Hey, promised we’d get back to a bit of politics didn’t I?

Our subject for today is Georgie ‘I is a greenie and I’m going to bung you some wonga in the process’ Osbourne.

OK, first lesson in recycling for George. In almost all cases there is no financial incentive in recycling. Sorry but there isn’t. One would hope that the bloke who wants to take over the country’s finances would be able to get his head around this.

Whether you like it or not, our economic structure is based on capitalism (yes, you don’t hear that word very often these days). Its driving principle is the creation of profit and that’s, well about it. There is no profit in recycling because when everything is reduced down to the hideously crude and simplistic concept of price, then barring a few odds and sods like some metals it’s simply easier (cheaper) to get new materials than it is to recycle old.

All ‘incentives’ to recycle are in fact sticks somewhere along the line. It doesn’t matter if you dress it up as we’re going to bung you some dosh to recycle because the premise on which that scheme is based is to creation of a false economy through regulation and or taxation.

In this case we’re dealing with landfill taxes on local authorities which is a pan-European scheme set up by the EU to encourage/force (choose whichever you fancy) member states to up their recycling rates because it’s been decided at a political level that reducing the amount of waste we as human beings produce is probably a good idea.

There’s nothing wrong with the introduction of targeted taxation to attempt to change societal behaviour as long as you can justify it with sound reasoning and preferably a lot of evidece to support your position too.

In the case of landfill, it’s fair to say you’d be hard pressed to find many people who think that reducing the amount of rubbish we chuck on tips is a bad idea although when you mention they might actually have to do something about it themselves or cough up a few bob then for some reason perspectives suddenly start to change a bit.

So we’re here, Osbourne’s little carrot is actually nothing more than the product of a very large EU stick that has created certain market conditions in the first place.

That of course leads us nicely on to the whole civil liberties malarky that seems to be doing the rounds of late.

The US company in question that Osbourne has so fallen in love with is RecycleBank and there’s two very interesting elements to their operation. The first being their use of ‘chipped’ bins. Yes folks we’re back to putting little bits a silicon chips in the bins to monitor how much waste we throw out.

Now for those with short memories, last year the Government was falling in love with the whole hi-tech approach of chipping everyone’s bins and forgive me for being a cynical old sod but wasn’t it all the Tories coming out of the woodwork saying it would be a crap idea (actually I agree with them on this one) and that flytipping would go though the roof.

There were a few pilots done, the first that springs to mind was South Norfolk District Council where it was such a disaster in both the technology breaking down and surprise surprise flytipping going through the roof that when the *ahem Tories took over the council they scrapped it.

Georgie boy might also want to have a word with Eric Pickles their very own local government spokesman because he said ‘they are also an invasion of people’s privacy’ on the issue of chipping people’s bins. Go on, what are the odds on another principled resignation of seat to stand in by-election moment? Nah, didn’t think so either.

To be fair to RecycleBank they seem really good folk and there’s nothing to suggest that they would use any information gleamed from such a system in a bad way. That said, they operate in the States where they have like proper bits of legislation and stuff written down on paper ensuring their citizens rights, not the data-mining free for all we have in the UK, seriously folks, the possibilities are endless.

How’s this for a wicked idea to catch out naughty people burning stuff in the back garden or flytipping. We could hand the service over to Tesco. They could monitor what we buy and if it doesn’t end up in our bin then we could get automatic fines as well, how’s that? Seriously folks, I’m here all week.

What Ozzy boy doesn’t exactly go out of his way to mention is the nature of payments, if indeed we’re taking RecycleBank as our model.

We’re not talking cold hard cash, you know, that stuff that’s readily accepted everywhere, even in the local boozer. No we’re talking tokens, and not the 30p off a box of Daz type (do they still sell Daz? Haven’t seen it for ages).

We’re talking (at least as far as can be ascertained from the information on their website) spend £50 in selected partner store and get £10 off tokens. OK, don’t quote those figures but we all know where we stand, to get the sweetener we’ve got to shell out a larger amount which is all well and good if you’ve got a reasonable income in the first place but if you’re getting by down to the last penny then are you going to have or even want to spend the extra to redeem the token?

What this approach also fails to address is the exact criticism the Tories were laying at the concept of pay as you bin last year. When you introduce a system whereby there is either a financial cost or benefit to putting less in your bin, doesn’t matter which. You will encourage fly-tipping and backyard burning because the financial incentive is there.

Of course what is continually being missed is not the actual desire or lack of from households to recycle, many aspects of the problems we face in the UK arise from the inability to recycle due to either poor facilities or, at least in my opinion poor packaging.

I’ve lived abroad, over a decade ago, seen how they did it back then. I’ve travelled about a bit, observed different recycling practices because it’s an area of personal interest but all came down to one very important factor. The recyclability of the packaging in the first place.

It doesn’t matter whether you try to penalise or incentivise recycling, if consumers can’t recycled the 2 litre bottle of coke they bought from Sainsbury’s then they can’t recycle it. They could if they lived in Finland or Germany but they can’t here. It’s the same product (admittedly produced locally under license) but in the UK it goes in the bin because it’s made of cheaper thinner plastic compared to thicker reusable (after being washed out) plastic abroad. There’s no scheme available to recycle them here, in other countries you just take them back to the supermarket, plonk them in a machine, it prints out a ticket that can be used at the checkout and hey presto, there’s your incentive system, it’s really not that hard and the whole lot doesn’t even have to be done by the public sector, you simply mandate the supermarkets to do it instead. They do after all have extensive distribution networks and it makes sense that after making deliveries they can do a pick up as well rather than driving back empty.

A bit of joined up thinking wouldn’t go amiss here.

I’ll finish on a positive point. It used to be (the last time I looked) impossible to recycle Tetrapak in the UK which is barmy. I was going to write a bit about it in this post but after some research it does appear to be picking up and your humble Penguin is planning a trip to Sandwell in the near future now he knows that he can recycle the milk cartons. Wednesbury to be precise as they apparently have a facility at the Leisure Centre. It’s just a bit sad that the most accessible facility for me is in an entirely different borough, but hey, that’s what you get from living in an area covered by Walsall Council I guess.

