EU tyre labelling

Last Wednesday I finally got some winter tyres fitted, just in time for the recent snow.

In choosing the tyres, I did what most people do: I read some reviews, and I satisficed. I decided I was happy enough with the Michelin Alpin A4s available from KwikFit, and I booked my appointment. So far they're serving me well.

At no point in this process did I feel the need for guidance from the EU. But someone in Brussels has declared 'market failure' and sought to address it:

European Regulation No 1222/2009 came into force from 1st November 2012. Apparently my lovely new tyres have an 'E' rating for fuel efficiency and a 'C' rating for wet grip. Sad, I know, but somehow I'm managing to hold it together.

For those who care about fuel efficiency, engine and driving style are likely to be much more important factors. To the extent that tyres matter, it's probably enough to keep them properly inflated. As for wet grip, without knowing what temperature they performed the test at, I have no idea whether the rating is relevant. I could dig into the details, but life is too short. I suspect this expensive new labelling system will be widely ignored by consumers, just like the energy efficiency ratings for houses.

If the ratings do manage to influence customer behaviour, they may well be nudging people in the wrong direction. Even assuming that their tests are well designed, they focus attention on a narrow range of features and conditions, and discourage critical thought.

Incidentally, there are no prizes for guessing where the BBC stands on this: New European tyre labelling could save money and lives.

And a bit of googling turns up some classic astroturfing. The new EU labels are supported by The Campaign for Better Tyres.

The Campaign for Better Tyres is being co-ordinated by Environmental Protection UK (EPUK), a national charity that provides expert policy analysis and advice on air quality, land quality, waste, noise and climate change.

Environmental Protection UK was one of a consortium of NGO’s which lobbied for the introduction of the new EU tyre legislation, which sets stricter standards for tyres on energy efficiency, noise and safety and introduces mandatory tyre labelling.

The campaign has been funded with a grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, with additional financial support from the European Federation for Transport & Environment.

And what about EPUK? A group of concerned citizens devoting their own money to an important cause? It seems not:

The UK's oldest environmental NGO has been forced to close after government cuts to local authority budgets drastically reduced its income.

Amazing. A non-governmental organisation entirely reliant on government funding. Sorry to see them go.

Charities and public health experts

The BBC's attack on alcohol really is relentless. I'd be surprised if a week goes by without at least one story on the subject. Here's the latest:

People should have at least two days a week completely clear of alcohol, a group of MPs says.

It is one of the recommendations in a report by the Commons science and technology committee, which is calling for a review of all government guidelines on alcohol in the UK.

It says there are "sufficient concerns" about the recommendations on how much people should drink.

The report has been welcomed by charities and public health experts.

Charities and public health experts, eh?

Prof Sir Ian Gilmore, from the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, said: "The main recommendation of setting up a review of evidence to come up with clear guidelines would be very valuable indeed."

If you read Christopher Snowdon's blog, that name will be familiar.

Alcohol Concern chief executive Eric Appleby said: "Accessible and reliable public information on alcohol harm is an essential element in tackling Britain's problem with alcohol misuse. However, the government must accept that information alone is insufficient.

A grassroots charity lobbying the government on behalf of concerned citizens? Not according to fakecharities.org:

Summary

Created by the British government in 1985, Alcohol Concern wages an incremental campaign against drinkers and the drinks industry.

Details

...

Its 2008/09 accounts show a total income of £1,137,582, of which:

• Department of Health (restricted grant): £142,000
• Department of Health (unrestricted grant): £400,000

• Big Lottery Fund: £127,275
• —
• Total £669,275 (58.8% of all income)

It received just £8,186 in public donations.

Who else has the BBC lined up?

Chris Sorek, chief executive of alcohol awareness charity Drinkaware, said: "Drinkaware welcomes the committee's recommendation for greater efforts on helping people understand the unit guidelines and how to use them.

Surely this is a real charity, funded by small donations from millions of concerned citizens. Nope:

Drinkaware is funded by donations from the alcohol industry.

Current funders include major retailers, pub companies and producers who have pledged approximately £5.2 million per year through to 2012. We work with a wide selection of organisations to tackle alcohol misuse, to lead education campaigns and develop corporate social responsibility campaigns.

