There were the families sitting round the cooking pot preparing their stew – all very noble looking. And lots of handicrafts (by the men and women). All very impressive for a dyspraxic semi dead person like me.

At least the S.S. men near by were ordinary looking people (and not producing anything). Which is fair enough (if they were supposed to be late S.S.) as in the late period of World War II more than half of the S.S. were not German (they were a truly Pan European military force). They had some friendly Alpine troops with them.

The people dressed as Americans (whether Civil War, or 17th century Virginia militia) had expanded waist lines and acted as if they did not know what they were doing (although it was an act – if one looked closer, they did know what they were doing, they just liked playing games). It was difficult to resist joining in (I like the smell of black powder – even if it does make the mouth dry). The local people liked them best – because they had a cannon and horses (yes I liked the horses to).

Still everyone was good. The Japanese, the Kights of St. John (black and white dressed Hospitalers – rather than the modern version with their med packs), and so on.

It was on a small scale (unlike the Rockingham castle even the week before) but it reminded me that not all things are decaying in the world.

“Planning”.

End taxpayer subsidies (for roads and everything else) and then see how many of these “developments” happen (my guess – very few).

The Daily Telegraph had an absurd editorial on “planning law” the other day – claiming that before planning law there were terrible developments in the towns and cities.

Actually the “sack of Bath” and the other replacements of good buildings with bad buildings tended to happen AFTER the Town and Country Planning Act.

It is not difficult to work out why. The sort of person who knows how to fill out a “planning application” and to play the “planning” system generally is a corporate type. And such people put up horrible boxes.

Someone who would be likely to build something decent would not know how to play the planning system (indeed the whole process would disgust him) – and would not associate with people who did.

the tall, blond people who played Saxons and Vikings did look superior to me

I suspect it is the tall that does it more than the blond, though since blond is rare it adds to the attention. We are all programmed to defer to taller people, and the successful in all professions tend to be taller than average, blond or not. When they aren’t it gets remarked on, so much do we expect it.

Perry,

For example London just need to grow and the solution will happen naturally without any need for damn the state: just pave Kent over and what is not paved gets turned into reservoirs.

Well, yes and no. Our beloved Government is already paving Kent and Essex with state-encouraged development. They’ve been pushing people east for decades. Thamesmead is an obsession. The trouble is why would anyone poor want to live in Kent when the work is miles away in London? They end up forced by rigged conditions into a commuting lifestyle that leaves them poorer in time and money, and enriches the planner’s favourites, the mass transport networks. The free solution wouldn’t in fact mean more countryside development, it would mean a denser London with some extensions to the west and north.

Sure planning should be got rid of, but my intuition is that the big gains for the private supply of housing are there to be had from unspectacular policy changes. Let’s get rid of barriers that most people think are small and reasonable: the planning powers of local authorities regarding change of use and internal alterations, crowding-out by privileged local authority and para-statal housing, absurdly prescriptive building regulations, the difficulty of fair eviction, and the heavy-handed regulation of honest landlords over such things as furnishing, fire-doors, and heating appliances.

Not politically doable. Also that farming land may one day be needed for food or fuel.

Where have you been? The state’s attitude to country and country people is so resented by people in the countryside because the idea that British people might eat their own food, let alone need it one day has been dumped in favour of Theme Park Britain. Farmers are paid, not to farm, but to keep the countryside pretty.

Two world wars showed us how important it is to be able to feed ourselves. Transport costs (oil) are in the headlines everywhere. Farmers grow food – and fuel. We don’t have to wait for the future; we need farmers, farms and farmland right now.

Listen up Islington!

Global warming follows up global terrorism as a ‘threat’ which the state can use to justify almost any interference, surveillance, laws and taxes. Of course, when the state decides the ‘war’ on warming – or the ‘war’ on terrorism – has been won, it will return the taxes, laws, surveillance to what they were before the threat … won’t they? Won’t they?
I wonder when that will be?

And what specific race are we discriminating against when one makes a statement of this sort?

Does that matter. If I said I hate all non-whites I’m not being specifically against a single race am I? It doesn’t stop it being a racist statement.

Trade them in for Poles? That displays a collectivist way of thinking. So… What you saying? That the right of individuals to make whatever living in the UK should be determined by their country of origin en-bloc? That because x have tended to be more successful (by whatever standard you choose to apply) than y all of y should be deported in favour of letting x in?

Guy,
Absolutely. I think your last point is especially insightful. It was easier for Moore to film in England. That’s his style. He goes for the cheapest easist shot. I wonder who provides Mr Moore’s healthcare?

