The Moral Law?

Is it not amazing how many moral experts and authorities we have walking among us? I am referring, of course, to the outcry in response to the news concerning Cameron's offshore tax dealings. The moment it was reported, it was obvious that the vast majority of the country would suddenly become very annoyed, accuse Cameron of acting, at the very least, immorally and, if you are Jeremy Corbyn, somehow botch up the opportunity to go on the attack. As Labour continues to be caught up in accusations of anti-Semitism, with my old university Warwick providing the latest headline, it seems that this is exactly what has happened:

Are people annoyed? Yes.

Do they think Cameron did something illegal? Probably not, we seem to understand the difference between avoidance and evasion.

Do they think, regardless, that what Cameron did was definitely immoral? Yes. Without question.

Because, suddenly, we are all the authority on what is and what is not immoral. Suddenly, what is legal and what is illegal is utterly irrelevant and we should all focus on what is immoral. Suddenly, despite the millennia Philosophers have spent arguing over morality and moral principles, we can all agree that finding legal ways to minimise your tax bill, open to everyone, is absolutely definitely immoral without a shadow of a doubt.

Except our legal system is, at least in part, independent of our morality. Sure, the Law, in many ways, matches up with our culturally accepted moral values. And sure, the Law, in other ways, has developed in response to changes in our culturally accepted moral values. But, ultimately, our legal system is a system of Laws. It is not a system of someone's moral values. Precisely because we cannot agree on moral values. And the public continues to be outraged when our legal system and an individual's moral principles do not match up, conflating legality with morality. We would do well to avoid (but, of course, not evade) such a conflation.

If you want to accuse Cameron of acting immorally, then that is your prerogative. Indeed, having different moral values is encouraged in a democracy. But telling me that somehow your moral values trump legal values, that your moral values are more important than someone else's, well that becomes a tyranny. Indeed, it becomes a tyranny arising precisely from the freedoms encouraged by a democracy. The very freedoms Plato warned us about in the Republic. Maybe he was somewhat right after all.

MAD MAD MAD

There are only four things that I find it hard to calmly debate and argue about, without becoming increasingly annoyed: how to use literally correctly and why it's important; gun control in America; Feminism and specifically whether a woman is ever asking to be raped (I mean, literally by definition you cannot ask to be raped); and whether we should abolish Trident. Indeed, whenever I take those political quizzes that proclaim to be able to tell me which political party I am closest to, my support for abolishing Trident somewhat skews the results. Yes, that's right. I would abolish Trident. And I don't think there is a single good argument (aside from the fact it seems to monumentally annoy the SNP) for keeping the expensive waste of money. Frankly, I'm not too fussed about the cost actually. I think the billions could be better spent. Maybe we could give those junior doctors a bit more money or stop charging people £9000 a year for the privilege of a university education. Or actually, here is an idea. Let's give all those people who will apparently now lose their jobs a huge payout. As if Trident's main purpose was to provide people with employment. But I suppose that's neither here nor there though of course I do believe it's an utter waste of money. And no, I don't think, if we abolish it, we will usher in a new era of calm and peace (Sorry Jezza, maybe whilst you're talking to Daesh about  whether they would mind terribly if they stopped killing homosexuals and raping women, you could ask them not to nuke us) where the US and Iran become Facebook friends and instead of launching nuclear war against each other, decide to hit the poke button and have a poke war that eventually Iran wins after President Donald Trump is caught in a dilemma over whether to comb his hair or invade Portugal and completely forgets to log into his Facebook account. I can even forgive the fact it appears to have been named after a brand of chewing gum.

No, my main issue with Trident is that it is not a deterrent. It is not a deterrent for a number of reasons. And if a nuclear deterrent isn't a deterrent then it serves no purpose. We may as well keep the warheads filled with all those plastics bags we are now saving because of the 5p charge for all the good it would do. 

Reason Trident is not a deterrent number one: 

Mutually Assured Destruction is an outdated idea that sounds like a perfectly good idea to those we are apparently trying to deter. In other words, it would not and does not deter countries like Iran or North Korea or terrorist groups and I think a nuclear deterrent is highly pointless if it only works as a potential nuclear retaliation. Mainly because they are fairly certain we would never use it (see below) but also because they are not bound by the incredibly volatile politics of MAD.

Besides, if you look at the nuclear powers or close-to-nuclear-powers in the world that might think a nuclear holocaust is a good idea, the majority hate America more than they hate us anyway, so I think we might be safe. Despite expanding over vast swathes of the globe and making life pretty miserable for most of the world's population in our not-so-distant past, we are remarkably still preferred to the USA. Anyway, apparently we don't have to worry about Iran anymore (unless you're Israeli...then you have to be very worried, but who cares about Israel?), North Korea are hardly a threat (I'm more concerned about the very real possibility that Donald Trump may be allowed into the UK after it transpires that only the Home Secretary can ban him and that three hour commons debate was entirely pointless. The havoc it would cause) and even if Russia and China were, Trident would be utterly useless and we'd need the Americans anyway. We may as well turn up to a nuclear war against the Russians with a glow stick and a McDonalds happy meal toy. 

Reason Trident is not a deterrent number two: 

We would not use it. Sure that's an assertion, but so is the claim that we would use it. I struggle to believe any British Prime Minister could sanction the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people who pose no threat to us in a single strike. Besides, couldn't we just invade Iraq again if we wanted to cause murder and chaos on such an unimaginable scale? I think it might even be *cheaper* than renewing Trident. The serious point there is that *even if* we could bring ourselves to sanction the death of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, we could do that in so many other ways. I hear barrel bombs are fairly effective, eh Mr Assad? But seriously. I wouldn't use it. I don't think anyone could do it.

In any event, we always assert our moral superiority over our enemies. We are not fooling anyone into thinking we would strike with a nuclear bomb, trust me. And aside from anything else, does anyone actually believe we would use it? I do not think so. It, therefore, does not work as a deterrent. It's not stopping anyone.

Given we would never use it, what is the point in actually having it? If you support Trident, you support using it in response to a nuclear strike. Ask yourself what good that would do. 

Reason Trident is not a deterrent number three: 

Our biggest threat comes not from Iran (unless you're Israel. Then Iran is your biggest threat, but who cares. You're only Jewi...Israeli) or North Korea or even the French. In fact, they might even all agree nuclear Holocaust is a terrible idea, (relevant, of course, only if they were our biggest threats) and therefore abide by MAD. In which case, good thing the Americans are on our side and look like having a trigger happy bumbling fool in the Oval Office come January next year. If anything is a deterrent, it's Donald Trump with the nuclear codes. Although, he probably thinks they're his numbers for this week's powerball...But no, they aren't our biggest threat. Or even a threat (unless you're Isra...you get the point). No, our biggest threat is terrorism. It's a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of Daesh, the bastards. Or Al Qaeda, also bastards. Or any set of suicidal medieval maniacs with no fixed state territory to strike back against. All bastards. Trust me, Daesh are not deterred by the prospect of us striking Syria or Iraq. Who exactly are we going to condemn to death? Syrians? Iraqis? The Spanish? Or have we developed precision nuclear weapons that can identify a Daesh terrorist and explode a tiny mushroom cloud on his/her (I'm an equal opportunities terrorist accuser) head, ensuring we both make our point and eliminate the threat? Our biggest threat comes from an enemy that doesn't necessarily even have nuclear weapons or the capacity to launch them, don't care about a retaliation even if they did and have no clear or defined territory to strike back against in any event. Seems Trident qua nuclear deterrent isn't quite working out for us.  

Reason Trident is not a deterrent number four: 

I've alluded to this above. Trident is fairly pathetic. Not only do only four out of five dentists even think Trident is good for your oral health, our so-called independent nuclear deterrent relies on the US for some actual muscle. This begs the question why we don't just rely on the US anyway, we seem to when it comes to deciding whether to invade other countries and virtually every other foreign policy decision, so why not when we apparently want to use a particularly devastating weapon? 

Can we not just murder our civilians more conventionally? Apparently Aldi Jaffa Cakes taste basically exactly the same as the real thing. I don't see why we can't apply the same logic when it comes to murdering innocent civilians in a retaliatory strike that would never happen. Maybe Lidl do a range of really cheap, really powerful bombs like the ones we are currently using to destroy Daesh? Who knows. Sure as the hell that would freeze over before we dropped a nuclear bomb on Syria because Daesh attacked Warrington, we do not need Trident. If it is not a deterrent, which - given we would not use it and given we could not use it effectively even if we wanted to against our biggest threats - it is not, then it is about as useful as these potential alternatives to Trident: 

• Employing Wayne Rooney to negotiate with any entity who looks like they might strike 
• Teaching my (dead) pet goldfish Krav Maga as our first line of defence 
• Banning Donald Trump from entering the UK to prevent the radicalisation of youngsters so outraged by him being a buffoon (I mean what were MPs thinking. Do they honestly believe anyone takes them seriously anymore after they dedicated three hours to debating whether we need to protect the sensibilities of an increasingly pathetic and easily offended set of students and others so morally outraged by anyone who dares not be a disabled transgender homosexual ethnic minority, so much so that apparently rape is absolutely bloody okay if it is carried out by refugees and we need to have safe spaces absolutely everywhere?)
• Sending Piers Morgan on a world tour to piss off everyone by name dropping every other sentence and then exiling him to an abandoned island in the Atlantic where everyone would decide to launch their entire nuclear arsenal (somewhat ironic, given his love of a good Arsenal performance) against him, thus preventing them from doing so against us

In fact, I have a radical solution. Let's pretend to renew Trident. We can have a huge ceremony, Cameron can cut the red tape in a massive political statement against regulations in an attempt to win over his party. Political leaders can all fall over themselves to assert the historic importance of the event, reference the Cold War needlessly and inaccurately and tell us how vital it is that we can strike at the heart of Andorra should they ever threaten to win a game of football and cease to be the only team more dull and predictable than England. Everyone can have an extra day off, whip out the bunting, organise street parties and generally have a merry old time akin to the Royal Wedding but without the kiss on the balcony at the end. Just don't tell Corbabes, he might get drunk and tell Daesh or Assad. Nightmare. Plus he might explode if he thinks we are renewing Trident, which I quite fancy watching. All an elaborate double bluff that keeps everyone happy. Our enemies all still believe that we have this apparently effective deterrent and therefore would not dare trying to find out otherwise because, you know, they are suitably deterred. Unless we think they will strike regardless of whether they believe we have a nuclear deterrent, in which case it isn't a deterrent (hang on, I'm fairly sure I've heard that argument somewhere...) and we can all argue about the merits of blowing up Baghdad or Tehran or Rome from the rubble of our destroyed homes. Someone could start a petition and we could watch MPs debate it for three hours before all deciding unanimously to ban Donald Trump. 

So come on. Let's stop pretending that Trident serves us any good and go back to arguing about something useful like the disaster that Bake Off leaving BBC is. Or I don't know. The football. I hear United are doing badly at the moment. Ferguson retires and we end up wth Daesh rampaging through Syria and Iraq, the potential for the special relationship to be between Donald Trump and Boris Johnson (I'm not sure what happens if they were to ever meet), Jezza Corbs in charge of the Labour Party and an especially cold winter. I'm not saying there's a link, but you do the maths.

This post has been updated 10 times, including most recently on the 28/09/17. Please note that the football analogy at the end was current at the time of initial writing. 

It is all Blair's Fault

I recently saw this tweet from Piers Morgan on my Twitter timeline:

"Cameron got punished for what Blair did. Simple as that #Iraq" (https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/373208889866457088)

Ok, you got me. I follow Piers Morgan on Twitter. I am not his biggest fan and I do think he is the most awful interviewer, incredibly arrogant and full of himself but, with all that in mind, his views are, at the very least, thought-provoking. Sometimes I even find myself agreeing with him - gun control, for example. Here I am not so sure. I agree that, to an extent, there is a sense that the British public and British MPs are (rightly) more wary about intervention in Syria after Iraq (and Afghanistan) than they would be if British troops had remained on home soil. The implication, however, is quite clear - that without Iraq, British MPs would have voted for the motion that was brought before the house yesterday. That is an altogether different point, and one I am not so sure about. (See, thought-provoking.) 

My stance on Syria is simple. There is nothing we can do. We are condemned to listen to George Galloway rant about how Israel supplied the chemical weapons to the rebels via Al Qaeda; to listen to our MPs try and score political points out of such a tragedy; and, ultimately, we are condemned to sit idly by as Assad, with the help of the Russians and Chinese, brutally murders his civilians until there are no more Syrians left for him to kill and he deems the job done. On the one hand, I understand the arguments against intervention and there are, of course, some MPs with a genuine opposition to intervention (then there is George Galloway). On the other, do we not have some moral responsibility to act, if we can? Perhaps the crucial point is exactly that: that, with the best will in the world, we cannot improve the situation and, as I say, we are condemned to watch on in horror. Diplomacy has failed and will continue to fail, whilst intervention seems only to mean that Syria's children are killed by our bullets as well as Assad's.

With that sobering thought firmly in your minds, let's return to the question at hand: Do we think British MPs would have voted for yesterday's motion had we not intervened in Iraq? I think Piers has a point, especially considering how close the final vote was, but it's not as clear cut as he is suggesting (or perhaps is forced to suggest with only 140 characters to play with).

I leave it as an open question - feel free to comment a response.

The Budget

I thought I'd make a late night comment on the budget which has just come out today. Whilst every detail remains unknown to me, there is enough for me to make a comment on:


1. The reduction of the 50p tax rate to 45p.


This is probably the most contested part of the budget, not that any of it was left unexamined by Labour, and for good reason. There is sound argument on both sides here - tax people more and they'll work harder to find ways of legally/illegally avoiding tax/ move out of the country entirely and take their profits elsewhere. However, how can you justify reducing taxes on the richest at a time when the poorest are paying so heavily for the mistakes of the former government? Surely tax breaks for rich people isn't going to help us get out of this recession and plug the gap in government spending and tax revenue.


I lean towards the former argument - I do believe in incentivising high earners to earn more money and thus pay more tax. Forcing them to pay more in tax only incetivises the opposite. However, does that really apply in this case? Osbourne, although he is always going to say this, claims that the higher tax rate isn't bringing in any extra revenue which is fair enough, but does lowering 5p actually mean that people are going to suddenly stop avoiding this higher rate of tax? The only reason to lower the tax rate is if it will actually bring in more revenue (through the reasoning above) and there is no way that a 5p decrease in the tax rate will do this. Osbourne has bottled a big decision here - he could have abolished this rate of tax entirely and brought it back down to 40%, a huge move, that may have had a positive effect on revenues but decided for a pathetic middle ground that does nothing except attempt to appease the Conservatives' rich allies whilst monumentally piss off everyone who hate bankers. Which is everyone.There is weight, in my opinion, to the argument for lower taxes (if not at a time of austerity necessarily) but this is going to make no difference and smacks of protecting bankers for no reason.


I thought it best to add in a bit in response to the comment below regarding the 0.105% increase in the bank levy designed to stop bankers from gaining benefit from the reduction in tax. First of all, as I asked below, does 0.105% actually offset a 5% reduction? That is equivalent to giving 5p and taking back 0.105p in the pound - for anyone who couldn't do the maths, I cannot see how that really harms the bankers. However, more crucially, would you not agree that it is pointless to lower a tax and then raise another tax to ensure people don't benefit excessively from the new lower tax - 1. That seems to defeat the purpose of lowering the tax initially and 2. It seems to be admitting that bankers will/would have benefited from this lower tax as a (tiny) measure has been put in place to stop this. What a stupid move! 


It is about time, whilst we are on the tax point, that the government did more to prevent rich earners avoiding tax legally (or indeed illegally as the case my be). Here lies the real issue - big companies can afford to spend big money on avoiding tax and will continue to do so even with lower rates; why not deal with this problem effectively?


2. The child benefit caps.


This seems completely the right move in my opinion. You may be able to argue over the lower end figure for removing the benefit, but does someone earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year really need child benefit? More importantly, does it, in this situation, even benefit the child? Surely that should be the cut off point - where the child benefit is of no benefit to the child, where it makes no difference the standard of living of the child why should to be given to the parents? That's quite a simple argument, but I'm open to reasons why it's wrong.


3. The Pasty Tax


It has, since the writing of this blog, been brought to my attention that the "correction of VAT loopholes" that the BBC write about in their article, to be found on the BBC website, is actually, effectively, a pasty tax. I've tried to detach myself from emotional involvement on this and while one can consider the large negative impact this will have on the Cornish economy especially, it is the principle of this that irks me too. Needless to say there are economic arguments for and against the move, and I do lean towards the against side, but taxing something so British seems anti-British. Was it not the Conservatives who opposed the proposed Cider Tax that Gordon Brown proposed and dropped? 

The good in question

There are some other, more minor, changes:


4. Corporation tax has gone down - probably just about a good move, should help businesses and incentivise investment which can only be a good thing. We await the empirical evidence I suppose


5. New Stamp Duty rate for homes over 2million - can't see a problem here really. Seems the right move


6. Tobacco Duty Rises - As a non-smoker and a complete anti-smoker I can't see any problem here either. If you wish to kill yourself then at least give money to the government doing it!


7. Fuel Duty rise - will, due to price in-elasticity of demand of fuel, probably raise revenue. There is a strong argument for fuel already being to expensive and this may inhibit ease of travel and thus growth.


8. Increase in personal tax allowances to £9,205 - again this seems a good move, or at least a move that doesn't simply favour the rich and could boost consumption amongst those most likely to spend their income - the poorest, who will now be better off. 


Overall, I remain unconvinced. Sure this budget does some good things - the child benefit removal and increase in personal allowance but you cannot help but feel that the biggest change made; the change that headlines the BBC website and will be most focused on, has been horribly fudged up. I can't understand why he has made this move now - it will almost certainly not bring in extra revenue and can only serve to annoy those opposed to rich people getting richer at a time of need for most. It is at least a political mistake and time will probably show it to be an economic one too.