I receive many emails from something called UK Conservatism, but fear that if I try to stop them I will then receive further emails about sex toys, Asian ladyboy brides and such. So they keep coming.
The latest from UKC contains this easily misunderstood question, from the probably quite soon to be late Lord Tebbit:
The party recently fought its worst campaign ever. It offered cleaner hospitals, better schools, safer streets, limits on immigration and almost imperceptible tax cuts. But who campaigned for dirtier hospitals, worse schools, less safe streets or unlimited migration?
Yes. That is what the Conservative Party should have been saying!
I know what Tebbit meant, and he has a point. But meanwhile, seriously, if we did have a government committed to supplying “dirtier hospitals, worse schools, less safe streets” and “unlimited migration”, we would almost certainly end up with cleaer hospitals, better schools, safer streets, and the ideal immigration policy consisting of lots of the right people and far fewer of the wrong ones. Why? Because when we all know that the government is not handling a problem, there is a decent chance that the right things will then get done. By mere people.
A powerful Tebbit speech.
On immigration it is for us, the British alone to decide who may be admitted…..Since man is born free, laws can only make him less so. “Human rights” legislation, for example, can only impose obligations…… Conservatives respect our right to enjoy the fruits of our creativity, in the form of property……There cannot be a multicultural society……Tories support economic and social policies favourable to the family……Conservatives believe individuals must be able to act in their perceived best interest, but be held responsible for the consequences……We should sweep away the insanely complicated tax/credit/benefit system…….We would make state hospitals independent, self-governing charitable foundations, financed by payments for the individual treatment. Schools would be financed through education vouchers…..Conservatives would resource the justice system to enforce existing laws
It’s a shame Tebbit didn’t push this agenda a bit harder in the early 1990’s. I wonder where Davies/Cameron stand on this. I suspect we won’t find out until they write their memoirs.
I think we know where David Cameron stands. Right alongside T Bliar. I am beginning to conceive a great hatred for this man. He’s as phony and self-regarding as Tony.
Verity, if your hated for Wonderboy is as half as intense as it is for Phoney, then the smoke is going to come off the front of my pc fairly soon!
DC gives me the creeps. I hope beyond hope that Davis wins it but I have a feeling in my gut that he won’t.
Jonathan – Yes, I’m working up to Hate Hurricane category 5 for Cameron. (I’m calling it Hurricane Dave.) He gives me the creeps, too. He is so patently insincere. And he has not deigned to offer any clues about where he stands on anything, although from hints, he stands for New Labour.
David Davies is a stronger man and appears to be guided by some principles (I know he’s a politician) and has given a lot of hard thought about how he wants to see Britain go forward.
I will say one thing: I have a fairly strong stomach, but I would not be able to watch Cameron and Blair twittering smarty-pants, self-congratulatory ripostes at one another over the despatch box. There isn’t an anti-emetic strong enough …
I’m still not sure about either Davis or Cameron as leader – the phrase ‘none of the above’ comes to mind when considering either of those gentlemen I’m afraid. There does, as has been noted by the snides in both Labour and the Tories, appear to be an element of ‘I wanna be just like Tony’ in both of them which, in the Conservative Party especially, very much rings false.
It does look now as though the Tories will succeed in electing a leader to match Tony Blair’s personality just as Our Little Tony is stepping down in favour of Brown. If that happens I can only hope that they don’t reconsider the leadership contest and select either Malcolm Rifkind or Liam Fox as leader, in the forlorn hope that one Scot can take on another.
Julian – Malcolm Riffkind is another Tony wannabee. He wants to see more women selected. Tell me how in hell this stupid idea that women want more women representing them gained credence. Isn’t it scary that it hasn’t occurred to them that it’s the absence of policies that turn voters off, not an abence of women?
Margaret Thatcher became an outstandingly successful prime minister, raised Britain’s standing in the world, killed off (but sadly never administered the coup de grace to) the bruvvers, promoted privatisation which is now practised all over the world not because she is a woman, for god’s sake. But because she believed the evidence of her own eyes that Britain was declining and trusted her instincts to put it right. And didn’t brook dissent. She had the nerve to stay the course. In other words, she was a leader.
By contrast, Blair got “Blair’s babes” – how demeaning is that? – and Cameron and Riffkind and god knows who else thinks the key to winning is having “more women”. “Blair’s babes” are a bunch of losers. They’re no good. They’re weak. They’re not intelligent. They’re bossy and stupid with it. Can you think of a name of a single one of them (provided she’s not your MP)?
Not one of these stupid men can tell us how “more women” is going to help them win the election. It’s a sad, wimpy little mantra of a hopeless victims fishing around for a straw. I wouldn’t trust any of them.
