Martin Durkin's blog

Keynesian Debt Junkies

Martin Durkin — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:49:36 +0000

Zealous Keynesians (like Martin Wolf and Paul Krugman) defend their indefensible position (huge state debt and massive public spending are just fine, while ‘austerity’ and tax-cuts are a bad idea) with the dogged tenacity of Davy Crocket at the Alamo.

Martin Wolf tries to support his case, in the Financial Times this week, by telling us to look at the industrial revolution. Back then, he says, there was a hefty government debt (from fighting the French), and yet the British economy was able to grow!

But Wolf is as poor a historian as he is an economist. First, he tells us that for years, between 1815 and the middle of the century, government debt interest payments accounted for close to half of all UK public spending. What he fails to mention (or perhaps doesn’t know) is that general government spending back then was miniscule by today’s standard.

Wolf also says that it is all the more remarkable that Britain was able to grow its way out of debt because it had ‘a very limited tax-raising capacity’. It is not true that Britain had an especially ‘limited tax raising capacity’. But it IS true that Britain had very, very low taxes (by today’s obscene standard).

Taxes and government spending were considered evils to be avoided as far as possible. In the words of the great historian of the period, J. H. Clapham, the classical liberal political leaders of the day ‘had never seen the least glint of romance in public expenditure.’

As for government borrowing, Clapham points to the ‘ the fearful burden of debt’, which contemporaries believed acted as a severe drag on the prosperity of the country: “the debt” said Sir Henry Parnell in 1830, was “justly considered as a heavy burden on the industry of the country.” Parnell attacked the parasitic “tax-eaters” who were bleeding the productive economy.

We should be grateful to Martin Wolf for reminding us of those golden times, when governments valued thrift, and taxes were rock bottom. This (not government debt) was the secret of their success.

This heroic age of British capitalism teaches us a valuable lesson, and it flatly contradicts Wolf and his Keynesian debt-junky chums. We must slash government spending and cut taxes ferociously.

P.S. Wolf & Co try to argue that big government debt is the consequence (rather than the cause) of slow economic growth. Let us be clear, big government debt is the consequence of irresponsible and self-serving politicans pandering to the inexhaustable demands of their friends and relations in the parasitic, tax-consuming state sector.

Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary

Martin Durkin — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:44:48 +0000

SHUT your eyes and think of Margaret Thatcher (twin-set, hair-do, hand bag, smells nice) and Fidel Castro (combat fatigues, bushy beard, revolver, smells of backy). Which one is the firebrand working-class revolutionary? The answer, of course, is Mrs Thatcher. The vile tyrannt Castro enslaved and impoverished the lower orders in Cuba. Thatcher enriched and liberated them in Britain.

The reason the Left hates Thatcher so much is that she stole the working class from them. And she was able to do this because she understood and shared their aspirations.

Behind the bluster about her death this week are two very different visions of the working class. According to the Left, the proles are oppressed, and the source of that oppression is economic freedom. The Left wants the working class living in state housing, travelling on state transport, working in state-controlled jobs, receiving a state education. The Left fights not to change, but to preserve working practices and “working class communities”, as it offensively calls them.

Mrs Thatcher had a sneaking suspicion that people wanted to own their own home, perhaps in a leafy suburb rather than a council estate. She had the idea that “working class” people wanted the things she wanted – to leave money to their children, to own a few shares, maybe start a little company, go on foreign holidays, own a car – maybe even two cars! She was right. They did want this, which is why ordinary working people voted for her in huge numbers.

The shop keepers and builders and taxi drivers of Basildon (formerly Labour) thought she was God’s gift. Mrs Thatcher saw voluntary profitable economic exchange as an essential and vital part of a truly human existence. Her commitment to economic freedom was moral and inspired by a (Christian) love of and confidence in other people.

The “market” was not a wicked thing. It was lively and sociable, she said. It brought spices and coffee and bananas into the shops. In her day, it brought Fred Astaire to the local cinema. And most ordinary Britons had the good sense to agree (unlike the Left, our “intelligentsia” and the Tory old guard).

To the horror of the Left, Margaret Thatcher re-defined the class struggle. The socialists argued that “the workers” were being ripped off by “the bosses”. But when workers looked at their wages and saw almost half had gone, they knew it wasn’t the bosses who had taken it. It was the state. “Socialism” was reduced to fleecing hard-working people in the private sector to keep the middle class public sector gravy train rolling.

