Now I am usually harsh in my criticism of the National Health Service and indeed I wish to see it abolished entirely… but credit where credit is due. This was a very, er, uplifting example of ‘Enterprise Thinking’ by the NHS.
Carry on, Doctor!
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As I have seen before, a lot of political news coverage in the UK (and in the US, for that matter) rather resembles sports coverage, if without the tone of hysteria covering the media’s reporting on England’s World Cup horror show. For instance, over at the Spectator’s Coffee House blog on the issue of public spending cuts, it goes into a lot of the arguments about who said X or Y about cutting A or B. In fairness, the Coffee House crew are pretty good at teasing out the statistics – Spectator editor Fraser Nelson has been excellent in hammering the former government over its debt – but there is something a bit missing from its analysis. And that is this: the scale of the shift that we might see from public sector jobs to private sector. If is true that hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs are to go, and the private sector is going to be encouraged to pick up the slack by new job creation, that is surely good news. We are not admirers of Cameron’s style of Conservatism here at Samizdata (that’s putting it mildly, Ed), but I’ll give him and his finance minister credit if, at the end of the current parliament, there has been a significant shift away from the state and towards the private sector. We libertarian ideologues are hard to please, but such a shift will be pretty tough to pull off. If it means we have to put up with a certain amount of political BS along the route, I don’t especially mind. It is the general direction that counts. Update: Guido Fawkes points out that certain leftist publications, reliant on public sector job ads, such as with the Guardian, have an obvious reason to fear the axe. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature! June 30th, 2010 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
 “There’s a very attractive girl in the second row. Dark and dusky … We’ll maybe put a wee word out for her. She’s very attractive, very nice, very slim. The heat’s getting to me. She’s got that Filipino look – the kind you’d see in a Gauguin painting. There’s a wee bit of culture.” Thus spake Frank McAveety, Labour member of the Scottish Parliament … unaware the microphone was on. Mr McAveety thus ended his tenure as chairman of the petitions committee and the Labour spokesman for sport at Holyrood, and began his career as YouTube star. Silly old fool. I bet his wife had words when he got home. He must be wondering whether the voters of Shettleston will punish him come the next election. That, and the YouTube, should be punishment enough. He should not have had to resign. Yes, the girl was fifteen (not seventeen as in earlier reports) – but he did not know that. He did not refer to her in explicit sexual terms. He just said she was attractive. I do not believe for a moment that his “put a wee word out for her” was a plan to arrange an assignation. The poor old boy just wanted to give her a tour of Holyrood and bask for a few moments in her proximity, as tubby middle aged men have tried to bask in the proximity of slim young women since the stone age. This is Benny Hill, for goodness sake, not Lavrenti Beria picking out rape victims from the lines of female gymnasts who performed before the politburo. Yet according to the Guardian a Scottish National Party MSP, Sandra White, described the comments as “sexist, sleazy and racist” (er, why racist?) and said Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray’s failure to act as soon as the incident came to light showed an “appalling lack of judgment”. Oh, and we have spokesmen from Disclosure Scotland (er, why? Just why?) and the Scottish Parliament burbling on about the “The Protection of Children (Scotland) Act 2003″ as if the mere mention of that was not damn close to libel. How did we get here? You know the world has got weird when you find yourself defending a Labour politician. You know the world has got weirder when his being Labour is not enough to protect him from the press. How on earth did we arrive at a place where someone as old-fashioned as me thinks this all has got a little bit crazy? I used to be fond of observing that puritanism had moved out of the bedroom and into the recycling bin, but now it’s back everywhere. It’s in the air we breathe, so that every wistful little fantasy, every bumptious little burst of bravado, is potential career disaster – at least for males. Females who do this sort of thing are demonstrating the rich, raunchy sexuality of the mature woman. Just so’s you know, boys. Added later: A comment from CountingCats sparked a further thought: how come Frank McAveety’s mere words were enough to make him resign from a chairmanship but Chris Huhne’s actual adultery has not made him resign from anything? I speculate that sex comes under the old progressive rules whereas speech comes under the new progressive rules, which are much stricter. Also, he said “dusky.” June 22nd, 2010 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
