Christmas pudding

ON THE EVE of stir-up Sunday (the penultimate Sunday in October), the day on which Christmas pudding is traditionally boiled all day ready for the festive season, here is a splendid recipe for home made Christmas pudding adapted and modified by my grandmother over many years from a recipe found in a 1950s oven manual.

Once one has tried home made Christmas pudding, especially to this recipe, there really is no going back to the sometimes disappointingly bitter shop bought variety. This pudding is as sweet and mellow as Christmas itself, and is as much a delight to eat as to make.

Making this pudding does require some time and dedication, as it requires steaming for no less than 7 hours, as well as leaving the mixed ingredients overnight. For a once a year pudding extravaganza, however, it is more than worth it, especially given the deliciousness of the result.

The recipe is reproduced using Imperial measurements as it was given to me by my grandmother.

Ingredients

• 12oz raisins
• 12oz sultanas
• 8oz candied peel
• 8oz light soft brown sugar
• 8oz white breadcrumbs
• 1tsp salt
• Milk to mix
• 1 carrot
• 3 large eggs
• 8oz shredded suet (vegetable suet may be used)
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp cloves
• ¼ tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 orange
• 1 bramley apple

Method

1. Grate the carrot and peel and grate the apple. Juice and zest the orange.
2.  Mix all the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl thoroughly and allow to stand overnight, covered with a tea towel.
3.  If, on returning to the mixture the next day, the mixture is stiff, add a little extra milk to soften it.
4.  Grease the appropriate number of pudding basins (2 large or 4 small, or some combination thereof).
5.  Add the pudding mixture to the greased basins, ensuring that there is some space left at the top of the basins.
6.  Cover the top of the basins with a layer of baking parchment and aluminium foil (with the foil on the outside) and seal the foil around the edges of the basins tightly with baking string or clothiers’ elastic (not an elastic band). Make sure that the parchment and foil have a pleat in the centre to allow the puddings to rise.
7.  Steam the puddings for 6-7 hours, boiling hard for the first hour, and simmering thereafter. A very large pudding may need 7 ½ hours. The water should come about half way up the basins and will need topping up at least every 45 minutes. Always top up with boiling water.
8.  After steaming, remove the foil and parchment leave the puddings until they have fully cooled, then cover with fresh foil (no parchment being necessary) and store until required. These puddings are best eaten about two months after they are made (so, for Christmas, make these puddings in late October).
9.  To serve the pudding, re-steam for 1-1:30 hours before eating.

The march of authoritarianism and what to do about it

Authoritarianism

IN A RELATIVELY short period of time during the second decade of the twenty-first century, authoritarian extremism has become mainstream. An ultra-right wing party was elected to office in Poland last year; an ultra-right wing candidate was narrowly defeated in an Austrian election earlier this year; Germany, France and the U.K. have seen the rise of right-wing nationalist populist parties (AFD, La Front Nationale and the UKIP respectively); the United States of America is about to choose whether to elect a right-wing extremist president; Greece, meanwhile, has for some years been in the grip of a left-wing extremist administration; Spain has witnessed the rapid rise of the ultra-leftist Podemos, the U. K.’s Labour Party was quickly taken over last year by ultra-left-wing activists who proceeded to elect a similarly extremist leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who recently won a renewed leadership contest against a barely less extreme rival; meanwhile, the ruling Conservative party has been taken over by former home secretary Theresa May, whose openly nationalist rhetoric and policies announced at the recent party conference have alarmed many; and the other candidate for the United States presidency, Hillary Clinton, only narrowly defeated left-wing extremist Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination several months ago.

The cause of this sudden interest in authoritarian extremism has been widely debated: The Economist published recently a good article on the subject entitled “The New Political Divide“, in which it argued that the battle between what it described as “open” and “closed” policies had replaced the traditional duel between left- and right-wing politics to become the most important political issue of modern times.

The reality is that, much as zealous supporters of either position seem unable to recognise it, the extreme right- and extreme left-wing positions have more in common than divides them, and less (besides rhetoric) in common with their moderate counterparts than they have in common with one another: they all seek to use the power of the state widely to suppress basic liberties in order to favour the interests of some particular groups (whether people of a particular nationality or locality, or people perceived to be hard done by) over the interests of the population at large. They are, essentially, sectarian positions, and sectarianism almost inevitably requires authoritarianism to put into practice.

Globalisation, poverty and equality

“Globalisation” (usually without precise definition, but one can conveniently take it to mean increasing international trade) is often blamed for the rise in authoritarian extremism. The effects of international free trade, entirely predictably, have been, slowly, to even out what were enormous extremes of wealth inequality in the world, and vastly to reduce extreme poverty worldwide:

That enormous improvement in billions of peoples’ lives, which could not conceivably have been brought about by any other means, has not been entirely without friction: those living in places that were once uniquely privileged economically are now far closer to economic equality with a far greater number of people, and the greatest share of the riches of global growth in the past few decades has gone to those who were formerly living in grinding poverty, rather than further enriching those who were already moderately well-off.

As Tyler Cowen points out in the New York Times, global inequality has fallen markedly in recent decades.

Some complain (such as in this critical response to Cowen’s article on a ‘blog) that people’s complaints about inequality are principally about the fact that there have emerged some people who are extremely wealthy (the so-called “1%”). To an extent, it is inevitable that, as the size of markets for any given sort of goods or services that can be supplied by any one organisation increases, so concomitantly does the ability of those organisations to make proportionately greater profit and the owners of those organisations to receive a share of that profit. To that extent, the very process by which billions of people have been lifted out of extreme poverty is one and the same as creates a number of especially wealthy individuals, and criticising the latter necessarily amounts to criticising the former, although there is also a significant extent to which wealth inequality is driven by the very sort of authoritarian economic control by the state that leftist writers such as the ‘blogger linked above advocate.

Nationalism

Those who would rather that things reverted to how they were decades ago, where merely living in a wealthy country was a near guarantee of an at least moderately well-paid job (and concomitantly, living in a poor country was a near guarantee of a subsistence in the most extreme poverty for life, which would be short) appear to be supporting authoritarian political causes as a way of suppressing global free trade and in some way returning to an earlier point in time where their own interests were favoured over others’ merely because of the nation in which they were born.

It is a popular misconception that such policies are unique to the hard-right, for the hard-left, too, is fundamentally nationalistic, favouring extreme levels of state control within a particular nation (purportedly) to benefit the people who live in that nation at the expense of people in other countries who might want to trade with them: the idea that allowing immigration will suppress wages is a common form of left-wing nationalism, for example (and, of course, deliberately ignores the fact that immigrants will improve their position by migrating). It is frequently speculated that Jeremy Corbyn’s underwhelming enthusiasm for the European Union  during the recent referendum on “Brexit” was for precisely this reason. Indeed, as I shall discuss in more detail in a subsequent post, the very idea of the welfare state is inherently nationalistic, prioritising as it does in the distribution of what is essentially charity to people who are citizens of the state in which it operates over people who are far worse off in other nations.

The causes and consequences of authoritarianism

The extreme dangers of nationalist fundamentalism (and, indeed, all kinds of sectarianism) are well-known and need hardly to be repeated: scarcely has there been an atrocity in all history for which extreme sectarianism of one kind or another was not principally responsible. It is of the first importance that no state is ever allowed to be run in such a way in any circumstnaces, come what may.

However, there is also a more insidious form of authoritarianism that has been around for far longer and is in many respects a cause, rather than a consequence, of the economic conditions giving rise to the recent increase in sectarian extremism. I wrote about that at some length in this article last year.

