Greg Barker - Warmist Tory Scum

To those who think that the labels Left and Right still carry an ounce of meaning, close your eyes and tell me whether this is a Leftist or a Rightist making this statement:

I think there is too much focus on trying to stimulate an increasingly sterile debate on the science, given the overwhelming body of opinion that there is now in favour of the science, and perhaps if they are wanting to have an active debate they should be talking about the policy responses to that science, rather than the science itself. I'm not trying to ban all dissenting voices but we are doing the public a disservice by treating them as equal, which is not the case.

This in the context of the BBC giving too much prominence to the 'sceptic voice' when it comes to climate change. The BBC??? Sorry, I must have blinked and missed it.

So, who is it that is completely unaware of what's going on in the world outside his window? Who is it that wants to shut down what little debate there is, and who believes still that the science is settled? A Labour politician? A Lib Dem?

Nope, this is none other than Greg Barker, a Tory Minister at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. A man close to Cameron, whom he famously accompanied on that husky hugging trip to the Arctic in 2006 (where's a polar bear when you need one, eh?).

When it comes down to it there is no difference - political parties are a flag of convenience for people like Barker. He would be at home in any of the three main parties, subscribing as they all do to the same core beliefs in environmentalism and statism.

OECD - Climate Bailout

Writing in the ever wonderful Watts Up With That, Dr Richard Lindzen of MIT, points out that:

Each IPCC report seems to be required to conclude that the case for an international agreement to curb carbon dioxide has grown stronger. That is to say the IPCC report (and especially the press release accompanying the summary) is a political document, and as George Orwell noted, political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

And right on cue we have arch-alarmist Roger Harrabin of the BBC reporting that the head of the OECD, Angel Gurria, is going to make a speech attacking governments for not making progress on tackling CO2 emissions. In other words applying more pressure to move towards binding emissions targets.

Given the absense of warming now for 17 years, how can Gurria (or anyone else come to that), inject a sense of urgency into the situation? The only way is by appeals to authority - it's certainly not through pointing to any concrete evidence. The climate is not changing catastrophically, islands are not sinking beneath the waves, ice caps are not disappearing, the world is not awash with climate refugees or any of the other nightmare scenarios that the alarmists have constantly predicted. Instead there are the IPCC reports, or at least the summaries for policy makers. And here we do get that sense of urgency - the "consensus" numbers get higher and higher, the rhetoric shows no signs of a pause and continues it's upwards trajectory.

So, while the real world refuses to abide by the models, the trans-national bodies like the EU, the UN, the IPCC and the OECD will contiue to work in concert to drive through the policies that they have previously agreed. The political establishments that have made "fighting climate change" one of the core beliefs that binds it together, across national boundaries and across "ideologies", show no sign of disengaging with the juggernaut they've set in train. And we, poor citizens, just have to tow the line and pay for their madness.

The Militard Tendency

The big focus in our media yesterday was largely around the movement of non-enitities in and out of cabinet and shadow cabinet positions. While the details are deathly dull it's worth noting that Ed Militard carried out a bit of a mini-purge of the remaining Blairites in the shadow cabinet. As you'd expect he's shoring up his support and doing more to draw support from his union sponsors. Of course this is being interpreted as a 'further move to the Left', as though those labels mean anything any more. Despite some valiant attempts to put space between the parties, when it comes down to the fundamentals of the EU and climate change/environmentalism there's still nothing in it.

However, one thing that may start to happen is that some of the moribund 'Left' who've drifted aray from New Labour may start to be drawn back into the fold. A basic cleavage of the Left in years gone by was between those who brandished the slogan 'Vote Labour With No Illusions' and those who refused to back Labour no matter what. The various Trotskyite and Stalinist proponents of 'No Illusions' preferred a Labour government because they felt it energised the unions and that it opened the way for 'Left' influence at grass roots levels. The hope was that a more energised union movement would inevitably make impossible demands of a Labour government and that when the conflict came it would create the space for the far-Left to organise and grow.

Tony Blair put an end to all of that. The 'No Illusions' line was harder to sell when there was so little difference between New Labour and the Tories. In some ways this has given us the Respect coalition (formed to oppose Labour's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) on the one hand and the various organisations and alliances around Bob Crow and the RMT. While numerically small in number there's a hard core of militants who are actively anti-Labour and on the Left. It may be that the more that 'Red Ed' postures and makes moves apparently in their direction, the more likely it is we'll see the return of the 'No Illusions' line.

