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There is obviously plenty of controversy – seen across the internet and the MSM – about the decision by the BBC, the UK state broadcaster, to let the British National Party leader Nick Griffin appear on the BBC’s Question Time current affairs show. For non-Brits, I should explain that QT is a show where a panel of politicians, pundits and the occasional “personality” take questions from an audience. The audience is selected, according to the BBC, from a supposed balanced cross-section of the public. What in fact this means is that such folk are often drawn from a series of pressure groups and the like. The journalist Paul Johnson once said, many years ago, that if the QT audience were representative of the UK population as a whole, he would think of blowing his brains out. I agree. If I ever chance upon the programme, I feel murderous not towards the panelists, but towards a large part of the audience. It fills me with despair.
Even so, the decision of the QT producers to let this man on the show has thrown up some bizarre arguments. This morning, the Labour MP and pundit, Diane Abbott, told the BBC Breakfast TV show that Griffin should not appear. At the core of her argument, if one can dignify it with such a word, was the idea that only “mainstream” parties should be allowed to be panelists. The interviewer did not immediately hit back with the question as to what Ms Abbott defines as “mainstream”. After all, one could object to a Labour, or indeed Conservative politician, appearing on the show on the grounds that both parties support the idea of seizing a large portion of our wealth on pain of imprisonment; support wars against countries that, whatever the justification, involve the deaths of innocent civilians; support the UK’s membership of an oppressive and undemocratic European federal state, have taken away the right of self-defence for householders; have supported, and continue to support, an intrusive, meddling and yet also incompetent state apparatus. On those grounds alone, one could argue that such politicians should not only be banned from Question Time or any other forum, but hanged from a lampost.
Given that the BNP – a party with a hard-left, socialist economic agenda, by the way – has been elected to several seats in the EU Parliament, it would be odd not to allow the leader of a party that has won a million votes not to be held to account in the run-up to a general election next year. Of course, if we had a genuine free market in broadcasting, the editorial judgement of the BBC, which is funded by a tax, would be irrelevant. But given we have a state-financed broadcaster, that broadcaster, under its charter of incorporation, should enable elected political parties to be put to the public test. The BNP is an odious party for a libertarian, and Mr Griffin is, as his background suggests, a nasty piece of work. What have other parties to be afraid of in putting this lot under the media microscope?
Yet again, Dave Cameron shows that far from representing an ‘alternative’ to Labour, he is as one in his underpinning world view. A vote for Cameron is a vote for “more of the same”.
So if you think that the sort of identity politics we have seen for years now is a splendid thing, then a vote for Dave makes perfect sense: you will get a younger energetic leader able to apply the ways of ever expanding regulatory statism more effectively… i.e. an end to the neurotic, sclerotic and thankfully ineffective Brown and a return to the much more effectively imposed Blairite Britain… Tory Blair.
No doubt under Cameron we will see more contracting out of government “services”, which Tories will hold up as evidence of their “free market” credentials and Labour will howl about Tory vandalism of th public sector… as if making a government “service” more efficient by changing the organisation details of who gets paid to do it in any way reduces the toxic society destroying purview of the state.
Then again, if you actually want to vote for a conservative, you can always vote UKIP.
Via Iain Dale’s blog, I came across this nifty piece of Conservative Party electioneering poster art. As Mr Dale says, this is incredibly prescient. Of course, the glee of Mr Dale in finding this is somewhat undermined by the fact that the Conservatives have not, to put it mildly, covered themselves with glory on this issue down the years, even though, to be fair, that it was Churchill’s Conservatives who axed ID cards and the final bits of rationing in the early 1950s. But whatever quibbles one might have, there is little doubt that today, Labour MPs will struggle ever to be taken seriously on the civil liberties issue. That is for certain.
Last night I listened to a great talk by Henry Porter, the journalist and book author, and the spy fiction novelist Charles Cumming. For Porter, civil liberties issues form a part of his latest book. Recommended.
