Changing the World.

By the Lord Harry, the world is in need of a change, and just as it has changed considerably - for better and worse - over the past few thousand years, - nay, the last hundred - it is inevitable that more changes will occur.  Just who will be changing it though is still undecided. Whoever has been doing it so far has made a messy bed out of it and sleep is hard to come by. While the world changes, we human beings often seem reluctant to go along with it or even change ourselves. 

But resistance is futile. So the talk in the Tavern, from a motley and diverse lot of folk (who says we don't do diversity here !) was of starting with the small stuff, early on, and changing one bed at a time. It can develop to change ourselves and the world.

The range of folk who spoke up was broad and started with a Dad: and an Admiral; a girl reporter (not Lois Lane, but one with no idea of how to make a bed); and a drill Sergeant (who did know), followed. And a Professor. Oh, and some scientists who counselled against it. Making beds, that is.

Drill Sergeants are fine fellows. I was a typical scruffy farm boy until taken in hand by a kindly and vocal Sergeant who could put  at least three quite obscene words, usually about me, in a short sentence.  Indeed, every sentence. He ensured I would never forget how to make a good start on changing the world. 

And the sheets.

A Knigthood followed later. For me that is, not him.

Warwick Marsh of the Dads4Kids Foundation ...

https://www.fatherhood.org.au/

...said he has been married to Alison for 42 years. He is the grandfather of seven grandchildren and father of five children, four boys and one girl, ranging in age from 36 years to 25 years.  Warwick is a musician, writer, producer and public speaker who likes to think he can still laugh at himself.  He started it.....

How to Change the World

I hate change because change brings challenge. I love my comfort zone. When someone asks me to change, I usually feel bad because there is a real likelihood that I was wrong in the first place. Most of us don't like being wrong. We all like to stay in our comfort zone.

I have always been a pretty messy person. When I was growing up I used to clean my room from time to time, but those times were infrequent and far between, often only a bi-annual event, which meant both my parents and I had to put up with my extended mess for a whole 6 months at a time, which was quite pathetic. To make matters worse I was lousy at making my bed.

After marrying, my wife objected to my messy habits and of course I objected to her objections. Funny that I had never really thought of myself as messy before then. Marriage and children is a process of self-revelation which at time can become very painful.

As my children came along they began to leave their toys in the lounge room. I don't know if you have ever walked on hard plastic Lego blocks in the middle of the night but it sure is painful. Of course I yelled at my children and told them how messy they were. Then I suddenly remembered the area on my side of the bed, littered with dirty clothes and other odds and sods.

My wife had been telling me to put my dirty clothes in the dirty washing basket for weeks, months, years even. I suddenly realized what a hypocrite I was and how I had to embrace positive change.

It took me over a decade to get my dirty clothes in that laundry basket in the corner of the bedroom. Eventually I succeeded but the process of change has been annoying. 

One of my strategies that I have used is to treat every attempt at the dirty clothes basket as a basketball shot in the hall of fame. It's called ego stroking. Now I could ask my children to clean up their offending toys with impunity.

After all this I still had my Achilles heel. I hardly ever made the bed so the burden of this always fell to my wife. Which in hindsight was terribly unfair.

I think the change started after having heard Admiral William McRaven's "Change the World by Making Your Bed" from The Art of Manliness blog.  

McRaven is not only an Admiral but a navy seal Admiral. The US Navy Seals are one of toughest special operation forces in the world. Some rate the Navy Seals number one in the world.

#2 perhaps. The SAS and SBS tie for #1. 

These are the guys that took out Osama Bin Laden. These men are not to be messed with and they can all make their bed.

Admiral William McRaven points out that it only takes you a few minutes to make your bed first thing in the morning but it sets you up for success for the rest of the day.

Listen to the Admiral for a moment or three, then we shall let Warwick continue. US Navy Admiral McRaven, delivered this speech  at a University ( which quite possibly started off the 'no-platform bizzo) about the importance of doing the little things like making your bed, embracing the fears of life, and changing the world for generations to come. I wondered who irons his uniform.

I shall put a transcript of that at the end so you can copy and paste it, frame it and hang it in your children's rooms. Now back to Warwick.