“David Cameron is determined to make as much noise as he can, and for as long as he can, to the effect that every unpleasant thing the coalition needs to do is solely the consequence of the criminal improvidence of its predecessor. No new prime minister, especially in these circumstances, would act any differently. I wonder how long this card will remain trumps, however. After all, when Margaret Thatcher’s government cut the unsustainably vast subsidies to public sector industries – from coal-mining to car manufacturing – which her Labour predecessors had not dared to confront, it established her reputation among millions as a cruel and heartless prime minister. It will be fascinating to see if the much more soothing rhetoric of a Conservative government in coalition with the Liberal Democrats can convince the electorate that they are caring cutters; how extraordinary it will be if they carry that off while reducing public expenditure on a scale which Margaret Thatcher never even attempted.” June 8th, 2010 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
No, the British state is not financially bankrupt, at least not quite yet, but thus quoth Dave Cameron…
These remarks by David Cameron might look like something that would get a thumbs up from the Samizdata mob yes? Well no. “Unavoidably tough”… I have no doubt whatsoever that these cuts are something Cameron would indeed prefer to avoid, and therein lies the reason I despise him just as much as I have ever done. The cuts to government spending, which should be an order of magnitude greater just as starters, are not being done because allowing the appropriative state to grow so vast is morally wrong or intellectually foolish, no, it is being done but because it cannot currently be avoided. If it could be, what Cameron really wanted to do was increase the size of the state’s appropriation by £ 25 billion. That is what he intended to do before he realised it was simply impossible: never ever allow that key fact vanish down the memory hole. He is not making the moral case for a smaller state, because he does not want a smaller state, he is just discussing dealing with the current economic crisis, nothing more. In this respect he is the ‘anti-Thatcher’, who at least made the intellectual case for a less pervasive state (even if she then allowed Norman Tebbit to destroy the very political cadre that sprung up to support that view). Could it not be that what “we” want, and certainly what “we” need, is not for more skoolzanhopitalz funded by the state? What “we” need is for more wealth to be created, not more stuff to be funded by money diminished by being filtered through the wealth destroying tax system and then mis-allocated by politics. June 7th, 2010 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have only two quibbles about this otherwise excellent press release by Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance. One, I don’t believe Sean was ever “speaking in London”, as the press release claims. I believe he just sat down and wrote what follows, probably in his home on the south coast. Two, the word “premature” seems an odd way to describe the ending of a similar killing spree in the USA in 2002, by the better armed citizenry that they mostly have over there. Was this interruption to be regretted? The first blemish above is just a pet hate of mine, probably best ignored. And the second I put down to Sean’s eagerness to get his press release out quickly, which I applaud. Indeed, this press release was how I first heard about this horror:
Indeed. How many more such slaughters must be perpetrated in Britain before it is realised that making guns really, really, really illegal, which disarms everyone except those willing to break all such laws and go out a-slaughtering, is only making things far worse? I remember the Hungerford Massacre, which went on for as long as it did because the police had to get guns from London, which took hours. After which, inevitably, they made guns even more illegal. The Libertarian Alliance predicted further massacres, and we were not wrong. The more rural parts of Britain used to be full of guns, and were, partly because of this, very law abiding. Not any more, on either count. Why do such killing sprees now happen? Because, now, they can. June 2nd, 2010 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)
I do not expect to obtain any medals for originality, but as we have noted before around these parts, this is a puritanical age we are living in, at least in respect of certain lifestyle aspects (with the possible exception of sex).
