Cllr. Gavin Ayling

Anyone who has known me for a long time will know that for all my criticism of the modern, socialist green movement, I have always been one who cares deeply about the environment. Before it was cool I used to chide friends who didn’t visit the recycling point (before doorstep collections) and I have always been amazed that you get free stuff by composting.

So, despite my criticism of the modern, socialist green movement, I bought an Electrisave recently and have enjoyed (perhaps too much) seeing what impact each device has on power consumption.

At the rate of 8.192 pence per kWh (kilowatt hour) a 100W lightbulb uses 0.6 pence per hour. A 20″ LCD TV and two 19″ LCD computer monitors don’t register any cost at all. A kettle uses a comparitively amazing amount (around 20 pence per hour) and an electric shower uses 38 pence per hour.

My PC (which is reasonably specced) uses a little less than a lightbulb and when it is on standby makes no impact on the meter at all. Fascinatingly, though, a 20″ CRT computer monitor registers a little less than a lightbulb on its own. And a 25″ CRT TV uses a little more than a lightbulb.

The most expensive things are kettles, electric showers and vacuum cleaners. But the most surprising thing of all was my Xbox 360. While that is running it costs between 1.8 pence and 2 pence per hour. When two PCs, an LCD TV, two LCD monitors, one CRT monitor, the fridge and double-height freezer, two cordless telephone base stations and two cordless telephone charger points as well as all the household’s standby lights and LCD clocks were running, the Xbox 360 doubled the amount of power being used!

So if you have an Xbox 360, and you care about your bills or wasting fossil fuels (or even CO₂ emissions if you’re an extremist) turn off your Xbox 360 when you’re not using it.

Oh, and in case you’re interested, a Wii doesn’t register even 1/10 of a penny while it is running.

The Electrisave is a sinch to install and works beautifully, I’d strongly recommend them to anyone who asked.

Apparently two-weekly collections of rubbish (that is collections every two weeks, rather than two every week) are now in place in more than half of Councils.

Some commentators are making this about the political colour of the local Council but the truth is many Councils around the country are having to do this and from all parties. For the sake of clarity, Adur will not collect two-weekly.

But the reason for the two-weekly collections in other places is (like the change we are considering: the merger of Adur and Worthing’s Services) because of funding. Despite the fact that council tax is rising at as near to the 5% that central government allows each year, the amount of funding that the councils receives is still reducing. To exacerbate this, the government is increasing regulation and responsibilities for local councils every year without providing the necessary increase in funding that that inevitably causes.

If you are angry about bi-weekly collections, by all means tell your Councillor, but also tell your MP and Gordon Brown. All aspects of British society are drowing in ever increasing numbers of forms and regulations –Councils too, as I say — but there’s no reason this couldn’t be reversed. Don’t blame those locally who are trying to squeeze some service out of their meagre financial rations; instead blame the Labour Party centrally and tell those in power in London that you know who’s to blame.

John Sargeant exacerbated the nanny-state mentality that has been so prevalent in this country as long as I can remember on his programme tonight (Driving Me Crazy on ITV1)… Gah!

The test on screen now is to see whether children can be seen standing behind a 4×4. Some responsibility has to be held by other road users — it is just unreasonable to subject 4×4s to different visibility requirements than vans.

I agree with the point of the programme: it would be better if people didn’t drive 4×4s. But the implication is that banning these cars from particular areas or from roads altogether is the answer to this.

It has been suggested that a Scottish Prime Minister with no mandate from the English people should have no say in Housing policy. Unusually for me, I am going to come to his defence.

First, I know immigration is often blamed for the housing shortage, but do we really want to get to a point where Vodafone cannot employ people they need from abroad where the position cannot be filled domestically? Immigration cannot be blanket-stopped in a First World economy.

Also one should note that the first cause of the housing shortage — the one that makes most difference to house prices and the number needed — is the number of smaller households. Single people and older people are living alone more than was historically the case and the number of divorces is also having an impact.

