Investing in Poverty

It is worth bearing in mind what politicians mean when they talk about “investing” in something.

It means one of three things:

• Taking money from ordinary people, thereby preventing those people from spending it on what that want or need, and instead, and spending it on something else. Such taxation might be direct taxation (mainly income tax) or taxation of corporations (mainly corporation tax) which does much the same thing, only indirectly. Or
• Borrowing money, which means that future generations will have to pay more and more tax just to keep up with the interest payments, let alone pay the loans off. Or
• Printing money aka devaluing the currency aka “quantitative easing”. Which you might characterise as a form of taxation or as a form of surreptitious theft. Either way, it is a process whereby the government helps itself to some new wealth obtained by making everyone else poorer.[1]

Sometimes, these “investments” result in something useful. Like a new stretch of motorway. But more usually, they have proved to be a complete waste of money. Like subsidising yet more windmills, which only work when the wind is blowing (we already have enough power when the wind is blowing). Or putting roadblocks on our streets, in the pursuit of “15 minute cities”.  Or reforming the way we educate children, which has (over the last several decades) led to our children being less and less well educated.

Pendulum Arbitration Webinar

The Law Society of Australia is hosting a webinar on Pendulum Arbitration of 5th June. Philip McNamara will be in the chair and I will be presenting.

Details are at the LSSA website. The content of their notice is:

Wednesday 5 June, 2024 | 04:30pm – 06:00pm | In-Person & by Webinar
1.5 CPD units (Practice Management/Business Skills)

Presenter: Robert Fenwick Elliott, Pendulum Arbitrator and Mediator
Chair: Philip McNamara KC, Murray Chambers

An explanation of what pendulum arbitration (aka baseball arbitration) is, what its advantages are, how it works in practice and how to implement it. This session will provide a practical guide for practitioners to when to recommend pendulum arbitration, how to implement it, and what to expect.
Pendulum arbitration combines the speed and cost advantages of mediation with the certainty of a binding result. It is successfully used elsewhere in the common law world but is still in its infancy in Australia. Practitioners who are early adopters, and their clients, have an opportunity for significant advantage over those who are limited to more traditional dispute resolution techniques.

Registration Fees:
Platinum/GDLP Members: Free
Members (admitted more than three years): $110
Members (admitted less than three years): $85
Non-Members: $160

It is never easy getting unfamiliar ways of doing things adopted, but hopefully, practitioners will attend this presentation and start using pendulum arbitration in suitable cases. Once practitioners are familiar with the process, it should take off.

Quiz XX – The Least Known of the 21?

Those who follow Formula One motor racing will know that Lando Norris is the 21st British driver to win a grand prix.

Which is the only one of them whose surname begins with “G”?

Twenty-one today!

I was very pleased to see that Lando Norris won his first Formula One race yesterday. The superlatives are thrown around at the end of every race, but they often sound somewhat mechanical. This time, the jubilation was very real. It was heartwarming to see such genuine congratulations from his competitors, and of course his team.

This takes the number of British drivers who have won Formula One championship races to 21, which is far more any other nation has achieved. I have remarked before upon the extraordinary success of both British drivers and British racing car constructors. It is notable that the British have invented the considerable majority of the best sports and games in the world, but rarely dominate in those sports and games these days. Ironically, racing cars is something which was invented by the French.

That Sinking Feeling

It is interesting to note that M1A2 Abrams tanks have been withdrawn from the Ukrainian front. The reason. It turns out that these tanks, supposedly the most advanced tank in the world and costing some $10 million each,  are being destroyed by drones which cost as little as $500.[1] It seems that 5 out of the 31 Abrams MBTs had already been destroyed.

Which makes one wonder if it is really so smart for Australia to be spending hundreds of billions of dollars on some submarines, as it plans to do. They are going to be made of metal. And advances in ultra-sensitive magnetometers might well soon mean that metal submarines will be readily detectable. They will need to be made of carbon fibre or some such if they are not to end up on the sea floor, the victims of underwater drones.

And anyway, do we really need people on submarines? I cannot help thinking that underwater drones, like the Mantas,  are the way to go.

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[1] That, at any rate, is what some reports say. Others say the tanks have been taken out by anti-tanks missiles, which is not much better. If “better” is the right word.

