Some might expect me to be talking about the Lewisham hospital shenanigans, wherein one branch of the state has sued another branch of the state to ensure that the state keeps spending money it hasn’t got on things that need to be shaken up. Yes, I think that Lewisham should be kept open, for both selfish (it’s my closest hospital) and non-selfish (IMO, it’s clinically better than the one that was to be saved at Lewisham’s expense) reasons. But I disagree fundamentally with the idea that the courts were the place to sort this, and I almost hope that the decision is overturned on appeal, because the precedent is very very nasty.

But this post isn’t about that; this post is about a local pub’s shenanigans.

The background from last November was this: the owner of a building in Catford wanted to end the lease of their tenant (a successful and popular bar) and turn it into flats and a shop. The tenants didn’t like this at all (fair enough), and created a bit of a public fuss (again, fair enough) and campaigned for the council to block any change of use for the building (bloody out of order). This then worked, because there’s nothing Lewisham council like more than extending their business into places where it shouldn’t be, for e.g. what a property owner chooses to use his business premises for. So the owner was left with a building that could only be used as a pub because the tenants convinced the council to make it so.

This displeased me, and I wrote about it last year:

The landlord is now left with a building that can’t be anything but a pub. But the tenants in it are clearly a bunch of twats. So what I’d do in his position is get rid of the tenants and bring in new ones to run a pub.

Fast forward to this week:

THE Catford Bridge Tavern pub – saved from being turned into a supermarket and later voted the best in south east London – is being sold off.

Company Antic say the landlord has agreed to sell the building to another pub company.

Max Alderman from Antic said: “The building was always for sale and we were trying to buy it.

“We thought we had an agreement but the landlord has decided to sell it to someone else.”

Fair play to the landlord, I think. Because if it was me, the last person I’d sell it to would be the one who bullied me by bringing the state to the argument and lowering the value of the property.

I’m sad to see what was by all accounts a brilliant pub have to shut. But I’m not sad to see the people who took the steps they did lose out in the end.

It is a simple fact that areas like the one I live in a a very deep red on any electoral map; in my particular part of London the only competition that Labour have is from the left (from a group whose name is so stupid I can’t even bring myself to type it). And that means that the general refrain once anything happens is that one arm of the state should ride to the rescue.

Case in point: a nearby pub is apparently under threat of closure; apparently the landlord has applied for planning permission to turn it into flats. Which is a crying shame, in my opinion – the area needs more decent pubs.

So I’m all for saving it. But what pisses me off is the way that people are talking about trying to save it: from local blogs, to the local MP, to the current people who run the pub, they’re all doing the same thing. Demanding that the council stop any planning application to change the use of the building. Hell, the main information page for the campaign lists seven ways that people can apparently help. In order, they are:

1. Email the council planning office
2. Email the local MP
3. Email the local mayor
4. Sign the petition (to be sent to the council planning office)
5. Email the local paper
6. Write to the landlord
7. Email the campaign with some support

Seven ways to help, and four of them are directly trying to get the state to stop the landlord having any say over how he uses his property. Only the fifth is really a sensible way to go about it: try and convince the landlord to keep the pub in place. Or, even better, get the people that run the pub to make a sensible offer and bloody buy the place off him…

There’s a lovely little article on the BBC about American thoughts on income inequality, that clearly thinks that its definition of a better world is very very clever and solves every problem.

“a just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you’d be willing to enter it in a random place”. And it’s really a beautiful definition.

He called it a veil of ignorance, because if you’re very wealthy, you might want the wealthy people to have lots of money and the poor to have very little; and if you are very poor, you might want the poor to have more money and the wealthy to have less.

But in Rawls’ definition, you don’t know where you’ll end up, you have to consider all the different options and therefore you have to think about what is good for society as a whole.

Oh, that is very clever. It’s basically saying that the only just distribution is one where everything is quite level and everyone has the same, because using the theory of a veil of ignorance, the only way for people to be happy is for there to be no difference in what each part of the distribution has.

Of course, it fails to take a great many things into account. Human nature for one; the simple concepts of risk and reward for another.

It says that ‘even’ lots of Americans want things to be equal and fair. What it doesn’t say is that ‘even’ Americans realise that there is absolutely no way to combine such a place and reality. And pretending otherwise is just fucking stupid.

But it sounds fair, and beneficial, and well meaning. And it has the advantage of making people who argue against it appear to be unfair, and malicious, and all round evil. When really people who point out that it’s stupid are just like the little kid, pointing out that the new clothes are suspiciously light on ‘existence’…

Every year when the Budget comes along, the web is taken over with high quality calculators, which are fun and let you know exactly how badly you’re going to get screwed come the new tax year. It’s not a pleasant thing to know, but it is useful.

So I was intrigued to see that your mate and mine, Ken Livingstone, had brought out a calculator of his own. Being a curious sort, I went and had a little look. And what I found was not a calculator but a slogan generator. Admit to travelling by train and you get told Every fare payer can save an average £250 every year for four years through Ken’s 7% fares reduction pledge. Admit that your household pays energy bills and you are reassured You can save an average of £120 every year for four years through the all-London bulk energy purchase scheme.

Here’s the thing: I don’t believe that first slogan – the idea that an ambitious politician like Boris Johnson is sitting on a billion pound pot going into an election and has increased fares instead is ludicrous. And I don’t credit that second one either; I’m too much of a free-marketer to think that a state sponsored buying group is anything other than a bad idea. In short, it’s not a calculator. And I don’t believe it’s just a slogan generator – it’s a bullshit generator.

That said, I don’t think that any of the candidates are much use. Just that each and every one of them are more use than Ken.

Ah, Norn Iron politicians and their need to talk bullshit.

The latest example: Mr Poots, of the DHSSPS.

The Health Minister Edwin Poots has said the Executive is determined to introduce new legislation to raise the minimum price per unit of alcohol.
…
Mr Poots told the Politics Show:”I am aware of one supermarket in the run up to Christmas not last year, the previous year, having a £20m loss leader on alcohol.

“I do think supermarkets really do need to reflect on where they sit in society.

“We shouldn’t have to intervene, but the irresponsibility of supermarkets and others is causing a situation where we do.”

Supermarkets should, indeed, reflect on where they sit in society. From what I can see, they only sell things to people if said people want to buy them. They do not sell things that the customer doesn’t want, and they don’t take away any money that the customer doesn’t give to them voluntarily.

Whereas the Northern Ireland Executive, and politicians in general, give people things they don’t want (in the form of services like intimidation and red tape), and take a chunk of money from people that never wanted to hand it over in the first place.

I put it to you, Mr Poots, that perhaps you should reflect on your position in society…