In summary, the economic authoritarianism of the state serves to (and there are strong grounds for suspicion that it is is in many respects intended to, related in large part to the tax system) stifle competition by excessive regulation allowing only very large companies to compete, and erecting artificially high barriers to entry for new entrants in the market. It creates artificial scarcity of assets (by repressing people’s liberty to create new assets or improve existing assets, such as planning control in relation to land, or by the entire edifice of intellectual “property”, which is the greatest enabler of rent-seeking behaviour in modern times), causing those who already have assets to enjoy artificial windfalls at the expense of (and to extract rent from) those who do not already have assets. This sort of authoritarianism not only entrenches wealth inequality, but stifles prosperity: interest rates manipulated by the state through the mechanism of central banking are usually artificially low, favouring those who borrow to invest in fixed assets, such as land, at the expense of those who would invest in (and those who would benefit from others investing in) productive business.

Through stifling competition, manipulating interest rates, and creating artificial scarcity of assets, the state has greatly exacerbated the economic issues to which globalisation gives rise by suppressing growth and prosperity and causing wealth artificially to accumulate to holders of fixed assets. This, in turn, has made it more likely that people will turn to more extreme forms of authoritarianism; although there are no clear data on the subject, there is every reason to suspect that authoritarianism gives rise to positive feedback: the more authoritarian that the state is, the more the people are disadvantaged by that repression, and the less that people have to lose by supporting ever more extreme authoritarianism.

What to do about it

I set out in my article from last year a suggested series of constitutional reforms. The underlying principle to those proposed reforms is that the constitution must work to protect the population from abuse of power if the very worst possible people come to power in priority over making it easy for a benign government to operate. In short, a nation’s constitution must be thoroughly Trump-proof: democracy alone will never be enough.

The rise of sectarian extremists makes the case for such reforms even more compelling. My article last year was written before the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, who was elevated to power by mass entryism: ironically, the article suggested the very same means for forcing constitutional reform onto the agenda of political parties. Regardless of Corbyn’s policies, his rise to power proves that entryism can work, and I again urge all those who realise the very real danger of the rise of authoritarianism coupled with a constitution inadequate to protect the population from extremist politicians to join political parties and demand that they demand fundamental constitutional reform along the lines that I set out in my article last year.

Golden syrup Madeira cake

MADEIRA cake has, among some quarters, a reputation for being uninteresting. Madeira cake, at its most basic, is a richer, denser sort of sponge cake, which was traditionally served with Madeira wine, and not to be confused with bolo del mel, a honey cake originating in Madeira. It must be admitted that the basic recipe produces a cake that does not have sponge cake’s almost frivolous lightness or the delicious richness and flavour of fruit cakes or similar.

However, I have developed a slightly modified version of the Madeira cake, made with golden syrup, currants and lashings of vanilla that is a delight to the taste-buds and anything but a sponge cake also-ran.

Even better, this recipe can, with a few simple adaptations, be made into a lemon (or even orange) drizzle cake (or perhaps even a combined lemon/orange drizzle cake that some enterprising bakeries call a “St. Clement’s cake”). Both versions of the recipe are given below.

Ingredients

• 450g self-raising flour
• 155g golden caster sugar
• 155g golden syrup
• 310g butter
• 150g currants
• 6 eggs (medium)
• 4tsp vanilla

Method

Ensure that the eggs and butter are at room temperature before starting.

Pre-heat the oven to 155ºC (use an oven thermometer for accuracy; this cake is very easy to undercook or overcook). Line the tin (9″/23cm round) with three layers of non-stick baking parchment on the base, three around the inside of the tin, one layer on the outside of the tin secured by baking string, and one on the top, with a small hole in the middle (but, if at all possible, not touching the top of the cake).

Cream the butter, sugar and golden syrup vigorously (an electric whisk makes this much easier: the more powerful the better) until the mixture is light and fluffy. Note that it will not get as light as with a sponge cake because of the use of golden syrup and golden caster sugar.

Gently beat the eggs in a jug, and add the vanilla to that jug. Pour in the vanilla/egg mix a little at a time, gently beating the egg/vanilla mix into the creamed butter/sugar (if using an electric whisk, on its lowest setting) after each addition.

Sift in the flour and mix gently with a metal spoon. Add the currants and stir gently until thoroughly combined

Turn out the mixture into the tin and make a hollow in the middle: this hollow will allow the cake to cook more evenly as well as having a more even top (unlike the cake pictured above where, in error, I omitted this technique passed to me by my grandmother).

Bake for one and a half hours. A skewer inserted into the centre should be just about clean, but it may not be entirely spotless.

The cake will continue to cook for a little in the tin after coming out of the oven. Leave it in the tin for about half an hour before turning it out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Alternative (orange or lemon drizzle)

• Two lemons, two oranges or one orange and one lemon
• 150g chopped candied peel, plus (optionally) a large chunk of candied peel to decorate
• 100g white caster sugar

To make a lemon or orange drizzle cake, follow the recipe above for Madeira cake, but omit the vanilla. Add instead the zest of two unwaxed lemons or oranges (or one of each), and very finely chopped candied peel (chopped mixed peel if not available, but this is inferior) instead of the currants. Add also two tablespoons of the juice of the lemons/oranges. The liquid will boil whilst the cake is cooking helping it to rise.

While the cake is baking, boil the remaining juice of the fruit and 100g or so of white caster sugar gently until the mixture is moderately sticky. When the cake has come out of the oven and is still warm, prick the top of the cake evenly all over with a skewer, and pour the syrup into the holes (making sure as much goes into the holes as possible), but also let some drizzle down the sides of the cake.

The top is traditionally decorated by a large chunk of candied peel (lemon/orange depending on the cake): use a small amount of the syrup to stick it to the top of the cake.

The state as enabler of monopolies

Why the state, big business and trades unions all have an incentive to restrict consumer choice and keep prices high

THE IDEA of a monopoly is well understood: a business that is the only supplier of a particular sort of good or service can exact a far higher price for that good or service than can a business that has to endure market competition from independent, alternative suppliers. Thus, a monopoly business can earn vastly higher profits (what economists call “supernormal profits”) than those that exist in a state of competition.

In a free market, monopolies can usually be upturned relatively easily by competition: a new business entering the market can earn for itself a substantial return and a good market share simply by offering the same goods or services as the incumbent monopolist at a lower price. This is easier in some cases than others: where there are high barriers to entry to a marketplace, it can be difficult for a new competitor to enter the market. In some cases, this may mean that a new competitor must spend many years selling inferior products at much lower prices before the monopoly can be challenged; in other cases, it may mean that the monopoly cannot be challenged at all.

Monopolies are, of course, as bad for consumers as they are profitable for businesses: consumers often have to endure substandard products or services at excessive prices where there is no competition in the marketplace.

In relatively recent times, the state in many jurisdictions has given the impression that it seeks to reduce the ability for monopolies to have this effect on consumers in the public interest. In the U. K., the Competition and Markets Authority (formerly the Competition Commission, and before that, the Monopolies and Mergers Commission) seeks to, “promote competition for the benefit of consumers, both within and outside the UK“.

To an extent, organisations such as the C. M. A. do have the desired effect, but at the same time, the state acts as a deliberate enabler of monopolies, against the interest of consumers, and for the short-term political gain of politicians, often supported and encouraged by large businesses and trades unions.

Why politicians profit from monopolies

Where the state, as is ubiquitous in modern times, goes beyond governance and provides welfare of all kinds, politicians generally win power by promising to spend (and then spending) money raised in taxes on things that are popular with undecided voters in marginal constituencies.

To spend money, however, the state needs to raise money. Taxing people is at least as unpopular as spending money is popular, so any politician who can credibly promise to increase spending without appearing to increase taxes is likely to be successful.

Wherever there is a monopoly, there is a supernormal profit. Wherever there is a profit, there is tax revenue. Thus, the state can easily increase its tax revenues without increasing the tax rate by creating monopolies. Businesses will make more profit, which will not only increase corporation tax receipts, but income tax receipts to, and this income can be augmented again if the state makes would be monopolies pay up front for licences for their monopoly rights, as is common.

