We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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The National Health Service celebrations have been interesting. It has been repeatedly claimed that everyone had to pay at the point of use for medical care in Britain before 1948 – untrue as many free hospitals went back centuries, and most people had long been involved in voluntary mutual aid societies or private insurance companies. Yes many people paid mutual aid Friendly Societies or Insurance Companies, but the government scheme is also supposed to be “National Insurance”, it is paying “at the point of use” that it is against. And the government “insurance” scheme started in 1911 not 1948 – 1948 was the nationalisation of the hospitals, many of them charitable hospitals that had existed for many years. It has also been claimed (repeatedly) that it was the NHS was the first national system of government owned hospitals in the world – again untrue as, even if one ignores various government owned free hospitals in the Ancient World, the Soviet Union set up a system of government owned hospitals free-at-the-point-use in the 1920s. The idea that the NHS was something new in the world (a British invention) is untrue. Problems with the NHS, such as the hundreds of deaths at “North Staffs” hospital and at Gosport hospital, have been ignored in the celebrations – instead the idea is presented that it only saves lives, never (ever) costs lives. And lastly “Nye” Bevan, the Labour Party minister in charge of introducing the NHS in 1948, is presented as basing the NHS on the mutual aid society in his home town in Wales – in reality health care in his home town was mostly a matter of a local voluntary society, absolutely nothing in common with a national system of government owned hospitals funded by compulsory taxation. The NHS was based on the health system of the Soviet Union (it is a “Whitehall knows best” government system) – it had nothing to do with a Friendly Society Mutual Aid group in a little town in Wales.
None of this establishment deception is new or is confined to the National Health Service. Yesterday (whilst waiting for a briefing on organised crime activity in my local area – short, unclassified, version is that the situation is really bad and getting worse) I looked at the political memoires of Francis Channing – once Member of Parliament for East Northamptonshire a century ago. Much the same radical (self?) deception is present in the memoires that I have observed on the television, and so on, in relation to the NHS and so many other matters.
Francis Channing presents the liberals of the early 20th century as following the same philosophy on income tax as Gladstone in the 19th century. Gladstone radically reduced income tax and wanted to abolish it, the Liberals of Channing’s day (essentially the 1890s onwards) greatly increased income tax – but somehow this is presented as being in continuity with Gladstone. Francis Channing also claims that the 1909 budget shifted the burden of national taxation from the poor to the rich – again untrue as the poor did not pay much in national taxation before 1909 (the opposite of what Channing says), what the 1909 budget did was INCREASE taxation (not “move the burden” – INCREASE the burden). Basic honest language such as “tax increase” and “tax rise” is absent from the work of Francis Channing. Also, and perhaps most importantly, he presents increasing government intervention into life (education, old age, health care, poverty relief….) as the road to moral improvement – Gladstone’s warning that “of one thing I am certain, it is not by the state that there will be moral improvement of the people” is forgotten and “temperance” and “moral purity” is presented as the likely result of government intervention. I wish Francis Channing would return to this Earth, so I could show him the “temperance” and “moral purity” on the streets of local towns – with all the vomit, begging, prostitution, disease, and people injecting heroin into their groins.
Francis Channing, typically of a liberal of his time (or ours), presents increasing government intervention as a way of supporting voluntary mutual aid – it was, of course, the death warrant of voluntary mutual aid. The policy of ever-bigger-government (although such honest language is absent from the work of Francis Channing and other 20th century liberals) has led to an “atomised” society – of lonely individuals with no real connection to their community (essentially – what community?). This is what the waffle about government supported cooperatives (even in farming) and so on, has led to – bureaucracy, endless regulations (inevitable when government tries to “help” people), crushing taxation, and the decline (not the reinforcing) of community life. Under the fair sounding language of people like Francis Channing is ENVY – envy that some people own big factories and other people do not, envy that some people own large landed estates and other people do not, and-so-on. If the efforts at cooperatives and so on proved to be a failure – what-of-it as the real aim was to pull down the large scale property owners, and replace them with THE STATE.
Of course the disease in ‘liberalism’, the bizarre view that ever bigger government would lead to “moral improvement” and even “freedom”, goes back long before Francis Channing – one can see it in the work of Jeremy Bentham, with his 13 Departments of state and so on. But the very late 19th century and the start of the 20th century does present a break – an end of the idea, that liberalism was about smaller government not bigger government – not accursed “Social Reform”. Many liberals really had been in favour of smaller government – but in the 20th and 21st centuries this is largely absent among them. Modern liberalism uses the same language, “freedom”, “liberty”… – but it has twisted (mutated) into socialism by the instalment plan.
Aunt Agatha suggests a certain London politico do a Dick Whittington, over and over again…
I suggest you take on Momentum. This will not be difficult, given your stance as a Social Democrat, if anyone these days even knows what that means. Enrage them and infuriate them by a series of Trump-style tweets. They’ll troll you and threaten you, and your popularity will skyrocket without your needing to do anything. That suits your style.