Finally, the people deciding housing policy in England are currently the unelected Regional Assemblies. Quite honestly I would rather Her Majesty’s Government, with the mandate of all Britain (including a majority of English MPs), was the one to decide where we have the new homes we need than Regional Assemblies.

We have a stark choice between having a European-style system of home ownership where only the rich can afford to buy and the majority rent, a country full of high-rise soul-less buildings or one of a few fewer fields. I know that the answer is no single one of those, but compromise must be sought in my humble opinion.

If you’re worried about the environment or (in London) your wallet, then you may be tempted to buy a G-Wiz — the electric car.

Don’t.

The G-Wiz crash test at only 30mph is horrendous: see it here.

If you’re worried about the environment, worry about yourself first.

Oliver Letwin today explained Cameron Conservativism in a way I believe was not intended for the lay audience. This explanation assumed that the argument about free-market vs. socialism had been won. Mr Letwin started out by saying that Thatcher’s economic policy had been accepted as the right way to go. He didn’t say, though I suspect he’d agree, that the result of the French Presidential election should be the final evidence of that victory.

But then he went on to explain the clear-blue water between the Conservatives and Labour. Something that I believe my party should have done long ago:

… the targets and directives, the reorganisations, schemes and initiatives. Direct government intervention has been brought – with the best of intentions, though often with notable lack of success – to bear on schools and hospitals, police officers and neighbourhoods, local authorities and universities. The State has been seen as the source of enlightened social action, just as it was once seen as the source of enlightened economic action.

The explanation leaves plenty of wiggle-room but I summarise it thus:

• Brown would like to use the profits of taxation (gained from a free-market, not nationalised industries) to attempt to provide those remaining public services that consensus appears to have decided should be provided by the State.
• Cameron (and so Osborn only by implication bizarrely) would like to use the profits of taxation to provide a framework within which charities and industry can provide public services.

I understand why the first couple of commenters (Andy Wigmore and Peter Gooderham at the time of writing) find this difficult to follow, but the fact that they’re not willing to try shows the reason style-over-substance rules supreme in modern England.

But back to the point, what is the fundamental difference between the Cameron and Brown positions as I have illustrated them? It seems to me that the difference is that the State, while involved, does not do the providing directly — the provision is outsourced.

If that is the case, then what has changed? Conservatives have always been about privatisation. If we’re to help provide services in a new way, isn’t this just gloss? Have we really decided that the party should no longer even debate the need for state-provided refuse collection? Could the remaining public services not be better provided by a private company entirely free from state intervention?

It occurred to me today, coincidentally, how much state-licensing and intervention in public transport is the cause of its lack of take-up. Environmentalists have been decrying us evil car drivers since they decided that the being green allowed their socialism to survive. But I wonder if they have considered the counter-argument?

If a bus company could be started by you or I tomorrow, by buying a bus, painting a number on the front and perhaps dropping some leaflets through local doors, how many more entrpreneurs would try? How many more bus-routes would there be servicing those routes that people actually want?

A local bus company started a trial service recently but only provided the service (from a suburb to a railway station) in the morning. The trial found that people did not use the service (because they couldn’t get home) so the route was abandoned. But if you or I had our own bus company, would we not put more effort in? Providing a service at each end of the likely user’s day?

Transport is one of those key areas which is ignored as a purely old-fashioned econocentric debate. Let’s have that debate!

Quentin Langley, in his comment, puts it best so I will leave the final thought to him:

I believe Milton Friedman said — and I paraphrase — that he won all the economic arguments and lost all the political arguments. That is an important addition to the paradigm shifts that Oliver Letwin is discussing. It is true that free-market ideas have triumphed in the economic debate: but they remain, largely, unimplemented. The size of the state over the past 30 years or so has varied from around 38% to around 43% and is currently at the top end of that range. I would hope the Conservatives can develop an agenda to bring that down, at least to the bottom end of that range, and preferably well below. Otherwise, the intellectual triumph has been for nought.

