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 Royal College of Nursing has just won a case against a bureaucratic body in England that many may not have heard of, the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA). The victory is a fairly minimal one: it has been ruled that the ISA must confirm to some elements of fair procedure, and may not ban people from their professions automatically without hearing. None of the professional bodies or establishment human rights organisations such as Liberty appears to be challenging the principle of state vetting in employment. They are fussing about the procedure.
But to me this is an epitome of the degree of state intrusion into our lives that is now accepted in Britain as completely normal.
Here, from the Nursing Times report, are summaries of the cases on the basis of which the most recent ruling was made:
Mr O is a nurse with an exemplary record. Mr O’s wife left their children alone for a short time while Mr O was at work. Mr O’s wife was arrested and detained overnight and subsequently cautioned. Mr O attended the police station the following day voluntarily and was also cautioned. There is no suggestion that Mr O was aware that his wife intended to leave the children alone. However, on 2 March 2010, over nine months since Mr O accepted the caution, the ISA wrote to inform him that it had automatically included his name on the Children’s and Adults’ Barred Lists for a full 10 years. Mr O remained on the Barred Lists until 24 July 2010 until his name was removed after representations were made by the RCN. During this time he was unable to work as a clinical nurse.
Mrs W is a nurse who was automatically included on the Barred Lists for 10 years by ISA on 7 June 2010 after she had accepted a caution for leaving her 11-year-old son at home on his own when she went shopping. Mrs W’s case was referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council which made a finding after an investigation that she had no case to answer. Mrs W was unable to work as an agency nurse as she was prior to being placed on the Barred Lists and remained on unpaid leave. This placed her under significant financial pressures as a single parent responsible for her son. Mrs W was removed from the auto bar list on 18 August 2010 after the RCN made representations on her behalf.
For those who are unfamiliar with English criminal law, “accepted a caution” is a sort of plea bargain in the hands of the police. If one accepts a caution, one is admitting an offence in return for no further action being taken by police (except keeping a record on you, fingerprints and DNA, till you reach the age of 100). One might believe one was avoiding punishment. That would almost certainly be suggested by police (whose figures are improved and paperwork decreased by disposing of offences by caution). Nevertheless the routine admission of a minor offence can be used by distant bureaucrats (whether they give you a hearing or not) to deprive you of your career (and in the case of British nurses wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayers money in training). And not only that but such a decisions makes it a criminal offence for anyone to employ you in any capacity in medicine, education or social care. Mr O and Mrs W would have been barred not just from professional nursing, but scrubbing the lavatories in a school after hours, or driving a bus for the elderly. (Or even, by a bureaucratic version of magical contagion, a bus for carers for the elderly. see pdf Q.35)
And cautioned for what? In the one case leaving a near teenager alone for a short while. In the other for allowing (allowing!?) one’s wife to leave the children for less than a working day. Who knew these were criminal offences?
I want children to grow up to be independent. That means them learning to manage themselves as early as they can. Leaving your children on their own for short periods, perhaps overnight or for a weekend, with proper provision and knowledge of who to call in case of problems, is not criminal. It is fine. It is laudable.
But we live in a state that demands you not use your judgement, that cannot bear the possibility of error and learning. It fears mistakes enough that there are now rules about how you may bring up your family, requiring all minors to be treated as needy infants. All adults, on the other hand, whether at home or in their working lives, are deemed to be cruel monsters unless restrained by the threat of excommunication from the benevolent database.
The state knows what is right. The ISA was originally to use a checklist to assess lifestyles for ‘risk‘, though that has been deferred for the moment. You are either among the elect, or you are damned – and the ISA has a list saying which is which.
Why is it that the BBC, in its reporting of David Cameron’s visit to China, keeps banging on about the supposed dilemma faced by the Prime Minister over whether to raise human rights abuse, and in particular the plight of Liu Xiaobo, a prominent Chinese dissident unable to collect his Nobel peace prize because he’s serving an 11 year sentence in a Chinese jail?