Here’s how far they have taken it: I read the other day that some Tory constituencies are excusing women candidates from having to give a political speech before the selection committee because it might make them nervous. An aspirant politican too shy to talk? Hello? As the columnist (can’t remember which one) said, that’s like excusing a surgeon from operating in case the sight of blood makes him nervous. DEAR GOD!
I don’t want inclusivity. I want a leader! And that person – given the nature of hormones and the human race – will probably be a man. (And please god, not a girly man like Toni Blairette. Did you know his nickname at Fettes was Emily?)
I have a feeling, though, that people have become un-used to solving problems themselves. Instead of solving problems they stand around and bleat for the government to solve them, and the government is happy to oblige.
Norman Tebbit – the only choice for leader of the Conservative Party.
If only…
Yes, GCooper. He has one thing the current contenders lack – clarity of purpose.
I know! They should choose a woman! Teresa May would be an ace choice to mobilise the country! Or maybe a woman no one’s ever heard of! That might work!
I know! Instead of policies – quotas! Policies are too hard! How can we be sure people would like them? We might lose votes! So best to be policy-free! But we should be incloooooosive – like the socialists!
I am soooooo with GCooper. Let’s have Norman “on yer bike” Tebitt. I think he is probably the only Tory of the last 30 years to have maintained his integrity.
I was button-holed last night by a Tory councillor who, initially, had no idea who I was and suddenly asked me what I thought of Cameron. I told him that he seemed on the surface to be a polished fellow but I still had no idea what he believed in. The councillor (a right tool, it has to be said) rolled his eyes at my naivete, obviously assuming that all that is required is a slick image and few soundbites.
The more I encounter Tories in the flesh, the more I despise them.
I was a bit keener on Davis for a while but I have lost faith in him of late. Some of his frothing pronouncements on drugs have turned me off him and show him to be as authoritarian as many other Tory pols.
Something about DC does not really give me an easy feeling. I suspect he will be a milk-toast Tory like Howard and continue some of MH’s policies of culling anyone slightly right-wing from the candidate lists.
The Tory Party is certainly not encouraging any of those who have driven out by idiocy there is a reason to rejoin.
Perhaps, when Cameron wins, it will be time to rename the UKIP?
What would you rename it, GCooper?
Andrew ID – The laissez-faire, anything goes culture has to be tightened up if Britain is not to decline further. As long as drugs are fuelling most crime against individuals I will not regard David Davis speaking out against them as a negative.
This whole declining society needs to be tightened up. People have been encouraged to believe that if they want to do something – drugs, sex with 12 and 13 year old girls, become a lifelong state dependent on welfare through having a string of illegitimate children who will never know a father, rape a teacher, it should be OK. This is a society on the skids.
I agree with Jonathan. The Tory’s don’t know what they stand for and are only anxious to get back into government to practice their non-policies. David Cameron will be absolutely fatal for Britain. You will see the rest of the middle class pack its bags and head for more stable societies, and Britain will be left with the druggies and dealers, welfare dependents, unemployed and unemployable immigrants and, tragically, pensioners who cannot afford to move away. What a grim future.
Humble apologies for the illiterate usage in writing ‘Tories’.
GCooper, agreed. How about ‘The Conservative Party’?
Yes, Verity but if all the Tories do is one up Labour on banning they will not win and they will encourage the Labour Party to take away even more freedoms.
Instead of banning things the Conservative Party should encourage subjects in this country to stand up for themselves and take responsability for their actions instead of expecting the state to sort everything else. They should push for lower taxes so that individuals will have more of their own money to spend. The way to cure this country’s ills is not baning more things or more nannying its telling people to get on with it and take care of themselves.
Andrew, I am saying there is too much of a sense of laissez-faire in Britain, too much of a sense of entitlement and this has caused the breakdown of our formerly civil society.
Drugs are part of this and to hear politicians greasing around saying they should be legalised tells me they have contempt for our society. It’s doubly foolish, because do they really believe that druggies vote?
If you read my post, I am not advocating the banning of more things, I am for employing the laws we already have to restore order to society.
Verity writes:
“What would you rename it, GCooper?”
Hmm… Think Julian Taylor has hit the nail on the head!
Sense oflaissez-faire in Britain, too much of a sense of entitlement
These are mutually exclusive terms almost. A Laissez-faire society would give entitlements. A LF is keen that the individual get of its arse and do something rather than waiting for the goverment to come along and bail them out.
In fact the UK, is not LF enough.
Laissez-faire: a defintion.
Andrew – Thanks, but I don’t need Wikipedia’s definition. Laissez-faire means ‘allow to do’. Everyone in Britain today thinks they should be able to act in any way that suits them, as an expression of their electifying originality.
Laissez-faire is in fact an economic term not a social one.
That is not the problem; the problem is that successive goverments have convinced people they can do whatever without consquences or the need for responsability that is in fact the problem.