Quentin Langley, Woking, UK

I started this reply on Robert Jackman’s blog and realised it was turning into a long rant. So here it is instead:

You see Enoch Powell’s speech wasn’t wrong in sentiment, it was just that is was racist. His warning about multiculturalism has been shown to be right and will be shown that way more in the future. In Channel 4’s poll 41% (Update: thanks Stop Whining it’s actually 33%) of Muslims want Sharia law here in the UK — that’s not hysteria, that’s a fact. If that proportion doesn’t grow with the world’s increasingly extreme religious groups (Christians and Muslims mostly) then we will still have a very large number of Muslims in this country who believe in Sharia law by 2050.

That’s not scare-mongering.

But the environmental thing is.

You said “Climate change could tear the very fabric of our everyday lives to shreds”

I have yet to read anything that shows me how this can be done. In El Nino the net effect to the US agricultural sector was an increase in yield. The US produces 25% of the world’s food. If global warming turns out to happen as per the approximations then we will have slightly more food. A dire warning indeed.

If sea levels start to rise (they haven’t yet — check) then we may have trouble on the coasts, but that will be minor trouble. It won’t be the loss of the south of England or the islands off Scotland. It may be, at worst, that we need more defences along the East Anglian coast.

Environmentalism is a great way for the left-wing parties (Lib Dems, Labour and the Tories (oops)) to tax us more. We needn’t pay these taxes, they say, because they are only be used as a disincentive to non-green activities. But what of people who must fly, or want to, God forbid, go on holiday? Should these people sacrifice a good life because some scientists have made some wild predictions that haven’t come true and so have made some more? No. Actually what we should be doing is saying to ourselves: Oil dependence is causing wars, damaging the ability of third world countries to progress and is silly as it is a finite resource — let’s do some research into alternatives.

Taxing petrol has not reduced car use — it’s just damaged the economic effectiveness of those people who would rather not stand on a wet and rainy street corner waiting for a bus full of damp people sneezing or worse. Taxing aeroplanes and other, apparently non-green activities will not change behaviour. Tax is not a behavioural management tool — it is a revenue device.

How many people, for example, have given up smoking because of the cost? People pay such high tax not because they are keen to top up the coffers but because the government has decided it wants people not to do something. How liberal is that?

William Hague did say that there was a danger from the Euro and do you know, I don’t think the Italians or Germans would disagree now. One exchange rate across Europe — has that been tried? (Yes) Did it fail? (Yes) Should we try it again? (Er, no).

And Michael Howard did not turn “tabloid paranoia over immigration into a political weapon” — he made policy that is much in keeping with what the majority of people want. Immigration is not a bad thing in and of itself, but the amount of immigration we have had recently has been too much to allow sensible assimilation or cultural attitudes.

The Conservatives may have a historical reputation for “whipping up hysteria” but that is only because socialists make such a hash of running the country. It is not hysterical, for example, to suggest that the mismanagement of the NHS since 1992 (sorry Mr Major) has caused it to come nearly to its knees in England.

And the thing I wish most was that the Conservative Party was the one saying the things I have said above. Increasingly they are not and it is UKIP which is taking the libertarian and economic issues as their own.

But Mr Jackman, I like your writing so onto the blogroll you do go…

Comments are here for this post

Time for some lazy blogging:

I generally find Samizdata a little heavy going so I only dip in there from time-to-time. So if you’re the same as me, there are a few recently which really cannot be missed.

When Johnathan Pearce asked Which law would you like to break? Michael Farris’ excellent answer was: “I would love to break the law of unintended consequences but there would probably be a down side I hadn’t counted on…”

The folly of always voting for the lesser evil is an excellent post by Perry De Havilland which raises some important questions. Do read it.

And finally, in reference to my last post about Michael Crichton some more people have noticed that having the audacity to question the ‘truth’ is risky.