My final good deed for this post is a littl link to Tetrapaks recycling locator. I think I should move to Sandwell.

Or lack of it to be more precise. I’m not quite sure what to make of the speech from the bit that I actually listened to. It was a heady mix of “the country’s gone to pot” with a bit of “here’s a few ideas we knocked up on the back of a fag packet that should be popular” thrown in for good measure. However what really struck me was not so much the lack of depth which I’ve become accustom to from Mr Cameron but moreover his distinct not mentioning a few little things that might be of interest to anyone living in a country with him as Prime Minister.

I was very interested in the line he was taking about a new world of change and freedom. The Facebook example was a classic. Perhaps I’m one of the old dinosaurs of politics that he’s trying to portray Labour as but Dave’s not exactly the best person to be talking about IT related matters but excuse me for being cynical. Facebook isn’t some part of a wider social revolution. Like all social networking it is merely an extension of interaction that takes place in the real world or at best a distraction. Mrs Penguin’s on Facebook, I’m not by the way. As far a I can tell, she uses it to find little games to play. A mate of mine once told me that Facebook’s only useful because it allows him to play Scrabble with his mates. Well yes, a nice little distraction and time waster, hardly the embodiment of a brave new world or is going to change the the future direction or our planet is it? Of course if you really want to know what Davey boy thinks about freedom and the Internet then just have a little read.

The next little bit that pricked up my ears was the comparison to our neighbours on the continent. The French, Spanish and Germans reducing their corporation tax. Now I’ll be honest in saying I don’t follow French or Spanish politics very closely but I do take a keen interest in what’s going on in Germany for obvious reasons.

Dave’s being a bit economical with the truth on this one. Yes, good old Angie’s knocked 9% off German business’s corporation tax, admittedly from a higher starting point but what Mr Cameron didn’t seem so keen to mention was what Mrs Merkel has also been up to. After all, knock tax of here, it’s going to have to go on somewhere else because the bills still have to be paid.

How about the increases in fuel duty? Yep, much as the Tories and their cohorts in various bits of the right-wing media and pressure groups will love having a pop at the Government over the increase on petrol duty here, they don’t seem too keen on leveling the same criticism at Mrs Merkel’s Government. Here it will be hard pressed families struggling to run the family motor because nasty old Gordon wants to take their money and hopefully we can pick up a few votes from disgruntled motorists but I can’t see the same being leveled at Angie.

Then there’s the 2% hike in VAT good old Angie introduced to plug the gaps in her budget deficit. VAT, as we all know is a wonderfully progressive tax that doesn’t hit the poorest in society hardest.

What this comes down to is a simple case of taking with one hand and giving with the other. I’ll do a bit more on stamp duty later in this post but it’s very simple and assuming that Gordon might nip off to see the Queen next week for a cuppa and a chat you can bet that like the last election, one of the core planks of any Labour campaign will be big banners with the deficit in the Tories spending plans.

They’re promising a lot but it’s uncosted so they’ve got a couple of options. Their current proposals financially benefit the better off so either a bigger burden of taxation will fall on the poorer in our society or they’re either going to have to borrow at unsustainable levels or cut back on services. Unsustainable borrowing’s probably out of the question even if it was a particular favourite of the Tories when they were last in power so it’s going to be cuts in services then. Which services is the question, but if anyone wants to have a guess at what goes first then we need to look no further than Tory run Walsall council to get a few pointers on where the Tories will hit first and yes, you’ve guessed it, the services that directly benefit the worst off in our society.

It’s a scary prospect but for anyone under any illusions that cuddly Dave’s turned the nasty party in a caring bunch of softies you only have to realise that all their announcements amount to robbing Peter to pay Paul, and Paul is considerably richer than Peter.

Lastly there’s this whole thing over stamp duty for first time buyers. Now I’ve been meaning to write something on this but let’s get it clear, first time buyers will be exempt from stamp duty on properties up to £300,000 where at present stamp duty is levied on all properties over £125,000. There are different rates that apply dependent on the price of the property so just so we’re all clear on this one. Currently anything up to £125,000, no stamp duty to be paid. £125,001-£250,000 is liable at 1%, £250,001-£500,000 at 3% and anything above that at 4%.

Now the first point must be, which first time buyers out there are purchasing houses for £300,000? I’m a first time buyer, admittedly nearly six years into my mortgage and when I went to get a mortgage the building society said I could lend anything up to three times my salary. I believe some lenders are now offering four times salary mortgages. Even at that rate, our humble hard pressed first time buyer would be on 75K a year. So just who is this aimed at? Is it something to benefit those who are genuinely struggling to get on the property ladder or a nice little cushy number for those on pretty good incomes already?

However let’s look at the bottom end of the market, the actual current £125,000 threshold. So just for instance, our first time buyer is after a property for £125,000. They’ll be looking at paying £1,250 stamp duty on their purchase which on the basis of the size of the total loan I don’t see being such a big deal in terms of a make or break issue so is this really going to make such an impact on the buying behaviour of first timers?

Back in 2006 when Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor raised the threshold GMAC-RFC conducted a study on it’s likely effects. (Sorry, I can’t get hold of an online version). Their conclusion was that stamp duty has very little effect on the purchasing habits of first time buyers, citing that issues relating to labour market flexibility in terms of renting being easier to move from job to job in different geographical location to cultural habits of less inclination to make a commitment through to demographic changes in terms of people settling down and getting married later were of far more consequence and that changes in stamp duty would have little effect in the first time buyer market.

However let’s go back to our hypothetical first time buyer picking up a property for £125,000. They’re going to have a bit of a hard time finding one. No, not because all the property is much more expensive but because there are natural clumps in the housing market around the stamp duty levels. So £124,999/950 is much more likely than £125,000. Equally after that the prices tend to go up to £130,000. You don’t get many in the middle and this is true at the other step levels in stamp duty.