Pearls before Swinney?

It is being reported that John Swinney, who – it is said – has been at the centre of every failure of the SNP in Scotland over the last 20 years or so, is going to become its new leader.

The previous leaders of the SNP (an hence Scotland) have been pretty poor. But there is good reason to believe that this one will be even worse.

Oh dear. That does not bode well.

Misogyny or feminism? Which is worse?

Clearly, misogyny is unattractive, dumb and unkind to women.  There is no need for me here to expand on this proposition.

But it seems to me that feminism is just as bad, causing damage which is more indirect but equally invidious.

One problem with feminism, of course, is that it typically equates equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.  Some feminists purport to understand this concept in the abstract, but they almost always abandon it in the application. Similarly, feminists will not infrequently acknowledge that there are some material differences between men and women, both in terms of the body and the brain (you might reasonably say here that the brain is part of the body. But that is really another way of making the same point). But again, this acknowledgement tends to evaporate in the application.

Another problem with feminism is its implicit assumption that if a man acknowledges a woman’s attractiveness, then that must necessarily infer that he fails to appreciate her other qualities. In fact, the opposite is true. If a man finds a woman sexually attractive, he is more likely – not less likely – to think her intelligent, witty and good company.  Especially if he is at liberty to acknowledge how he feels, rather than keep those feelings buttoned up as a guilty secret.

Luvvie Tattoos

I wonder why so many actors today think is a good idea to get tattooed? Surely, visible tattoos make them less attractive for casting purposes? At any rate for movies and TV shows set in the past, which is a good many of them. Except, I guess, for movies about gypsies, sailors or career criminals.

Could it be that they are anxious to hang onto their unemployment benefits?

The Next Shibboleth to Fall?

It is now, I think, pretty widely recognised that virtually all measures taken by Western governments in response to Covid nineteen were counter-productive. The lockdowns achieved nothing, and were a disaster, causing considerable damage both to the economy and to the mental health of many people. Putting people on ventilators was pretty much a death sentence. The Nightingale hospitals were never used, and were a huge waste of taxpayers’ money. The politicians lied when they said that the vaccines were safe and effective; they neither prevented people from getting Covid, nor prevented them from passing it on to others, but did cause side-effects – including serious injury and death – to at least some people (we are still waiting for a proper analysis of whether these vaccines did more harm than good overall).  There are still many, of course, who stick to the “official” line, including drugs companies which made a fortune from the vaccines, the totalitarians who just loved the additional control that all of this gave governments and, of course, the vast number of people who uncritically believed what they were told, and are now understandably reluctant to admit that they were gulled.

On that front, the tide has well and truly started to turn.

Which absurd shibboleth will be the next to fall?

It might be multiculturalism: the ridiculous belief that it is in the interests of a Western nation to admit large numbers of racially, religiously and culturally different people (particularly from Africa and the Middle East) and expect that something good will come of that. In all sorts of countries where that has happened, we are now seeing as substantial popular resistance to unrestricted immigration, including overreactions that is starting to look like xenophobia. That is hardly a surprise.

The Little Old Ladies of Switzerland

I have been reading the judgment of the European Court of human rights in Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and Others v Switzerland. It is grim reading. You might be shocked by it – unless of course you already know just how incompetent and dangerous that Court is.

The background may be briefly stated. In 2021 the Swiss government adopted some proposed legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but that proposal was rejected by the Swiss people in a referendum. The first applicant in this case (whose name may roughly be translated as “Old Swiss Women Bothered by the Climate”) evidently did not like the way the referendum vote went, and brought this case to force the Swiss Government to override it. They lost at first instance, and then again in the Federal Administrative Court, but have now won on the 3^rd and final appeal to the Grand Chamber.

The decision is based on junk science, is bad in law and is even worse as a matter of politics. It will add a good deal of fuel to the fire of those who think the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) pretty sharpish, ideally before its court (the ECtHR) purports to prevent the UK from dealing effectively with its illegal immigration problem.

As to the science, the judgment collects together the most alarmist pronouncements from all the doomsayers that they could find, particularly from the IPCC, and uncritically treated it all as established fact, saying: