Steve Hemingway

This article by Jamie Whyte explains why it is such a bad idea for the state to interpose itself between willing producers and consumers, but also why the structure of politics makes it impossible for politicians not do exactly that. As Whyte says Alas, there is no prospect of an end to this waste, even if politicians understood it. When invisible costs are incurred for the sake of visible benefits, a politician will never consider them too great..

Terry Arthur, the author of an IEA estimate of the magnitude of this deadweight cost puts it at two-thirds of the value of tax collected, or, well over half a trillion pounds by my calculations. It seems astonishing that the bulk of those commenting on this article seem to think that this is a price well worth paying to avoid the cash nexus. This is typical of the responses:Human life has many "irrational" qualities that you ignore at your peril. Wives don't "pay" husbands to remain loyal fathers, Children don't "pay" parents to cook their meals for them. Friends don't "pay" each other for their company. Surely given the recent calamities it is clear that the gross simplification and standardization that has been brought into the understanding of human society needs to be radically changed, and that the "science" of economics needs to redefine what it can and cannot do. Then again, asking for humility and depth from a economists is like asking for an apology from a banker: a little futile..

So far so familiar. What is deeply depressing are the comments on Whyte's article. Even though this is the Times, not the Guardian or even the Morning Star the authors of the comments seem to believe that what is right and appropriate in a family environment (providing for other family members without the promise or receipt of payment) can be scaled up to work at the level of the state. Hayek called this "The Fatal Conceit". Sadly it appears to be as widespread and strongly held as ever.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths University Enterprise Network. So now you know. You can find out more at stem-uen.org.

The idea of a UEN is to strengthen links between universities and industry and to promote entrepreneurship. Yes, it is a quango and as such has a lot of equality, diversity and inclusiveness rhetoric.

Currently the website is fairly sparse, but it's likely to collect a lot more content in the coming months.

I have always wondered about the relationship between Tony Blair, Alistair Campbell and Gordon Brown. Why on earth did Tony, who had the power to sack Brown, put up with this maniac for so long? How did an unelected tabloid hack come to have such a Rasputin-like power over the prime minister for so long?

Somebody, who shall remain nameless, explained it to me last night. He said that the problem was that (i) Tony had such shallow roots in the Labour party he felt obligated to Brown who a native-born member of the Labour tribe and that (ii) Tony was a brilliant public face of the party, but basically was incapable of imposing his will on colleagues and therefore was completely dependent on Campbell to do it for him.

This is consistent with the portrayal I've seen in 'The Thick of It' and will explain why Blair repeatedly gave power to people like John Prescott despite any evidence of an ability to run a department or communicate effectively. I suppose most of you are wondering why on earth it has taken me so long to understand this. Well, I have always found it very hard to understand why politicians behave as they do, and, in particular why their observed behaviour is so often at odds with their stated goals.

I have had the good fortune to be related to some people, particularly Guy Yeomans Hemingway, who produced the Hemingway Family History in the 60's, helped by my dear friend Geoff Dart. This gives an idea of what it is about.

Kathie put some effort in researching our immediate family at St Katharine's House in the 80's, when all the records were still in dusty files. I combined this information in a GEDCOM file, which has gathered its own virtual dust on my hard disk ever since. I posted it to RootsWeb, here.

I am extremely bad and lazy about data. Once I get a piece of code working, I always think that it is simply for users to sort out the data. As far as I was concerned, the best way of doing this was in something like a wiki, where everyone who was remotely interested could create and monitor their own leaf of the tree. I looked around at the options for this and eventually decided that the cheapest option was phpGedView. I was slightly hesitant about getting it installed on my web server as my days as a serious programmer/administrator are well behind me. However I discovered that a combination of beautiful coding on the part of the developers, and excellent web-based administration screens provided by my hosting company, pair.com meant that I could get the interactive Hemingway family tree up and running in an absurdly short time.

Really it's only interesting if (i) you are related to the individuals on it and (ii) created as an individual user by me. I can't do anything about (i) but I can certainly sort out (ii). Just email me at steve.hemingway@gmail.com and I'll set you up. I think that you can just send a message to the administrator via the hosted tree as an alternative to sending me an email, but I can't see why you would want to do that.

While I am writing this I should own up to damaging the tree. I somehow tried to merge in a couple of incompatible trees of the Pullen/Palmer/Verrall/Houde families, which resulted in some awful confusion. Because I am only extremely distantly related to these families I have never bothered to invest the time to sort things out. Please help!

Much of politics today is theatre. Politicians are like actors, saying their carefully-learned lines, never willing to ad-lib for fear of being ridiculed. I really wonder what the point of all these staged enquiries and commissions that tell us absolutely nothing, but keep the mainstream media news machines fed with 'news' that is nothing but stale re-hashing of old stories.

The Prime Minister told MPs: 'I think it is right to have run a large deficit. I think it has been essential for us to have the recovery that is necessary for the economy.

Read more: here.

I love peanuts and peanut products. My mother is the same. When I used to commute into London I would often run down to the station in Knebworth clutching a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Now I like nothing better than to have a nice piece of wholemeal toast spread with a mixture of Vegemite (first) and peanut butter (probably Waitrose own brand, but not essentially). At a pinch I will use Marmite in place of Vegemite, but it's not the same.