Why this happens is simply market adjustment. No one wants to sell at £125,000 because it’s a disincentive to the buyer for the sake of £1 you can save your poor buyer £1,250 and you’re much more likely to sell. Equally this is true for the next few grand or you get the seller paying the stamp duty as part of the offer. It’s no cheaper, the seller just adds the stamp duty on to the price or takes a little hit to off-load the property. Ironically this favours the buyer but you won’t hear much about that.

So what happens if we abolish stamp duty? Is it going to benefit the first time buyer? Well no. Much as it seems a nice bit of populist politics, like most of the Tory announcements, it’s a bit light on real economics. Here’s how capitalist markets work. Increase demand, assuming the same supply leads to a rise in prices. Even if the abolition of stamp duty for first time buyers was introduced and assuming it stimulated demand of which there’s no evidence to suggest it will, all it would do is push up prices meaning they’re no better off and ironically it strengthens the position of the seller.

That is of course assuming that the inflation in house prices doesn’t then force the Bank of England into raising interest rates which then ends up costing all the current first time buyers such as myself more on our mortgages every month. Helping the first time buyer, existing or potential, the Tories certainly ain’t.

What there was a distinct lack of when Mr Cameron talked about housing was that other element of the market equation, that of supply. No mention of building more houses that would lower prices and actually help first time buyers assuming that is that demand doesn’t increase to outstrip the new supply. Thankfully though the Labour Government actually acknowledges that this is the only effective way to alleviate the problems that first time buyer face.

The final irony is that the current set levels of stamp duty actual aid in depressing house prices at certain levels helping first time buyers but the Tories never were very good at economics anyway.

OK, lets qualify that title first. Germany isn’t cheaper for everything, definitely not healthcare, of which there’s a lengthy post/essay on that to come whenever I can get round to finishing it. We’re talking about general stuff to buy in the shops. I’m not much of a consumer, shopping is one of my least favourite activities but when I do partake of the consumer activity I’m fairly ruthless when it comes to getting a good deal.

There are a few things I’m interested in at present. Mainly techie stuff, computer components and DIY stuff, building materials and the like so with this in mind I’ve been comparing prices.
Before I left I was looking up the price of RAM for PC’s. I might one day have the finances to build a new computer and I’d like to have at least a Gigabyte of RAM. There were some strips of 1Gb RAM in Maplins circa £80 and some special heatsinked two strips of 512Mb ones mainly used by gamers and over-clockers for £110. I took a look in MediaMart the other day and the same strips of 1Gb RAM were going for 79.99EUR and two strips of 512Mb with heatsinks were only 69.99EUR. I have to nip back at some point before we leave to do some price checking on other things but in terms of components I could get a much better deal here.

Same goes for building supplies. Now lets discount trade prices or having a mate in the know and go straight for comparisons for your average person who wants to do a bit of DIY and goes off to the local DIY superstore ala B&Q and Homebase. I was looking through and a few years ago I was interested in the possibility of a log burning stove. You’re going to need somewhere around 6-7kW for a house of my size but the prices were anything from £1,500 up to £5,000 in Britain and I plumped for a gas-combi boiler instead. Here, you can get a 6.5kW boiler for as little as 229 EUR and the most expensive I came across was a 7kW system for 1,899 EUR most being around the 700-900 EUR price tag.

Loft insulation is something I’m after at the moment although not necessarily for the loft. For some strange reason trying to find common rockwool loft insulation that isn’t wrapped in that bloody space-blanket stuff is getting incredibly difficult. Apart from being three times the price, there are some jobs when simple old rockwool is all you need. Of the DIY superstores I only know B&Q in Wednesbury that still sell it and they don’t do it in the convenient smaller rolls but in the trade size rolls. However getting back on to the point of prices. Here, a 160mm thick roll with silver foil backing on one side is 5,55 EUR a square metre. From memory the old rolls I got from Homebase with no silver foil that cover about a square metre cost £6 each and that space blanket stuff is closer to £15 a roll.

On plasterboard, for 12.5mm thick boards it 2.79 EUR a square metre. I bought a load a couple of years ago to do the attic which was thinner than that but for about 12 square metres it cost something like £79. So that would be £6.58 a square metre and ironically it was all made in Germany. I might add that included delivery which was free if you spent more than £75 and from trade being the cheapest I could find in the Black Country out of checking everyone in the Yellow Pages, have no idea how much it is in Homebase or B&Q but I suspect more.

I’d like one of those mixer taps in the bathroom. The ones with an attachment to fix a shower but also has a downwards facing tap that you can switch between the two. I priced one up in the UK last year. It was £109 so that project stayed on hold. Here I could get one for 29 EUR and this applies generally for all types of mixer taps, why they are so ridiculously expensive in the UK is beyond me.

Finally on to laminate flooring. I did our abour five years ago and it’s the quite cheap, not proper wood type because that was far too expensive at the time for my budget but it clocked in around £5 a square metre. I also remember looking at the proper wood flooring and it being anything from £12-£30 a square metre depending on how posh you wanted it. The same good quality proper wood flooring here is 6,49 EUR a square metre.

Those are just a few examples but there’s some pretty big differences in prices. Why is this the case? The last time I came back from Germany I did a post about price differentials on buying a copy of Windows XP. I ran through in more detail factors that affect prices then but just to recap. Germany is in theory a higher cost country, the people earn more so more has to be spent on wages, it has more employment regulations so there should be more costs to employers, it’s part of that nasty old Eurozone thing that the right-wing in Britain told us would increase prices, their VAT rate is 19% a whole 1.5% higher than in the UK and a lot more of the products are actually made in Germany by Germans being paid higher wages, not made in China by people earning a pittance as are many of the goods us UK consumers are paying out for.

I can only conclude that somewhere along the way in the UK there’s some greedy companies creaming off a higher proportion of profit from our consumers than companies in Germany do. It would be interesting to know what the relative mark-up price on goods are here compared to in the UK. Sadly though I’m sure that information is very hard to come by.

[Timestamp altered]

It’s been a strange week in comparison to normal. My enforced housebound status due to having my toenail removed on Monday has meant I haven’t got out. This has meant I’ve completed lots of jobs (mainly techie) that I’ve been meaning to do for a while and I’ve completely exhausted every one of my RSS feeds in terms of my media consumption.