In such a case it may mean that a part of the old Left that has moved away from Labour and put its energies elsewhere may switch tack and give Ed the conditional support and activists on the ground that he will need. This is something that Ed needs. Not because these are people who are likely to vote for the Tories, but because these are people who can get to working class voters who are attracted to UKIP.

Let's not forget that it's not just the Tories who are fearful of losing support to the anti-EU voter, it's Labour too.

Bob Geldof Is An Irrelevant Old Hag

Bob Geldof is right. We should all take note of his announcement that we're facing a 'mass extinction event' connected to climate change. One has to assume that he's talking about the coming extinction of the IPCC and the climate alarmism that it has so assiduously propagandised. Of course it faces an 'existential threat' as Geldof has claimed - after all the IPCC was founded on the premise that CO2 is the driver for catastrophic global warming (how quaint that sounds now) - so without the catastrophy the reason for the existence of the IPCC gravy train has to be called into question.

Now is the time for all concerned citizens to make their feelings known. Let's join together, in that Bob Geldof Live Aid all in together kind of way and drive the IPCC into dust. Bring on the mass extinction event and destroy the great warming con.

What??? You mean that St Bob really did mean that he thought the world was suffering from some kind of climate emergency? That at the very nadir of the warming con he's still trying to sound the alarm? Why, that's like suggesting that St Bob is a has-been rockstar who's had nothing sensible to say for years now...It's like suggesting he's the Viviene Westwood of popular music...

Militard - The Statist

While the Daily Mail may have shot itself in the foot with the story about Ralph Militard - I mean anything that provokes sympathy for Ed Militard is an own-goal - perhaps there will be some good that comes out of it after all. Now emboldened by the positive response to his calls for regulating our energy bills - bills which are highly directly because of policies he put into place - and by the sympathy the Mail has garnered for him, Militard is showing his true statist colours.

According to a piece in the Guardian, Militard is quoted as saying:

Yes, we will be doing more to show the difference a Labour government would make … we will tackle the cost of living crisis and one of the ways we'll do it is by making markets work in the public interest

Because, of course, only under the guidance of the enlightened few can markets be made to work. Because, as history has shown us repeatedly, politicians have worked their magic and have been successful every time they have done this. Apparently our nice Ed Militard is as ignorant of history as he is of economics or even the world of work in the real economy. And yes, like many of our leaders he may have studied economics at some point in his life, but it clearly has made no real impression on him, except perhaps in some simplified Keynesian way.

Still, Militard the statist and his penchant for price controls and other interventions is clearly on show now. The danger is of course that his simplistic calls for state intervention strike a nerve with the electorate. And of course the BBC will continue to do his bidding as his interest coincides with theirs.

We have been warned...

Kingston Lib Dem Leader's Child Porn Habit

A while back, in connection with the reptilian Chris Huhne, I remarked that that the Lib Dem's had once been considered the 'nice' party, but that:

But thankfully Chris Huhne through his behaviour has shown that the Lib Dems can be as bad as the rest of them - part and parcel of the British political class, no different in kind to the ambitious and ruthless bastards that make their home in the other major parties.

Derek Osbourne, until recently the Lib Dem leader of Kingston Upon Thames, has just been convicted of possessing and distributing more than 5000 indecent images - including some at the the worst end of the scale - of children. The prosecution showed that the material Osbourne shared :

Some of the material depicts children as young as three being subjected to acts of rape or serious sexual violence...The case is significantly aggravated by virtue of the fact material was shared with or distributed to other paedophiles.

Sentencing has happened yet, but it looks likely to include prison.

So much for the nice party. And ironic that sitting Kingston Lib Dem MP should be Ed Davey, the brain dead minister who took over from that other Lib Dem jail-bird, Chris Huhne.

One can't help but wonder what would have happened had Derek Osbourne been a councillor for a minor party. What would the BBC and the Guardian have made of it had he been a member of UKIP?