David Lloyd-George set it up (for some, not all workers) in 1911 – and it was con from the start (he meant it as a con). He expressed his love of the Friendly Socieities (which already covered more that 80% of industrial workers are were growing) whilst having the hope of their long term destruction (in the short term he got them involved in the administration of the very schemes he intended to destroy them).

The idea was a simple one – get people dependent on government benefits so that they vote for the party that provides them. In this David Lloyd-George was no different from Bismark before him, or Mr Brown in our own day.

No doubt the people who work for the system are not dishonest, but the person who set it up was.

This is why in Australia and New Zealand they do not even pretend (so I have been told) that welfare is anything other than welfare – and fund it from general taxation.

On race:

I went to an historical reconstruction the other day, and I did find myself thinking that the tall, blond people who played Saxons and Vikings did look superior to me.

Of course this does not give them the right to gas me – but there we are.

I tend to feel that Slavs (as well as Germanic or Nordic types) tend to look superior to me and my kin (on my farher’s side) as well.

I suppose that is a sort of racism.

I agree entirely. Unfortunately our increasingly national socialistic government doesn’t.

Following your lead, I suspect Moore fetishises the NHS partly for the same reason our left does: it is fully ‘socialised’ and centrally-controlled, in a way that the systems in other western countries mostly aren’t, insurance being part of his target and scarcely relevant here – and partly because a documentary requiring research or filming in languages other than English would be just to too hard.

And what specific race are we discriminating against when one makes a statement of this sort?

Infact, it’s the most recent immigrants (those that have arrived here within the last 50 years) that disproportionately make up the unemployment stats.

Trade them in for some productive Polish, that’s what I say.

I suppose what I meant was something closer to your last comment. If NI or tax is treated like a piggy bank where nanny ensures you put in a large chunk of your pocket money every week and therefore everyone eventually wants to get back what they paid in to get their money’s worth is mad. It’s a typical tragedy of the commons.

If I was to pay BUPA for health cover would I hope to get something really serious to “get my money’s worth” out of it? Wow, I’ve now paid enough over the years for a kidney transplant so break out the scalpel and retractors Doc!

Public services (to the extent that we should have them) shouldn’t base their provision of services on how much someone has contributed. That is raving mad. I do not resent the NHS shelling out for tourists who fall under a bus or for sick kids, neither of whom have paid much into the system.

That’s not a defence of the NHS or welfare state. I’m just saying that if we have such things then their only conceivable virtue is their complete freedom of availability to everyone who needs it. This is another example of NuLab failing not just by my standards or your standards but by their own standards in terms of what they claim they wanted to achieve. I am sick to the back teeth of NuLab measuring their performance by how much they spend rather than how much they achieve. Something, of course, they only do because they have achieved frig all.

I may not particularly like the idea of living in a socialist wonderland but I really can’t stick the idea of living in a dysfunctional socialist wonderland.

Which brings me to the Michael Moore thread. Why bring up the NHS. Is he bloody stupid? There are social healthcare systems which actually, to a certain extent work well. The NHS isn’t one of them.

Guy, are you really saying someone whos paid into the ‘system’ their whole life is no more deserving of support from the state in their hour of need than an economic migrant (failed asylum seeker) whos only been in the country 5 minutes and never paid a bean?

Yes. Regarding the system as a piggy bank where people are led to believe that they can get out what they put in, plus something that other people have put in, is one of our biggest problems. If you want state services, somebody has to pay, and whoever is paying is usually not getting good value for money.

A lot of people are under that mistaken impression. But it hasn’t operated like the friendly society policies it mimicked when first introduced for decades. And when it did it was a fund for unemployment pay, not housing or healthcare. Any link with pensions has always been one way. The word “Insurance” in this context is a lie rather like the “collective” in “collective farm”.

I suspect (for whatever reason) Ms Hodge (bit close to warden Hodges?) is rattled by the BNP. She sounds like the BNP.

Is she not aware that “economic migration” is a two way street. Genuine economic migration is to fulfill a demand here in the UK. A Polish plummer or Tanzanian nurse contributes much more than some long term (though British) moocher.

You know, I thought that’s why they called it “National Insurance“. That’s the whole point of insurance isn’t it? It covers you from the moment you sign up and start paying premiums. You prang the car the question is, is that prang covered, not how long have you paid your premium!

She lives in a fantasyland. She spouts nonsense which is laughed at, often to her face, but because she says it and smiles she thinks everyone agrees with her. The woman is a stranger to reason

TimC. Yup, absolutely. NuLab seem to have a monstrous regiment of such wimin. NuLab have promoted thick, brass-faced moos like Hazel Bleary, Patricia Spew-it, “Irritable” Jowel and Roof Kelly. They are like the worst kind of ineffectual school teachers. And with typical NuLab irony have, by their advancement, put back the position of women in politics by a generation.