Every blog I read has been read, every media feed I have has been read, I’ve polished off Zelda the Twilight Princess and gone back through it to find all the hidden stuff, built my Lego Star Destroyer and have found myself at a loose end.

This led me to hunt out some new stuff to consume. I rarely get round to reading the online sections of newspapers, save for the dear old Express and Swastiki for pure frustration at how bad journalism can get but I found myself at the Guardian’s comment is free section. More precisely at this article by Polly Toynbee.

Haven’t read anything by her for years, which may sound odd being a leftie politico type but it’s true. However it made me remember that I’d been planning to write a piece about the impact of consumer society values on expectations of public services. I wasn’t planning on concentrating on the health service in particular but it is a very good example.

I’m not going to reiterate what Polly Toynbee has written, just read her article to get the jist but what struck me most was the comments to her article. I managed to get about half way through before I gave up in despair at the number of people slagging off the NHS, moaning about how much taxes they pay for it or doing down what we have in the UK and comparing it to other countries that have ‘better’ health services.

So I thought I’d share a bit of my own personal experience of the NHS.

I don’t use the health service much, I’ve only ever had one procedure done and short of a few trips to the GP for a bit of professional opinion and the odd bottle of jollop that’s about it. The only procedure I’ve had is the one that took place on Monday to remove my ingrowing big toenail. I visited my GP about five weeks ago because it was painful, he diagnosed it, referred me for the operation that should have been in about four to six weeks so five weeks is pretty much on the money and I had it done. I went back today as the operations are carried out at my local clinic in the town, a walk of about 200 yards to have my dressing changed and that was it. I don’t know how much this procedure cost the NHS nor the cumulative cost of my few visits to the GP over the years but I’d hazard a guess hardly anything compared to the proportion of the taxes that I’ve paid into the system to pay for its running.

The strange thing about this, at least if you are to believe some of the comments on Toynbee’s article is that I’m quite happy about this situation. I am quite happy to pay taxes to run a service that I do not wish to use. I’m happy because I’m not able to predict and control everything in my life. I do not know that one day one the arseholes who speed past my house isn’t going to knock me over and I end up in A&E with the requirement for a lot of treatment. I don’t know if I may suffer from an illness like cancer or suddenly have a heart attack but I do know that I quite like the idea that if I do, then I don’t have to worry too much about it because I won’t have to suddenly fork over thousands of pounds to cover the cost or find out suddenly there’s a clause in my health insurance that “doesn’t cover that condition or illness”. Such as I don’t mind that from my own perspective up till now I’ve paid thousands into the system for other people’s care and treatment, because come the day I may need treatment for something serious, those very same people may be the ones paying in to cover for my treatment. Personally however, I’d be quite happy to pay into the system for the whole of my working life and never have to have had another procedure done other than the one I’ve just had.

There were also numerous comments about waiting times for procedures and of course of a negative nature so I thought I’d add a few examples. I waiting five weeks to have a minor bit of surgery done relating to a condition that caused me minor discomfort but nothing agonising. I’m reminded back to about 16 years ago when a relative of mine had the same condition. He waited over six months for his operation and apparently that was a reasonable time to expect to wait in those days to have an ingrowing toenail removed. I think I quite like the way things are now because despite my condition being a minor discomfort for the period of five weeks, I don’t think I would have fancied it for six months, not even taking into account how the condition can get progressively more painful the longer it is left.

Second example. My mother had a problem with her ear a few months back. She went to the GP who referred her to a specialist at New Cross hospital in Wolverhampton which took about a fortnight. He saw her and asked her if she’d like to come back the following day to have the procedure done. Not sure about how other people might see that, but having the procedure done the next day seems rather a good service by my standards.

I’ll touch on a bit of comparative health provision which always comes up in these arguments usually about why our health service isn’t ‘as good’ as for example the French, German or Nordic ones. I won’t go into the old debate of comparing it to the US system of individual health insurance as it’s been done to death apart from noting that purely from an administrative cost analysis our system wins hands down in terms of efficiency. It’s simple, one form to fill in, if you’re registered as living at an address in the UK you can get an NHS number and that’s about it. You don’t have to pay for treatment at the point of need and whether you’re taken sick in Wolverhampton, Edinburgh or Machynlleth you can get treatment at the nearest hospital without any hassle. I use that example deliberately as you will see in a minute.

Now I will admit to not knowing much about the French health service apart from it’s based on a combined system of people paying for it through taxation and private health insurance. Germany is pretty much the same which I do know a bit more about for obvious reasons. Is it better? Well yes if your measurement of comparison is in terms of the potential wait you may have for things to get done. Perhaps this is part of the national psyche of the Germans? They don’t tend to like to wait for things, something very evident in Mrs Penguin and with their combined state funded and private health insurance system they get a faster service than we do. Of course they pay for it, not only through higher taxes but also having to afford private health policies on top and we are back to the old adage of getting what you pay for. Whatever rubbish is spouted by the right of British politics we have it fairly good in the UK in terms of taxation, both personal and business. What we have is a health service that is effectively done on the cheap because of the conditions under which it is expected to run. Despite its detractors it’s a pretty damn efficient organisation, of course more could be done but given how we pay comparably less for our health service than our near neighbours on the continent we get a pretty good deal.

Moving on to the Nordic model of which I know more about, in particular of the Finnish system having lived there. Theirs is in essence more comparable to ours in that it’s a directly funded for by the tax-payer system unless things have radically changed since I last lived there.

However here’s why I used the example of our own where it doesn’t matter if you’re in Wolverhampton, Edinburgh or Machynlleth when you need treatment. Much as the Finnish health system could be considered better than our own, less waiting times, better facilities etc etc, it’s not a ‘national’ health service. It’s funding comes through local taxation which on one hand is good in terms of being able to tailor treatments to more specific local areas but if for example you live and pay taxes in Tampere and just happen to be visiting Helsinki when your appendix starts to burst and there have been some examples of this. The doctors in Helsinki have been known to ship the patient 120 miles north back to Tampere so that they pick up the cost.