A number of Members of Parliament are up in arms about the clearly arbitrary rulings by Sir Thomas Legg regarding the repayment of money claimed as expenses by various MPs. It seems obvious to me that the ‘rules’ being applied by Legg are criteria he has more or less plucked out of the air for deciding what constitutes a ‘reasonable’ expense for an MP to claim.
And I must say I find this an edifying show. That the apex predators of the looter class are being given a taste of what it is like to be at the mercy of a capricious ruling by some state functionary fills me with delight. Moreover the public perception of MPs wriggling on the hook are unlikely to be one of legalistic understanding but rather a deepening of the perception of a socially remote class squealing over their looting privileges being squeezed.
The notion of taking one for the team obviously does not appeal to a number of the Honourable Members and frankly from my perspective, ideally the MPs will prevail and end up not paying back the money they took in order to yield the maximum effect I would like to see.
But whoever wins the argument in the end, there is simply no downside from my point of view at the spectacle of a cross party selection of bloated hippos noisily snorting and harrumphing and rolling around in the steaming mud piles of public relations effluent slathered across the floor of the House of Commons… oh… fulsome apologies to the world’s hippos for that unkind analogy.
I hope this process drags on and on as the already palpable cynicism with which the political establishment class are viewed by most people gradually slides into loathing. From such seeds do interesting fruits grow.
These guys crack me up. Geert Wilders finally makes it to Britain after a court overturned the disgraceful ban, and he delivers his anti-Islam message in Westminster… and how do his enemies show that Wilders is wrong to characterise them as a threat to western civilisation?
In one TV interview I saw, one of the Muslim protesters said “he should just come out and talk to us and get our point of view”… very reasonable… whereupon a second bearded paragon of the Religion of Peace interjected words to the effect “If he did not have all those police around him, we’d show him what we do to enemies of Islam” (if anyone spots an on-line video of this exchange, please post it in the comments).
I just cannot avoid smiling at these guys who are always so keen to give a televised performance of “Crazed Muslim Lunatics” straight out of Central Casting any time someone sticks a microphone in their face.
Although I disagree with Wilders’ ideas regarding banning the Koran, is it not remarkable how when he says profoundly reasonable things, defending the rights of Jews and Gays no less to be free from the threats promised by a great many Islamic commentators, somehow almost all the mainstream media tag him as “far right”.
Nichola Pease, a top City executive, caused a stir last week when she said that state-enforced maternity leave “rights” for women – and for that matter, paternity leave – was a cost that had a bad consequence. If you tell a company that it must pay a woman her full salary for a year while she is not working and raising her child, say, then, other things being equal, fewer women will be employed in the first place, however hard one tries to enforce so-called equal opportunity hiring practices.
This is a simple fact. If you raise the cost to a company of employing a person or increase the risk that employing a woman will be more expensive than employing a man, say, then fewer women will be employed. It is a fact as undeniable as a the laws of gravity. Unfortunately, one of the driving characteristics of many politicians down the ages is a petulant hatred of such facts, and a desire that 2+2 could equal five rather than four. Consider this reaction to Ms Pease’s comments by a Labour MP. It is not so much an argument as a tantrum:
“I am absolutely horrified to hear such an old-fashioned view expressed by someone who should know better.”
In other words, a City executive has said something that this MP considers to be unsayable. There is no argument given, no attempt to explain how driving up costs will not have an adverse result. End of discussion.
What needs to be pointed out is that every time the government creates some new “right” to such things, such as paid long holidays, long periods of paid leave for child-rearing, or whatever, there is a cost of some kind, that is borne by someone, often those more vulnerable than the group intended for the original benefit. The honest answer is for such MPs to openly admit as much rather than to pretend otherwise. For example, it would be refreshing if defenders of minimum wage laws could state that they prefer a bit more unemployment to the sight of people working on very low wages. Of course the argument is still bad and involves coercively arranging affairs to benefit some groups at the expense of others, but it would at least be preferable to what we usually get.
The impending strike by Royal Mail workers is a wonderful opportunity to deal with a long standing issue… the essential obsolescence of the whole notion of state mail monopolies.