Where there is a graduated tax system, in which those who earn more money pay a higher rate of income tax, the state has a further incentive to create monopolies: doing so concentrates wealth in the hands of a relatively few people. This means that, compared to a non-monopolistic situation where the wealth is more evenly distributed, a higher proportion of that wealth is susceptible to a higher rate of tax. Again, this increases tax revenues without appearing to increase the tax rate.

This does not, of course, mean that wealth is created for free. Instead of being taxed more, people have to pay more for monopolised goods and services, often leaving people worse off than were the revenue raised by tax. The amount extra that people have to pay in goods and services to generate any given amount of extra revenue by the state is much greater than the amount that they would have to pay in tax, as the supernormal profits are shared between the state and the monopolists. Also, the extra costs of goods and services has to be born equally by everyone, whether rich or poor, whereas the state can and usually does tax those who have little income much less than those who have a higher income.

Thus, a welfare state that is ostensibly intended to redistribute money from rich to poor actually creates an overwhelming incentive for politicians to do the exact opposite: appropriate money from poorer people in higher costs of goods and services to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few where it can then be taxed at a higher rate to give to whoever is likely to influence the results of the next election.

Why trades unions like monopolies, too

Where a unionised monopoly business makes supernormal profits, trades unions can and do use their power over that business to appropriate for their members a share of those supernormal profits.

In a competitive market, by contrast, even if a union were to succeed in demanding that the business pay equivalent rates to the union members, doing so would be futile as the business would not be able to sustain such high wages without becoming insolvent.

Thus, trades unions have a strong incentive to act to suppress market competition, against the public interest, and help to create or maintain monopolies, preferably those controlled by the state, over which they can exert the highest degree of control.

This is why, for example, in the 1960s, when large swathes of the nationalised U. K. railway network was closed by the state, the government (at that time highly influenced by the trades unions) forcibly prohibited private businesses re-opening the lines, in spite of the fact that it would clearly have been in the public interest for the lines to be re-opened if doing so did not create a cost to the Treasury. (Preserved railways, usually operating steam trains, were permitted, but these were run by volunteers, and usually operated only a few trains a day in the summer, and were thus not serious commercial competition).

How the state creates and maintains monopolies

In some cases, the state’s creation and maintenance of monopolies is obvious, as where the state nationalises an entire sector and then prohibits any other business acting in competition, as with the Post Office before 2006, or the railways after 1948.

In other cases, the state’s influence is less direct: as with taxis (or ‘buses between 1930 and 1986), for example, the state may license operators, prohibiting anyone but those granted a licence by the state from competing in the marketplace. Where the state restricts the number of license granted, or makes the cost (whether direct or indirect) of acquiring a licence so high that only a business that makes a supernormal profit could ever afford to acquire one, the licensing creates a monopoly. A good example of this in modern times in the U. K. is railway franchising, where a franchise operator must pay the state a high fee for its franchise, which cost it then passes onto passengers.

Licensing creates a monopoly even where multiple operators are licensed so long as the number of licensees is restricted, because the operators so licensed are a monopoly between them: if the number of licensed operators exactly matches (or is less than) the demand, as is common with taxis, and as is the case with railway franchising, there is no incentive for any operator to charge a lower price to acquire market share, as the operator’s market share is inherently limited (for example in the case of taxis, by being a single person; in the case of ‘buses between 1930 and 1986 by being licensed to operate only on certain routes) and the operator is virtually guaranteed enough demand at the monopoly price to meet all the supply that the operator is able to provide.

The state often seeks to justify licensing on the ground that it is necessary to safeguard public safety or similar; but such concerns can never justify restricting the total number of licensees: if the state does so, it almost certainly does so because it wants to create a monopoly from which it (or the businesses and/or trades unions who influence it) can profit.

Some means are far more insidious. The state can create a monopoly by artificially increasing the barriers to entry to a market so as to be so high as effectively to create a monopoly or de facto cartel among a limited number of suppliers without explicitly limiting numbers at all. The more profitable the business sector, the stronger that the state’s incentive to create a monopoly in that sector and appropriate a share of its supernormal profits that there is.

The way that the state creates artificial barriers to entry is by regulation that is so costly and difficult to comply with that only a very large, already well established business (and possibly only one that makes supernormal profits) can hope to do so. This is a common technique, as regulation of business tends to be accepted uncritically by many voters as being in the public interest even though in many cases it manifestly is not.

It is thus no surprise that the most profitable sector in the U. K., financial services, is simultaneously the most heavily regulated and the most dominated by large operators that make very large profits for the benefit of the Treasury and which employ a sizeable number of people who earn extremely large sums of money which are then taxed at a higher rate than the rate at which than those same sums would be taxed if the financial services market were more competitive and its profits not sufficient to sustain such large salaries.

Intellectual property, too, creates monopolies the supernormal profits from which can be taxed by the state. This is why the state is happy to agree to requests from holders of these monopoly rights retrospectively to extend the copyright term even though doing so is clearly contrary to the public interest: the supposed justification of copyright law is that, without it, people would not create original works, and everyone would be worse off in consequence. Clearly, this does not apply when the works have already been created (the extent to which this really applies at all is doubtful, but that is another topic), so the state cannot in good faith even be trying to act in the public interest when it extends the copyright term for things that have already been created. The overwhelming inference in such cases is that it doing it to profit from the supernormal profits that the monopoly holders of copyright enjoy. Even if the public would benefit more from being able to enjoy, for example, 1930s Disney films, for free, this would be less likely to advance the personal careers of the politicians who control such things than something which concentrates wealth in the hands of the state.

Indeed, this creates a strong incentive for the state to encourage or mandate that as many things as possible be monetised so that the profits from that monetisation can be taxed, no matter what the benefits to the public would be of a demonetised state of affairs (e.g., copyright abolition).

The solution

The only way of preventing the abuse of power that is the creation of monopolies with the intention and effect of abstracting wealth from the population to benefit the political careers of a few politicians and trades union officials and to enrich the monopoly suppliers of services is by taking away the state’s power to do things that amount to the creation or enabling of monopolies.

Truly free trade is the enemy of monopoly. Free trade ought to be regarded as a fundamental human right and the state’s power to repress it be drastically and irreversibly curtailed, as discussed in more detail here.

Furthermore, as will be explored in more detail in a future ‘blog post, regulation must be re-imagined in ways that protect the public interest in, for example, safety without having the capacity to create de facto monopolies by raising barriers to entry to the market to excessive levels, and the state’s power to regulate must be strictly confined to such regulation as complies with this principle.

What is political extremism?

POLITICAL extremism is a topic of growing concern at the present time, but there is little in the way of an adequate definition of the concept. I suspect that people often think of political extremism as any view that is extremely different to their own, which is more or less useless a concept as it cannot easily be communicated meaningfully between people except those who have, and know that they have, identical political views.

The dictionary definition is vague:

“extremism

1. the condition or act of taking an extreme view.
2. the taking of extreme action. — extremist, n., adj.,”

and begs the question of what it means for a view or action to be “extreme”.

Even if one were to take a somewhat less subjective definition of “extremism” as a political view that is extremely different to the norm, that definition is also of very limited usefulness, as the concept would lose any moral significance: the view that women ought to be allowed to vote would have been an extremist political position in the mid 19th century, for instance, in the fullest sense of “extremist” if that were the extent of the definition.

Whether a political view is common or uncommon is utterly irrelevant to whether or not it is justifiable or deserves condemnation. To be truly useful, and to serve the function that it needs to and is often used to serve, the concept of political extremism needs to denote justified moral condemnation of a political view, rather than merely noting it as being extremely unusual. A political conviction that all bank notes ought to be bright purple is a highly unusual political view, but it does not genuinely belong in the same category as, for example, the conviction that people of some races are inherently superior to others and should be treated as such.

A useful definition of extremism needs to have two essential qualities:

(1) it must not be defined to be simply the opposite of a specific conventional political position (as, e.g., a person of right-wing views might consider any left-wing views to be extremist and vice-versa); and

(2) it must be a rational basis for justifiable moral condemnation of all the views that fall within that definition.