Personally if I happen to be in Sheffield and my appendix starts to burst I’d quite like to be taken to the local hospital and it done as quickly as possible there than be shipped back to Wolverhampton and that of course raises the issue of what is the overriding priority? As much as the Nordic system is very good, it doesn’t preclude the possibility of costs and funding overruling clinical patient care. I’ll just add that there’s actually another type of health service structure in Finland that I haven’t mentioned, that for students which is completely different and funded through membership of the local student union which is compulsory and has to be paid for. I won’t go into too much detail but over there students unions are very much a part of the social welfare structure as opposed to the organisers of piss-ups at universities over here. (that is a deliberately flippant remark for humorous value, yes I know they do some very important student welfare stuff here too before someone complains but in comparison it is nothing to the extent that they do in Finland)

What’s the conclusion? Well much as we would all want our treatment done the next day, it’s quite clear that in Britain people are not willing to fork over the extra money in taxation to pay for it. We have a pretty good and efficient health service that operates on significantly less money than those in France, Germany and the Nordic countries so we can’t really complain that much. We are spending more on the NHS now than we were under the Tories and the improvements in service and significantly lower waiting times are there to see but for some reason people seem not to understand this expecting everything to be done yesterday and of course not willing to cough up the extra cash to achieve this aim. Something for nothing I think that is called and it’s a very childish perspective to take which perhaps is a sad reflection on the society in which we live.

[note] I’d originally titled this article “In pursuit of happiness” and intended to go on to other areas but I’ve decided to keep it more focused on health issues. I’ll do the more general theme another time.

Yes, I’m getting back to a little bit more on the serious issues again but please don’t be put off by the title.

A while back I intended to write a long article that never happened and this issue was going to play a part in it.

The primary inspiration for it was an article on the BBC’s website which I really can’t be bothered to hunt out now which reported that only Britain and Sweden in the EU were on target to meet the conditions of the Kyoto agreement as regards carbon-emissions.

Good news of course to us conscientious environmentally aware and active Brits that we’re leading the world on this issue. I remember too well the news back in the 80’s when Britain was branded the ‘dirty man’ of Europe with our factories belching out sulphur dioxide that was destroying the forests of Norway, Sweden and Finland. We’ve obviously come a very long way since then. Or have we?

Now we’ve had a bit of news the last few days that actually the UK’s carbon emissions rose last year but I’m not going to jump onto that issue to take an all too easy swipe at the Government. I’m more interested in longer term trends and patterns which, at least as far as your humble Penguin can surmise, have gone completely unnoticed.

Here’s where we get into a bit of economics. I want to introduce the concept of comparative competitive advantage. It’s a well established economic theory which basically means one country can produce some goods better or more efficiently than the other so if countries trade the goods they are both best at, the whole system is more efficient, productive etc etc etc.

The classical example of this is to consider two countries. Country A is somewhere say in the Caribbean, nice hot climate but not much in the way of industrial raw materials. Country B is somewhere in northern Europe, much colder climate but relatively rich in terms of mineral and energy resources. Country A can produce Bananas a lot better than country B because it’s got the right climate. However country A requires various agricultural equipment and tools that country B is better placed to manufacture. So they happily produce what they’re best at, trade the goods, everything is more efficiently done and everyone’s happy.

With that in mind I’d like to return to this Britain seeming to be doing quite well on the old Kyoto targets compared to everyone else except Sweden.

I know we’re doing a lot in the UK on this, we should be doing more but we are in terms of our environmental regulation on industry a lot better than most. However this did puzzle me as to why some of the other EU countries weren’t up there particularly those who have been seen to be more ‘green’ than us in the past.

This is where I would like to introduce a ‘new’ concept. Now I have been looking around quite a bit for relevant information and personally I can find no one anywhere who has touched on this issue and it is very important if we are serious about building a long-term sustainable world for the future of our species. As I can’t find anyone who has contemplated this issue then I’m going to claim it as my own although I’d be happy to defer to anyone who can find mention of it else where.

I’m going to call it ‘comparative false carbon off-setting’. Bit of a mouthful I know but bear with me.

This is the theory that by off-setting swathes of economic activity, individual countries can appear at least on the outset as being ‘greener’ than others. So here goes, a brief overview of the UK as an example.

Back in the 70’s, Britain had quite a large industrial base producing goods that were consumed by the British people in Britain. Along comes the Tories and a few million people on the dole later Britain now has a far smaller industrial base which has continued to shrink ever since.

Now have the British become ever more less the consumer. No, and from my own personal experience in comparing to other countries I think it is fair to say that the Brits are some of the most voracious consumers out there. We love all the latest things, clothes, consumer electricals, cars etc etc. So although our ability to produce the goods at home as it were has declined, our desire to purchase has not, and if anything it has increased considerably over the last 30 years.

This means we have to import the goods from elsewhere. We afford to do this by shifting our economic activity to the service sector and here’s where the problem is. However you want to look at it, our economy is built on a service sector that comparably produces less pollution/carbon-emissions than industrial production. Good for us in terms of needing less specific energy for manufacturing, processing raw materials and so yes, when taken from that perspective the UK is doing quite nicely in terms of cutting carbon emissions.

The problem arises from us still wanting the manufactured goods which as they are no longer produced at home come from other countries. Countries that do not have as good environmental standards as ourselves. I’m going to single out China as an example of a country that over the past few years has become a major exporter of goods to the UK. Nothing personal against the Chinese but they have come in for some stick on their environmental record, the rapid growth of manufacturing and their willingness to use high carbon emitting energy sources such as coal to fuel their economy.

Here’s where I find that us Brits put ourselves in a position of being a bit on the hypocritical side because we are happy to blame countries such as China for not doing enough to curb their carbon emissions but that very rise in emissions is of a direct response to the demand for goods by our good selves that the Chinese produce.

We have, through poor economic policy started in the 1980’s left ourselves with the inability to feed those demands at home and thus require not only that the material goods we consumer be manufactured in a way that produces more carbon emissions than it would in our more highly regulated economy, but equally then have to be shipped from the other side of the world incurring yet more carbon emissions.