The IPCC Has Delivered

The IPCC has delivered something of a crowd pleaser in its latest assessment. There really is something for everybody in this latest report. For the true believers we get the "95% confidence" that humans are the dominant driver of climate change. Forget the models diverging ever more from reality, forget the 15-17 years flat-lined temperature increase despite record CO2 levels, forget the lowered estimates of climate sensitivity to CO2. Just focus on that 95% figure and everything else pales into insignificance. There's little doubt that it's a crowd-pleaser and the true believers will take that number and batter the sceptics with it repeatedly.

For the political classes who pay for the IPCC gravy-train, this is just what they wanted. Here's the justification for the continued green policies and the subsidies for grandiose and futile schemes to reduce CO2 emissions and stop us boiling the oceans. For those in power in the Westsern countries, they've bought themselves permission to carry on as before with failed policies that we citizens are paying dearly for. Obama, Cameron and the rest will quote the IPCC ad infinitum and continue with the refrain that the evidence is incontrovertible and that it's worse than we thought.

And, let's be honest, the IPCC has done a great service to the sceptic cause too. There was a chance that it could have taken a more honourable course and admitted that it's models were wrong, that there was less cause for alarm, that we know less than we pretend to. It could have admitted that the 'science' is far less settled than it has previously claimed. But it hasn't. The IPCC is like a super-tanker set on a course and is unable to nimbly change direction in the face of the obstinate reality in its path. So it continues with statistically incoherent pronouncements and politically acceptable sound bites. For us sceptics this is confirmation that the IPCC is irredemable, and the voices that are being raised against it are growing more vociferous and increasing in number. Witness Judith Curry saying:

We need to put down the IPCC as soon as possible – not to protect the patient who seems to be thriving in its own little cocoon, but for the sake of the rest of us whom it is trying to infect with its disease.

For the moment though, the IPCC have bolstered the confidence of the diminishing band of true believers who are immune to evidence. For them, the 95% number, along with the fake 97% 'consensus' number from Cook and his band of crooks, is all they need to fight off the mounting evidence (much of it in peer-reviewed journals) that climate alarmism is not warranted. In fact it wouldn't suprise me if another 90+ number appeared soon. Having three 9s to quote will feel so much better than just two - as if that's enough to close off reality.

Carrier Bag Scepticism

Cut to the haunting image of a sea turtle, thousands of miles away, struggling through the deep ocean waters as discarded plastic bags wrap themselves around its flippers and body.

These majestic animals are dying in alarming numbers because they mistake the flimsy translucent bags - which could in theory come from British supermarkets - for jellyfish, a key element of their diet.

The endangered Green Turtle provides a potent symbol of the deadly threat to wildlife and the blight on the natural world caused by throwaway plastic bags handed out free in their billions to shoppers. [Daily Mail, 27 February 2008]

Who can fail to be moved by the image conjured so vividly in those few sentences? Scourge of the oceans, destroyer of marine life and polluter of the eco-system, the carrier bag is everything that is wrong with our throwaway life styles. Only the most hard-hearted and selfish could say otherwise. Except that, as with many environmental scares and controversies, the reality is considerably more complex than these often simplistic narratives would indicate. Perhaps the case for the prosecution is not as strong, or as straightforward, as would first appear…

At first glance the case against the carrier bag seems self-evident. It is wasteful – the bags are throwaway by design. They use up resources – plastic carrier bags are made from oil and obviously use up energy in their manufacture. They pollute the environment – famously being a key ingredient of the ‘great Pacific garbage patch’, (or the Pacific Trash Vortex if your language tends to the dramatic) or the similarly described patch in the Atlantic. And finally, the great and the good have come out firmly against them – from hardened environmentalists to the BBC to the Daily Mail and Marks and Spencers. In fact, in some more environmentally conscious parts of the world, Wales for example, the carrier bag already incurs a surcharge – a guilt tax to nudge us towards greener alternatives.

Halloween Costumes Go PC

Says it all really - what a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in. For those readers not from the UK and a bit perplexed... a news item doing the rounds at the moment concerns two major supermarkets withdrawing Halloween costumes that depicted psycho mental patients because they allegedly help stigmatise those suffering from mental illness. The Guardian covers the story thus:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/26/tesco-withdraws-psycho-ward-costume-complaints

They even get slime-master Alistair Campbell to mount the soap box and whine that :

Those defending these costumes say they are a bit of fun and we should lighten up. They are not a bit of fun. They are offensive. They commercialise prejudice and stereotype and they reinforce stigma.