Quite why the 'alcohol industry' is funding these neo-prohibitionists is anyone's guess. Perhaps someone at the Department of Health had a quiet word with them ...

The Lib Dems and Oxfam

When I blogged about Oxfam last September, I wasn't aware that Daniel Hannan had covered the same theme back in 2008:

Is there anyone out there who just happens to support deeper European integration? Without being paid to say so, I mean?

I ask the question perfectly seriously. When he introduced the Bill to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, made a song and dance about the fact that it wasn’t just Labour politicians who backed the wretched thing. A whole range of NGOs, he told MPs, had also come out in favour.

“The NSPCC pledged its support, as have One World Action, Action Aid and Oxfam,” he said, looking typically pleased with himself. “Environmental organisations support the treaty provisions on sustainable development and even the commission of bishops supports the treaty. This is a coalition, not of ideology, but integrity”.

Integrity, eh? Within a few hours, Eurosceptic blogs were pointing out that every single organisation he had cited received money from the EU (hat-tip EUReferendum.blogspot.com).

He linked to this old Conservative Home post from his latest blog, which considers how unfit the Lib Dems are to claim the legacy of classical liberals:

The Lib Dems, we read, want to be like Oxfam. I'd have thought they're more than half way there already. I've blogged before about the way in which Oxfam seems more interested in lobbying against free trade than in distributing medicines or building schools. Nothing wrong with advocacy work, of course; on the contrary, it's heartening to see people taking up causes in which they believe. I wonder, though, how many grannies chipping in their tenners know that Oxfam gets more than £30 million a year from the EU? And that it then uses some of its resources to lobby for closer European integration? Oxfam, like the Lib Dems, has generous and public-spirited supporters but corporatist and worldly chiefs.

The whole article is well worth reading.

Transparency and non-corporate vested interests

James Delingpole writes:

Top environmental campaigner George Monbiot has publicly disclosed his laundry list in order to show how transparent he is.

This is a comprehensive list of my sources of income, and any hospitality or gifts I receive (except from family and friends), beginning in September 2011.

I have opened this registry because I believe that journalists should live by the standards they demand of others, among which are accountability and transparency. One of the most important questions in public life, which is asked less often than it should be, is “who pays?”.

All well and good, though we might wonder who his friends are, and how much they have given him.

Monbiot concludes:

I believe that everyone who steps into public life should be obliged to show on whose behalf they are speaking: in other words who is paying them, and how much. I would like to see journalists, like MPs, become subject to a mandatory register of interests. But until that time I hope to encourage other journalists to declare the sources of their income voluntarily – by declaring mine.

A mandatory register for journalists sounds like a very scary idea to me, and we shouldn't be surprised that the likes of Monbiot support it.

But for key decision makers in the public sector, our supposed servants, it does seem appropriate to insist on transparency. Delingpole provides a rather shocking example:

Thanks to FOIA requests from the American Tradition Institute's Chris Horner we are learning more and more about the vast sums of luvverly dosh to be made for those lucky enough to be on the "correct" (ie Establishment) side of the global warming argument. For Jim "coal fired power stations are factories of death" Hansen, AGW has proved a very nice little earner indeed.

The lawsuit claims Hansen privately profited from his public job in violation of federal ethics rules, and NASA allowed him to do it because of his influence in the media and celebrity status among environmental groups, which rewarded him handsomely the last four years.

Gifts, speaking fees, prizes and consulting compensation include:

– A shared $1 million prize from the Dan David Foundation for his "profound contribution to humanity." Hansen's cut ranged from $333,000 to $500,000, Horner said, adding that the precise amount is not known because Hansen's publicly available financial disclosure form only shows the prize was "an amount in excess of $5,000."

– The 2010 Blue Planet prize worth $550,000 from the Asahi Glass Foundation, which recognizes efforts to solve environmental issues.

– The Sophie Prize for his "political activism," worth $100,000. The Sophie Prize is meant to "inspire people working towards a sustainable future."

– Speaking fees totaling $48,164 from a range of mostly environmental organizations.

– A $15,000 participation fee, waived by the W.J. Clinton Foundation for its 2009 Waterkeeper Conference.

– $720,000 in legal advice and media consulting services provided by The George Soros Open Society Institute. Hansen said he did not take "direct" support from Soros but accepted "pro bono legal advice."