There’s no dilemma here at all – except in the vague terms already referred to by Mr Cameron, this is not an issue which needs to be explored at all on a visit which is meant to be wholly about trade. Only the BBC, would, in oblivious disregard for the national interest, keep on trying to make something out of it.
– Jeremy Warner
I seem to recall some ‘sensible’ commentator of the day made similar remarks about those who deprecated comparable government to government relations with Nazi Germany in the 1930’s over that whole tiresome ‘human rights’ thingie 
Says it all, really. Her Majesty’s Treasury informs us that
The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) is carrying out a review into all tax reliefs, allowances and exemptions, for businesses and individuals, across all the taxes administered by HM Revenue & Customs. The Chancellor has asked the OTS to identify reliefs that should be simplified or repealed to help achieve a simpler tax system.
As the first step of the review process, on 08 November 2010 the OTS published a complete list of tax reliefs and the approach that will be used for the Review. The list is the first time all tax reliefs administered by HM Revenue and Customs have been compiled and made available in a single document.
And here it is. All 349 kilobytes of it.
All good citizens will be happy to learn that “Expenditure incurred with regard to safety precautions at a sports ground is eligible for capital allowances.” (No. 530), although perhaps approval will be less enthusiastic for No. 603, “International organisations and their staffs are exempt from specified taxes.” It is a burden off my mind to discover in the form of No. 673 that “Suggestion awards made by employees which do not exceed £25 are exempt from income tax.” – although one might suggest that the effort put forth by lawmakers to create and tax inspectors to administer this provision probably exceeds the benefit felt by the average taxpayer. In fact that conclusion might apply to most of No.s 1- 672 and 674 – 1042 as well.
The subject hierarchy in mainstream media is a clear tool for editorial mischief. No doubt the website designers will argue that their pathways are efficient and designed to assist readers to the most appropriate subject. Inbuilt bias does not exist, and you tag the BBC especially for this. Sometimes irony can ensue, such as the Grauniad pairing “environmental” and “nuclear”.
Only this newspaper could render the sour grapes of subsidy junkies newsworthy. Let’s hear the renewable energy mewl and whine because they do not get enough money:
The developments are likely to fuel concerns among the many environmental campaigners who oppose nuclear power that the industry has unfair access to the government, as well as benefiting from hidden subsidies.
“They [government] have to come clean about all the money spent on assisting nuclear – and this would be part of that,” said Mike Childs, head of climate campaigns for Friends of the Earth. “It’s important ministers come clean about who they are meeting, when they are meeting, and the issues they are discussing.”
After all, green lobbyists derive all of their financing from voluntary donations, so they would have us believe. In reality, the renewable energy industry and its lobbyists require subsidies to survive. So does nuclear energy.
Itis particularly telling when they weep because their quango constituency is whittled down to one. The Chicken Littles wail that the sky has fallen because they have to compete on a level playing field of one quango each:
Concern about the preferential treatment given to the nuclear industry by successive governments is likely to be heightened by the decision last month to abolish the parallel Renewables Energy Board, which met every quarter at the department and once a year outside, as part of spending cuts. The work of the renewables board will be taken on by the Office for Renewable Energy Deployment, for which there is a parallel Office for Nuclear Development.
There would have been a time when the Guardian, in its liberal days, could have stepped back from a story of quango competition and included the question: is this a good use of public money? The prevailing philosophy of the newspaper still recognised a link between tax and accountability. Not an argument that we could agree with but one that we could recognise.
What has changed over the last few years is the sense of entitlement from public sector professionals and their media sympathisers. State expenditure is unquestioned and arguments arise over the disposal of the spoils. The immoral, debauched class of New Labour becomes more visible at a time of illusionary restraint on the part of the Coalition.
Ministers should not spend more time consulting business about the general question of what should we deregulate. Exisiting businesses can handle existing regulations and often see them as allies to keep others out of a market.
