Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-28-2010

[andrewducker]

• Online petition plans to go ahead -politicians worried that public will be even more incompetent than they are.
  (tags: uk government)
• LibDem manifesto commitments delivered so far.
  (tags: libdem politics uk)
• Wisconsin Supreme Court puts 17 year-old on sex offender register despite agreeing he hadn't committed a sex crime.
  (tags: sex crime usa wtf law EpicFail)
• Association of Chief Police Officers calls for debate over prostitution laws
  (tags: prostitution law uk)
• How facebook builds cliques, sociopathically
  (tags: rant facebook socialnetworking)
• December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse - 20 hours in 40 seconds
  (tags: video snow weather winter)
• Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness - the arguments over DSM 5.
  (tags: mental_health ontology psychology)
• The 20 Best Console Games of 2010
  (tags: games 2010)
• Newborns with low vitamin D levels at increased risk for respiratory infections
  (tags: vitaminD asthma children)
• One cat, one teddy, two photos. The cuteness, it burns.
  (tags: cats photos cute)
• Reading your wife's email can get you five years (seems unlikely it will do though)
  (tags: email privacy spying)

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Online petition plans to go ahead -politicians worried that public will be even more incompetent than they are.

Seeing the results of this sort of thing in California and Oregon has convinced me that any sort of direct democracy is a truly horrible idea.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

My predictions for the first laws Parliament will be asked to pass under such a scheme:

- Restore the death penalty.

- End foreign aid.

- Remove benefits from immigrants.

- Withdraw from the EU.

- Repeal the Human Rights Act.

Depressingly, there is widespread public support for all of the above. Yes, it's manufactured by the tabloid press, but that doesn't make it any less real.

[andrewducker]

Jeremy Clarkson for president!

[robhu.livejournal.com]

At the very least that would be fun :)

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

The proposal seems quite mild: all a petition gets is debating time and consideration - and presumably a certain amount of awareness among politicians that people care about this.

The change I would most like to see made is to be able to vote against any given petition as well. A petition with 120,000 votes for and 20 against is much more worth considering than one with 200,000 votes for and 300,000 against. This would also make it easy for sensible voters (by which I mean people who agree with me) to kick out the sillier petitions about Jedi Knights.

[andrewducker]

I like that suggestion. If I could vote against the poll against speeding cameras (for instance) then I'd be much happier.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Facebook allows posting photos, but it is not possible to send a link to anybody you want to show them - they need to log in and see your update before it expires from their list - assuming it isn't silently filtered from it in the first place.
This isn't the case, is it? I can think of at least three different ways of sharing a photo on FB. One of them is 'copy image location' where, last time I checked, you can even share with people not on Facebook.

LibDem manifesto commitments delivered so far.
So many of these commitments are written out by other coalition actions. The 10k threshold is all very well and one that affects me personally, but a VAT rise is going to go a long way to wiping the gain out completely - and everyone pays VAT, every time they walk into a shop. Product cost increases will always hit more poor people than income tax increases - this is just a simple fact. And then they went ahead and froze benefits, furthermore threatening to take them off folk who 'weren't trying' at a time when unemployment rates are at their highest in ages.

Further to this the draconian Benefits system changes (while I completely accept that a streamlining was required) plus the Tuition Fees debacle (and I know how you feel about the proposed Tuition Fees system but I'll explain properly in person sometime why I feel the way I do about it because when I do it online people are stupid at me) are still unforgivable caves on the Lib Dems part.

They're in the coalition or they aren't. If they're in, they take responsibility for all policy, not just the ones they liked to start with - they can't say "Oh we delivered on this manifesto commitment" when the gain is completely wiped out (and then some) by a Conservative policy.

And if they aren't, they take responsibility for the commitments they didn't meet - Lib Dems got the measly number of seats they did on the backs of students, and then they turned around and pushed the ladders away. They can whine about all the commitments they met all they like but the outright betrayal of young folk will still be there. You make a stand like that, you've got to take responsibility when you fail to stick to it.

The fact is that they've already said a billion times on screen and in print that as of the coalition agreement, their manifesto isn't worth the paper its printed on. And I don't even disagree with this. And yet we keep seeing these posts. They need to make up their minds. Again.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

The VAT increase isn't applicable to all spending though. A number of products considered "essential", including food, books & children's clothing are zero rated, as is rent/mortgage spending. And things like gas, electricity, heating fuel which are eligible for VAT at a reduced rate will not have their VAT levy increased.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find that due to the sugar and milk lobbies, the cost of all products will go up.

(Edit: Sorry, looking back at that comment I realise it looks a little combative - not meant as such. I'm just not sure how much I need to expand upon the point.)

[matgb]

I did a test of our expenditure recently (we're living at way below the poverty line currently, mostly due to debt repayments and illness), and VAT rated goods are a tiny proportion of our total expenditure.

Virtually everything that's subject to full VAT is a genuine luxury for us, something we buy when we've spar money, food, heating, rent, clothes for little un, etc aren't VAT rated.

My cheapass chocolate bars and texco value bourbon biscuits go up a penny or two. Phone bill goes up. Virtually everything else that we need stays the same.