Daniel Hannan has also picked up the story:

Oddly ... Monbiot says nothing about the money and influence on the other side. Yes, the oil, tobacco and (above all) pharma lobbies are active in politics – every day I spend as an MEP teaches me quite how active. Even more frenetic, however, are the poverty lobbyists and green NGOs: Oxfam, Friends of the Earth, War on Want, the WWF, Greenpeace and, not least, Christian Aid.

The global corporations and the global NGOs are mirror images of each other. Both distrust the democratic process, preferring to reach understandings with key opinion formers. Both, accordingly, love the EU, immediately intuiting that it was designed to be immune to public opinion. Yet, for some reason, most of those who complain about the anti-democratic tendencies of the multi-nationals have a blind spot when it comes to the eco-lobbies and anti-free-trade campaigns.

Quite.

Borrowing to give

On BBC Breakfast this morning, International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell claimed it was 'morally right' for the government to engage in international aid.

It comes as the government is finally considering ending aid for Russia and China. Aid for India is set to be frozen at current levels.

Laughably, the BBC reports that

Labour says too much of the UK's aid budget is being mis-spent.

I suppose 13 years wasn't long enough to address that problem.

I stand by my previous comments on international aid:

Borrowing to give is irresponsible. It is bad enough that taxpayers' wealth is confiscated for the government's chosen humanitarian projects, but it is indefensible that they are stealing from future generations.

If the government got out of the aid game, would charitable work in the Third World cease? No. Private citizens in Britain and around the world would continue to support worthwhile projects, according to their own priorities. And if the charities involved were true charities, entirely reliant on voluntary donations, there would be proper competition between them to deliver aid as efficiently as possible.

What's really needed, though, is trade, not aid. Abolishing the CAP, and trading freely with food producers in the developing world, would do far more to help them than handouts, both immediately and in the long term. If we legalised drugs, and cut out the criminal middle-men, poor farmers of high-demand crops would benefit still further.

Do charities need government support?

I recently rediscovered a truly shocking Times article from 2009, by Monique Bateman, director of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Children's Fund:

We understand that local authority budgets are tight and that if a charity is willing to help them to fulfil a role, this enables them to put more money into other areas.

Surely, though, during a recession, when help is needed to continue providing the support, they or the Government should step in to help these families, or at least to provide funds to charities such as ours to enable us to continue our work?

There is simply not enough aid available for charities fighting desperately to keep up their levels of support despite an increase in demand and a decrease in donations.

I therefore call for help, not just from the Government but from local authorities and, where possible, the public. It may sound a cliché, but we are now in a time when every penny donated to charities really does count.

I'm sure she means well, but it's disturbing that she draws no distinction between true charity (the freely-given donations of individuals) and 'government' funding (the redistribution of confiscated wealth).

£18 trillion raised for Children in Need?

Pudsey says: "You have raised an incredible £18,098,199 MILLION!"

£18 trillion! That really would be incredible.

I suspect Pudsey really meant the rather more modest sum of £18 million, which is about what the government borrows every hour.

Still, unlike Oxfam, Children in Need isn't an obviously fake charity. The donations come from the public, and are freely given. However, they receive support from the BBC — an organisation that is most definitely not funded by voluntary exchange.

Here's note 18 from their 2009 accounts,

The BBC Children in Need Appeal is the principal UK corporate Charity of the BBC and as such is supported by the BBC in a number of ways including but not limited to:

• the provision of office space, postage and other services at no charge
• the preparation and broadcast of the annual BBC One Appeal Show including national and regional programming content
• the extensive support of BBC Radio 2 both on the day of the Appeal and in the build up through promotion,
• competition, 24 hour music marathon and the “things that money can’t buy” auction on the Terry Wogan show: ’Wake up to Wogan’
• significant promotional support and coverage of the Appeal across the BBC local television and radio network in the days before the Appeal and on Appeal night
• the provision and maintenance of the BBC Children in Need pages of the BBC’s website

The costs of support through the provision of office space, postage and other services have been valued at £510,205. Many of the other elements of the support are very difficult to quantify as they are not discrete activities but embedded, partly as newsworthy and entertainment content, within the operations and business of the BBC. The Appeal show provides valuable content, which attracts a large audience, and without it the BBC would have to produce alternative content. As such the value of support provided by the BBC has not been included in the Charity’s Statement of Financial Activities

So, setting aside the unanswerable question about whether licence-fee payers believe that CiN-related broadcasts provide "valuable content", there is at least half a million pounds worth of "office space, postage and other services". We all support CiN, whether we want to or not.