The new class struggle, as defined by the revolutionary Thatcher, was between Tax Producers (in the productive economy) and Tax Consumers (in the parasitic public sector). The regions that voted Labour were dominated by public sector workers and benefit recipients (they wanted to keep the tap on). The regions that voted for Thatcher were populated by the suckers who footed the bill (and rather resented it).

All the talk today of “austerity” would cause Thatcher to boil with rage. “Whose austerity are we talking about?” she would thunder. “Theirs or ours?” (to paraphrase Trotsky). Less public spending means a lighter burden on the productive economy. She knew it. The good people of Basildon knew it. Perhaps someone should tell George Osborne.

Much rubbish has been said of Thatcher in the last week. We’re told that her deregulation of the City (which broke the old boy network and let in the barrow boys) ushered in an era of greed and was the cause of the great crash. Let’s spell it out so even Robert Peston can understand. The crash was the result of the preceding credit boom. Credit booms are the result of governments pumping too much money into the economy – which Thatcher was adamantly against. She knew why politicians like doing it: phony booms make them look good and it’s a way of stealing money from savers without the saps even noticing. Thatcher also knew the terrible consequence: pumping money in lowers interest rates, encouraging debt and discouraging saving. If only Thatcher had privatised currency too, to prevent politicians abusing their monopolistic control of it!

We’re also told that Thatcher damaged manufacturing. Again, let’s set the record straight. Manufacturing does well when it makes a good profit. Higher taxes mean lower profits. It is the burden of supporting Britain’s obese public sector (now roughly the same size as our private sector) which is crushing the life out of capitalism (manufacturing included).

There will be plenty of people lining the route of Thatcher’s funeral. But they won’t be the toffs down from Hampstead. They’ll be ordinary folk from Basildon. The sort of people who used to vote Labour. And unlike the regimented mourners at the funeral of a Socialist dictator, the sorrow will be genuine. This is one revolutionary who deserves our gratitude and affection

RED NOSE RELIEF - Poverty Porn from the BBC

Martin Durkin — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 11:22:16 +0000

It is the hypocrisy of the BBC’s Red Nose Relief which is most upsetting. What a lie. What a charade.

A bunch of light entertainers are ferried out to Africa at the licence-fee payers’ expense, and they are upset to find poverty and disease. They then tell us that, by calling the BBC and donating a few quid, we can do our bit to make things a tiny bit better for a small number of these unfortunate wretches.

The question is, should we take this human suffering seriously? I, like those BBC celebs, have been to some really miserable parts of Africa. I have seen a child die of malaria. If we are serious about addressing this, then we should be talking angrily about the effective prohibition of DDT (one of the great inhuman achievements of the green movement) which has led to the unnecessary death of millions of people in poor countries from his horrendous disease.

The celebs noted, with sadness in their eyes, that few of these poor people enjoyed the benefits of electricity in their homes. They might have added that this causes incredible suffering and early death (especially among women), from suffocating indoor smoke, as people burn wood and cow dung in their homes to cook food.

But if we are serious about this terrible problem, we should talk about the provision of cheap electricity, from coal-fired power plants (there is plenty of coal in Africa, and indeed oil), and we should angrily attack those green Westerners who use the carrot of international aid to force African countries to adopt absurdly expensive and inefficient ‘sustainable’ energy policies.

The celebs noted, repeatedly, how poor these people are. But if we really care about this, why was there no mention of the single greatest barrier to economic progress in Africa – the disgusting EU trade tariffs which prevent African farmers from selling their produce into the world’s richest market?

There is a fundamental dishonesty in Red Nose Relief – that a few million … even a hundred million … will do the trick. That what Africa needs is an ‘appeal’. The BBC does not take seriously the suffering which it captures on camera. Where are the BBC programmes featuring calls for abolition of cruel EU tariff barriers? Where are the BBC programmes featuring calls for cheap coal-fired electricity generation in Africa - denouncing the peasant-worshipping, coal-hating, anti-growth policies of the global warming establishment? Instead of giving us the truth about DDT the BBC gives us the awful Pandora’s Box, Adam Curtis’ gushing, idiotic and offensive tribute to Silent Spring – the book which led to the prohibition of DDT. I don’t think the BBC really gives a monkey's about malaria. Indeed, the bulk of the BBC’s ‘Africa’ output features animals, not humans (of whom Attenborough tells us, there are too many in Africa).

No, the BBC’s almost pornographic use of poverty is just a springboard for a light-ent special. Red Nose Relief is a cynical assault on the senses. It is supposed to make us think that the BBC is fundamentally decent. It makes me think the exact opposite.