So, let me get this right. It's OK to invade Iraq and enter a conflict that leaves thousands dead and injured, but it's not OK for a supermarket to sell a tacky costume depicting cartoon-character psychos? Yep, makes perfect sense to me too.


Is there anyone in the country who's not going to be offended by something someone does somewhere? It seems that the only human right we're not allowed to glory in is the right to offend...

At least one person has got it right:

http://www.thebanger.co.uk/2013/09/26/halloween-zombie-costumes-banned-from-supermarkets/

BBC and 'Well funded sceptics'

The BBC has a piece online today that looks at climate sceptics. As you'd expect from the BBC it's heavily weighted towards the IPCC side of things, but still managers to give a superficial impression of being fair. For example, there's a side bar that states:

Although there are only a small number of mainstream scientists who reject the established view on global warming, they are supported by a larger group of well resourced bloggers and citizen scientists who pore through climate literature and data looking for evidence of flaws in the hypothesis.

Aside from repeating the lie that there are only small number of 'mainstream scientists' who are in the sceptic camp, it also repeats the bigger lie about 'well resourced bloggers'. Come on, who's well resourced? Is it the sceptic camp or is it the alarmist camp funded by governments, trans-national bodies (like the UN, EU etc), big green and a host of environmentalist activist organisations. The disparity in resourcing is staggering - back in 2009 Australian blogger JoAnne Nova pegged the money spent on climate science as $79 billion (http://joannenova.com.au/2009/07/massive-climate-funding-exposed/) - yet the implication in the BBC story is that well-funded sceptics are attacking plucky little climate scientists.

But let's also focus on the last bit of that quote:

well resourced bloggers and citizen scientists who pore through climate literature and data looking for evidence of flaws in the hypothesis.

Excuse me, but isn't that what scientists do? Doesn't the scientific method depend on this process?

Militard's Record on Energy

For those with short memories, a few reminders:

• First Secretary of State for the newly minted Department of Energy and Climate Change.
• Committed the government to cut CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050, up from a mere 60% that had previously been announced.
• Announced that any potential new coal-fired power stations would be unable to receive government consent unless they could demonstrate that they would be able to effectively capture and bury 25% of the emissions they produce immediately (even though, or perhaps because, no such technology exists).
• Represented the UK at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit, where he pushed hard for binding agreements to cut emissions.

All of these are policies which have cost, and continue to cost, billions and which have directly impacted our fuel bills.

That Militard Speech

So, let’s get this straight. The Labour Party were instrumental in putting into place the green subsidy gravy train that is screwing the UK consumer (and which our current leaders are in no hurry to dismantle). Having helped deliver fuel poverty the Labour Party sees no reason to do anything positive to address the problem – for example by aggressively supporting the introduction of fracking, stopping the rush to build more useless windmills, cutting down on other costly green subsidies. Instead, brave Ed Militard will take control of fuel pricing directly. Because, of course, price controls have been so phenomenally successful everywhere they’ve been tried.

Ed’s speech was supposed to impress us with his strategy and vision. Well, it’s impressed me with something, but it’s not strategy, vision or intelligence. What it has done, though, is show once again the nasty statist bent of Militard and the Labour Party. And, should he fail, it sets up his credentials for a cushy little number in the EU Commission...

Sadly, bashing energy companies and promising to make better the problems you’ve caused seems likely to be a more popular bet than being honest and helping to put right the wrong policies that you helped put into practice in the first place.

GWPF Call For Review of UK Climate Model

Today's email post bag includes a Press Release from the Global Warming Policy Foundation calling for an independent review of the UK's Official Climate Predictions from the Met Office. To quote from the release:

Nic Lewis, an independent climate scientist, has published research that shows that because of the way the predictions are prepared using the Met Office's computer climate model, they are bound to predict fairly high warming in the UK whatever observational data are fed into the process.

The UK climate predictions programme informs decisions to invest billions of pounds in climate change adaptation measures across the public and private sectors. The inherent warm bias in the predictions means that much of this spending is probably unnecessary.

Andrew Montford, the author of the GWPF briefing paper, said:

“There are potentially billions of pounds being misspent on the basis of these predictions. The government has little choice but to withdraw them pending a review of the way they are put together”.

GWPF chairman Lord Lawson is calling for an independent panel of climate scientists and statisticians to review the UKCP09 predictions.