Why grumble, though? It's for the children, after all. And they are so very needy.

Well, some of them are, yes. But viewers might be surprised at where much of the grant money ends up. Here's Ross Clark, from a 2007 Spectator article

You know the format: Terry Wogan introduces an evening of smiling kiddies overcoming misfortune and meeting celebs: please give generously.

And give generously viewers do: £18,300,392 on the night of last year’s event. But it would be a mistake to assume that the smiling kiddies were getting all the money. What’s this? A sum of £59,521 went to something called the Womenzone Community Centre in Bradford, which offers training for local women, plus a gym and steam room. Another £20,000 went to Until the Violence Stops, the domestic violence pressure group started by Eve Ensler, writer of The Vagina Monologues. Other handouts went to Brent Women’s Aid, Angolan Women’s Association and numerous local women’s groups. Perhaps most remarkably, £12,481 went to Women in Prison, a pressure group that campaigns against the incarceration of females, declaring, ‘Prison does not work. The best way to cut women’s offending is to deal with its root causes.’

In other words, some of the money you thought was going to buy wheelchairs for stricken children is really going to campaign on behalf of jailbirds. I am sure many of these charities do valuable work but, even so, to invoke images of sick children — the emblem of Children In Need being a bandaged teddy — and then to give much of the cash raised to battered women does seem a little underhand. To paraphrase the Ronseal advert, Children In Need doesn’t quite do what it says on the collection tin.

Quite.

You can see for yourself where the money goes. It's all very politically correct:

£20,000 for Bradford Trident: "This project will provide activities to promote community cohesion for eastern european children living in Bradford"

£99,782 for the Bangladeshi Community Association Bradford (BCAB): "This project will improve the self esteem and aspirations of 160 young people in Bradford by providing a range of activities including sports, social inclusion, citizenship and life skills"

£109,164 for the Indian Muslim Welfare Society: "This project will provide activities three times per week for disadvantaged Asian children in Batley."

£82,910 for Gay and Lesbian Youth in Calderdale.

£118,597 for a project to "provide play work support for children who are visiting their mother whilst she is resident at HMP New Hall"

That's quite a lot of money, especially compared to the £7,200 for "Down Syndrome Support Group Bradford".

Whatever you may think about the value of the projects listed above, Ross Clark is right: "Children In Need doesn’t quite do what it says on the collection tin".

Perhaps of greatest interest to donors to Children In Need was the £56,123 which went to a charity called the Children’s Legal Centre, a group which offers free legal advice to children — or in some cases to fund legal cases. Most notable of these was the case of Shabina Begum, who took Denbigh High School, Luton, to court over its refusal to allow her to wear a jilbab — a full-length Islamic gown — in contravention of the school’s uniform policy. Shabina, who was represented by Cherie Booth, eventually lost her case in the House of Lords a year ago.

Was that really what donors had in mind when they whipped out their credit cards in reaction to the stories of juvenile cancer victims: that a slice of their donation would be going into the pockets of Cherie Blair to help a teenage girl sue her school over her refusal to wear a school uniform? I am all for charitable giving, but I do wish that BBC viewers would take a little more care to read the small print before falling for emotional blackmail of the corporation’s big charity campaigns.

The other offensive thing about Children in Need is that it boosts the egos of overpaid celebrities. The newsreaders prance around, donating their valuable time for the sake of the children. So noble. Then they go back to their day job of protesting government cuts.

If they really cared about the children, they'd worry a little more about the national debt.

Inheritance Tax Is Unjust

Today I came across a brilliant article from 2002 by Robert C. B. Miller:

When the Queen Mother died, there was a muted criticism by republican commentators that Inheritance Tax would not be paid on her estate. It was a scandal, so the argument ran, that the Royals should not have to pay a tax that everyone else had to pay.