Be careful though, and wear a stab-vest when you go out. We all know that statistically you’re more likely to be stabbed when you leave home in London than to reach your destination on time.
I wonder who this poor soul is? 😉
I hear there is a footballing tournament taking place.
Apparently the English team is not doing too badly, and some people feel happy about this. Naturally, the Guardian is on the case. Steve Bloomfield writes, “If this England team represents anyone, it’s the 48%: the remainers”
My favourite comment came from DunstanMc:
‘If this England team represents anyone, it’s the 48%: the remainers’
God I hope not. They lost.
Congratulations Mr. Brokenshire, you’ve just killed every buy-to-let mortgage. of which there were 1.8 million even back in 2015. It’s a standard clause in every single one of those mortgages that they be rented out on a six or 12-month shorthold assured tenancy. The reason being that in the event of default the bank or building society understandably wants to be able to sell the place without having to deal with an immovable sitting tenant.
No one has any problem with increasing the choices available in terms of types and terms of tenancies. But imposing new terms on all landlords and tenants either means that 1.8 million rental dwellings are off the market, or we’ve got to persuade every bank and building society in the country to alter their existing contracts. For a price, of course.
We might, then, politely suggest that this hasn’t been properly thought through. Although of course we’d never compare James Brokenshire to Tony Blair, I’m not too clear who that would be unfair to.
– Tim Worstall
The last part of Ludwig Von Mises great work Socialism is entitled “Destructionism” and is not, formally, about socialism at all.
In the main body of “Socialism” Ludwig Von Mises proves that it is impossible (yes impossible) for socialism to equal capitalism economically, let alone to exceed capitalist economic performance (as socialists had been promising for over a hundred years) socialism must always produce inferior results. Now the language of Ludwig Von Mises may sometimes suggest that he believes that socialism can not function AT ALL (i.e. that it can produce nothing – no goods and services), but that is a misinterpretation of the position of Mises (which is partly the fault of Mises himself – who sometimes lets elegant language get in the way of fully stating the correct position, as I detest such things as “grammar” I do not make this mistake). By copying the prices of the capital goods in “capitalist countries” socialist countries can make a crude approximation of “capitalist” economic activity – never very good, but certainly not no economic activity at all.
However, in the last part of his work “Socialism” Ludwig Von Mises turns to “Interventionism” government spending, taxes and regulations which (supposedly) improve on the work of voluntary cooperation. “Market forces”, of supply and demand, are as my friend Mr Ed often points out – partly a matter of physical reality (weather and so on), but mostly a matter of human choices (voluntary interaction).
Government intervention (by spending, taxes and regulation) far from improving economic and social outcomes can (as Herbert Spencer pointed out in “Man Versus The State” in 1883) only make things worse than they otherwise would be. Ludwig Von Mises takes great pains in “Destructionism” to show that the fashionable polices of his time (and our own time) of government spending, taxes and regulations make things worse, not better, than they otherwise would be. And that the supposedly new idea of interventionism – is, in fact, a return to the absurd fallacies of past centuries that the Classical Economists of the had exposed.
Has the penny dropped, do politicians (and the public) yet understand that government spending, taxes and regulations make things worse (not better) than they otherwise would be? Sadly no – most politicians and most of the public do not understand.
→ Continue reading: Destructionism – with a few British examples
The indefatigable Madsen Pirie has written an interesting article about Dan Hannan, describing how his background influences helped him avoid that oh so typical fate of many an idealistic soul: going native when joining an institution which generally opposes your underpinning views, in this case getting co-opted by the European Parliament.
In NZ, the UK or Australia, one may own a rifle or shotgun, but it has to be locked in a cabinet when not in use. Thus, it is of no use for a sudden life or death situation. A twelve bore which is locked in a steel cabinet will not save you when you need it.
I must say I find it odd that in the UK, NZ and Oz it is legal to own guns for all reasons except self-defence, which is the most basic and obvious reason to own one. It was not always like this, but the 20th century saw the state getting bigger and bigger, and thus the citizen getting smaller and smaller.
The one part of the UK where ownership of a pistol for self-defence is still legal is Northern Ireland, but even that is for the convenience of the state. They found that builders, contractors and other suppliers of goods and services to the state were refusing to work for them any more, as they were targetted by the IRA. The only way the state could get its jobs done was to allow these people to own a pistol and a small amount of ammunition (25 rounds I believe). So there is no general right to be armed in self-defence even in NI, it is just something the state had to allow for its own survival.
The NI situation is something which is never talked about, however. About 10,000 people in a population of 1.5 million carry a pistol for self-defence. Carried across to the mainland, that would be 400,000 armed citizens. The powers that be don’t want the peons getting any ideas above their station.
– JohnK making some very cogent points on Natalie’s article here on Samizdata.