The dictionary definition does point to one useful feature of the concept that is worth retaining, viz. that it should be apt to apply either to a political conviction or to the means of realising it.

With the above in mind, I propose the following working definition of political extremism. A political view is an extremist view if:

(1) the realisation of it in practice has a real potential to harm at least some people (where “harm” includes not just physical injury, but restricting a person’s freedom or diminishing a person’s wealth or happiness); and

(2) it is intended to benefit a limited subset of the world’s population of humans (e.g., those of a particular race only), rather than the world’s population as a whole, except where:

(a) the policy is the implementation of another, more abstract, principle which, when applied universally, itself best serves the interests of the world’s population as a whole; or

(b) the limited subset of the world’s population that the policy is intended to benefit is constituted by people who are not genuinely deserving of justifiable moral condemnation of which all those who do not fall within that subset are, by definition, are deserving; or

(3) it is known to have no rational basis.

A means of achieving a political view is extremist if:

(1) it seeks to subvert a proper process for resolving disputes between people about what political views ought to be realised (e.g. seeking to bypass the results of a democratic election by military coup or otherwise); or

(2) it seeks to change people’s views as to what policy ought to be preferred, not by reasoned argument, but by violence, intimidation, bribery, or emotional or other manipulation or deceit, including any use of any of the dishonest debating techniques discussed here.

Extremism is thus a matter of intention. A political view will not be extremist merely because, in practice, it would, if realised, harm some people to benefit only a limited subset of the world’s population: it would only be extremist if that was the explicit intention (which includes where the person holding the view wishes to benefit the limited subset and does not care whether others are harmed or not). Similarly, a political view will not be extremist merely because it turns out that it cannot be justified by reason: it will only be extremist if the person advancing it is advancing it despite knowing that it cannot be justified by reason (or, at least, in the absence of an honest belief that it can be justified by reason).

A means of achieving a political view will not be extremist merely because, for example, an argument in favour of it is not logically sound: it only becomes extremist if a person specifically intends to change another’s view in spite of knowing that the argument is not logically sound, e.g., by becoming aggressive or evasive when pressed as to the logical flaw.

With that in mind, it should not be difficult in practice for anyone rational to spot political extremism. Some common hallmarks of political extremism are:

(1) criticising an entire group of people (e.g., “women don’t understand politics”) except where the group is defined by the very characteristic deserving of criticism (e.g., “criminals deserve the due punishment of law”);

(2) believing that any political ends can ever justify using deceit, manipulation or violence or infringing another’s private rights;

(3) asserting that, because a particular group of people has or has had in the past some disadvantages or have been the victim of others’ prejudices, that they should receive special privileges over and above the population as a whole to make up for it (as opposed to simply ending the prejudice or disadvantage);

(4) seeking in any way (whether by social pressure, verbal or physical aggression or repressive state action) to suppress the expression of opposing views rather than meet them with reasoned argument in response; or

(5) seeking to condemn in any way the very idea of subjecting the policy in question or the principles underlying it to the scrutiny of reason.

It should be readily apparent that political extremism is at the same time both very common and exceedingly dangerous. Those who tolerate extremism in any form are themselves partly responsible for its existence and the harmful consequences that it almost inevitably has. It is the duty of all people to do all in their power to vanquish the world of the dangerous and evil menace that is extremism.

The dangers of nationalised charity

Why the welfare state is inherently nationalist and open to abuse and what to replace it with

THE WELFARE state is said to be a proud achievement of the Attlee government of 1945: it amounted to the realisation of what had been the aim of socialists for decades before then. The state levied “National Insurance” upon people (and later ever greater indirect taxes, too), and, in return, they would receive from the state care “from cradle to grave”, including a nationalised health service, pensions and stipends for the unemployed or those unable through illness to work. It also, eventually, included legal aid, funding by the state for individuals to have access to legal advice and representation which they could not otherwise afford, to allow access to justice to all irrespective of means.

Compared to what had gone before, such arrangements transformed people’s lives: no longer did lack of means equate to destitution; people of any means had access to health-care whereas previously they had had to suffer many ills untreated (it was common for people to have all their teeth extracted, whether they needed them or not, as a wedding present because they would be unable to afford dental treatment if they ever had tooth decay), and the justice system was not one which was practically inaccessible for a large proportion of the population.

Such opposition as there had been to such measures was swept away by the Second World War, which not only fostered a communitarian esprit de corps, but normalised a degree of state control over people’s affairs that would have been unthinkable before then: the idea that the state would exercise its power for the common good, whether to defeat a common enemy or simply make life better for everyone, would probably have seemed beyond doubt to many of those voting in the 1945 general election.

Against that background, it is not hard to appreciate the enduring popularity of the welfare state (and especially the National Health Service); but that background can serve to obfuscate the real and serious problems of the welfare state and give rise to the false impression that the only alternative is the pre-1945 state of affairs in which destitution was a very real prospect for many. The conventional divide in politics between right and left has also tended to obfuscate proper scrutiny of the essential nature of the welfare state and whether there are better ways of achieving the same objectives: the only options have apparently been either to reduce or even eliminate welfare provision entirely, or to continue or increase it under the direct control of the state.

In reality, these are not the only options, and an entirely different, third, option which has yet to reach the popular consciousness is significantly superior to both.

Prior to 1945, there were a wealth of friendly societies and philanthropic organisations providing some measure of welfare to those who required it. They were not sufficient to provide for all who needed them because people’s generosity was not sufficient to fund them adequately.

However, full state control of welfare and funding by taxation is not the only means of solving the inherent problem of the pre-1945 philanthropic provision, being the lack of resources. The only real need for any element of compulsion is in the giving. There is no need for the state directly to control what is done with the money once it be given, provided that it be required by law for everyone who earns more than a certain sum of money to give a proportion of their incomes to charity. This would solve the resource inadequacy of the pre-1945 system without introducing the many problems that are inherent to – and unique to – a state monopolised system.

The problems of state controlled welfare

When the state controls welfare, it is inherently politicised. This means that welfare provision depends, not on what is in the public interest, but on what is in the electoral self-interest of those who control welfare. The two are not necessarily (and often not in fact) the same. History has shown that the trust in and deference to the state that prevailed in 1945 was seriously misplaced.

Thus, people who tend to turn out to vote more often (such as older people) are disproportionately generously treated by the welfare system (consider the pensions triple lock, the non-means-tested winter fuel allowance, free television licences for over 75s, free ‘bus passes and that the greatest single activity of the UK state in economic terms is redistributing money from young to old), not because anybody genuinely thinks that this is the right thing to do, but because it will help to advance the political careers of those who make welfare decisions.

People who are more likely to be in marginal constituencies, or to change their party loyalties, are also more likely to be considered favourably by those making welfare decisions than those who are in practical terms unlikely to affect the results of an election.

Further, because the state has monopoly control over a whole sector (such as healthcare), it can (and does) use that control deliberately to abuse its powers for short-term political gain. The state can (and does) use its authority to repress the revelation of information about failures of its own services; it can (and does) use its power as a monopolist to manipulate prices (for example, by paying medical professionals less than the true market rate for their services, which would not be possible in a system of open competition), and even, as it did recently, to manipulate the legal system to make it uneconomic for many people to bring legitimate claims against state run institutions such as hospitals for having negligently caused them injury.

The state can (and often does) take money away from people who genuinely need it and yet simultaneously pay the same or a greater amount of money for frivolous schemes that are intended to seem impressive to voters but are often utterly worthless (billions were spent on the abandoned identity cards project in the same decade as substantial cuts to legal aid, for instance). The state with alarming frequency imperils the proper operation of all of the welfare services that it provides, to the extent that they really cannot be relied on in the long term by those who need them at all.