PS. The one exception last night was my wonderful brother-in-law Ben Smith, aka Doc Brown, whose hilarious rap Equality Street was the highlight of the evening.

KISS GOODBYE TO JAMES DELINGPOLE

Martin Durkin — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 11:56:22 +0000

If you want to know what an ‘Ofcom for the press’ will do, ask me. The ‘reasonable’ restraints of Ofcom have resulted in a shocking restriction of free speech. Ofcom acts like the polite face of a left-Statist lynch mob.

Broadcasters are wary of incurring the wrath on Ofcom. They are nervous of the forced on-screen apologies (which can be cited in support of legal action against the channel), the hefty fines and the threat of having the channel shut down.

It is well known in the industry (ask any Channel Four lawyer) that if Ofcom receives a lot of complaints, it feels under pressure to uphold a couple. The regulator is anxious not to be portrayed as ‘toothless’. And Channel Four and other broadcasters know that if a programme rocks the boat (as mine tend to) they are likely to receive a lot of complaints (in my case from angry Guardian readers).

Very quickly it becomes a ‘brave’ decision to commission a programme that rocks the boat. A commissioning editor might get away with one or two minor Ofcom decisions against them, but any more and they jeopardise their career. They will not advance to higher management. They may have to resign. Film-makers, for their part, risk their careers every time they make a film that goes against the consensus or upsets vocal lobby groups. I have been warned countless times that I must be mad for daring to take on the greens, or for making shows demanding radical cuts in public spending. (After The Great Global Warming Swindle it was three years before Channel Four felt able to commission another film from me). These shows invite complaints to Ofcom, and Ofcom judgments ruin careers.

Ofcom's regulations may seem perfectly ‘reasonable’ on the written page, but their effect is far from reasonable in practice and, for all the reassurances of our nice reasonable Statist politicians, they kill dead free speech.

Let us take, for example, Ofcom’s demand for ‘balance’. Sounds eminently reasonable. Who could argue against it? I recently made a film for Channel Four (a ‘brave’ commission) called Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story. For this film I interviewed a whole load of MPs and asked them if they knew the size of the official national debt, and the difference between the debt and the deficit. As it happens, almost every Labour MP was utterly clueless, the Lib-Dem MPs were slightly less dim but not much, and the Tory MPs almost all had a very good idea of both.

But when my excellent Channel Four lawyer reviewed the show (the man is dedicated to keeping me in the industry despite my Kamikaze inclinations) he said it wouldn’t wash. For ‘balance’ we would need to make out that all MPs were equally stupid, which we did.

Behind ‘balance’ is a great deal of bias. Those who dominate public discourse get to shut out the critical voices. For example, all those TV and radio shows which take global warming as a fact, feel under no pressure to ‘balance’ their views with those of skeptics. But when I made The Great Global Warming Swindle I had to provide written proof to Ofcom that I had sought interviews with key global warming believers, and that they had, of their own choice, refused to take part. This was balance.

On the BBC’s Today programme politicians are regularly berated for not doing enough about this or that, or for threatening worthy projects with their cuts. How many times, in the past ten years, have you heard the Statist BBC reporters asking about the shocking levels of debt? Or demanding of politicians with new proposals: ‘Who’s paying for all this? Where’s all the money coming from?’ Where is the balance here?

A famous Supreme Court decision in America warned of the “chilling effect” of regulating free speech. Regulation, which seems perfectly ‘reasonable’ on paper, has devastating results. This form of the censorship is not obvious. It operates in large measure by inducing so-called 'self-censorship' or a wariness about speaking out. And this makes it all the more sinister and hard to counter. When we hear (as I did this morning) politicians declaring that the press should be ‘accountable’ (in a reasonable sort of way), it should induce panic.

In our newspapers, at the moment, we have fantastically popular, radical writers like James Delingpole and Janet Daley and Rod Liddle and Toby Young and Simon Heffer and Melanie Philips. I am often asked why, on our TVs, we don’t we see much of these enormously popular columnists.

The trouble is, if you allowed these writers to do on TV what they do in the papers, you would find yourself up to here in Ofcom complaints. And complaints lead to judgements. And judgements ruin careers. To give these people space on TV would be ‘brave’.

Mark my words, if there is an ‘Ofcom for the press’ you can kiss goodbye to the Rod Liddles and James Delingpoles. Harriet Harman may be pleased, but the rest of us should be very worried indeed.