Criticism resurfaced when it was announced that the Queen would exercise her privilege and that details of her mother’s will would not be published in accordance with longestablished practice. The Queen may have been relieved that the criticism did not develop into another round of the nonpayment of income tax imbroglio that emerged in the early 1990s and caused so much excitement amongst anti-royalists.

But while some of the mainstream press complained at the royal privilege, few pointed to the obvious conclusion, which was that no one should have to pay Inheritance Tax. The arguments that led John Major’s government to agree to the Queen’s exemption from Inheritance Tax in 1993, apply with equal force to other people. The tax is relatively expensive to collect, requires ferocious anti-avoidance rules, and affects most severely those least able to pay it. It raises little revenue — around 1.5% of Inland Revenue receipts — and in the long run may stifle, if not prevent, much altruistic and generous behaviour.
...
Indeed, one of the ill consequences of Inheritance Tax is that it has subsidised institutional bureaucratic and increasingly politicised charities at the expense of sympathy and generosity closer to home. Help given from one individual to another is likely to be far better directed than anything provided by the welfare system, or politically correct charities. And it is just this generosity at the margin that is likely to be stymied by the 40% charge on the bequests of the middle classes.

Hannan: European Parliament demands a higher EU budget

Daniel Hannan writes:

Euro-MPs want Brussels to have a direct revenue stream, so that it is no longer dependent on contributions from the member nations. However, as the MEP in charge, a former French minister called Alain Lamassoure, slyly puts it: “It must not be called a ‘European tax’. Once you mix the words ‘Europe’ and ‘tax’ in the same sentence it becomes explosive.”

Explosif, Alain? Eh bien, je jamais! Perhaps European taxpayers, struggling to find savings at home, are fed up with paying more and more for Commissioners’ entertainment allowances and extra staff for MEPs.

Hannan notes, as he has done before, that though our net contribution to the EU is rising "from £6.4 billion this year to £8.3 billion in 2011-12", we should focus on the gross figure, because the money the EU spends in the UK rarely goes to things we would have funded ourselves.

Our gross contribution is rising from £14 billion to £19 billion – enough to cut council tax by half, take fourpence off income tax or pay of our Olympic debt in a single year.

In the comments, I pointed out that 42.5 million of the EU's UK spending recently went to Oxfam, an unashamedly fake charity that is campaigning for European taxation!

Of course, there are some benefits to EU membership, but they are far outweighed by the costs.

Oxfam - an unashamedly fake charity

Also on BBC Breakfast this morning was a representative from Oxfam, who openly acknowledged that a significant portion of their funding comes not from voluntary donations, but from the UN and the government — that is, money confiscated from taxpayers.

Predictably, this revelation passed without comment.

Oxfam's accounts are available online.

2009-10 shows £112.7 million (out of a total of £318.0 million) coming from "government and other public authorities".



For the 11 months to 31 March 2010, Oxfam claim to have received £125.6 million in "Voluntary Income". Bizarrely, £7.3 million of this comes from "UK government: Department for International Development – Partnership Programme Agreement"

The £112.7 million for the same period from "government, institutional donors and other public authorities" breaks down as follows:

	11 Months to 31 March 2010 (£m)
UK Government
...DFID Resources for specific programmes – CHASE	2.9
...DFID Resources for specific programmes – Desks and Regions	7.4
...DFID Government and Transparency Fund	1.2
...Other	0.4
European Union	42.5
UNHCR	0.7
Other UN agencies	12.7
Members of Oxfam International	21.6
Non-UK governments	16.0
Other international agencies	5.2
Big Lottery Fund	0.2
Other UK agencies	2.5

£42.5m from the European Union?! I don't suppose we can expect any Eurosceptic views from Oxfam, then. And sure enough, we find Oxfam lobbying for pan-European taxation:

As the rain poured down in Brussels, campaigners arrived outside the European Council building to press home the message that Europe can and must agree to a Robin Hood Tax. Braving the weather, activists staged a stunt to the European media, as greedy bankers wrestling with the poor and the planet over a giant euro bank note.

Inside the building, European finance ministers were meeting to discuss options for taxing the financial sector and protecting taxpayers from future financial crises. The meeting was requested by the French and German governments, and ministers were hoping to reach consensus on bank levies and financial transaction taxes in Europe.