The state’s power to borrow money is used abusively in order to manipulate and deceive in a state controlled system: a political party can promise to spend amounts of money in welfare that it cannot generate by tax revenue (because it would not be elected if it were to raise taxes enough to pay for its plans). The resulting borrowing at best results in what is ultimately a redistribution of wealth from tax-payers (including the very poor, who pay Value Added Tax) to bond-holders (who generally tend to be more wealthy, as they have money to invest), and, in extreme cases, can lead to state collapse and mass destitution, as has occurred in recent yeas in Venezuela.

Further, state control tends to create legions of sinecures: people who are paid great amounts to work in apparently managerial positions who produce little or no value and consume a substantial proportion of the resources allocated apparently to the public welfare in worthless re-organisations that achieve nothing.

Moreover, state controlled welfare and enterprise is inherently nationalistic: the National Health Service is so termed for a reason. The provision of welfare is made, not to those who need it the most, but to those who happen by chance to live within what are essentially arbitrary national borders. There is no possible justification for forcing people by law to spend their own money in tax on paying for wealthy elderly people to have free ‘bus passes or television licences when they could use that same money instead towards saving people’s lives in parts of the world where a little money would go a long way.

Proponents of state controlled systems often speak of such systems being “universal”, but that is a falsehood, for they are not universal at all, but rather restricted to the privileged few who happen by chance to live in the nation in which they are provided.

The solution

As noted above, it is not necessary for the state to control the provision of welfare services for the problems of the pre-1945 state of affairs to be addressed. All that is needed is for people to be required by law to give a proportion of their incomes to charity. That solution to the problem does not have any of the problems unique to state welfare, nor is it likely to have serious problems of its own that are not also present in some form in a state controlled system, and thus is strongly preferable to it.

Thus, that proportion of tax that is currently spent on welfare should be replaced by a legal duty for people to give an equivalent sum of money to charities of their choosing.

There is already a satisfactory legal definition of what counts as a charity (which is an improvement in and of itself in strictness as to benefiting the public in comparison to those things on which the state is free to spend money raised by tax). This could be improved upon by setting two grades of charity: primary charities, those, such as providers of healthcare, whose services are provide from relief of destitution or the treatment or prevention of illness, and secondary charities, encompassing everything else currently permitted as charities, and also including schemes that are not-for-profit, but which only benefit those who pay into them, such as friendly societies. A divided scheme would work by people being required to give a certain proportion of their charitable donations to primary charities, and the remainder to either primary or secondary charities.

Scientific research is not welfare, but it is still not safe to have this funded by the state given the dangers of the possibility of the election of capricious extremists who might divert funding from worthwhile science to things that do not really count as science at all, or things which are politically motivated. It is in any event dangerous for the state to control what can count as worthwhile scientific research, lest the state deliberately manipulate research for political ends.

Scientific research is a complex field, requiring technical expertise, and it may be difficult for many people to make sound judgments about what is and is not worthwhile scientific research. Therefore, the better system would be one in which scientific research were funded by compulsory donations as with charities, but, where the choice of at least a substantial portion of that research funding would be limited in accordance with the decision of one of several boards approved for the purpose. For the constrained portion, people would have to give that money to one or more bodies determined by one of the boards. The boards themselves would be entirely independent of each other, and unlimited in number. They would have to consist of a body of leading experts in science. The first board would initially comprise the current government scientific advisors. Further boards could be established by satisfying an independent organisation (perhaps a court or an independent commission, not itself a board) of the scientific credentials of its members. The idea behind having multiple boards is that no one body of people by themselves can monopolise control of all science funding, thus eliminating the possibility of a single point of failure.

Thus, people would be required to give a certain proportion of their income to primary charities, a further proportion of their income to scientific research as approved by a board, and a further proportion to any charity or any scientific research at their discretion. Those proportions between them should initially be at least roughly equivalent to the amounts now collected in tax for state welfare, international aid and scientific research.

Further, people would be permitted to give in kind rather than in money. For example, a person would be treated as having given a certain amount to charity if that person does voluntary work to that value for that charity, whether that be providing professional services or working in a charity shop. Thus, lawyers, for example, could discharge the welfare part of their compulsory donations by undertaking a certain value of pro bono work, which would potentially be considerably more efficient than a legal aid system funded by taking money in tax and paying it to lawyers (and paying also for a whole administrative mechanism to provide for this).

Because the amount that people would be required to give would be a proportion of their income, it is likely that those who are able to do voluntary work of a higher value would be those who have a higher welfare liability to discharge, meaning that, irrespective of income, people would have to undertake roughly the same amount of voluntary work to discharge their welfare requirement in that way.

Additionally, people ought to be able to carry forward donations or voluntary work from year to year, earning a notional interest rate for having paid early. For example, a person paying £1,000 over and above her or his allowance for a year, at a notional interest rate of 1% per year, would be able to deduct £1,010 from the donation required for the next year. Thus, for example, people who are unemployed could effectively undertake voluntary work full time for a number of months, which could then mean that this work would be set off against any future liability to make donations. This would have the potential of substantially improving the long-term financial position of people who are unemployed and who undertake voluntary work. It would also be likely to be economically counter-cyclical, making the economy more stable, as it would mean that people would be more likely to be productively employed despite economic downturns. This would be exactly the opposite of what currently happens during times of economic recession, where tax income is reduced at precisely the same time as welfare spending needs to increase.

As to evasion, any charity ought to be able to have the ability to pursue an evader of donations through the courts. Those who are found to have evaded payment of compulsory donations should be required to pay a significantly higher proportion of their income in donations in the future, as well as a high rate of interest on any sums not paid and the full costs of the proceedings necessary to bring them to justice. Whichever charities fund the proceedings against an evader ought to be entitled to share the historic donations recovered between them on the basis that a person who fails to discharge the duty to make donations loses the right to decide the recipient of those donations.

It would be very important to prevent the state from interfering in this arrangement once it had been established (for example, by making politically motivated and arbitrary changes to what counts as a charity in order to achieve the same abusive ends as the state currently achieves by direct control). I wrote about the constitutional mechanisms to restrain the state’s power here. Those are essential to prevent such abuse.

Once established, the requirement to make donations to charity, the definition of charity, the separation definition of primary and secondary charities, the position of scientific research, the rights of charities to pursue evaders privately and the prohibition of the state in undertaking these activities directly should all be strongly entrenched, requiring a supermajority at a referendum to reverse. Only the donation rate (i.e., what proportion of people’s income should be required to be donated, and how this should be computed) and the notional interest rate ought to be able to be modified by Parliament alone, and even then with upper and lower limits constitutionally entrenched.

Answers to common objections and concerns

Having discussed this idea with a number of people, the same objections are often raised. A common theme to all of the answers to them is this: this system does not have to be entirely free of problems to be worthwhile: it has only to be better overall than any actual alternative. However many problems that the best solution has, it is still the best solution. The current way of doing things has, as described above, very serious problems indeed. This system need only be somewhat better overall to be worthwhile. In fact, it is likely to be considerably better for the reasons given above.

People might give money to frivolous charities

People might indeed give money to frivolous charities: but the state might also spend its tax revenue frivolously, and very often does so. This is thus not a problem unique to this system, but exists at least equally with the state.

However, with the state, there two critical differences. First, whereas an individual might decide to give all of her or his money to a relatively frivolous charity out of caprice, the state’s frivolous spending might also be motivated by a desire for electoral manipulation as described above. Thus, the state is more likely to mis-spend its money than individuals are to give to frivolous causes.

Secondly, when a state spends money on frivolous causes, it has enormous power to spend the money of a very large number of people at once on a single frivolous cause, and to choose to redirect money seriously needed for people’s welfare into that frivolous cause. There is a single point of failure. When the power to decide the destination of welfare is distributed widely, there is no single point of failure. A huge number of people would simultaneously have to make frivolous decisions in order for a significant amount of money to be diverted to a frivolous cause.

Further, this system is necessary to prevent abuse of state power in the same way as democracy is necessary to prevent the abuse of state power. One might equally object to a democracy on the basis that people might vote for the wrong politicians (and often do), but that is not a reason not to have a democracy, given that all the alternatives are clearly worse. The same applies here.