Using laws to crush bad behaviour does not actually curtail that behaviour it merely involves the state. Surely it would be better if individuals were not doing those things in the first place for fear it might affect them personally?
Hear, hear!
As though there were going to be some kind of massive outbreak of drug abuse if the damnable things are legalized. My experimentation only ever went as far as marijuana out of the very real fear of the kinds of effects heavier drugs can have. Most people I know feel more or less the same way.
We all have friends who have fallen into drug habits. The common thread in all of these stories is that the law failed to stop them making the decisions they made. All the law does in these cases is insure that inflated prices in the industry that boasts one of the world’s largest profit margins line the pockets of some of the worst people on the planet. Meanwhile – our drug-addicted friends and relatives fear (1) arrest by the police and (2) for their safety wrt to the criminals they deal with. Prohibition only serves to make an already bad problem worse. Meanwhile the government spends huge amounts of our money keeping up the herculean task of trying to enforce these laws.
There isn’t going to be a huge outbreak of drug use if cocaine is legal. The only problem with legalization I can really see is that Medicaid (bzw. NHS) might end up footing the bill for some related medical problems that they could otherwise have opted out of – but I would guess the costs are trivial compared to the costs of enforcing the present laws.
Why are you people all so hung up on drugs that you want to see norms of society – any society – sacrificed to the holy goal of having drugs legalised?
You want to bend society to your will. Who doesn’t? I think it’s my human right to get free nail extensions. And yes, if a nail extension breaks on the second day, that can make you crazy, but not crazy enough to enter someone’s home and kill them for a replacement.
Actually, I shouldn’t have said it’s my human right to get free nail extensions because I believe we have to pay for everything we want. Capitalism.
It was a bad analogy, except I think druggies have to be corralled in the free prescription pen to keep them out of everyone else’s hair. Give them the amounts it takes to keep them passive, but not enough to give them surplus to sell. I really don’t care.
The argument is rather that the norms of society wouldn’t really be affected: there is simply no evidence that drug use will suddenly become rampant if drugs are legalized. I say again: 100% of everyone who has tried drugs did so in flagrant violation of the law, and those of us who haven’t tried them – by and large – opted not to do so for health, safety, and life philosophy reasons – not because the government nasties told us we shouldn’t.
I imagine that if drugs were legalized there would be a slight increase in use due to easier availability, sure. But there would also be a huge WHOOSH of money out of the criminal economy and comensurate drop in crime. And then there’s the subject of savings for the taxpayer. I don’t know what the UK spends fighting its drug problem, but in the US the figures are positively staggering. We throw millions away every year on this hopeless cause.
More importantly, there’s a philosophical issue here. People own their bodies and should decide for themselves what substances go in. It’s really not my problem if they make bad choices. I certainly don’t think it’s proper – in a free society – to threaten people with imprisonment for making choices we think they shouldn’t. Shooting heroin is a victimless “crime” – i.e. is not a crime in any consistent society.
Joshua – This is good in theory. I have absolutely no interest in whether someone lives entirely on ice cream and cake and becomes grossly obese and develops a heart condition. I don’t care if someone drinks battery acid.
The problem is, on drugs, people do unpredictable things and they lose the inhibitions that curb human beings. Pot, I couldn’t care less about because they usually get extremely passive (although that makes them a menace behind the wheel). But drugs that make people carefree and hyper are dangerous to me and therefore, I don’t want people to have them.
The argument was also largely a practical one. My point was that I don’t think it can be demonstrated that drug use and drug-related accidents will increase to any statistically significant amount after legalization. In absence of such evidence, it’s improper to have a law against something.
We retain the right to regulate consumption of drugs in public environments for the reasons you’ve outlined. It wouldn’t be any more legal for people to drive under the influence of cocaine after legalization than it currently is for them to drive under the influence of alcohol. That people will do this should come as no surprise: they would do it in a hypothetical prohibition-free future because they already do it now – in spite of the law.
Granted, there might be an increase in the frequency of such incidents as people went more public with their habits – but I can’t help but think this would be small. Many of the taboos against drug use would remain (possibly even get stronger), and I think it’s fair to say that in general the kind of person who is irresponsible enough to drive under the influence of cocaine under any circumstances is unlikely to have been prevented from doing so by the current legal realities.
The important point here is that government is limiting a freedom. We accept limits on our freedoms to live in any society, of course, but we hope that the government meets a heavy burden of proof in deciding which of our natural freedoms to take away. I can’t see that it’s met any such burden in this case. All that I can see that’s come of drug regulations – at least in the US – is a horrendously expensive (some $240million a year) effort to fight the problem which has, to date, shown precisely zero impact. Meanwhile, the massive police effort drives up black market prices, ensuring a criminal class flush with ca$h.
In other words – the current policy is known to be damaging to society in many ways, and there isn’t any evidence that we get any benefits out of it to balance this.
Kill it.