The full briefing paper, which is well worth a read can be downloaded here: http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/09/Montford-Climate-Model.pdf

And for those interested in the detail of the science behind the call for the review, it's available from Nic Lewis here: http://niclewis.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/metoffice_response2g.pdf

UKIP - Bloomed Again

At the time of Godfrey Bloom's 'bongo bongo land' outburst I wrote:

Let's be clear, if UKIP is a serious political party and not the vehicle of a handful of leaders safely esconced in Brussels, it needs to appeal to a wider range of the electorate. It needs to appeal across racial and class barriers, it needs to appeal to those who look for signs of intelligent policy as well as wanting to have a go at our ruling elites. And it won't do that with people like Godfrey Bloom slurring racist comments to the party faithful.

Now, we get a re-run and the effect on the wavering voter are pretty clear to see: 

What I do care about is that he’s sounding like the boring bloke in the pub who drones on in a loud voice and vents his bigotted bloody spleen all the time. And that Nigel Farage doesn’t seem to be much better. He sounds like another charmless twat who’s got no brains and no ideas apart from how to make good for himself.

David Attenborough Should STFU

David Attenborough should just STFU. The misanthropic old git has been much in the news again spouting off his usual doom-laden drivel about over-population. Just as an exercise he should just take a look out of the window at the real world around him. In the 87 years that he's been around the planet the population has shut up from 2 billion to around 7 billion. A huge jump, we're all agreed. But at the same time global life expectancy at birth have doubled according to some statistics - and while I'll admit the actual numbers may be dubious the trend is there in every set of numbers you look at. Poverty levels have been dropping in percentage and absolute terms. Wealth has increased massively. Pollution has decreased in the developed world and is starting to drop in other parts of the world too.

By any conceivable metric the human race has prospered even as the population has increased. What about the 'natural' world (as though somehow humans are not part of the natural world)? Well, deforestation is no longer seen as the problem it once was - though it's clear that some of the policies inflicted on us by greens like David Attenborough are making things worse as forests are cleared for bio-fuel crops. Global warming never was a problem and it's becoming clearer by the day that this scare is dying on its feet.

Of course we're not living in utopia and there are real economic, political and environmental problems in the world. But by any objective measure the doom and gloom propagated by Attenborough, and those who have preceded him (Paul Ehrlich being the most obvious example) is not warranted.

National treasure? Possibly. But he'd be more of a treasure if he just STFU or else dared to look beyond his fixed ideological position and see how the real world has changed in his life-time.

Read it and weep

Climateer Tim Flannery sacked in Oz

Now we know why they call Australia 'the lucky country'. From here in the UK we can only look on jealously as the new Aussie administration starts to dismantle the climate alarmist gravy train. In the UK, across Europe and the US, the alarmist establishment continues to soak up our money even as the 'consensus' withers and turns to dust. Alarmism is so firmly embedded in the DNA of our political masters (regardless of what party label they attach to themselves) that there is little chance of us learning from the Aussie example. The only thing we can hope is that there are enough second-rank leaders looking and learning so that when the time comes and they step up to leading positions they can be as ruthless in cutting out the rot in the heart of the establishment.

HS2 - Huge Subsidy Too

The recent report from KPMG that suggested that by 2037 the HS2 rail scheme could be benefiting the economy by £15bn a year was pretty much wishful thinking paid for by the quango behind the scheme. The made up numbers were meant to impress, but they've been treated sceptically by pretty much everyone who's commented, aside from the government of course. Interestingly the made up numbers are not based on decreased travel times but by an increase in the number of journeys and an increase in economic activities that this is supposed to magically lead to.

If, for a moment, we ignore the nonsense numbers and accept that more journeys will mean more economic activity, then we have to ask are there cheaper alternatives to HS2? The answer surely has to be yes. How about more road building? How about improving the existing motorway infrastructure? And, given the long time scales involved, we might even try and take a futuristic stance. For example, Google and others are making real strides in the development of autonomous vehicles. If this continues then perhaps we can think about providing special lanes or even separate roads for these vehicles - which will be able to travel more closely together in loosely associated convoys with the ability of individual vehicles to come on/off as required. With continued improvements in control systems, enhancements to engine design for fuel efficiency and other technological advances, we can get the increased journeys, possibly improved journey times and the economic benefits that ensue without the need to pump the billions into HS2.

