*****

Look down the Traunsee in Austria’s Salzkammergut and you’ll see a little blob of rock rising above the village of Traunkirchen. Dwarfed by the surrounding peaks it may be, but as a first “mountain” for my children (10, 6, 5) it did nicely. Trudging up the steps into the forest, J. thought he was climbing up to the Jade Palace in Kung Fu Panda. Despite the trudge, I counted only three whines coming from M., my youngest. Her little legs barely managed to step over most of the logs and roots, but with daddy’s help we made it to the ridge from where the views of the Traunsee spurred us merrily on to the top. Of course, this being Austria we found a cosy little hütte near the summit where we drank Cokes and played a game called warum immer ich? Plenty of ‘ach! so tüchtig’ (oh, so brave!) greeted my children from passing Austrians.

A little less pleasant — well, a lot less pleasant actually — is the grim reminder of Nazi crimes one finds in Ebensee just below our hike. In 1943 the Nazis established a satellite camp of Mauthasen in Ebensee. The inmates were tasked with blasting massive rock caverns to house the German rocket programme. Nearly 9000 people died. For me, the sight of the Traunstein is a happy memory. For others, it stood guard over their suffering.

Next to Erlakogel, the Traunstein’s slightly smaller sister. No hütte nor via ferrata, just a plod. Normally the views would make it worth it. Alas, it chucked it down and we got totally soaked. In Snowdonia I would have packed more stuff. Turns out that downpours in Austria also make you wet and cold. Who would have thought? I discovered that Paramo windproof jackets aren’t that waterproof and that my Scarpa boots would have benefitted from some gaiters.

Away from the Salzkammergut for a day, I decided to march the family part way up Hochkönig in the Berchtesgaden Alps near Salzburg. Our aim was the Bertgenhütte which I had reached in 2008 but M.’s legs gave up before we could reach it. Still, we enjoyed the marvellous views and an hour frolicking in the stream.

Finally, Traunstein, the watchman of the Salzkammergut. With two young boys in tow, I decided to take the “easy” route (Mairalmsteig), but it still represents a steep, 1200m scramble. The boys were marvellous, thoroughly deserving their appellation of “mountain goats.”

From Austria 2010

I’ve been putting off this admission for quite a while but cometh the hour cometh the confession:

Football is rotten. Not just bent, not just greedy. Rotten, as in an infestation of maggots munching their wormy way through the once beautiful game.

The Thierry Henry incident confirms it. It’s not really about Henry — professional athletes will always seek competitive advantage, some will cheat.

No, I blame FIFA. Talk about asleep at the wheel. As custodians of the game they must take immediate and decisive action to exile the cheaters. The remedy is easy:

1. Video panels to assess every high level game, identify divers and other cheats, and serve offenders with lengthy bans.

2. Video replay. Give managers two challenges per game.

Until this happens, football will further descend into pantomime.

I am now led to devote my life to the re-union of the British empire, as the best and only means to dry up the streams of misery that have deluged this country. They may be assured, that concious of the rectitude of my intentions, I shall treat their malice and calumnies with contempt and neglect.

That may be a step in the right direction but I am left to wonder why there should be any liability limits at all. Liability sustains markets. According to Adam Smith, markets employ self-interest to the benefit of the public good because economic actors bear the costs of their activities.

Limiting liability creates an incentive for irresponsible behavior where corporations can make more money at the cost of third parties and the general public. As a consequence, liability limitations threaten property rights. We may destroy each others property not only with impunity but under the protection of the law.

That makes for a brutish, nasty and short life if you ask me. In the Gulf of Mexico, tens of thousands of fishermen are losing their jobs and their businesses as do hoteliers, gastronomers, and their employees. That is not their fault. They did not soil and pollute the Gulf. BP and its contractors did.

The logic of the market requires that the perpetrators pay for the consequences of their actions. Otherwise, there will not only be injustice but waste.

Murkowski and Inhofe claim that the insurance for $10 billion would be unaffordable for small drillers. Adam Smith might reply: “Tough, then you shouldn’t be in a business that can devastate an entire region of the United States of America.”