In this era of highly efficient competing international courier companies, why bother with state letter carriers at all? Do not ‘privatise’ the Royal Mail as was planned earlier, instead make the workers (very generously) redundant… all of them… then sell off the assets to the highest bidder, end the anachronistic monopoly on letter delivery and get the state out of that business completely: simply wind up the Royal Mail.
El Gordo needs to stop seeing this strike as a ‘problem’ and instead see it as a golden opportunity to raise some more money to squander from yet another asset sale whilst allowing modern high tech courier companies like TNT, DHL and UPS to expand into an area they should never have been excluded from in the first place… it is a win-win really.
Britain’s National Health Service, so beloved by Michael Moore, is not what (most) supporters of Obama’s ‘reforms’ claim they want for the USA. They are of course lying through their teeth as a single payer system is clearly the desired endpoint (i.e. eventual de facto nationalisation) and anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.
Well just look what you have to look forward to.
Yet as every UK politician will say when asked, the NHS is the ‘envy of the world’ and wanting to do away with it is clearly a sign of madness as the only imaginable alternate to state provided healthcare is, apparently, no healthcare at all, with anyone who is not a millionaire dying in the streets if they get ill.
Seriously, try and have a sober conversation about the NHS and the extent to which people have been propagandised will stun you.
The destruction of British civil society continues apace…
New anti-paedophile vetting rules will threaten the 90-year tradition of Scout Jamborees, the Scout Association says. It has warned that major gatherings of packs from around the world may be cancelled due to the introduction of the scheme.
Under the controversial rules anyone working or volunteering with children must register for background checks. But organising checks on thousands of foreign Scout leaders was “just not possible”, a spokesman said.
Good. I have nothing against the Scouts, but I do like it when people are smashed in the face by the reality of the political order they tolerate. Let people feel the consequences and start to get angry. Of course I want people to stop even trying to comply, to ‘go Galt’ if you like, to wilfully break laws and subvert regulations, but here we have an example where they really cannot comply, and that works too.
The state is not your friend. Are you starting to get the message?
The official history of MI5 by historian, Christopher Andrew, has, again, directed us to the potential number of politicians and trade unionists who gave or sold information to the Soviet Union.
Three Labour MPs named in the history, written by the historian Christopher Andrew as Soviet bloc agents are John Stonehouse, who became postmaster general in Harold Wilson’s government, Will Owen and Bob Edwards. The three were “outed” by a Czech defector, but there is no evidence the politicians passed over sensitive information….
Andrew says Jack Jones, the trade union leader who the Guardian has been told was the subject of many volumes of MI5 files, was not “being manipulated by the Russians”, but the Security Service was “right to consider the possibility that he was”. Britain’s top KGB spy, Oleg Gordievsky, said Moscow “regarded Jones as an agent”, Andrew notes. He says Jones accepted some money from the Russians but there is no evidence that he gave them any information.
Now that remittances for socialist traitors have dried up, does this partially explain why some on the Left were so quick to adopt kleptocracy as a principle of government, perhaps in homage to their dearly departed ideals.
Dave Cameron “promises to tear down big government“, presumably by increasing the size of government.
I have one question for you, Dave… were you lying in January when you promised to increase government spending from £620bn this year to £645bn next year – rather than the £650bn proposed by Labour… or are you lying now in October when you say you will tear down big government?
The Tory conference was designed to bring home to the public the notion of truth and responsibility. Some would say that the release of such headlines as raising the retirement age, freezing public sector pay and “telling it as it as” are a democratic version of spanking. The toffs transposing their public school predilections on the masses.
Yet, the very basis of this approach is paternalist. The public must be schooled and directed towards the appropriate outcome. For the Tories, the outcome is fiscal sustainability, the only time that word appears truthfully in their canon.
However, the majority in democracy have an incentive to socialise their irresponsibility, allying with government to inflate their debt away or maintain redistribution. Such a system is inherently unstable in the long term. After all, under Labour, welfarism has moved onto secondaries. An interesting experiment is under way. Do turkeys vote for Christmas? Short-term slaughter and, possibly, long-term satisfaction.
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