We live in a seriously screwed up country.

We say, hey! Politicians! Stop being puppets and say what you really think! Then, if we find a politician stupid enough to listen we lynch them for it. Hell, you can be lynched for being seen to agree with someone speaking their mind these days.

If the subject matter is the NHS then the politician is doubly cursed. Any criticism of the NHS is a sign that you don’t love your country, that you’re obviously a foaming right wing nut job that’s into eugenics and laughing at people dying of cancer because they’re too lazy to get a job to pay for their medical bills.

Yep. That’s the kind of screwed up country we live in.

Liberal Conspiracy, for example, have exploded into what can only be described as an outpouring of pure bile, mixing nationalism and socialism and extreme hostility towards anyone who dares even mention the NHS in anything other than reverent, respectful tones. In the most overtly nationalistic thing I’ve seen from the mainstream British Left since “British Jobs for British Workers”, the author condemns Dan Hannan (who is, at the end of the day, just an MEP) as a  ‘A national disgrace’ for the crime of bring critical about the NHS to foreigners! Oh my frickin’ Lord!

UPDATE: It’s been highlighted that I’m probably overly sensitive to nationalism, even ‘good’ nationalism. There’s no ‘good’ nationalism.

The problem, as always, is that when politicians do speak their minds, there’s opportunist scumbags waiting for a nice easy straw man to torch to death.

Here’s a news flash – to improve the quality of politics it needs all parties to take their fingers off the triggers and start behaving like sane rational adults – and let people speak, let them be heard and let the actual arguments do the talking.

Sure it’ll mean sacrifice – after all, rhetoric is so much easier than winning a real argument. Sure it’ll be difficult to get used to – but don’t complain about brainless, moronic robot politicians if you’re the first in line with the cudgels whenever one opens their mouth.

Here’s something I’ve seen popping up across various blogs in the last few weeks:

There’s too much capacity in the Car Industry

Clearly, during a recession, the demand for new cars is going to be lower than it was – that’s true. Even when people want to buy a new car, they’re less likely to be able to finance it at reasonable terms.

At the same time, we’ve got the Car Scrappage Scheme, gifting everyone £2,000 for turning in any car for £2000 (who’s paying for the cars to be actually scrapped by the way?) which, assuming it works, turns taxpayer’s money into demand for for new cars, yes?

So I started checking out the prices of cars, to familiarise myself with the state of the industry – what products they’re offering and at what prices. I wanted to see what the market place was like. A Fiesta starts at £10k. A Corsa starts at 10k. A Punto starts at 10k (are you spotting a pattern here?). A Mazda 2 costs £10k. A Yaris starts just shy of £10k.

A Peugeot 206 starts at £8.5k but I wouldn’t recommend one of those on account of the hell my housemate suffers with hers.

The most obvious thing about all these cars is that they’re practically identical in appearance and features: Shitty, unappealing overpriced crap.

All this is, of course, highly fascinating. Except I was looking at this market about 6 months ago, in fact, because a newly qualified driver friend of mine was looking to buy a new car. Puntos and Fiestas, I’m reasonably certain, were starting in the £6-7k price range.

If that’s true, that means the advent of the Car Scrappage scheme has seen prices jump up between £3 and £4k, in order to then offer a “discount” of £2k, resulting in a total price increase of £1-£2k.

In other words, even with the stupid squandering of tax-payer’s money, cars are getting more expensive. But there’s a good economic reason for that.

The natural consequence of a recession means that people aren’t quite as willing to pay quite so much on this shitty, unappealing overpriced crap as they were. That means over the life-cycle of say the new model Fiesta, they will expect to sell significantly less than they’d hoped. Because the cost of developing a new car (including design, testing and configuring the factories) are recouped over the whole life-cycle, those costs are being spread out over a smaller number of cars. Therefore prices go up… which means demand falls… which means production needs to reduce… and so on until, inevitably, car companies begin making record losses.

Reasonably we can expect (should this continue) car manufacturers to reduce the number of lines and variants they offer. We should expect the number of manufacturers to reduce, too although it seems none of these bottom end car makers seem overly concerned with trying to compete on price.

Too much capacity in the car industry? Probably. Temporarily. But ultimately we live in a country where new cars have always been traditionally overpriced compared with other nations as it is, and now prices are going up. We are supposed to be witnessing Government support to stimulate sales of cars to ‘save’ this industry, but we all know that there’s steep financial punishments for anyone daring to drive any of these new cars (depreciation not withstanding)

For what it’s worth, I suspect paying £20 in tax on £30 of fuel might have something to do with the ‘over-capacity’ of the Car Industry, but then pricing people off the road is the modern way of circumventing demands for proper road infrastructure. Labour, at least, understand how to dodge issues that they have no solutions for – put their critics on the back foot and keep them there.

Nick Clegg’s gone on a PR rampage (the ‘public relations’ kind) with a clever wheeze of demanding MPs give up their Summer Holiday to find the time to fix the expenses crisis.

One of the suggestions is abolishing the House of Lords to be replaced with an elected senate. I have mixed feelings about this – obviously as a retirement home for former MPs and a holiday camp for big donors it’s fairly squallid.

Yet, at the same time, the Lords have been crucial in blocking the very worst of the Government’s anti-Civil Liberties legislation. “Don’t worry, it’ll never get past the Lords” has been the most reassuring 8 words on the political lexicon for a number of years now.

I quite like the idea of the Lords as a chamber immune to the temptation of populism for easy election victories.  Imagine if, right now, Labour had full control of both Houses. 96 days detention, with Labour Senators joining in in the dash for ‘anti-terrorist’ votes? I dread to think.

If we must have an elected second chamber, political parties must be banned from it. Of course, I’m yet to be convinced that making the second chamber elected won’t just fill it full of politicians anyway.

Guido draws attention to Simon Hoggart’s observation in the Guardian that the MPs Expenses Scandal is as yet unnamed.

Putting my communications hat on for a moment, the fact that this scandal does not have a name makes it significantly more powerful. Consider: Watergate. Watergate is the name of a hotel. It does not explain what the scandal was all about, who was involved or what crime was actually committed. In fact, “Watergate” obscures the details of the scandal, robbing people of understanding.

We call this scandal the ‘MP’s Expenses Scandal’ because that’s exactly what it is. People are left in no doubt as to what’s going on. We could give it a name: Bob? Charles? Who cares. All we’re doing is adding a layer of obfuscation between what’s happened and how we talk about it. So, no thanks, no clever name please: Let’s have reality and let’s concentrate on getting the matter resolved rather than try to find new, clever and witty ways to talk about it.

One of my brothers (10 years my junior) is always in bands. It’s just my luck that this time he’d end up in one called, “Flags of the Soviet Republic.” He also makes videos, and this time he’s made a video for his band using rotoscoping. I’m reliably informed that this took ages, drawing each animated frame by hand.

Obviously I’m biased, but I thought this was sufficiently cool to justify embedding as my weekend ‘can’t be arsed properly blogging’ post.