Making your bed gives you a sense of achievement which can flow on into your other activities for the rest of the day. 

I think a few months later (Prof) Jordan Petersen rammed the point home in his talk on why the best way to start to change the world is to make your bed and clean your room. 

Ahha, yes. The recently elevated to stardom Prof certainly has that as a good start. But he delves much, much further and ties many strands together very simply. And guess what ... it ain't new.

 I interrupted again. Sorry. Back to Warwick. Can I get you a pint?

You see I am one of the world's worst hypocrites. When people ask me what I am doing at any time of the day I often answer, "I am just trying to change the world." I would often add jokingly, "But it keeps springing back the wrong way." Who you might well ask is springing back the wrong way?'

However, this is the time when we must take a deep breath. Now is the time to adopt the 3 step process of positive change for both dads and kids through the Dads4Kids Positive Change Model.

Rule 1: Don't get angry when people point out your inconsistencies - stay calm and collected and develop your own change strategy.

Rule 2: Look at your own need for change first. Remember what Don Bowak said, "It's all about us . . . we must become the change we seek."

Rule 3:  When it comes to your children give them the direction they need. Then look for the moments when your children follow your directions and then give them lots of appreciation and praise.

Accentuate the positive and de-accentuate the negative. This Dads4Kids Positive Change Model for change works in every situation. As Thomas Carlyle said, "Change indeed is painful but ever needful."

By 'kids' he includes girls. It is not just boys that are messy. Here is a teen girl's bedroom.  

And here, perhaps, the married couple's bed an hour after the chap has gone to work.

The good news is I am making the bed first thing in the morning 60% of the time and trying to lift the bar. It just goes to show you can teach an old dog new tricks.

To bring change we must become the change we seek. This is the only sort of change that lasts.

Which brings us to the question of 'how'. Getting the kiddies' attention is all well and good but you have to show them how to do it.

Girls especially. You cannot expect them to have a genetic program for it just because the Missus has been on at you to shape up and seems to know the drill.

Here not-Lois, the girl reporter, gets some instruction from a very mild mouthed Sergeant (not at all like the horror I had).

Now I did say we had heard from some scientists who clearly were not impressed with all this 'tidy bed' lark. The BBC told us, and we all know how that organisation loves throwing chaos into things.

Untidy beds may keep us healthy

Failing to make your bed in the morning may actually help keep you healthy, scientists believe.

Hah ! Believe, eh? 

Research suggests that while an unmade bed may look scruffy it is also unappealing to house dust mites thought to cause asthma and other allergies.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4181629.stm

A Kingston University study discovered the bugs cannot survive in the warm, dry conditions found in an unmade bed.

The average bed could be home to up to 1.5 million house dust mites.

By the Lord Harry. Really. Not in my cave there aren't. 

The bugs, which are less than a millimetre long, feed on scales of human skin and produce allergens which are easily inhaled during sleep.

The warm, damp conditions created in an occupied bed are ideal for the creatures, but they are less likely to thrive when moisture is in shorter supply.

The scientists developed a computer model to track how changes in the home can reduce numbers of dust mites in beds.

Researcher Dr Stephen Pretlove said: "We know that mites can only survive by taking in water from the atmosphere using small glands on the outside of their body.

"Something as simple as leaving a bed unmade during the day can remove moisture from the sheets and mattress so the mites will dehydrate and eventually die."

In the next stage of their research, the scientists are putting mite pockets into beds in 36 houses around the United Kingdom to test their computer model and will investigate how people's daily routines affect mite populations.

Gordon Bennett !!  Can they start with Mrs May? Several Cabinet Ministers too?

Building features such as heating, ventilation and insulation will also be altered to monitor how the mites cope.

Dr Pretlove said the research had the potential to reduce the £700m spent treating mite-induced illnesses each year in the UK.

"Our findings could help building designers create healthy homes and healthcare workers point out environments most at risk from mites."

Dr Matt Hallsworth, of the charity Asthma UK, said: 'House-dust mite allergen can be an important trigger for many people with asthma, but is notoriously difficult to avoid."

Professor Andrew Wardlaw, of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology, agreed.