While countries like France and Germany who aren’t on target to meet their Kyoto targets but still retain large manufacturing bases to supply local demand of their consumers. We have in effect off-set the pollution/carbon-emissions of the manufacturing process required to meet many of our own consumer demands which creates a false image of the relative ‘greeness’ of the economies of different countries.

If we were to try and address this issue by compiling carbon footprints based not just on the economic activity within one economy but by analysing the carbon emissions generated by what is actually consumed then I fear that the UK may not come out in quite so rosy a light as it has done.

Anyway, there’s a thought to consider.

This looks like really good news doesn’t it? Microsoft, bless them, are going to be investing £14million in the Black Country, setting up academies in each of the four local authority areas to train 35,000 people.

I’m sorry to sound like a miserable old critic on this one but I thought it might just be useful to explain a few things here. Firstly, Microsoft are stumping up £14million which as far as they are concerned as a company is absolutely nothing. They’ll be getting by 2010 these four academies and 130 learning centres.

Now that’s a lot of centres irrespective of staffing them so just on a rough estimation taking in things like running costs, buildings, land and tax, I don’t think £14million is going to go that far so who’s putting up the rest of the money?

Equally, can someone tell me what these people will be learning in these centres? Somehow I doubt it will be anything outside of the world of Microsoft which raises an important issue. FOSS (free open source software) is rapidly overtaking the proprietary stuff like Microsoft in terms of it’s growth. Across Europe the signs are there and various countries have been actively encouraging it’s use and development. No matter how many people at present use Microsoft software the sheer weight in terms of numbers and more importantly the vastly quicker development times of FOSS will eclipse it because the proprietary model cannot compete.

Other countries recognise this and are already going down that route of equipping their workforces with the IT skills for the future. It’s sad to see we are doing the opposite and equipping our workforce with the skills for the present (just about) and the past.

Here’s an analogy. It’s 1989, the Eastern Bloc is crumbling. Lada come to the Black Country and offer to train a whole load of people how to maintain/repair/work with their cars. Would that have been an investment for the future? Oh, and Lada aren’t stumping up all the money so actually you’re going to have to find the cash to train people to only be able to maintain/repair/work on their cars.

Sorry, I’m all for investment but this one not only promotes the interests of a single company which somewhere along the line we will be paying for because there is no way £14million is going cover this for the 30 year period they’re talking about. It also promotes and equips people with the skills to use systems that are not as productive as other alternatives, don’t have a viable long term future and because these ‘trained’ people will obviously adopt what they’ve learned, it will also mean that while companies in other countries are using far more efficient/robust systems, we’ll be lumbered with rubbish that will have a detrimental effect to our competitiveness against them.

I know many bloggers have been giving their views on the budget and I didn’t get round to saying anything.

Apart from the different aspects of who will benefit or not etc etc that seems to be the run of things in the media I just like to comment on the comments and positions taken largely by the media.

A common theme seems to be, both in the media and the attack lines from both the Tories and the LibDems that Gordon Brown has tried to pull a fast one and has given with one hand by taking with the other.

Now for the economic illiterate here’s the four possible budgets that any Chancellor can announce.

1. Give lots away, tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Works well just before an election, a particular favourite of the Tories in days gone by, leads to a massive public sector borrowing requirement, economic instability and is a pretty crap way to run an economy.

2. Take a lot more out of the economy by raising taxes and don’t spend it. Not a very common type of budget and almost unheard of in the UK but occasionally needed in times where paying off national debt to reduce the cost of servicing that debt is beneficial in the long term, however tends to completely kill off economic growth so the returns are diminished in the longer term.

3. A neutral budget. Maybe bugger about a bit with where you get the money from to encourage certain economic activity and deter/penalise others but fundamentally you’re balancing the books, it’s called good house keeping and promotes economic stability. A very sensible way to run the economic affairs of the country.

4. The neutral budget but a bit more complex. Here you can justify borrowing and or modestly cutting some taxation on the basis that the additional money put into the system or allowed to circulate there will promote efficiency and productivity gains that will in a few years time offset the initial loss of revenue or loan. This maintains economic stability but can have the added benefit of boosting economic growth at the same time which is better in the long run because it increases future revenue.

Yes, pretty much since Gordon Brown has been Chancellor he has done a 3 or 4 type budget. So for all those journalists desperate to fill column inches with crap about the budget, whatever happens you have a choice of 1 to 4. 1 may bring short term booms which will turn to busts, 2 will propagate permanent economic stagnation, 3 keeps things going nicely but doesn’t boost growth as much as 4. So please tell me what exactly all these dipsticks expected Gordon to say?

Oh, and here’s what they would have said: Option 1, Gordon isn’t Mr Prudence any more, he playing fast and loose with the economy. 2, Gordon’s a money grabbing git, 3 or 4, he’s giving with one hand and taking away with the other. So on that basis I’m not listening to anything any economic commentator wishes to say.

On a personal note, my highlight of the budget was that my son took his first few proper steps half way through Gordon’s speech and much as a love economics and respect Gordon Brown, my son took most of my attention away from the event.