Of course, there is – as some commenters occasionally point out – a long-standing puritanical streak in the English-speaking world, which varies in intensity and in the object of its obsessions. In the last few decades, it has tended to focus on health and the environment. Before then, it was about sex. There is a distant, now deceased, old relative of mine who was brought up in a Methodist household where dancing was frowned upon, and so on. This mindset is, I suppose, ineradicable. But what is not inevitable is allowing this mindset to win. June 2nd, 2010 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
June 1st, 2010 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
British tax funded broadcaster the BBC (it does not like the term “state broadcaster” as it prides itself on its political independence from the government of the day – although it shows no independence from collectivist ideology in general) does not run advertisements apart for what it considers good causes. Such as, of course, itself – BBC shows and other products. The first “Director General” of the BBC, when it stopped being a commercial company, was a man called John Reith – and annual lectures are given in his name, the “Reith Lectures“. The BBC proudly advertises these lectures as a high culture jewel, something that no nasty commercial or charitable broadcaster would ever produce. Each year some establishment person actually lowers him or herself to speak to the unclean masses. However, this year the endless advertisements were useful. The lecturer (a former head How “science” can be twisted so that this last nakedly political aim can be claimed to be part of it, I will never find out – as, of course, I will avoid the Reith Lectures as if they were the plague (which they are – the plague of ignorance and collectivist fanaticism), but I am still grateful for the advertisements for, as always with BBC advertisements, they warn people that the show being advertised is excrement, something to be avoided unless one enjoys stepping in excrement. However, if should be remembered that for children, especially for intelligent children interested in the world, such things as the “Reith Lecturers” are presented as key to the golden door of knowledge. This is the tragedy – it is the most intelligent and hard working children who are ruined, those who hunger for knowledge are poisoned with a political message disguised as science (or history, or high culture). Not everyone has access to books (especially in modern times – the days when ordinary homes were full of serious works are long gone, at least in Britain), and many people are not first inspired by books in any case – they are inspired by the spoken word. And both the education system and the media (especially the broadcasting media) target such young people for ruination – for taking what is good in them, and turning it bad. Teaching them a rigid orthodoxy (which they must not question) which is really a mask for a political ideology – world egalitarianism, the “equitable sharing” of “the benefits of globalization”, with its basic denial of private property rights. Perhaps, as so many tell me, the internet will save such young people – but perhaps it will not. I remain doubtful. Oh and I, of course, remain open to correction – for example it is possible that the lecturer (his name did not make an impression on me – such beings being rather close to being parts of a hive mind anyway) may explain various new designs for atomic fission power stations in his lectures and discuss various approaches to nuclear fusion in great and enlightening detail. If he does I will have been, partly, refuted. May 30th, 2010 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tim Worstall asks a good question about why the UK taxpayer is giving aid to countries. First off – as can be seen in the associated comment thread – it seems madness to give money to a rapidly growing economy such as India when that nation has a space programme and a nuclear weapons programme. True, that country still has immense numbers of very poor people, but surely the best way to address that problem is to continue with pro-market reforms, encourage as much free trade as possible, and so forth. Another good reason for opposing government-to-government aid (and that is what a lot of such aid amounts to), is because it bolsters existing, sometimes very harmful regimes, is frequently stolen and stashed away, or is misused, or deranges local markets, and creates a bureacracy with a vested interest in continuing programmes far beyond their useful life, assuming they ever had a valid reason in the first place. Unfortunately, “Overseas Aid” has taken on a near sacred status in UK political discourse on a par with “National Health Service”. May 28th, 2010 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here’s the problem: the global economy has gone tits up. We are doomed. And nowhere is more doomed than Europe whose Monopoly-money currency is going the way of the Zimbabwe dollar and the Reichsmark, and whose constituent economies are so overburdened by sclerotic regulation and so mired in corruption, waste and the kind of institutionalised socialism which might work just about when the going’s good but definitely not now sir now sirree. And what, pray, is the European Union’s solution to this REAL problem which has already led to riots and death in one country and which could well lead to many more in the horror years to come? Why, to impose on its already hamstrung, over-regulated, over-taxed businesses yet further arbitrary CO2 emissions reductions targets, which will make not the blindest difference to the health of the planet, but which will most certainly slow down economic recovery and make life harder and more miserable for everybody. In Britain, David Cameron is wedded to the same suicidal policy – on the one hand brandishing £6.5 billion cuts in government spending as though this were a sign of his maturity and his commitment to reducing Britain’s deficit, while on the other remaining committed to a “low carbon” economy set to destroy what’s left of our industry and cost the taxpayer at least £18 billion (yep – almost THREE times as much as the pathetic cuts announced so far by his pathetic chancellor) a year. – James Delingpole explains why he keeps banging on and on about Global bloody Warming. May 26th, 2010 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The process is the punishment”, and Dale McAlpine has been processed.
Of course they have. So long as someone pushes back, the police will retreat. They know that they would lose in court – they also know they do not have to win in court in order to intimidate. Being arrested is not nice, is it? The mere arrest is quite enough to spread the idea around that saying homosexuality is a sin is illegal.
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Kudos to gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who “condemned the arrest and urged the home secretary to issue new guidelines to the police” – although it is a pity that Mr Tatchell does not follow through the logic of his argument to the case of property rights. Once freedom goes it becomes a matter of elite fashion just who the police harass. In 2010 it was Baptist street preachers. Twenty years earlier it was homosexuals. Twenty years later it may be homosexuals again. Get yer multiculturalism right and it could be both. May 24th, 2010 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
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