He said: "Mites are very important in asthma and allergy and it would be good if ways were found to modifiy the home so that mite concentrations were reduced.

"It is true that mites need humid conditions to thrive and cannot survive in very dry (desert like) conditions.

"However, most homes in the UK are sufficiently humid for the mites to do well and I find it hard to believe that simply not making your bed would have any impact on the overall humidity." 

A voice from a dark corner cried out... "Yeah ?  Well wot abart Global Warmin then? Eh?  Won't that kill off the mites and save heaps of taxpayers' monies on asthma?  Bring on the CO2 and sabotage a windmill".

Scientists !!.

Make the bed. 

And have a drink.

Pax.




PS. That transcript....

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you'll never be able to do the big things right. If, by chance, you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made. That you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

To pass SEAL training, there are a series of long swims that must be completed. One is the night swim. Before the swim, the instructors joyfully brief the students on all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters off San Clemente. They assure you, however, that no student has ever been eaten by a shark. At least not that they can remember. But you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position, stand your ground. Do not swim away. Do not act afraid. If the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you, then summon up all your strength and punch him in the snout, and he will turn and swim away. There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim, you will have to deal with them. If you want to change the world, don't back down from the sharks.

Over a few weeks of difficult training, my SEAL class, which started with 150 men, was down to just 42. There are now six boat crews of seven men each. I was in the boat with the tall guys, but the best boat crew we had was made up of little guys, the munchkin crew, we called them. No one was over five foot five. The munchkin boat crew had one American Indian, one African American, one Polish American, one Greek American, one Italian American, and two tough kids from the Midwest. They out-paddled, out-ran, and out-swam all the other boat crews. The big men in the other boat crews would always make good natured fun of the tiny, little flippers the munchkins put on their tiny, little feet prior to every swim. But somehow these little guys, from every corner of the nation and the world, always had the last laugh, swimming faster than everyone and reaching the shore long before the rest of us.

SEAL training was a great equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your colour, not your ethnic background, not your education, not your social status. If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not by the size of their flippers.

The ninth week of training is referred to as Hell Week. It is six days of no sleep, constant mental and physical harassment, and one special day at the mud flats. The mud flats are an area between San Diego and Tijuana, where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana sloughs, a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.

It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold, the howling wind, and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors. As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some egregious infraction of the rules, was ordered into the mud. The mud consumed each man until there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit. Only five men. Just five men and we could get out of the oppressive cold. Looking around the mud flat, it was apparent that some students were about to give up. There were still over eight hours until the sun came up. Eight more hours of bone-chilling cold. The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud, it was hard to hear anything.

Then one voice began to echo through the night. One voice raised in song. The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm. One voice became two. And two became three. And before long, everyone in the class was singing. The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singing, but the singing persisted. And somehow, the mud seemed a little warmer, and the wind a little tamer, and the dawn not so far away.

If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person. A Washington, a Lincoln, King, Mandela, and even the young girl from Pakistan, Malala. One person can change the world by giving people hope. So if you want to change the world, start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone. Know that life is not fair, that you will fail often. But if you take some risks, step up when the times are the toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden, and never, ever give up, if you do these things, the next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today. And what started here will, indeed, have changed the world for the better.

Taxed to Death

Death and taxes, the two 'inevitables'. One is a natural part of the human condition due to and defining our mortality: the other a man-made imposition which beggars belief in its operation and drives folk to distraction.  Taxes are anything but natural. 

We know not the hour or the means of our future demise and try not to think on't too much, but with taxes we get to hear too much and too little, and while accident, homicide and simply fading away (as old soldiers may be fortunate enough to experience) happen, we seldom hear of the autopsies. And we seldom hear sensible investigation and analyses about taxes either, especially when cogent discussion is kept behind paywalls. 

Behind the bars I get to hear all sorts and was pleased to hear two very cogent discussions, previously hidden behind paywalls, which I will bring to you. 

First though (and later) I shall give a view of my own.

Yes, we need to pay for 'common goods': our roads, trains, infrastructure of all sorts that are better contributed, financially, from all. So we pay our taxes. But at every step there are opportunities for rorts, theft, embezzlement, sanctimonious cant, excuse, and an enormous range of people living off the sweat of others. 