Even if you agree with Murkowski and Inhofe about curtailing markets, they are also wrong that insurance would be prohibitive for drillers. It turns out that liability insurance would be a relatively minor part of an oil rigs operating expenses.

NOAA maps over 3,500 rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. If they were all required to obtain $10 billion liability insurance and a disaster like the current one would occur every twenty years, then the annual premium per rig would be $200,000. That includes 40% overhead for the insurance’s costs and profits.

Stick it in a spreadsheet and see for yourself. $200,000 is barely the equivalent of four annual salaries on an oil rig. Of course, once we take smaller insurance cases into account, premiums will increase substantially. However, as a share of operating costs even a million dollars a year remains more affordable than most people’s automobile insurance.

Once we hold businesses accountable by requiring them to carry sufficient insurance, in effect, the insurance companies will protect the environment generally and the Gulf of Mexico particularly. It is not in the interest of the insurance companies to pay for damages. Therefore, the insurance companies will establish uniform minimum safety requirements, which the insurers will enforce with inspections.

Non-compliance will result in loss of insurance, which in turn, ought to suspend the operating license of the drillers.

I suppose that there is some merit in watching out for small businesses but no business should operate at the expense of the public. Being pro-business is not the same as pro-market. When Murkowski and Inhofe carry the water for the oil industry, we need to realize that their actions cost all of us and undermine the institution of the market.

By contrast, abolishing liability shelters and requiring liability insurance harnesses the power of markets on behalf of the environment and the public interest. It will probably protect the public interest and the environment more effectively than any other regulation.

On one side of the Atlantic, the British Conservative Party is now in bed with the lefty Liberal Democrats, its leader gushing about the dawn of a new politics (see video below). On the other side, the Tea Party has ousted the evidently not-conservative-enough Utah Senator Bob Bennett.

The days of Maggie and Ron, natural Atlantic allies on the right, are long gone it seems. Who thinks Obama and Cameron will get on swimmingly? I certainly do. Further evidence that the British Conservatives now equal Democrats, or, if you prefer, that the Democrats are Conservatives. Interesting times.

This is not to say that all Conservatives are happy with the LibCon coalition, but in Team Tory, the backbenchers do not now drive the party. There is also the non-influence of a public that is largely apathetic, reasonably progressive, and not at all animated by “moral” issues or controversies such as healthcare. Cameron has seized power — and lurched left — the only way he could and there’s very little desire to stop him.

In the US, things seem to work the other way. Driven by a vocal and rich mob of Glenn Beck groupies that the Republican Party leadership seems powerless to stop, US conservatism is trending right (sometimes bizarrely so) at the same time the Tories are claiming the centre. Cameron’s strategy has delivered him government. Can the same be said for US Republicanism?

One of the things that allows the United Kingdom to govern in such an ad hoc manner is that its leaders see beyond the letter of the law and rule according to consensus and common sense. The Queen is a prime example: the Constitution allows her more direct power than she exercises, but, realising that for the Crown to play politics would be unseemly and unpopular, she remains sensibly aloof.

Yes, it is perfectly constitutional for the two smaller parties in Westminster to form a majority against the largest party; yes, it is perfectly constitutional for a governing party to change its leader (again) without invoking a General Election; yes, it is perfectly constitutional to cobble-together support from anti-unionist nationalist parties; and yes, it is perfectly constitutional to ram through voting reform without a referendum.

But none of it is wise. The majority of the British people will see this for the scheming desperation that it is and the country and its constitution will be damaged for it.

A Con-Lib coalition has none of these disadvantages. I very much hope that Nick Clegg will not play the “old politics” he so passionately decried.

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Here’s the story: Mary has twins — Jesus, a religious weirdo, and Christ, the politician. Encouraged by a mysterious stranger, Christ makes plans to turn Jesus’ provincial message in to a world religion.

I sort of wanted to like this book, if only so I could resist the holy religious outrage which often accompanies anything written by the pop atheists nowadays. Religions would most of the time be better off confronting the abuses of faith that are pilloried by people such as Pullman, rather than pretending they don’t exist.