Better yet, if we make the new roads (or new lanes on existing roads), toll roads, then the users of these vehicles will pay for the privilege of travelling on them.

Ultimately, the problem with long-term substantial infrastructure projects like HS2 is not just the huge cost over-runs and massive tax-payer subsidies, it's that they're always out of date by the time they come on line...

Vivienne Westwood Is An Irrelevant Hag

As you can imagine, I'm not really one for fashion - whether it's politics, music or sartorial - but every so often something will grab the headlines and eventually impinge on my consciousness. Vivienne Westwood was in the news a few weeks ago when she attended the 'anti-fracking' camp at Balcombe. She was dutifully interviewed by the massed ranks of the old media where she gave us the benefit of her vast insights into energy policy, climate science and economics. To call her clueless would be kind. The degree of vacuousness was unbelievable. But still she's a celebrity and had once, for a short while, been considered incredibly radical. Now she was spouting environmentalist drivel and sounding like a doddery old granny on day release from a hospital ward.


Fast forward a couple of weeks and her latest collection is in the news. Gasp! It's so radical again. So engaged. So... Clothes with the words 'Climate' on them! Models with zombie faces to symbolise the death and destruction we've wrought on Gaia. Yawn. This at the time when the climate scare is gasping from lack of oxygen and most people have realised that the game's up. But like a French aristocrat on the eve of the revolution, she has no idea that history is about to leave her and her brand of empty climate alarmism behind.

Thank You Chris Huhne

A big thank you is due to Chris Huhne, all over the papers complaining that the media ruined his life and that being a lying, deceitful and arrogant bastard had nothing to do with it. There was a time when the Lib Dems were seen by many as the 'nice' party. Where the Tories and Labour were the nasty beasts of government - full of scheming, dishonest and conniving careerists and the power-hungry who'd do anything to get into government - the Lib Dems were portrayed as the slightly naive, idealistic and slightly eccentric party that the 'real' politician types would avoid. But thankfully Chris Huhne through his behaviour has shown that the Lib Dems can be as bad as the rest of them - part and parcel of the British political class, no different in kind to the ambitious and ruthless bastards that make their home in the other major parties.

Of course it's not just Huhne, we all know that Lib Dems policies are the epitome of big green thinking - Europhile, statist, collectivist and most of all radically environmentalist. But when it comes to the personal ethics of Lib Dem politicians, Chris Huhne has done us proud. Sadly, that won't stop him prospering from his former position in the political establishment, but we can hope that he's helped make his party unelectable in the future.

The Living Wage

Much has been paid of the report that up to 4.8 million workers are earning below the 'living wage' (currently defined as £8.55 in London and £7.45 outside). If we take it as read that the research, from the think tank the Resolution Foundation, is accurate, and that the amounts set for the living wage are about right, the obvious question is what do we do about it?

Well, there's a simple solution and then there are various shades of complicated solutions which, no doubt, will be the ones discussed by politicians and media commentators. First the simple solution: just take people on minimum wage out of the tax and NI system. You can do this by adjusting tax thresholds appropriately and then you don't need to install new systems of bureaucracy, create new classes of benefit or even track conformance. Just stop taking money away from the people who need it the most. Hell, you don't even need to employ a single addtional civil servant to make this work.

That virtue - simplicity and no additional bureaucracy - means that it's unlikely to happen. So then we look at the other options. First is the relatively simple one of raising the minimum wage. But this has some serious down-sides, like stifling job growth and putting some people out of work. And what do you do about the living wage differential between London and the rest of the UK? Do you institute regional minimum wage scales? Now you're in the realm of additional complexity for employers and having to put new systems of inspection and control in place. The net affect is to add to the costs to the state (in reality to the tax payer, including those on minimum wage...) and to increase the costs of employment.

So, what looks like a simple solution of increasing miminum wage turns into something a bit more complex and expensive. What next? Well, you leave minimum wage where it is and put into place additional benefits. Or you get employers to increase pay then then give the employers some to make the difference. Or... You get the picture - more complexity, more costs and an increasing bureaucratic burden.

Which takes us back to the really simple solution that I first mentioned. If we really believe that people should be paid this living wage, then we can increase the tax thresholds so that people on low wages can get to keep their money. Why do it any other way?