And that's on the 'official' side.

Like it or not we have hundreds of thousands of people - millions on Oz - who have to be paid from the public purse. They too pay taxes. But their pay and taxes are from the monies given to them by those who are not employed on the public purse. Why do the public servants pay taxes at all, I often wonder.  That includes all those employed by the Tax Office.  

It is a great money-churn,  The productive taxpayer pays them all and their taxes. It is a wonder there is any left for 'common-good' use.

Why not pay public servants tax free at the rate after the tax would have been taken?  Then a good half of those doing the servant-work of taking it could be sent into the productive workforce. Less tax would need to be levied.

Taken at source from the ordinarily employed person, the tax-take money is not even seen by them.  Out of sight: out of mind. The taxman likes it that way.

Until the taxman calls. We don't often hear the tales of woe about that nor of the deaths from despair.

The taxman never, ever brings joy and helpfulness, succour or even a bottle of wine to anaesthetise the pain. And those taxmen are rapacious, cruel, pen-pushers.  They do not subscribe to 'Natural Justice'. Justice is another department's business.

Grace Collier is a fine lady with an analytical mind and a sharp pen. 

Her recent  discussion in the Australian can be seen only by those who pay, so I am pleased to have her sit at a table in the Tavern surrounded by customers sitting on their wallets, and tells us herself.

ATO’s tax on natural justice

Don’t be a fool and assume you have certain rights. 

You may think if you are accused of something the presumption of innocence applies unless proven otherwise in a court. You may think the authorities are not allowed to bust down your doors in the middle of the night unless they have a warrant.

You may think no one in the government can just whisk money out of your bank account without your permission, or sell your house from under you, without going through some sort of process first where it has been established that a debt is owed by you and orders are made that it must be paid.

These individual rights you think you have are what separates a free democracy from a dictatorship. In all areas of law, the listed assumptions about your rights are correct 

— except when it comes to taxation.

If a person within the Australian Taxation Office decides that in their opinion you owe a debt — and they have the power to choose the amount — then by law you owe that money, whether that debt is real or not. You can dispute the debt in court, but you must pay it first. 

In the meantime, the ATO is entitled to collect the debt off you in any way it wishes. It has the legal power simply to take the money out of your bank account, sell your house and raid your business or home.

In this country, taxpayers have fewer rights than murderers.  

This was pointed out on Monday night by a tax barrister on the ABC’s Four Corners program. If you missed it, I strongly recommend you watch online.

Last month, this column touched on Minister for Revenue and Financial Services Kelly O’Dwyer’s since-shelved plan to give the ATO power to report alleged debts to external credit agencies (“O’Dwyer unchains tax office bullies”, 17/3). After reading the column, which detailed a submission by Self-Employed Australia, tax commissioner Chris Jordan went to a meeting with officials from two unions. He referenced the column and asked the unions to support him by rebutting my allegations.

Before Jordan’s union mates could put their shoulder to the wheel, the Four Corners program aired. It is now blindingly apparent that the allegations were true, and the sound of wringing hands and gnashing teeth is ricocheting through ATO headquarters. 

Denial, anger, despair: these are the emotions senior executives are experiencing. To them I say: just imagine how your victims felt when they lost their incomes and assets, and had their lives ruined.

These Tax officials, the Department and Ministers will not have their incomes taken away, nor their assets. Their lives will continue as normal, sitting in comfortable offices, and enjoying all the salaries, perks, privileges and rorts, paid for by hard-working taxpayers.  They will get fat pensions, also provided by taxpayers.

Since the program aired the floodgates have opened, and there are many more stories that will come to light in future.

As we all know, thanks to high government spending, there is a desperate and ever-expanding need for revenue, and the evidence of waste is always apparent. 

Just a small example, for your consideration:

Unsolicited emails from a National Disability Insurance Scheme provider regularly land in my inbox. It wants me to register a tax-exempt, not-for-profit social franchise and start a community choir. 

Me, a community choir, can you imagine? 