This is the big problem with fake charities. The BBC will often trot out reports from the likes of Oxfam as if they are independent bodies, representing the will of the people. In fact, their independence is compromised by massive donations from government. These fake charities are never going to call for a reduction in state spending; they will support Big Government to the bitter end.

UPDATE: The story later appeared on news.bbc.co.uk:

Overall, the charity saw total revenues rise to £318m ($496m).

The strong results came mainly thanks to a £27m jump in grants from governments and agencies like the UN.

About half of the charity's fundraising income comes from governments, Oxfam's head, Barbara Stocking, told BBC Breakfast television.

Interesting that there's no specific mention of the EU, despite them being far and away the largest government donor ...

International aid - immoral, irresponsible, wasteful, and counterproductive

Melanie Phillips has written an excellent article on international aid:

When the Conservatives announced that they intended to ring-fence the international aid budget, many eyebrows were raised.

Currently, this country spends about £3 billion every year on such aid. The Coalition has pledged to increase this total to meet the UN target of 0.7per cent of national output by 2013.

Since only the health service is also to be ring-fenced against the draconian spending cuts threatened for the rest of the public sector and expected to be outlined in next Tuesday’s Budget, many have asked how the Government can justify spending even more on humanitarian assistance abroad while causing increasing hardship at home.

Surely a government’s first duty when the country has a £155 billion deficit is to its own people? And why is a Conservative Prime Minister adopting an attitude that is more commonly identified with the Left?

The reason is not the presence in the coalition of the Lib Dems. It is principally because of David Cameron’s driving imperative to transform the image of the Conservative Party from nasty to nice. And a precondition of niceness is that hearts must bleed for the wretched of the earth.

As I see it, there are four main problems with international aid:

1. Fake charity is immoral. Real charity occurs when an individual voluntarily parts with a portion of his wealth in order to support a cause he believes in. Fake charity occurs when the government confiscates our wealth to spend on humanitarian causes that they believe in.
   
2. Borrowing to give is irresponsible. It is bad enough that taxpayers' wealth is confiscated for the government's chosen humanitarian projects, but it is indefensible that they are stealing from future generations. Think of all the good that could be done at home and abroad with the £30 billion we spend each year on debt interest. If we carry on as we are, that figure will soon be £70 billion. This trajectory is not sustainable; our first priority must be to get our own house in order.
   
3. International aid is wasteful. As Gerald Warner asks, Why are we giving India £1 billion in aid if it can afford Moon missions?
4. International aid is counterproductive. It sustains a culture of dependence, fuels overpopulation, and provides support to warlords, terrorists, and tyrants.

Phillips's article focuses on the fourth point:

In Somalia, warlords extracted from the aid agencies as much as 80 per cent of what the aid supplies were worth.

After the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, which left 40,000 dead and displaced 2.5 million people, Dutch relief workers were forced to pay a levy of up to 25 per cent of the aid to the terrorist Tamil Tigers.

In Sudan in the Eighties and Nineties, where two million were slaughtered, the government army that committed these atrocities fed itself on food aid that it stole. The truth is that this aid kept the genocide going.

...

in Gaza — to which the Cameron government has just committed a £19 million first instalment of a five- year £100 million aid package — UNRWA admitted last year that the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hamas had stolen 3,500 blankets and more than 400 food packages, including 200 tons of rice and flour, that were supposed to be distributed to Gaza residents.

Phillips concludes,

Ultimately, international aid is not about rescuing the starving of the world. Instead, it is all about burnishing the self-image of the person, organisation or government doing the giving. That’s why blind eyes are so resolutely turned to the way aid is used as the life-support system for tyrants and mass murderers.

There is surely a case for saying that, rather than being ring-fenced as Cameron’s government vows to do, the entire international aid programme should be axed — along with the department that administers it.

Failing that, it should be renamed the Department for the Perpetuation of War, Tyranny and Terror. Now that would be transparency.

As for the generous-minded members of the public who want to dip into their pockets to relieve distress, they would be well advised to give the international aid racket a miss and donate to charities caring for the poor, old or disabled in this country instead.

I recommend the whole article.

If we really cared about the plight of millions of people in the third world, we would renounce the CAP, exit the EU, and engage in mutually beneficial free trade.