I object to VAT rising, but the changes to the income tax threshold will make us, way down the bottom of the working poor, better off.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Accepted, although I think you'll find that an awful lot of people living way below the poverty line are living on high-sugar VAT-applied foods and products and not VAT-0 'necessities'. What you need and what poor people buy are not the same thing. I'm not saying that that's how it should be but you can't change a social climate just by raising a produce tax.

Further to this, what I'm saying above is that it seems to me as though raising VAT is highly likely to raise the cost of essentials as well as foods with VAT applied simply due to the sugar lobby's vested interests and immense power over supermarket pricing. With constant pressure to keep sugary/convenience foods low-priced and on special offer, one way or another the money will be made back on 'sensible' foods. I would love to proven wrong but given current practices it stands to reason.

[matgb]

an awful lot of people living way below the poverty line are living on high-sugar VAT-applied foods and products and not VAT-0 'necessities'. What you need and what poor people buy are not the same thing.

Which is, actually, an argument for increasing VAT. I've always favoured pigouvian externality taxes, if people want to be stupid with their money, that's up to them, but cheaper better options are there, and if this makes the better options even cheaper by comparison, so be it.

If the confection lobby wants to continue to bulk discout stuff to keep prices low, then their margins remain low, and profits are reduced. That won't be sustainable longer term, there's no long term future in cutting your nose off.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

If the confection lobby wants to continue to bulk discout stuff to keep prices low, then their margins remain low, and profits are reduced. That won't be sustainable longer term, there's no long term future in cutting your nose off.

Or alternatively, since they don't exist in a vacuum and the purveyors of said confections are rarely producing only high-sugar products, they will, under pressure, keep their confection prices low and hike other products instead.

[matgb]

And supermarket own brands or other suppliers will then undercut them on those products. That already happens on a lot of products, and the big firms know it.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Unless those other suppliers are all under exactly the same pressure and have exactly the same incentive to go along with it. Like they do now.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

So adults do not 'need' clothes then? The definition of essential is a pretty weird one, it seems to me.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I have no idea who drew up the list of VAT exempt items, but it is fixed in stone as part of our EU Accession Treaty. VAT was introduced in the UK in 1973, so presumably the Heath government negotiated the list with the EEC at that time.

[andrewducker]

You're clearly seeing things from a different perspective from me. Which is fine, but I'll try to explain how I'm seeing it, so we can at least understand each other.

Where you see two policies cancelling each other out, I'm seeing more tax being raised (in a reasonably progressive manner, because VAT does hit rich people more than it hits poor people, because a much higher percentage of their purchases are zero rated), and then there being a libdem policy which helps the poor balance this out so that they aren't hit by it.

And of course the manifesto policies are still meaningful. Going into a coalition means that you have to compromise, and you aren't going to get all of your policies, but that doesn't meant it isn't worth celebrating the ones that you do get. That's the nature of any kind of coalition.

I definitely agree that there are things I disagree with coming out of the government. But as the right wing of the Tories is constantly threatening rebellion I feel happy that things are being pulled in a more leftwards direction than they would otherwise be - and indeed in much the same direction that Labour were pulling (particularly when it comes to both tuition fees and benefits).

Are things going the way they would if I was running the country? No. Is it worth celebrating the things that are? Yes.

(All thoroughly IMHO, of course.)

[marrog.livejournal.com]

VAT does hit rich people more than it hits poor people

Could you show me some proof on this please?

[andrewducker]

I bow to the IFS, who have done the math:
http://www.markpack.org.uk/the-ifs-answers%E2%80%A6-is-increasing-vat-progressive/

[marrog.livejournal.com]

That's a judgement based on a pre-assumption that poor people buy more VAT-0 goods, not evidence that that is the case.

[andrewducker]

Less of their consumables will be computers, yachts, sofas, cars, etc. More of it will be food, and clothes, as a percentage. Yes, some of the food will be non-zero-rated, but a lot of it will still be, because ready meals still are, so even if they aren't eating homecooked meals, they're still not paying VAT on the Tesco Value Lasagne.

[matgb]

There've been plenty of studies on that though, including by the IFS (my flu bound head isn't telling me what they are currently, but I know they're there).

Essential foods, including processed foods like bloody oven chips, aren't subject to VAT. Rent isn't subject to VAT, domestic fuel is only subject to the 5% minimum and isn't changing. TV licence isn't subject to it. Council Tax isn't subject to it.

That's overwhelmingly what someone on, say £800 per month take home is going to be using their money for.

Poor people don't buy more VAT-0 goods, but the proportion of their spend on VAT-0 goods is much higher, because that's the essentials.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, although this still doesn't address my 'knock-on' argument above.

[matgb]

That link about Facebook. I have replied. Overwhelmingly, most of the criticisms there are false. I can think of many many legit critiques of Facebook, but inablity to share photos elsewhere definitely isn't one of them, I use Facebook for Gallery snaps simply because it's so easy to share them with family, including my father who won't get an account.

And the photo of me in my blog sidebar is hosted on Facebook.

[andrewducker]

Thank you - worth knowing, and I shall go take a look!

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

The article about DSM 5 was very interesting. It is also a fine example of how the Great American Health System causes problems everywhere.

Incidentally, may I draw your attention to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12070732? It will be Exhibit A when our new Robotic Overloads try us for offences against their innocent forebears.

[andrewducker]

Thanks!