My choir must accept anyone who wants to sing in it and no auditions can occur because auditions exclude people who cannot sing. I am to hold the choir every week because it helps with loneliness. In return, the NDIS will pay me $500 a year for every NDIS recipient who sings in my choir.

The choir idea sounds like a wonderful thing except taxpayers should not be funding it. 

It is precisely because of this sort of nonsense many people who pay a lot of tax resent it.

One hears a lot of resentment, predominantly from people who pay little or no tax at all, and usually against the wealthy who pay pretty well all the tax that can be usefully deployed. 

The 'average' taxpayer, be he or she in the private sector earning their crust and being taxed without even seeing it; or the public servant who, as said, is paid and has their taxes paid by the taxes of the private sector taxpayer: mostly get more back in government bribes than they pay. They are nett beneficiaries. 

They keep quiet.

But, we in Oz also have the GST. Pretty well everything we buy with what is left to us after tax, carries a 10% tax. Americans laugh at us. But are things any better for them with their Federal taxes, State taxes (we in oz don't have those) and even City taxes ! We don't have those either. 

Nevertheless, the price of a civilised society is taxation. If people do owe a tax debt it must be paid and, while tax minimisation is legal, tax avoidance is not and should be punished. But ATO employees have unfettered power. 

These people, who are not bad people, by the way, sit in their securely tenured public service bubbles without any understanding of what it is like to create their own income, and income for others, out of thin air every month.

Where there is a system in which individuals are issued unfettered and unchecked power, mistakes and abuses will occur, and those are unacceptable because the impact is so great. When an ATO person decides someone owes a debt, and decides to collect it, then people’s lives can be destroyed.

On March 28, Jordan spoke to federal parliament’s Standing Committee on Tax and Revenue. He disclosed that every week during the 2016-17 year, 37 people were pushed by the ATO into bankruptcy or a wind-up of their income-earning activity. And every week 455 people had money taken from their bank account by the ATO without their agreement.

There are some in our community who find the ATO’s powers acceptable. They think the ATO should be able to mercilessly extract any amount of money it wishes from anybody in any way it wants to, without any higher body having any ability to stop it. 

These people belong in a communist dictatorship.

For those who believe in fairness, legal process, justice, social mobility and individual freedom, these are worrying times. 

We have passed a dangerous tipping point. 

Now, most households pay no net tax and, as such, 

the few are supporting the many. 

The majority have an insatiable demand for more and more funds, the minority are providing those funds, and the agency that collects the funds has draconian powers, which it is abusing, causing catastrophic outcomes.

Those with income and assets should be aware their position is precarious and their future fraught with danger. 

Australia looks like a stagnant pond where the piranhas outnumber the goldfish and the water level is dropping.

Grace received a heary cheer for her ladylike rant. She made room at the table for Matt Ridly who widened the issue into areas we rarely get to discuss. He has taken to the Times, which also inhibited our otherwise ability to hear his view by putting it behind a paywall.

Public Sector bureaucracies grow like Topsy. They originate in a social, political or trade need, and then grow, inexorably, to make sure that need continues. The need is nurtured. 

The very thought of eradicating or even alieviating that need is like a toothache to them. Their very existence depends upon it. 

For example: Poverty? Oh yes. They need poverty. The more the better. The more there is the more need for public servants and huge budgets. 

And gravy-trains. And corruption. 

And embezzlement. 

And status. 

One might niaivly think that Capitalism and a sound Marketplace would be a good counter to the unfair and unjust impositions of Government, but that is a mistake. 

Corruption spreads. It is a disease.; a swamp; it sucks down and drowns.

So, to Matt.

The swamp is a huge drag on us all

While the world economy continues to grow at more than 3 per cent a year, mature economies, from Europe to Japan, are coagulating, unable to push economic growth above sluggish. The reason is that we have more and more vested interests against innovation in the private as well as the public sector.

This pub of course.

Continuing prosperity depends on enough people putting money and effort into what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. The normal state of human affairs is what The jurist Sir Henry Maine called a “status” society, in which income is assigned to individuals by authority. 

The shift to a “contract” society, in which people negotiate their own rewards, was an aberration and it’s fading. 