Meet the new face of Ukip: The free speech extremists who could make Ukip dangerous again
– Mikey Smith‘s headline of a Mirror article about UKIP. Now it does not matter a damn what you think of UKIP, but the idea that supporting free speech itself can make you an ‘extremist’ is breathtaking and frankly absurd: you either support free speech or you support state approved speech, there is no middle ground.
Remember the mockery that Sarah Palin got for her prediction that state health care might result in “Death panels”?
She was wrong about a few things. There is no need for a panel of bureaucrats to decide when it is time to stop treating old people and those with Downs syndrome. That can be done more conveniently by the doctors and nurses. And while we’re at it, why confine ourselves to stopping treatment? Would it not also reduce the burden on the NHS and its employees to become a bit more proactive and actively shorten these useless lives?
This article by Dominic Lawson about the Gosport War Memorial Hospital scandal is one of the most powerful I have ever read.
Last week’s monstrously belated report on the Hampshire hospital’s treatment of its patients in the 1990s revealed that at least 450, and probably more than 650, had been killed — sorry, had had their lives shortened — as a result of a policy of attaching them to syringe drivers pumping diamorphine. Diamorphine is medically indicated only when the patient is either in the severest pain or terminally ill, because its notable side effect, when large doses are consistently administered, is respiratory failure. Injections of diamorphine — in 30mg doses — were Dr Harold Shipman’s chosen method of dispatching his patients. But the numbers at Gosport exceed the tally of Britain’s most prolific mass murderer.
You may be thinking, no need for that sort overblown rhetoric. Surely this is a case of misplaced mercy, of overdoing the pain relief? That is what I thought too. It is why I had not paid much attention to this story until now. More fool me. Read on:
The report, led by James Jones, the former Bishop of Liverpool, reveals that only 45% of those administered terminal quantities of diamorphine were said to be in pain. And in 29% of cases their medical notes give either no reason, or no comprehensible justification, for the lethal dose (most died within a couple of days of being attached to the pump).
(Emphasis added by me, as it is in all the excerpts I quote in this post.)
Even that is not the worst. Read on further:
The ones most likely to get the treatment appeared to be not the sickest, but the most “difficult”. As the stepson of one of the victims remarked: “If a nurse didn’t like you, you were a goner.” This was clear from the testimony of Pauline Spilka, an auxiliary nurse. After the local newspaper in 2001 reported the complaints by relatives of Gladys Richards, (whose life had been “shortened”), Spilka went to the police. In an interview with Detective Chief Inspector Ray Burt of the Hampshire constabulary, Spilka said: “It appeared to me then and more so now that euthanasia was practised by the nursing staff. I cannot offer an explanation as to why I did not challenge what I saw at that time . . . I feel incredibly guilty.”
Spilka was especially troubled by the fate of an 80-year-old patient (his name is redacted) whom she described as “mentally alert and capable of long conversations . . . able to walk . . . and to wash himself”. He was, however, “difficult”. She told the policeman that this patient was “always making demands” and that “I remember having a conversation with one of the other auxiliaries [Marion] . . . we agreed that if he wasn’t careful he would ‘talk himself onto a syringe driver’.”
So it came to pass: “One day I left work after my shift and he was his normal self. Upon returning to work the following day, I was shocked to find him on a syringe driver and unconscious. I was so shocked and angered by this that Marion and I went to confront the ward manager.” They were told to put a sock in it. Nursing auxiliaries are at the bottom of the chain, without any medical qualifications. What was their word worth, against that of the formidable (and formidably well connected) Dr Jane Barton
Whereas a word from Dr Jane Barton was literally enough to sentence a woman to death. Lawson continues:
Perhaps the most upsetting case — at least, as the father of an adult with Down’s syndrome, I found it so — was that of 78-year-old Ethel Thurston, admitted with a fractured femur. She was described in the report as having “learning difficulties [and] the mental capacity of a 10-year-old”, though she “once held down a job in a bank . . . and had been able to travel across London independently”. The nurses’ notes took a different tack: “Willing to feed herself only if she feels like it . . . her behaviour can be aggressive.”
On July 26, 1999, Dr Barton made her recommendation: “Please keep comfortable. I am happy for nursing staff to confirm death.” Happy? The following then appears in the nursing notes: “Syringe driver started diamorphine 90mg. Midazolam 20mg.” These huge doses were administered at 11.15am. At 7pm a nurse confirmed Miss Thurston’s death.
If you find yourself in London tomorrow, you can go on the March for a People’s Vote.
On the 23rd of June, we will march to Parliament Square to demand a vote on the final Brexit deal. Join us, for this historic event!
Remember this is the march for a People‘s Vote. The last one didn’t have enough proper people taking part.
“Liberal, democratic” is something that we’re all in favour of. It’s the definition of those words which is the difficulty. The older and correct meaning of liberal would have us all doing whatever the hell we want as long as our doing so doesn’t impact upon the rights of others to do the same. A regulatory system which bans large motors on vacuum cleaners for our own good is not liberal in this sense. We also can’t throw the bastards out so it’s not democratic.
– Tim Worstall
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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