Finally, in any event, the requirement to give a certain proportion of money to primary charities would mean that it would not be possible for all of any given person’s donations to be made to a frivolous charity.

This requires a large amount of trust in the wisdom of the public

This is a variant of the above objection in substance. In reality, it requires no more trust in the wisdom of the public than a state controlled system, where the same money is spent by people elected by and drawn from the same public as would in the charity model proposed here be deciding individually where to make their compulsory donations, as here.

Would healthcare still be universal?

As remarked above, healthcare is not universal now. It is not certain precisely what healthcare system might emerge in the long-term once such arrangements as I describe here had been put in place; but it is equally uncertain what healthcare system that there might be in the future even if this system is not put into place.

Indeed, healthcare provision is likely to be more certain and stable in the long-term if it is taken out of state hands: the state cannot be trusted with healthcare, as even a cursory examination of recent history clearly shows.

People could not co-ordinate their donations effectively

This objection relies on the implicit premise that the state can organise welfare effectively, or, at least, more effectively than on the basis of voluntary donations. Yet, as described above, any single authority controlling where all the nation’s welfare is spent is inherently prone to abuses of power, meaning that it will use the authority that it cannot but have if there is to be any central co-ordination of welfare to advance the personal political interests of those who exercise the control.

Any system in which there is a centralised authority is inherently prone to this problem. It is therefore essential to have a system that does not have centralised control.

Some charities are inefficient/badly organised/corrupt

This is no less true of the state. The difference is that, if a charity is found to be failing, people can immediately stop giving their money to it. In the case of state failure, people are still forced to give their money to the failing state, and their only chance of control is a general election which might be as much as 5 years away, and where the only credible opposition to the government might well be likely to do things in office even worse than perpetuate the particular failure in question.

The more things that a government controls, the less that any one of those things can be effectively controlled by democratic accountability, as voters have to weigh the various parties’ stances on all of the various issues in order to vote at an election. I call this “democratic dilution”.

Thus, people might end up voting for a party whose policies on dealing with a whole range of things they find seriously disagreeable only because they find the other parties’ positions on other issues even worse. The fewer things that the government controls, and therefore the fewer things which people have to take into account when voting, the more democratically accountable that a government really is.

Additionally, where the state is corrupt, it has far more power to suppress the revelation of that corruption than does a private organisation.

The system is untested

This is true of anything before it is implemented for the first time. Indeed, it was true of the National Health Service before it was founded (nothing like that had ever been done before). For this to be a valid objection to this proposal, therefore, it would have to have been an equally valid objection to the founding of the entire welfare state which it is intended to replace.

There are many things that it is not practical to test before instituting. It would be very unlikely that any test of this system even if a test were possible would be a fair test, as those (e.g. the sinecures) who currently benefit from the state’s abuses of power, as well as the politicians themselves, would have a strong incentive to manipulate the outcome.

Given that the problems of the current system are well established and very serious, and given that they specifically require centralised state power in order to be problems, it is more than worthwhile to implement something that would be a specific solution to those problems that is unlikely to create any significant fresh problems that are not already present in one form or another in the present system.

Conclusion

The important thing to take away from this is that providing for adequate relief of poverty does not need an expansive state. Because the state tends to abuse its power, relief of poverty, and the provision of welfare generally, is best provided (in the interests of those who really need it) other than by the state. The state need only to mandate the donations – not to control the spending of them.

The expansion of the state is not necessary to avoid destitution and hardship as is often assumed. Those who oppose the degree of state power currently wielded are not necessarily wealthy people who secretly want selfishly to keep all of their money for themselves no matter what the consequences for those in need; indeed, it is likely that this sort of system would make it far easier to increase the donation rate than is now possible with the tax rate, as people would retain agency over how their donation money were spent and would be able to take steps to assure themselves that none of it would be wasted on causes with which they disagree. I should certainly be happy to pay more in combined donations and taxes than I now pay in taxes were such a system to be put in place; but I should not trust the government to spend wisely the proceeds of any tax increases.

It is also likely that the donated money would be much more efficiently spent than in a state controlled system, meaning that for any given amount of money donated, more good would be likely to be done by it than in a state controlled system.

Wholemeal bread

BREAD is a splendid sort of staple, and home-made bread is generally far tastier than the shop bought variety. With the wonderful invention that is home freezing, large batches of it can be made at once and frozen from near fresh to keep one going for a good few weeks. I always try to make my own bread when I can, either this plain recipe, or a richer, more flavoursome fruit bread recipe that I may well share sometime.

Ingredients

• 2kg wholemeal strong flour
• 2tsp salt
• 150g butter
• 35g dried instant yeast (that is, 5x 7g sachets)
• 1.3l tepid water

Method

Add the flour to a very large mixing bowl, and crumble together with the butter using the tips of the fingers until a fine texture like breadcrumbs is achieved. Add to one side of the mixing bowl the salt and to the other side the yeast. Add 1 litre of water to the mixture and stir by hand until the water and the dry ingredients are well combined. Add the remaining water little by little until no dry flour remains: it may not be necessary to use all of the water; how much water is necessary varies with atmospheric conditions among other things. The dough should be soft but not soggy.

Once the mixture is worked into a rough dough, cover a large board or work surface in flour and knead rigorously (without tearing the dough) for 10 minutes. Place the kneaded dough back into the mixing bowl, cover with a tea towel, and leave it until it has risen to twice its original size. This will take between 1 and 3 hours.

Prepare 2x 2lb (1kg) loaf tins, or equivalent by lining them with a single layer of baking parchment. Knock back the dough and knead it again for a minute or two. Cut the dough into two parts and form each part into a shape suitable for fitting into the baking tins. Add the dough to the tins, cover with a tea towel, and leave them to prove for a further 1 hour, but not longer, or else they will over-rise and either collapse or come out with a hole in the middle. The aim is not to make sourdough.

Pre-heat the oven to 210ºC (preferably use an oven thermometer to ensure accuracy), and fill the oven’s roasting tray with water so that the steam will soften the bread’s crust a little whilst baking. Optionally, rub butter onto the outside of the bread before baking further to soften the crust.

Bake the loaves for 35 minutes, ensuring that they are properly cooked by tapping the bottoms of the loaves: a properly baked loaf will sound hollow.

Allow the bread to cool on a wire rack. Generally, it will be easier to cut when it has been left standing (covered with a tea-towel) overnight, but it can be eaten fresh, before it has even cooled down, which is a particular delight.

Ten dishonest debating techniques, and how to spot them

For those in a hurry, the list of techniques starts here.

DISHONEST political debate has been in the news recently in connexion with the EU referendum, after the Treasury Select Committee criticised false claims made by the Vote Leave campaign as being false (and members of the Vote Leave campaign in turn criticised the Remain campaign for being misleading in respect of other figures).

Dishonesty in political (or, indeed, any) debate is not new, and is depressingly common. In my practice in the legal profession for over a decade, one thing that I have found striking is the similarity in people’s behaviour when they seek to deny some legal wrongdoing in the face of overwhelming evidence to when people encounter a difficult counter-argument or question in a political debate: they tend to be evasive, aggressive, or both.

Recent research suggests that people strongly tend to believe (or, at least, claim that they believe) facts that support their existing ideas about what is right (e.g., people who believe that the death penalty is morally wrong are more likely to believe that it is ineffective practically than those who believe that it is morally acceptable, even given identical evidence of effectiveness).

If you think that you spot these techniques in people with ideas opposed to your own more often than in people who share your ideas, this is probably because you have had more cause to debate with those who disagree with your ideas, rather than that people who agree with you are inherently any more honest than those with the contrary view.

