prediction of doubled food prices and mass starvation in less than twenty years.

The Oxfam solution to this predicted disaster? Surprise,surprise it is more regulation and a global climate fund. Who do you think would administer this worldwide regulatory system and manage this mighty global fund? It might just be those people who have spent their lives working for the ‘charities, NGOs and quangos which have helped the poorest nations on earth to be even poorer now than they were fifty years ago and their murderous dictators still in place with gigantic Swiss bank accounts.

Two hundred years ago Robert Malthus predicted mass starvation because food production could not keep pace with growing population. At that time the world human population was about 800,000. Now the population is around 7 billion. Malthus was wrong because he did not account for scientific progress and human ingenuity that has increased food production enormously.

Oxfam is wrong because it has not taken account of scientific progress and the stupidity of bureaucratic interference. The rash of well intentioned agencies that has spread all over Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia has created serious dependency in the countries where they are active. The excellent work of African economist Dambisa Moyo has show this devastating effect with great clarity.

There has always been climate change and there always will be. I don’t know whether current changes for the human race and I am certain that Oxfam doesn’t know either. I do have confidence that the pursuit of greater knowledge of climate and energy uses will be much more useful than dipping into taxpayer’s pockets to set up another global fund.

The main reason for insufficient food coming to markets at affordable prices is the existence of import and export tariffs and barriers as well as the distorting and stifling effect of state control in most of the underdeveloped world.

Get the development agencies off the backs of the poorest countries and their populations will be better placed to remove their corrupt governments and get on with producing the food they so badly need.

A message  for Cameron and Clegg. You are encouraging the nonsense predictions of Oxfam and others. The UK foreign aid budget should not be protected in this economic crisis, it should be phased out completely. Britain and other western nations cannot develop the rest of the world, it can only stop preventing them from developing themselves.  Free trade  will be the biggest possible contribution to reducing world poverty.

Related articles

• Food prices ‘will double by 2030′ (bbc.co.uk)
• The Overpopulation Hoax (lewrockwell.com)

Devon Cream Teas – The Inadequate in Pursuit of the Inexcusable

Devon cream teas are the latest food product to try to claim EU protected status. We now have an epidemic of this nonsense in which some consumable that has a geographic location in its name tries to tell the world, or as much of it as they pretend to control, that they have an exclusive right to use the name.

 

This farce began with things like champagne so that overpriced fizz could carry on extracting a snob premium and similar sparkling wines failed to command a strong market position because they were denied the magic word.

 

This has nothing to do with people fraudulently trying to pass off a product as something that it isn’t. It is all about market manipulation. Nobody should pretend that Cava is made in the champagne district of France, but there is nothing miraculous in that bit of ground. Champagne was in early and got itself a reputation as the tipple of the rich so they try to put up barriers to entry in which as good, or even better, product cannot break in.

 

Now that we have got to Devon cream teas we are scraping the bottom of the jam jar. This alleged regionally exclusive product is Indian or Chines tea drunk with a scone whose origins are lost in time and some clotted and whipped cream produced from cows like Jerseys or Ayrshire. Which bit of it is exclusive to Devon? None of it.

 

Amid all of the money wasting EU bureaucracy this is not the biggest deal, but all of these attempts to rig markets have only one consequence. The consumer and taxpayer gets milked.

 

I’m off for a Cornish cream tea.

Related articles

• The cream tea wars (bbc.co.uk)