I am writing this from Amsterdam and am reminded we caught the idea off the Dutch, whose impudent prosperity so annoyed the ultimate status king, Louis XIV.

In most western economies, it is once again more rewarding to invest your time and effort in extracting nuggets of status wealth, rather than creating new contract wealth, and it has got worse since the great recession, as zombie firms kept alive by low interest rates prevent the recycling of capital into new ideas. 

A new book by two economists, Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles, called The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality, argues that “rent-seeking” behaviour — the technical term for extracting nuggets — explains the slow growth and rising inequality in the US.

This 'rent-seeking' is the raison d'etre of the public sector. And increasingly some of the larger aspects of the private sector that depends upon Government. And do not get me started on Charities!  

They make the case that, in four areas, there is ever more opportunity to live off “rents” from artificial scarcity created by government regulation: financial services, intellectual property, occupational licensing and land use planning: 

“The rents enjoyed through government favouritism not only misallocate resources in the short term but they also discourage dynamism and growth over the long term.”

 

Here, too, hidden subsidies {extracted, coerced, simply taken at source, from taxpayers} ensure that financial services are a lucrative closed shop; patents and copyrights reward the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries with monopolies known as blockbusters; occupational licensing gives those with requisite letters after their name ever more monopoly earning power; and planning laws drive up the prices of properties. 

Such rent seeking redistributes wealth regressively — that is to say, upwards — by creating barriers to entry and rewarding the haves at the expense of the have-nots. 

True, the tax and benefit system then redistributes income back downwards just enough to prevent post-tax income inequality from rising. 

But government is taking back from the rich in tax that which it has given to them in monopoly.

As an author, my future grandchildren will earn (modest) royalties from my books thanks to lobbying by American corporations to extend copyright to an absurd 70 years after I am dead. Yet there is no evidence that patents and copyrights incentivise innovation, except in a very few cases. Indeed, say Lindsey and Teles, the evidence suggests that “rents that now accrue to movie studios, record companies, software producers, pharmaceutical firms, and other [intellectual property] holders amount to a significant drag on innovation and growth, the very opposite of IP law’s stated purpose.”

[Thomas Babington Macaulay MP summarised an early attempt to extend copyright in a debate thus: "The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on one of the most innocent and most salutary of human pleasures; and never let us forget, that a tax on innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasures." A correspondent sends me the following details of this appalling saga: "Someone noted that there is a divergence in copyright term in the European Union.

All the then member states protect works for the life of the author plus fifty years while West Germany alone protects works for the life of the author plus seventy years. Immediately the copyright publishers suggested this as something in need of harmonisation. But instead of harmonising down to the norm, all the member states were lobbied to harmonise up to the unique German standard. As a result, Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" which was going out of copyright in 1995 was suddenly revived and protected as a copyrighted work throughout the European Union.

Gilbert and Sullivan operettas whose copyright had been controlled by the stultifying hand of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company found themselves in a position to once again stop anyone else performing Gilbert and Sullivan works or creating anything based upon them. 

It is not surprising that, following a brief flowering of new creativity when the Gilbert and Sullivan copyrights initially expired (e.g. Joseph Papp's production of Pirates on Broadway and the West End stage), since their revival by the European Union harmonisation legislation their use have become effectively moribund. A generation of young people are growing up without knowing anything about Gilbert and Sullivan - an art form which, it can be argued, gave birth to the modern American and British musical theatre."]

As for occupational licensing, Professor Len Shackleton of the University of Buckingham argues that it is mostly a racket to exploit consumers. After centuries of farriers shoeing horses, uniquely in Europe in 1975 a private members bill gave the Farriers Registration Council the right to prosecute those who shod horses without its qualification.

I think I may have mentioned before (or perhaps a customer did - that is more likely) that Governments take away your right to do whatever you always did and then sells that right back to you for a licence fee. 

Did Government copy the Mafia or the other way around?

Then there are energy prices. 

Lobbying by renewable energy interests has resulted in a system in which hefty additions are made to people’s energy bills to reward investors in wind, solar and even carbon dioxide-belching biomass plants. The rewards go mostly to the rich; the costs fall disproportionately on the poor, for whom energy bills are a big part of their budgets.