What it means if someone is being dishonest in a debate

If somebody claims that something is true, knowing that there is no rational basis for that claim, that person is being dishonest. If I were to say, “your attic is infested with squirrels” without any idea of what is in your attic, that would be dishonest. Assertions of this sort in political debate are extremely common, particularly with respect to the causation of common behaviours: people tend often to make totally confident, unqualified assertions about what causes large numbers of people to behave in a particular way knowing that there is no empirical evidence supporting that claim at all (and, when asked for evidence, they then tend often to display some of the techniques of dishonesty described below).

It is almost always in a person’s own interests to have accurate information before making any decision. Dishonesty is therefore a fundamentally hostile behaviour: a person who would have somebody else believe a falsehood nearly always means that person harm, as a person with false information will be less able to make good decisions in her or his own interests than a person with accurate information. Indeed, the intention of deceiving others is to manipulate them into doing things which, if they were in full possession of the true facts, they would not do.

Dishonesty in political debate is therefore a very serious matter: anyone who engages in it can rightly be considered manipulative and hostile, not to be trusted in any context. People who behave in this way should not expect to be treated as merely mistaken, confused or “entitled to their own opinion” any more than anyone who lies in court to try to evade responsibility for legal wrongdoing should be so considered.

Techniques of dishonesty

The following are some examples of particular techniques of dishonesty that I have seen frequently applied in debates. These techniques are normally invoked by people faced with unanswerable argument to the contrary of their position, or when faced with a relevant question that they cannot answer consistently with their stated claim (e.g., “what properly controlled empirical evidence is there for that claim?”). The list is not exhaustive and people are encouraged to add others in the comments section.

The techniques of dishonesty mentioned here could benefit from scientific research, but that they are techniques of dishonesty is based on the same sort and strength of inference as regularly suffices in courts of law.

1. Logic denialism

Anyone who, during the course of a debate about anything, denies logic or reason in some way (including claiming that logic and/or reason do not “apply to” the subject in question or that logic and reason are other than universal) is almost certainly being dishonest.

This technique is usually used to attempt to overcome a counter-argument which is logically unanswerable. Any use of the insidious term “hyper-rational” or anything with a similar meaning (implying that it is possible to be too rational, and therefore that one should be less rational than one can be) is an example of this technique.

It is dishonest because it is not possible to reach any meaningful conclusion other than by reason, which is, by definition, universal. All argument is, by definition, an act of reasoning. The person deploying this technique will almost certainly have done so in defence of what is itself a purported argument, and will have put forward purported reasons to believe that some or other statement is true, only denying logic when confronted with some unanswerable flaw in that purported reasoning.

This technique is dishonest in the same way as a shopkeeper who has short changed a customer denying arithmetic (or its universality or applicability) in defence of the inadequate amount of change given is dishonest, for exactly the same reasons.

2. Criticising abstraction

Anyone who criticises an argument for being “too abstract” is almost certainly being dishonest.

Be careful not to confuse a criticism of abstraction with a criticism of vagueness: a criticism of vagueness is a reasonable form of argumentation so long as the thing being criticised is, in fact, vague. Vagueness and abstraction are not the same things: something can be abstract and yet very precise (e.g., all mathematical equations) or specific yet vague (e.g., “there has been some sort of furry thing somewhere in your attic sometime recently”).

Criticism of abstraction is dishonest because it is inherently contradictory: a criticism of an argument for being too abstract is itself abstract. In reality, a good understanding of something requires that it be understood in the abstract as well as in the specific.

This technique is used to suppress scrutiny of inconsistency between a person’s views. Abstraction is usually the most effective and often the only way of finding inconsistency in a person’s stated opinions, for example, if the reasons that a person puts forward as sufficient for believing one thing would, if true, also be sufficient reason for believing something else that the person denies is true.

In a sense, criticism of abstraction is just a specific example of logic denialism.

3. Inappropriate personalisation

Anyone who invokes some personal characteristic of her or his opponent in any debate as a reason to disregard that person’s arguments in that debate is almost certainly being dishonest. A (rare) exception is where the subject of the debate is itself the person in question, or some aspect of that person.

This is dishonest because the individual characteristics of the person making an argument are logically incapable of being relevant to whether the argument is sound or valid, unless the subject of the argument is actually that person. It is an attempt to suppress an argument without engaging with the substance of it, which is an inherently dishonest thing to do.

It is a variant of the ad hominem fallacy, but it is not limited to things which amount to a criticism of the person (although certainly include those things).

It can arise where a person making the argument is said to have some bias or personal interest in arguing for that proposition. A bias or personal interest is a reason to be sceptical of a statement (e.g. of some purported first-hand information) that the person making the statement is inviting another person to accept on trust, but is not relevant to a reasoned argument where all parties have access to the same information and reasoning. If the person’s argument is flawed because of some bias, the honest response is to find the specific flaw and identify it as such. The reason for the flaw is then irrelevant. Conversely, if the argument is not flawed, that the person making it has an interest in it being true does not make it any less true.

It can also arise, especially in connexion with what is fashionably termed “identity politics”, when a person claims that another person is disqualified from commenting on an issue because he or she lacks certain personal experiences (typically, but not exclusively, of being the victim of others’ prejudices of various kinds). What personal experiences that a person has, however, is irrelevant to whether that person can advance a sound argument or identify valid flaws in others’ arguments. Personal experience is, at best, anecdotal evidence. Any relevant information, including any relevant first-hand anecdotal evidence, can be communicated in words as part of any discussion. Any rational person in possession of relevant information can make a judgment about any issue just as well as any other person.

Such techniques are, as always, primarily used as a response to an otherwise unanswerable argument or question, as a way of suppressing scrutiny of possibly flawed claims.

4. Claiming to take offence

Anyone who asserts (expressly or impliedly) that an argument or question in a discussion ought to be disregarded or suppressed because it causes offence is probably being dishonest.

Offence is a personal, subjective reaction that is logically incapable of being relevant, by itself, to whether an argument is sound or a question meaningful or relevant. That to which people take offence is shaped by a person’s attitude. A person may take offence at something precisely because it challenges that person’s views. Indeed, this is common: the entire concepts of sacredness and blasphemy exist for exactly this reason.

Do not confuse, however, the taking offence at an argument with the dishonest intention of suppressing it with criticism of malicious conduct. If something is said because it is intended to be offensive, rather than because the person saying it genuinely believes it to be a sound argument in favour of a true proposition relevant to the subject at hand, that is malicious and deserves criticism (indeed, it may be a technique of dishonesty itself: see no. 8). Those who use the deceitful technique exploit confusion between these two concepts dishonestly to invoke unwarranted sympathy in others.

Similarly, people may take offence at an argument because it is wrong. This is common in relation to things which have caused serious harm in the past, such as racism. This is unobjectionable, provided that the identification of the argument as wrong is completely independent of the offence, which is exclusively a consequence, and not a cause, of the belief that the argument is wrong.

Demanding that an argument be disregarded because it is offensive amounts to demanding that an argument be disregarded because a person has an adverse emotional reaction to it. That is no rational or honest basis on which to engage in discussion.

Such techniques are, as always, primarily used as a response to an otherwise unanswerable argument or question.

5. Vague emotive criticism

Anyone substituting vague pejorative and emotive adjectives for reasoned argument is not acting in good faith.

It is dishonest because it is an attempt to manipulate the emotions of the person at whom it is directed rather than put forward a genuine reasoned argument.

The word “obscene” is the paradigm case of this technique: it entirely lacks content aside from an expression of an extreme emotional reaction to this thing that it is describing, and more or less any use of that word in any serious debate is an attempt to manipulate and deceive rather than to reason.

Look out also for subtler uses of this technique, which are just as insidious, such as describing a person or organisation that believes a particular thing to be important as “obsessed” with that thing (usually instead of a reasoned criticism of the reasons for which the person or organisation believes it to be important in the first place).

I suspect that it would only be a slight exaggeration to suggest that more or less every political statement made by Donald Trump falls into this category.

6. Redefining words

Anyone who attempts to define any word that has an established meaning to mean something distinct from that established meaning for the purposes of any debate is probably being dishonest.