Another one from the list of things I meant to write about but haven’t. I was prompted to cover this issue tonight by a report from the BBC.
A welcome bit of news from the oh so evil we want to detroy everything that is British, EU. The European Commission is looking into the use of Open Source software and the benefits that it can provide to businesses and the public sector. I have to admit from a personal perspective that this is overdue and very welcome news.
Now a word of warning. I know a fair number of the people who view my site and their relative backgrounds when it comes to IT stuff. So for people like my mate Dave from Smethwick, forget this article, I’m not going to get too techie for it to be of much interest to you as I’m aiming at a bit of gentle introduction to the concepts and issues which you already know. Equally to my other mate Dave in Wolverhampton, try to read this, I know most of it will go over your head as you’re a daft muppet slave of the Microsoft Corporation but you might learn something.
So, where to start, because this one’s a biggy of a topic. Probably a few definitions are useful. Open Source, what is it? Well, ‘Source’ refers to programming. Everything that is run on a computer is a programme, be it the operating system like Windows, Linux or OSX. Equally things like word processors, web browsers, spreadsheets, games, again, all programmes. ‘Source’ comes pretty much in two varieties (yes Dave, if you did decide to read I know there’s more but I’m trying to keep it simple). There’s ‘Open Source’ and ‘Closed Source’. Now ‘Source’ is the code that tells the programme what to do. Think of the film The Matrix, we’re talking about all that green moving shit. (note, code never moves, it would be impossible to understand if it did, that’s just how it appears in films).
Here’s a few examples of ‘Open Source’ programmes: Any Linux operating system from Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu through to the smaller distributions. Server and database stuff like Apache, Unix and MySql. OpenOffice.org, Firefox web browser and Thunderbird mail client. Some you’ll probably have at least heard of, others you probably won’t have.
Here’s some examples of ‘Closed Source’ programmes: Anything from Microsoft, Windows operating systems, Office, Publisher, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Nero and Norton Internet Security.
The difference being that the programming behind ‘Open Source’ software is freely available to anyone and as long as you acredit the original author you’re pretty much free to change it, play around and derive new programmes and functions from it. It gets pretty complex when it comes to licensing but as a rule, most is covered by the GNU/GPL license. ‘Closed Source’ on the other hand comes with nice little licenses, you’ll know these, they always pop up when you try and install something and you have to click yes to agree before the software works. Again, there’s different types but pretty much they all say something like, “I will not copy this software to my mates and it’s only for me to use because I paid for and registered it.” You are also not able to access the source code on what the programme is built, change or amend it and pretty much what you see is what you get. (WYSIWYG)
Now just a note, ‘Closed Source’ software with few exceptions tends to also be proprietary software meaning that it is owned, not actually by you as you might think as you may have forked out hundreds of quid for the latest version of Microsoft office or Windows. They are, owned by Micorsoft, you might have a little CD with it on but actually you’re not buying the programme, all you are buying is the License to use it, an interesting legal definition but the important thing to note is that with very few exceptions, you’re going to have to pay for this stuff.
‘Open Source’ on the other hand, although there are again some exceptions, tends to be free or at least very cheap compared to it’s ‘Closed Source’ rivals. If anything, the money made from ‘Open Source’ in a business sense is derived from support packages and technical help.
I think it’s time for a bit of a comparison between the two models, and who knows, this might just save you a bit of wonga if you take heed.
There are programmes that pretty much everyone uses who has a computer. A staple of this is the ‘Office’ package. Usually comprising of a Word Processor, Spreadsheet, a database programme, one for doing presentaions on projectors and maybe a box standard graphics programme.
So, in the Blue corner, we have Microsoft Office, it’s got all these bits and the last time I looked, it cost £279 for the full office suite. I know their new system is coming out soon, who know’s what the price of that will be but it’s quite a few bob and don’t forget, we’re talking licenses here, that’s to use one copy, two computers, you need to cough up more money.
In the red corner, we’ve got OpenOffice.org, does all the same stuff, don’t be scared, it looks pretty much the same too. Now I’ve never seen this on sale in the UK ‘off the shelf’ as it were, but I did spot it in good old MediaMarkt in Germany for the extortionate price of 9.99EUR, so that’s about £6 here. However, if that’s too much for you, go to their website, download it for free and as it’s ‘Open Source’ you can put it on as many computers as you like at no extra cost.
So here’s a question. Need an office package. Do you:
A. Pay shitloads of money, or;
B. Pay nothing for the same functionality?

I think I’ll go for ‘B’.

Another example, what we’ve all got, operating systems.

