Samizdata

In my bitter and twisted way I often resent people being given good jobs when they have no clear talent for these jobs. Before going back to Bolton (I still have not set out) for my pointless course (pointless because I have not been “allocated 120 documented teaching hours” and therefore can not pass) I went over to a local supermarket to get a something to eat.

I started to read the Daily Telegraph, the leading Conservative newspaper in Britain and came upon an article by Mr Boris Johnson (Conservative party MP and journalist). The article was about the recent announcement of the closure of a car factory in Coventry in the English West Midlands. Fear not, argued Mr Johnson, for although this particular factory is closing, industry in general in the United Kingdom is doing well and unemployment is only 4% of the workforce.

The problem is that unemployment was 5% of the workforce in January (and I bet it has gone up since then). and industrial output has been falling for over a year. I actually agree with the thrust of Mr Johnson’s article (that we should not copy French regulations – although quite a lot of regulations have already come in over the years), but the careless attitude to facts irritates me.

Christopher Booker (of the Sunday Telegraph – the sister paper to the Daily Telegraph) regularly attacks journalists (including Mr Johnson) for getting the facts wrong (on the EU and other matters). But these journalists (and people in other walks of life) just carry on writing and speaking as if facts do not matter. How is it that people can get high paying and important jobs and just not bother about what they are doing? For example, Mr Johnson will have at least one paid ‘researcher’ – so it is not as if it would be a great effort for him to get the facts right (he just does not care – just as many other important people just do not care).

I know I have said it before, but it offends me that (for example) David Cameron (who has a degree in Politics Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University) talks as if he did not understand what the words “social justice” meant (i.e. the belief that income and wealth should be “distributed” by government in accordance with a pattern held to be just). Does he really believe in ‘social justice’? In which case he should not be a member of the Conservative party – let alone the leader of it. Does he not know what the words mean? But he is not Ian Duncan Smith (an ex leader of the Conservative party and ex-army man who also uses these words, but can not be blamed for not knowing what they mean) he has (as I said above) a degree in PPE from Oxford – how did he get the degree if he knows nothing about basic political philosophy? Or is he trying to trick people by using words he thinks they will like whilst not caring about the formal meaning of these words? In which case he is dishonest.

“Mr Cameron is not dishonest, he is a nice man and Mr Johnson is a lovely man”.

No Mr Cameron is not a ‘nice man’ – nice people do not call “most” (the exact word was “mostly”) of the members of another party “closet racists” without a very good reason. He was not referring to the genuinely racist neo-fascist British National Party (BNP), who pose no threat at all to the Tories, but rather the anti-European Union United Kingdom Independence Party, who do indeed take votes from the Tories. He also refused to apologize – and then got the party Chairman (arch plotter Francis Maude) to come out with even more smears.

And of course this is the same Mr Cameron of the PR work for Mr Green of Carlton television. When Mr Green was busy using shareholders money to try and prop “On Digital” Mr Cameron not only denied it was happening he said “if you print that I will have you sacked” to several financial journalists.

Mr Johnson is not a “lovely man” either – he cheats on his wife and then makes a little joke of it (in the hopes that he can get out of trouble). He also made great play of how anti-EU he was (when he stood for Parliament) – and then voted for the arch EU fanatic ‘Ken’ Clarke to be leader of the Conservative party (Mr Johnson then, I believe, supported Mr Cameron in the last leadership election).

These men have no honour and no ability, other than the ability to somehow get to the top.

“It is just because you are bitter and twisted Paul” – well that is true, but I still do not see why Britain has to have so many people in high positions who do not care about truth. It is as if the entire ruling elite (almost regardless of party) want to be the “heir to Blair” as Mr Cameron is supposed to have claimed to be.

Government spending, taxes and regulations are all on the rise in this country and have been for quite some time. This has happened many times before in history, but there is a odd thing about this time.
  
Most people seem to think that we have a ‘free market’ government, and that Mr Blair is very ‘pro-business’. I can understand people thinking the government is very close to some businessmen (the people who are connected politically), but there is a view that this is a general ‘free enterprise’ regime.
  
In the past Marxists held that various Labour governments were “really pro-capitalist” because these administrations were not as collectivist as Maxists would like. However, it is more than a few Marxists today. It does seem to be a  common view that a  state of affairs  where way over 40% of the economy is spent by the state and what is left is controlled by a vast web of regulations is a ‘New Labour’ system where the government has turned its back on ‘social justice’ and is not doing enough to ‘help the poor’.
  
In the United States the wild spending Bush administration (responsible for the Medicare extension, “no child left behind” and the biggest increase in ‘entitlement’ spending since the days of L.B.J. and Richard Nixon) is held, by some people, to be  ‘free market’. But then (like Nixon) Mr Bush is a Republican (who are supposed to be free market – even if they often not so) and has actually cut taxes (by some definitions).
  
In this country there should be no such confusion – the government is from the Labour party, and taxes (as well as spending and regulations) have been increased and are increasing – yet the view persists that this is somehow a pro free enterprise administration.
  
Many in the Conservative party seem deeply confused. For example Michael Gove MP writes in Forward! (the journal of Conservative Way Forward – I  wonder if the people who control this journal know that  ‘Forward’ [in various languages]  was the name for first Marxist and then Fascist newspapers in  20th century Europe) that  President Bush is not “concerned” enough about the “very poorest” and should have more of a “one nation social obligation” (supposedly John McCain would  be more collectivist than George Bush and would, therefore, make a better President)
  
If this waffle means that President Bush should have spent even more money on the various health, education and welfare programs then Mr Gove knows nothing about what has been happening in the United States (but then Mr Gove has little interest in the United States, other than his desire that it should make war in various places). However, it is clear that Mr Gove (and his master Mr Cameron – the leader of the Conservative party) also think that there is not enough statism here.
  
The words ‘social justice’ are often used  by  some people in the  Conservative party, as if there was no knowledge that basic point of being a Conservative is to  oppose ‘social justice’ (statism – specifically the “redistribution of income and wealth”) and to support justice (private property – to each their own). The virtue of benevolence (what used to be called the virtue of charity) is indeed a good thing – but it is a different thing from the virtue of justice. It does no good (indeed it does vast harm) to confuse the concepts.
  
So we have a government that  is  greatly increasing the size and scope of the state and an opposition that seems to think that the  government  has not gone far enough. I suppose it might be claimed that Mr Gove and Mr Cameron are so deeply moved by the  thought that there are poor people that they are willing to try anything, even “social justice”, in the misguided hope that it will reduce (rather than increase) poverty.
  
However, I am poor and I have not noted Mr Gove or Mr Cameron rushing to me and offering me a job or other aid. I know of no evidence that they have some deep feeling for the poor. At the base of their  words does seem to be  a belief   that they well get more votes by talking and writing in this way – i.e. they think that even after the orgy of spending, taxes and regulations of the last few years, the people of this land are still in love with the “public services” and with  “social justice”.
  
Perhaps they are right. As I have  noted,  many people do seem to think of Labour statism as ‘New Labour’ free enterprise. It is very odd.