The purpose of the technique is invariably to present an argument that is valid for a statement using the word in its special, new definition, but intend, by implication, people to accept that statement as it would be if the standard definition of the word were used. For example, if I were to say, “there’s a squirrel in your attic”, and insist that the word “squirrel” means any living organism, I could argue that there is inevitably a squirrel in your attic because there must be at least some bacteria there, then say that you should call pest control because squirrels in attics can cause much devastation.

There is never any legitimate reason to redefine established words. Anything that can be said can be said using the dictionary definition of words. There are more than enough words in the English language with their standard definitions to convey any meaning.

This technique is often used by the religious to argue in favour of the existence of a deity (by seeking to define “God” in terms so broad that something according to that definition will inevitably exist, yet treating any concession that “God” by that definition exists as a concession that a deity as conventionally understood exists), and also by left-wing extremists, some of whom use the word “rape” to describe things that do not, in  fact, amount to rape, but which they wish to carry the same social stigma as actual rape without being able to come up with any honest arguments as to why this should be so.

This technique is sometimes accompanied by technique no. 3 (inappropriate personalisation), claiming some sort of bias on the basis of those who write dictionaries. Needless to say, combining two dishonest techniques does not make the argument any less dishonest.

7. “That needs no evidence”

Anyone who attempts to assert that any statement of fact (i.e., any empirical statement) needs no evidence is not being honest. Likewise, anybody who asserts that weak evidence is (even in the absence of any contrary evidence) sufficient for a strong belief is dishonest.

It is always irrational to believe any proposition without adequate reason to do so. Where the proposition is empirical (i.e. one of fact, such as whether there is a squirrel in a person’s attic), only empirical evidence can count as a reason. Belief in a fact is not binary: there can be degrees of belief. One can be uncertain to different degrees about a thing. It is irrational to have a belief in a proposition of fact that is stronger than the empirical evidence in support of that fact.

A demand that a proposition be accepted without evidence is a demand to be treated as an authority: it is no more than a demand that a person accepts what another says without question. This is usually in response to a question about what evidence there is for the claim in question.

A person who makes a statement (such as “there’s a squirrel in your attic”) without having reason to do so (i.e., evidence) is dishonest, as discussed above. An assertion that a statement needs no evidence is almost inevitably an admission that there is no evidence for it. It is therefore simultaneously an admission of dishonesty and a demand that that dishonesty be ignored.

8. Personal abuse

Anyone being personally abusive to another in a discussion, except as a direct response to personal abuse by that other, is almost certainly doing so dishonestly to conceal the fact that he or she has no answer to a pertinent question, or cannot respond to an unanswerable counter-argument.

Personal abuse is logically irrelevant to whether any given argument is right, and tends to dominate a discussion because of the degree of hostility inherent in it.

More insidiously than that, it is usually an attempt to intimidate the opponent into discontinuing the discussion (and therefore suppressing scrutiny), as, even where it does not carry an implicit threat of physical violence, it is sufficiently unpleasant that a person may discontinue the discussion to be free of it. This is usually what is intended.

It can also be intended to be a purposeful distraction from the content of the discussion, with the intention of manipulating others into forgetting that the abuser has no answer to the question or counter-argument to which the abuse is a response.

Criticising a person’s conduct is not the same as personal abuse (which is directed to character), so pointing out the use of one of these techniques of dishonesty and that it is dishonest is not personal abuse.

9. “That’s just your opinion”

Any claim that an argument or statement should be disregarded because it is just an opinion, or similar, is probably dishonest.

In reality, an opinion is no more than an attitude towards a proposition, viz. that it is true. There is no difference between me saying that it is my opinion that there is a squirrel in your attic and me saying that there is a squirrel in your attic. An opinion might connote a belief reached by deduction rather than by direct perception, but there is no reason to disregard the products of deduction provided that that deduction be sound. There is no fundamental difference between an opinion and a fact: by definition, an opinion is a fact if it is a true opinion. A thing cannot be an opinion in the first place unless it is capable of being a fact.

This technique is dishonest because it amounts to a demand that a reasoned argument be ignored in spite of its merits, rather than rejected because it lacks merit.

This technique can also be used in reverse and in combination with technique no. 7 (“that needs no evidence”), to assert that because a statement is “just my opinion”, it needs no evidence in support. The reality is that, if the person holding the opinion has no evidence for it, there is no honest basis on which that person could have formed that opinion. Usually, when a person invokes the technique in this way, the statement will initially have been made with absolute confidence and no qualification or indication that the person making it considered it “just an opinion”, and so the initial statement will have been dishonestly made.

Be careful not to confuse opinion with preference. “Cake is tasty” is an expression of a personal preference, not an opinion. “I like cake” and “cake is tasty to me”, meanwhile, are statements of fact about preferences.

10. Repeatedly changing the subject

If a person consistently changes the subject when faced with a counter-argument or difficult question, that person is almost certainly being dishonest.

This is dishonest because it amounts to a deliberate refusal to engage in the discussion of the original subject: it is a form of evasiveness. It is particularly dishonest when used in a circular fashion (i.e., when argument 1 is shown to be flawed, move to argument 2 without acknowledging the flaw; when argument 2 is shown to be flawed, move to argument 3 without acknowledging the flaw; and when argument 3 is shown to be flawed, revert to argument 1, ad infinitum).

In general, any failure to acknowledge a counter-argument or respond to a question during a debate is likely to be intended to be evasive and therefore dishonest.

Why the Conservatives won the election and what people should really be complaining about

THE DAY after the Conservative party won a surprise overall majority in the 2015 general election, large protests took place in London and Cardiff (but, interestingly, not Edinburgh) against the government that had just been democratically elected, with pre-printed banners reading “Get the Tories out!” and headed “Socialist Worker”, the name of a far-left newspaper, which implausibly claims that Labour would have won the election had it only been even more left-wing. Such anti-democracy protests would no doubt be viewed with bemusement from people in those countries where people do not have the right to vote at all, or where voting is a mere formality.

Chocolate chip fairy cakes

 

THE FAIRY cake, not to be confused with its larger, straight-sided, American cousin, the cupcake, is often associated with twee children’s parties and forgotten in adulthood. This is a mistake, for, whilst fairy cakes are indeed splendid for children’s parties, they can also be quite delightful at any time of life, and have the advantage over their full cake sized sibling the Victoria sponge of being more portable and needing no cutting, making them ideal for social occasions.

This recipe is enriched with milk and uses chocolate chips instead of currants to give a particularly delicious flavour, although plain fairy cakes (with water substituted for the milk, currants for the chocolate and some vanilla or almond essence for flavour) work well, too. With this recipe, however, it is important to use good quality chocolate: off the shelf chocolate chips are never of high quality, and should be discarded in favour of manually chipped milk chocolate bars of high quality (I use Lindt but other premium chocolate should work just as well).

Ingredients

170g plain flour
170g butter
170g caster sugar
100g finely chopped milk chocolate
1tbsp milk
3 eggs

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. It is advisable to use an oven thermometer to check that the temperature is accurate.
2. Cream the butter and sugar thoroughly until pale and fluffy. It is advisable to use an electric whisk for this stage: do so at the highest speed available. The creaming of the butter and sugar can never be over-done.
3. Lightly beat the eggs in a jug with the milk.
4. Little by little, add the egg/milk mixture and combine slowly with the creamed butter/sugar. This can be done with an electric whisk, but the slowest available setting should be used.
5. Sift the flour into the mixture and add the chocolate. Mix together gently with a metal spoon until the mixture is thoroughly combined. Do not use an electric whisk at this stage.
6. Spoon the mixture into fairy cake cases (each case should be about two thirds full) and bake in a fairy cake tin for about 15 minutes, until risen and golden.
7. Leave to cool on a wire rack and serve in the paper cases. These cakes are best served within a day or two of baking, but can easily be frozen to keep much longer. If frozen, very gentle defrosting is advised.