Beer and water

They are at it again. This morning I caught an interview with some idiot on the Today programme on the subject of binge drinking and young people - I think said idiot was Kevin Barron MP, but I'm not 100% sure. Said idiot was however advocating increasing the taxes on booze and complaining that water in the supermarkets is more expensive than lager.

I call the guy an idiot for a number of reasons:

1. It is simply idiotic to suggest that the reason kids are getting drunk is because water is more expensive, which is what is being implied by this comparison.
2. It is also untrue. The last time I bought Sainsbury's basic water, both still and sparkling 1.5 litre bottles cost 18p. The Sainsbury's basic lager was 22p for what (I think) was a 0.5 litre can. So in fact it would appear that you can by buy three times as much water for 4p less.
3. Why should I pay more taxes on something because the government is incapable of enforcing its own legislation.

I am getting fed up of the lie - for that's what it is, a lie - that supermarkets are charging more for water than for beer, and that being used as a justification for increasing taxes. Politicans should maybe go and do some research before repeating it (after all, it should take a reasonably bright young researcher on 22k a year about five minutes in Sainsburys to realise it's not true).

Of course expensive waters like Perrier cost more than cheap lager, but expensive beer may cost more than cheap wine.

Fisking Tim Worstall

Tim Worstall writes :

The value of any job in a market economy is set by supply and demand. We have a (relatively) fixed demand for MPs. Some 630 or so (roughly, isn’t it?).

According to Wikipedia, it's actually 646. For someone who spends a lot of time complaining (correctly) about the sloppy figures of Polly Toynbee, it's a pity Tim didn't spend thirty seconds looking the number up on Google.

At the last general election some 3,000 people stood for one of those seats. Some will say that some were markedly unqualified (from Monster Raving Loonies to Trots of various types) but this isn’t, in a democracy, a valid position to hold. Any and every one of us is qualified to be an MP: that’s what rule by the people means.

This is incorrect - yes anyone is eligible to apply to be an MP - that doesn't mean you're qualified to be an MP. To qualify, you have to convince the largest number of people on the "interview" panel to vote for you. Simply being qualified enough to apply for the job does not mean you're suitable.

So as we have 3,000 qualified applicants for some 600 jobs, clearly, we are overpaying those who do it. MPs pay should therefore be cut, radically.

Again, this is faulty logic - just because you get lots of applicants, doesn't mean you're over paying them. Looking at my own field, that of Information Technology, the higher paid positions are naturally going to have more applicants. What this means for the employers that pay above the market rate salaries is they get more chance to cherry pick the best people in the field, not that they are somehow overpaying them. I like the thought that we get a higher class of applicant to be an MP by paying more. I'm still not sure how that explains John Prescott though.

In fact, back in the day when being an MP attracted no salary at all (only Ministers were paid) we had no shortage of MPs. Thus we would have no shortage now if MPs were unpaid now (that is arguable, but do you think there would be a shortage if this were the case?).

Possibly not - but as has been pointed out on numerous occassions, the other side of that is that only the rich could then afford to become MPs. By running this policy, you'd effectively ensure that "every one of us is" no longer "qualified to be an MP". So you'd end up moving away from the main starting point of this discussion. Either that or MPs would have to take "consultancy fees" from vested interests, which I'm not convinced would be an improvement on the current situation.

Cut MPs pay and cut it now!

If the problem is that MPs are incompetent, then that is a decision for their constituents to deal with. The fact that you may not like someone's choice of MP is not a reason to reduce that MPs wages (again, a certain former deputy Prime Minister comes to mind). It's called democracy.

Value for money

I saw Hazel Blears yesterday - briefly - on Sky News as she was discussing her campaign for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. She was arguing her job should be about the party and campaigning, and not neccessarily a ministerial post.

She was then asked if that meant she'd refuse the Ministerial Jag and the perks of office. Obviously she didn't want to answer, so she started waffling on about the importance of the public seeing value for money.

While value for money has never been a strong point of the current Labour government (NHS, IT, the Dome, the Olympics) is this Blears admitting that maybe Labour made a mistake allowing John Prescott to cost the tax payer two million per annum for his non job?