Of course, this assumes that said pillories have merit. Alas for Angry Atheism, Pullman’s retelling of the Jesus story lacks the bite necessary to be taken seriously as a grown up indictment of Christianity, although I’m sure some less discerning readers will salivate over the audacity of suggesting Jesus was not the Son of God. Lo! The Prophet Pullman!

But no, in Good Man Christ’s visions of a powerful (abusive) Church are a clumsy caricature and his twin, the “good man” Jesus, a pastiche of hippy love and post-modern doubt. It’s even theologically naive: in a radio interview, Pullman wished us to believe that Christ’s divinity was some late concoction, forged perhaps by St. Paul, whereas the “true” Jesus can be found in Mark. This forgets, of course, that the Pauline epistles predate Mark by some way.

The book is not without some merit. Pullman has ably captured the bare style of mythic narrative — you could almost imagine the story being found among some gnostic gospels — and pulls you speedily along towards the tragic denouement. No prizes for guessing which son of Mary lives and who dies to found a world religion.

Possibly my favourite hill in the country, Black Hill in Herefordshire, aka “The Cat’s Back.” Not quite the Herefordshire county top (which lies to the west, astride Offa’s Dyke), Black Hill rises 604m above the English/Welsh border.

The choice is between Gordon Brown and David Cameron, Labour and the Conservatives. A vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote only for meaningless, populist “change” so we can dismiss Clegg out of hand. (That said, I wouldn’t mind if the Liberals started to eat into Labour as the party of the left, but that’s not what’s at stake tomorrow.)

Listen to the Associated Press:

European economic forecasts show that Britain’s deficit this year will hit 12 percent, the highest in the European Union and four times what the EU considers acceptable in normal circumstances. In 2011 or 2012, total debt is expected to reach 88 percent of gross domestic product, overtaking the EU average.

For a party that inherited a healthy economy and so merrily rode the wave of the boom, this is a damning indictment of New Labour’s failures. Their profligacy has done nothing to help the poor, creating instead a bloated State and a black hole in this nation’s finances. We could also list other failures (Iraq, funding for Afghanistan, immigration) but this is the overwhelming problem facing our country so we can simply stop there.

Gordon Brown got us into this state and it is ludicrous that we should trust him to get us out of it. Labour is finished.

So, if for no other reason, vote Conservative to sack Brown.

But there are positive reasons to vote Tory too. Their idea for the Big Society represents a fresh and fair ideology and will do more for our communities than Labour’s failed tax and spend wastage. David Cameron — a principled, patriotic man — has the competence and energy to lead as Prime Minister, to bring us back from the economic brink, and to govern from a renewed, compassionate centre-right.

Vote Conservative.

Cleggmania is a sign not only of how devoutly Britons yearn for something new politically but also of how profoundly Britain itself has changed. The country’s top-down political system was devised in an age when people knew their place. Modern Britons have no such certainties. Somehow or other, they are beginning to think that Nick Clegg speaks for them.

Um, no. If the current polls are to be believed, around 30% of Britons believe Clegg speaks for them. That leaves 70% who do not believe Clegg speaks for them or who don’t give a monkey’s either way.

This, from Matthew D’Ancona is much better:

It seems to me that, distilled to their essentials, the polls in aggregate reveal four basic truths about the mood of the British public in late April 2010. First, disgusted by the expenses scandal and the financial crisis, the voters are hungry for change. Second, as a consequence, they no longer want Gordon Brown to be Prime Minister. Third, they lean towards David Cameron PM but have reservations about him, and the prospect of an undilutedly Tory government. Fourth, they have found in Nick Clegg a telegenic tribune, who articulates the nation’s grievances better than anyone else and incarnates the dynamism and freshness they yearn for.

Here’s where Britain’s indecision gets really insane: Brown’s Labour could come third in the popular vote but because they easily mop-up a swathe of urban seats, find themselves with the most seats in the Commons. To form a proper majority they’d need to make a deal with Clegg’s Liberal Democrat’s, and thus you see his importance as Kingmaker.

If the Tories do well I wouldn’t rule out a Con-Lib coalition, however. If Clegg is serious about “change” he will have no choice. But I predict Clegg will see some of the X-Factor crowd slip away in the end, thus delivering a small Conservative majority.