An example of how crony capitalism stifles innovation: Dyson found that the EU energy levels standards for vacuum cleaners were rigged in favour of German manufacturers. The European courts rebuffed Dyson’s attempts to challenge the rules, but Dyson won on appeal and then used freedom of information requests to uncover examples of correspondence between a group of German manufacturers and the EU, while representations by European consumer groups were ignored.

So deeply have most businesses become embedded in government cronyism that it is hard to draw the line between private, public and charitable entities these days. 

Is BAE Systems or Carillion really a private enterprise any more than Oxford University, Oxfam, Oxfordshire county council or the NHS? 

All are heavily dependent on government contracts, favours or subsidies; all are closely regulated; all have well-paid senior managers extracting rent with little risk, and thickets of middle-ranking bureaucrats incentivised to resist change. 

Disruptive start-ups are rare as pandas; the vast majority work for corporate brontosaurs.

Capitalism and the free market are opposites, not synonyms. Some in the Tory party grasp this. Launching Freer, a new initiative to remind the party of the importance of freedom, two new MPs, Luke Graham and Lee Rowley, not only lambast fossilised socialism and anachronistic unions, but also boardrooms “peppered with oligarchical and monopolist cartels”.

One of the most insightful books of recent years was The Innovation Illusion by Fredrik Erixon and Björn Weigel, which argues that big companies increasingly spend their profits not on innovation but on share buybacks and other “rents”. Far from swashbuckling enterprise, much big business is “increasingly hesitant to invest and innovate”. Like Kodak and Nokia they resist having to reinvent themselves even unto death. Microsoft “was too afraid of destroying the value of Windows” to go where software was heading.

As a result, globalisation, far from being a spur to change, is an increasingly conservative force. 

“In several sectors, the growing influence of large and global firms has increasingly had the effect of slowing down market dynamism and reducing the spirit of corporate experimentation”.

The real cause of Trump-Brexit disaffection is not too much change, but too little. 

We need to “radically reduce the restrictive effect of precautionary regulation” and promote a new regulatory culture based on permissionless innovation, Erixon and Weigel say. 

“Western economies have developed a near obsession with precautions that simply cannot be married to a culture of experimentation”. 

Amen.

So, there you have some insightful roughage to chew upon.

I have the drinks to wash it down.

Meanwhile I shall leave you with an 'Opinion' handed down from the bench.

The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. 

And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue"

James Avon Clyde, Lord Clyde KC DL (1863 – 1944)

Lord Justice General and Lord President of the Court of Session from 1920 to 1935

Be good now.

Pax 

Man and woman: It is Simple, Stupid

From time to time I am asked for my view on men and women. I have been around a while and have noticed a difference; those in Universities and legislatures who still have the cradle marks on their backsides and shyte for brains think there should be no differences at all and indeed that just refering to 'man' and 'woman' is an insult somehow. To them there have to be a large and increasing number of sexes, perhaps a different one for everyone. Or neuter. 

Now, I admit also (shock, horror) that the differences between (the bog-standard, Mk 1, created in the Likeness)  men and women are many. The quality of men and women are also matters for observation and understanding; and just how they go about their lawful occasions, which show up and put into sharp relief those differences and inequality of quality. It can get deep and complicated.

But it behoves to simplify sometimes.

CherryPie stopped in for a fine wine and introduced her friend, Fr Dwight, who had a few things to say that did just that. Simplify. I hope my beloved Southern Gal notes that between Cherie, Dwight and m'self, we add something to her quest for understanding.

What is a Man? 

What is a Woman?

I was reading Phyllis Zagano’s book about women’s ordination and came across a peculiar thought. Ms. Zagano argues that there is “ontological equality” between men and women because both are created in God’s image. That seems fair enough.

 https://dwightlongenecker.com/what-is-a-man-what-is-a-woman/

But then she goes on to say that this truth implies a “single nature anthropology”. I’m not quite sure what that means because I am not the academic theological bright spark that Ms. Zagano clearly is.

However, what I think it sounds like in ordinary people talk is, “Men and women are not only equal but they’re the same.” 

I don’t know how else to interpret the mysterious phrase “single nature anthropology”. 