I love salted roasted peanuts, and I will enthusiastically eat any confection involving peanuts and chocolate. MarathonSnickers Bar.... mmmm!

I have, however, never been a convert to peanut brittle. The combination of glassy, filling-destroying hard toffee and peanuts has never much appealed to me. This is until I discovered Gourmet Buttery Peanut Brittle from Virginia Diner, courtesy of my wife's relative, Jim Pullen, resident of Fredericksburg, VA. This is the most delicious peanut butter I have ever tasted. The salty sweetness blends perfectly with the peanuts, which are present in the perfect proportion for satisfying crunchiness.

I am not capable of describing the taste of this stuff in a way that will remotely communicate its deliciousness to you. If you love peanuts you will love this stuff. Please ask to taste some if you drop by, but you'll have to be quick - I have only one pound of it and I do not have the willpower that would allow me to ration its consumption.

There are a lot of articles around saying how scandalous the behaviour of bankers has been. This is one of the better ones.

There is a massive barrier to entry into banking, erected largely by the FSA and similar regulatory agencies around the world. Although bankers complain in public about these agencies, in private they congratulate themselves and their politician stooges for enacting the legislation that give rise to these agencies. Ostensibly these agencies exist to protect the public. In practice they exist to make it prohibitively expensive for entrepreneurs to start up new banks and break into the industry.

The result of this barrier to entry is supranormal profits. Profits beyond the normal costs, including the cost of capital. These supranormal profits accrue to the scarce resource. Normally this would be the shareholders, the owners. Increasingly these are not rewarded, because the gatekeepers to these profits are the managers. In theory the board is the agent of the shareholders, but since they face essentially no incentive to provide more return than shareholders can get investing in other similarly risky assets, the residue is kept by them.

Financing costs for banks are in any case much lower than any other firm because of their special relationship with the central bank, and because savers have few choices when it comes to finding an investment that guarantees (courtesy of the government) a full return of capital.

Sadly the only solution to this problem of excess rewards to bank boards is to treat banks no differently to other enterprises, as described here. Unfortunately our leaders, and the population as a whole, have been mesmerized, to use the apposite word coined by Simon Jenkins, into thinking that such an approach to regulating banks would be suicidally reckless.

Until we resolve the problem of the power of the bankers we are, I fear, doomed to follow the exact path trodden by Japan, in the two decades since it's financial crisis of 1992.

I regularly get called up by mysterious salesmen offering wealth beyond the dreams of avarice if only I will sign up to their brokerage and start trading on the wonderful research they will give me.

I just spoke to Matthew Taylor of Finsoul.com. He was offering tax-free investment, offshore trading, between my repeated attempts to bat him away. I think I am just too polite even to cold-calling reptiles like him.

Anyway, it's interesting to see that this operation has jumped on the Big Green Bus of companies that are working to save the planet. I suspect that a lot of fraud will be conducted under the auspices of environmental responsibility. Not that I would suggest that Finsoul are remotely fraudulent, although I may change my mind if they call me back on Tuesday as they have promised.

There is a predictable outcry for banning Islam4UK, a bunch of nutcases who want to draw attention to the number of good Muslims who are killed by Our Boys in Afghanistan. What on earth would we gain by banning this organisation? I think we lose a lot by publicising it heavily, especially on the BBC. It must have a lot of name recognition now, and by facing a ban it will attract the sympathy of those who distrust the state.

It will be impossible to ban a march specifically by this organisation. Therefore if a ban is to be enacted it will have to be drafted in more generic terms. This inevitably opens up the possibility that the ban will apply to another protest, about a cause which hasn't even arisen yet, which you and I will support strongly.

This is always the problem with opposing laws which restrict freedom. Very often the freedom that is being lost applies to actions that we haven't even conceived of yet. It is hard to organise a rally to support the right to do something we haven't even thought of doing yet, but little by little the sorts of authoritarian laws that recent governments love enacting are eroding fundamental freedoms.

Americans are more aware of the dangers posed, and always hope that their constitution will protect them. Their problem is that the framers of their constitution never conceived of the things that are being banned now, leaving unelected lawyers and supreme court judges to make these vital decisions.

We all loved The West Wing. Apart from anything else it was a wonderful change from police procedurals, whodunnits, and the staples of TV drama. The dialogue was fast-paced and funny, and you felt that you got a glimpse of what really went on behind the scenes - the horse-trading and log-rolling and kow-towing to lobbyists.

But as the sainted Juliette points out in this blog entry, the TV series paints a wholly implausible picture of what goes on in the real whitehouse. The character of Josh Bartlett owes more to The Waltons than any real-life president of the modern era.

I suppose that TWW is entertainment, not education, and that on balance it's better to have an idealised image of what happens in the White House than none at all, but I fear that, as always, youngsters who decide to go into politics because they imagine that it's like TWW are destined for a terrible disappointment. I suppose this is a common fate for politicians and explains why they so often turn to drink. At least there are a lot of nice, subsidized bars in the Houses of Parliament.