– John Redwood
I know we keep banging on here about Steve Baker MP, but he really is excellent.
The thing about Baker is that he doesn’t just say the uncompromisingly libertarian things that he does say about economics and economic policy, and about, to quote the title of his talk, honest money and the future of banking. He is willing to be immortalised on video saying them, and therefore potentially to be heard saying them everywhere on earth. Amazing. Truly amazing.
This performance lasts just over forty minutes. I urge you to make the time to look at it and listen to it. If, like me, you have any sort of drum handy, I also urge you to do some banging on about it yourself.
Well that was not very clever of me, was it? I got the wrong de Soto in the original posting here, which I have taken down to avoid confusion. My apologies for the first poster who told me it was wrong. Ugh. Grovel-grovel.
Here is the event, anyway. I strongly recommend people to go if they get the chance. I will be.
See, whilst many (most of them apparently on Twitter) are psychologically able to ignore, or excuse, or basically discount altogether the taking money from people bit of public spending, there are some of us that just can’t.
One day it occurs to ask the question, “What exactly gives them the right to help themselves to whatever they want?” and the answer turns out to be because they can. Then you get a bit angry and frustrated, feel almost entirely helpless, then, just to make things that little bit worse, everyone else in the world comes and slaps you in the face for even daring to consider such heretical notions.
The taking from me bit doesn’t count. I don’t matter. It’s the no longer giving bit that counts. Think about how people feel! Think about all the things they could do with that money, or that job, or learn from those people or achieve with the support of those others! Don’t you understand? Have you no feelings?
Apparently not. I just keep thinking, “But it’s not your money. How can you live with yourselves taking it?”
– Charlotte Gore, spotted earlier in the week by David Thompson.
Quangos and the rest are instruments of government. To get rid of them, you have to get rid of their functions.
– EU Referendum
I see on Guido Fawkes that arch-Europhile Denis MacShane is to be investigated by the police. He has had the Labour Whip withdrawn.
To give him credit, he did once call Hugo Chavez a “ranting, populist demagogue”. On the other hand he was once Minister of State for Europe.
This article gives a sample of his thought.
Commenters are requested to bear in mind the principle that a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yes, even a man who said:
In 2004, a major step forward was taken with the creation of a European arrest warrant
Whatever pious comments George Osborne, UK finance minister, or David Cameron might make about encouraging savings for the long term and less reliance on borrowing, blah, blah, blah, this sort of policy, assuming it is true, shows that this government does not give a rat’s arse about encouraging savings. Coupled with the new top tax rate of 50 per cent, reduced tax-free allowances and other adjustments, the enterprising class of those who work to build up pension pots for themselves just got a serious setback.
At a time when there is so much talk about a pensions “time-bomb”, this sort of announcement is also disheartening since it sends out the message that pension schemes are a contrick. My own managing director at the firm at which I am now a small partner does not bother with pensions and intends to rely on his own business/properties to pay for his old age. When announcements like this come out, who is to say he is really wrong?
Tim Congdon has thrown his hat in the ring to become the next leader of UKIP and that means UKIP could possibly end up with a leader whom I dislike even more than David Cameron (hard to believe, eh?).
I have disliked Tim Congdon long before I knew who David Cameron was. I remember him at a conference long ago – his reply to my suggestion that lending should be from real savings, and that governments should not subsidize or bailout banks (via such methods as the Bank of England lending them money) was to suggest that I supported a ban on overseas trade that (he stated) the Ming dynasty in China had imposed.
“Paul only you could hold a grudge over something like this” – not if the man had changed his opinions, but he has not (it is still corporate welfare all the way with him). Nor has he changed his manner – he does not debate, he just claims that foes do not understand banking.
If he means do not understand how to get paid lots of money for being an apologist for subsidies to the banks then he is right – although “understand” is not the correct word.
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