But what does this mean? I can’t get my head around it because if there is a “single nature anthropology” then at some point outside of this life does that mean that our masculinity and femininity doesn’t matter or that it ceases to exist? Does that mean in heaven we are all androgynous ghostly beings? If this isn’t what it means, then I’m stumped.

You are not alone !! 

Anyway. I got thinking further about this and asked myself, “Well, what IS a man anyway?” and for that matter “What IS a woman?”

How would YOU define a man or a woman?

So I came up with an answer: 

“A man is a father or a potential father. A woman is a mother or a potential mother.”

Think about it. Biologically a man is defined by his male genitalia and hormones. A woman is defined by her female reproductive system and her hormones, so these factors determine biologically what a man is and what a woman is, and these defining characteristics’ purpose is reproduction. In other words, to make the man a father and to make the woman a mother.

If you take “father” and “mother” out of the equation, then how do you define “man” and “woman”?

Try it. See? It’s tough. 

Try to define what it is to be a man without the concept of “Father”. Try to define what it is to be a woman without the concept of “mother”.

There is a legislated trend in many western nations to do away with the terms Mother and Father so that they do not appear in 'official' documents. Like Birth Certificates and Passports. They are considered to be 'Offensive'.  Offensive to whom is rarely made clear. Transgendered loonies? Non-sexist sexists? 

I have yet to speak to anyone who claims to be offended, but there are always some who claim on their behalf. Personally, I find the tems 'Parent A and Parent B to be offensive, but I am pretty normal.

Then I remembered that after he created man and woman as equals, the Genesis story says God gave them the first commandment: “Be fruitful and multiply.”

In other words, “Adam-you become a father. Eve-you become a mother. That’s what I created you for.”

Actually I understand He said that as He evicted them from Eden for their naughtiness and lounging around naked all day, and it may have been a polite form of another well known and more modern phrase. (Four and three letters).

(I shall have to mention saying this at my next Confession.)

So, if I am correct that a man is a man because he is a father or potential father, and a woman is a woman because she is a mother or a potential mother, no wonder our society is so confused about gender identity.

For the last fifty years we’ve been so busy trying to turn off the babies and NOT be mothers and fathers. 

Contraception tried hard and was followed through by the straight-forward murder of babies in the womb. We weep.

Because so much of society has decimated the role of mother and father for all sorts of reasons, a fallout from that is that people not only don’t know what mothers and fathers are they also don’t know what men and women are.

There’s more: why are we in this state? Because of a contraceptive culture. Because of artificial contraception and recreational sex and abortion as contraceptive, a whole generation have also lost the idea of what their reproductive organs are for.

That equipment is for being and fully becoming a man and a father and being and fully becoming a woman and a mother. 

But if those organs are used as pleasure toys, then we forget what they are really for and so we deny and block out being mothers and fathers and we therefore forget what it really means to be men and women.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming Phyllis Zagano for this bizarre state of affairs, and I don’t think her strange notion of a “single nature anthropology” is consciously connected, but it is philosophically connected. 

I think she’s jumped on the feminist bandwagon and is promoting (consciously or unconsciously) a trend toward a kind of neutered humanity in which there is no longer a distinction between men and women.

Fr Dwight Longenecker

Perhaps I am overthinking it, and maybe I’ve got it completely wrong but there it is, for what its worth.

But just to be on the safe side, I’m going to keep my beard.

I keep my beard too. A lot of time is spent quite unconsciously stroking it ! 

Thoughtfully.

Simplification sweeps away detail. One can see the forest, unimpeded by trees in the way.  That is useful for establishing some view of the Grand Scheme of things. But those individual trees - the qualities, talents, abilities, aspirations etc will bark nonetheless. They will not be ignored.

Professor Peterson tackles some of those, from inside and out.

As he shows, without specifically saying it ( I won't do a Cathy Newman, don't worry) is that being a man or a woman has become considerably more difficult since the Garden of Eden days. Although there remains a great deal of lounging around naked.

No doubt we shall have to make furniture from some of the more woody bits of the forest of Knowledge, to sit upon and ponder.

And to have a drink and a think.

Pax