The big Daddy of the operating system world is Windows, runs on about 90% of all the world’s computers and another product of Microsoft. There’s plenty of ‘Open Source’ alternatives when it comes to picking an operating system but by far the most popular is Linux.
Most readers probably won’t know what Linux is or if you’ve heard of it, you’ve probably never used it or are planning to in the near future but here’s a run down of what it is.
Linux is an operating system based on a Kernel created by Linus Torvalds based on Unix in the early 90’s as a project for his course at the University of Helsinki in Finland. He released it on the net as ‘open source’, it was picked up by developers across the world, firstly in Manchester University and some university in the US who’s name escapes me and has developed over the years into a powerful, stable and secure operating system. There are many varieties about but the biggest distributions are, in no particular order, Ubuntu, Suse and Red Hat. Learned the other day that one of the big people behind Ubuntu is from Wolverhampton, makes you proud dunnit?
Now on comparison between these two systems it gets a lot more tricky. In general terms they both do the same, they run programmes and interface with the hardware on the PC. How they interface is sometimes a problem, for both Windows and Linux but Windows tends to fair better and here’s why.
I’m going to use one example which is probably the most pertinent but there are others. As with the software that is run on computers, the hardware ie: the motherboard, the memory, the graphics cards etc, all have their own code. Here, in the hardware world there’s a lot more ‘closed source’ code. The people who make these devices are a lot less inclined to release this information at least to everyone. So for example, there’s three main graphics card manufacturers out there. Nvidia, Ati and Intel. Nvidia don’t let anything out, Ati are starting to release stuff and Intel are a lot more open. (I’m speaking in very general terms here). So whereas Nvidia are really good graphics cards (probably the best) you’re only going to get the best performance out of a Windows system because they only share their code with Microsoft. Now we’re not saying that it’s crap with Linux, simply that to get these things working requires some guess work on the part of Linux programmers and whereas you’ll get really good graphics, you’re probably not going to get the full potential. Other areas include devices such as webcams and wireless routers where there are issues and if the EU could do one thing, it would be to look into this because in my view it is a hinderance to competition and stifling development to the detriment of the consumer.
That said, pretty much everything will work with both systems. I won’t go down the route of saying how crap Windows is from a crash/security perspective, everyone knows that, or at least should so what’s the price.
Well, Windows XP comes in at between £160 and £200 dependent on the version. Again, that’s for one license so more than one computer, more costs. Linux, well all the distributions I mentioned can be downloaded for free from their websites.
So hang on a second, how exactly did we get to the point where we pay lots of money for stuff that we could get for free or at least a damn site cheaper?
Well, I’m going to let you into a bit of my past history on this one. I’m of an age, 27, where I’ve been knocking about this IT malarchy for quite a while. Since I was about four. I remember my first computer, the ZX Spectrum 48K with the rubber keys, through to the awful Sinclair QL, rather good Amstrad 6128, the passable Amstrad 1640, a few custom built (by myself) 386’s, a Toshiba Satellite Pro laptop, a P3 IBM to my current arrangement of begged, borrowed or donated bits and bobs.
I also remember using something other than Microsoft Word to write stuff, something that I’d hazard a guess most people five years younger than me won’t which is where I’m going to start the example of how we got to this situation.
Now put your hand up if you remember either WordStar or WordPerfect? Some of my older readers probably will because at the end of the 1980’s and the start of the 90’s these two programmes dominated the Word Processing market. Pretty much everyone in business to local and national Government used one or the other, with WordPerfect being a particular favourite of the public sector. However, they all use Microsoft Word now, so why is that? Is Word such a superior programme that can do so much more? Well, erm no. Actually, I can remember doing things with WordPerfect 17 years ago that you still can’t do with the latest version of Word today.
Next example. Back in the 1980’s the vast majority of servers ran on a system called Unix. Safe, secure, reliable good system. Come the late 1990’s the majority of organisations had switched to Microsoft Servers which to be fair are shit in all the categories mentioned above.
This is probably the greatest example of marketing over substance. Why it happened? Well, the people who made the decisions on the whole didn’t have a clue what they were doing, down to company directors, civil servants, politicians, they got sold a sucker and many have come to rue that decision. There’s plenty of examples out there on the interwebnet of firms IT departments who have gone to war with the managers over daft decisions and one whose name I won’t mention who let the company spend millions on Windows, kept their Unix system and just made it look like they’d changed it to the management.
However this has had a major impact on what is used, not only in a professional context but also at home. If your employer uses Windows and Microsoft Office, you’re probably going to use it at home. Equally, all the training out there for things like CLAIT and ECDL are based around Microsoft programmes. What most of our kids have been using at school and therefore what they’re likely to use at work and home are also Microsoft. Are we really so addicted to this stuff or is there an alternative?
Back to licenses for a second. How much is this all costing? Well, I thought I’d use a particularly political example. Anyone who has had a shufty through MP’s expenses will notice the IT section. Now I’m quite open to someone correcting me on this one but the last time I knew the allowance, it was for four computers comprising three desktops and a laptop to be used by the MP and their staff in both Westminster and the consituency. All these computers are currently supplied by Dell, previously it was Compaq. So let’s do a quick bit of maths.
646 MP’s times 4 = 2584 computers (assuming they all take their full allowance which I’d hazard a guess not all do)
So as Dell buy their licenses in bulk from Microsoft and get a discount we can’t be perfectly accurate but about £60 a license is a good estimate given that’s what they’ve refunded some people for not using it.
So, 2584 times 60 = £155,040
Lets add to that the licence for Office, which the last time I bought one for corporate use was £90
So, 2584 times 90 = £232,560
Add this together and we get £387,600. OK, it’s not a lot of money in terms of Government spending, but we are only talking about a few MP’s here, what about all the other Civil Servants, the Local Government workers, the schools, the universities, and not to mention the private sector and home users.
I was heartened to hear after a chat with a friends son from Sandwell that at his school they use the Linux Ubuntu operating system, OpenOffice.org office package and Opera web browser. All open source and all free. A good bit of saved money there for the council and I’d be interested to know how widespread this practice is.
Sadly however it doesn’t seem to be used in any local authoirty or government department to my knowledge, please correct me if I’m wrong. Contrast this to the French Civil Service which is wholly Open Source, OK, there’s probably a bit of Anti-Americanism mixed in there knowing the French but they’ve done it. It seems to be a growing trend among regional and local authorities in Germany, Dresden have had it for a few years and I believe Munich switched just before Christmas. It’s widely used across the Nordic states and catching on in Spain and Italy. Why? Well, it’s free, safer in terms of security, more stable and doesn’t require you being dependent on one single US company.
One of the studies I’ve been meaning to do has been on this subject and I know a number of MP’s visit my site, so expect an e-mail from me in the not too distant future.
So what have we learned? Well, there’s a lot of potential savings to be made by the public sector if we switched. Even taking into account a short term cost in re-training staff, the long term financial benefits are there. There’s an understandable fear of the unknown factor for many users which in most cases is uncalled for. There’s that belief that if I’m paying for something it’s got to be better than something for free. I’ll admit I don’t mind paying more for something that’s better but this is one of those cases where the phrase ‘the best things in life are free’ certainly applies. I’ve mentioned it before, but this website is whollly built using open source systems and in my humble opinion, it ain’t that bad.
If of course you’re just a regular user, not too keen on getting rid of your Windows operating system but fancy dipping your toe into the open source world, here’s a few pointers to get you going.
Try a different web browser, Mozilla Firefox is my personal choice but you also might want to try Opera. Both good systems with lots of extras you can install later.
E-mail clients, ditch Outlook and try Thunderbird, another product of Mozilla, nice and simple, easy to use with added bits and bobs.
Office package, there’s one main choice here, OpenOffice.org
That should keep you busy for a while. I will of course answer questions or queries on this subject although please be aware I’m not a help desk and I don’t know absolutely everything. Enjoy.

One of the things that will become apparent over time is my background in International Politics, to be more specific my area of interest is comparative European social welfare models with a particular interest in the Nordic system.
So just a quick post for now and a simple idea. We have a problem in this country when it comes to first-time buyers in the property market, I think that’s something that is pretty universally accepted and not open to political controversy. Up until now a myriad of different schemes have been tried out and experimented with to varying degrees of success. With this in mind I thought I would propose a different idea and get us away from all these complicated shared ownerships and the like for certain public sector workers etc etc.
In Finland, if you are a first time buyer, you simply pay a lower rate of income tax. It’s not sexy, it’s not complicated, it just means that the state accepts that being a first time buyer can be difficult so they take less money out of your pay packet. How simple is that?