The 'Robin Hood' Tax revisited

Faced with these proposals, anyone who has read Atlas Shrugged cannot help but recall the words of Ragnar Danneskjöld:

It is said that [Robin Hood] fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity.
...
Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no way for mankind to survive

Last month I highlighted James Tyler's critique of the Luvvie/Tobin Tax, which has been rebranded the Robin Hood Tax, and promoted by Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Bill Nighy.

According to its proponents,

The Robin Hood Tax is a tiny tax on bankers that would raise billions to tackle poverty and climate change, at home and abroad.

By taking an average of 0.05% from speculative banking transactions, hundreds of billions of pounds would be raised every year.

Today, Daniel Hannan reports that

As predicted, the European Parliament has voted for a tax on financial transactions, to be levied directly by Brussels. The vote went through by 536 to 80...

Hannan earlier noted that "the case for a small levy on financial transactions is not intrinsically absurd: an argument can be made either way", but Tyler's concerns about the impact are plausible:

It is said that the market will absorb the Tobin/Hood/Luvvie tax. Anyone who says this clearly underestimates the ability of a bank to pass on its increased costs. You will either pay directly by higher fees, or indirectly, as the cost of everyday things get more expensive.
...
But surely a tiny transactional tax would pass unnoticed? Well, it may seem tiny, but to many market participants this Luvvie tax will be huge. What people fail to understand is that a regular and competitive price in many instruments come from institutions that are prepared to turn over huge volumes in order to make a net margin often much smaller than the Luvvie tax. In one fell swoop, you make a huge proportion of this trading unprofitable, therefore you take away the ability of the market to provide a price. It’s always the way of ill thought out taxes: unintended consequences. Some arbitrary decision is made, and a myriad of economic activity suddenly becomes futile.

But even if Tyler is wrong, and the market would absorb this tax, the proposal remains concerning for a number of reasons.

As Hannan has noted, a regional tax would "simply drive business away from the EU". The Robin Hood Tax campaigners acknowledge that the tax "requires co-ordinated implementation by the G20 countries, or at least the G8", but this notion is laughable — such cooperation would be vanishingly unlikely, and it would be insufficient in any case. According to Z/Yen, the world's top 10 financial centres in September 2009 were:

1. London
2. New York
3. Hong Kong
4. Singapore
5. Shenzhen
6. Zurich
7. Tokyo
8. Chicago
9. Geneva
10. Shanghai

It is not difficult to imagine Obama joining the Merry Men; the EU have surprised nobody by declaring their support; and the Telegraph reports that Katsuya Okada — "wide favourite" to be Japan's next Prime Minister — has given the idea his backing. But that leaves Hong Kong, Singapore, Shenzhen, Zurich, Geneva, and Shanghai. Can anyone imagine the Chinese and the Swiss signing up to this?

The implementation of the Robin Hood Tax would devastate New York, London, and Tokyo, but the revenue would dry up as the financial industry shifts operations to friendlier countries.

This on its own should be enough to stop the idea in its tracks, but how many critical observers would still claim that our governments act to promote our long-term prosperity? On the contrary, we can expect socialists on both sides of the Atlantic to continue on their current path, confiscating wealth and consolidating power, heedless of the eventual consequences for the hapless masses.

We need only examine the plans that proponents have for their plunder. The windfall would not go on clearing our national debt, settling our pensions liabilities, or investing in infrastructure and scientific research. Instead it is intended to "generate money to bring about social change and tackle climate change".

The supporters page for the Robin Hood Tax campaign reads like a who's who of Fake Charities. The list includes

• Barnardo's (£10.5 million from the state as 'Gifts and Grants')
• Christian Aid (£18m total state funding; 20.8% of their income)
• The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (£19.7m in public money; 19% of their income)
• The Save the Children Fund (£83 million from governments worldwide; 51.8% of total income)

There is no doubt that most of the people who support the Robin Hood Tax do so from the best intentions, but they do not recognise the evil of practising charity with other people's money, and they fail to identify the chief beneficiary of such schemes.

It is not the long-suffering African who will reap the rewards, but rather what Rand calls "this foulest of creatures — the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich", the "mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors".

Our financial system is fundamentally flawed, but the Establishment shows no interest in reforming it. They do not want to close the casino; they are content to take their cut.