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Given that the papers are full of the most appalling socialist commentators sharpening their knives to butcher Britain’s remaining economic freedoms, when ‘right-wing’ (in their terms, God help us) Tony Blair leaves office, it is nice to be able to point out a ray of sunshine.
I like Nick Cohen. He is often wrong, but he does have the sense to follow his own mind rather than retailing the received wisdom . And he is intellectually honest and self-aware, which is more than can be said for most commentators on the left. This is an impressive example:
Too many on the liberal-left, including me, don’t feel in our bones that it is as wrong for the state to take billions of pounds from taxpayers and waste them on, say, the fatally overambitious National Health Service IT project as it is for the owners of Farepak to take the Christmas savings of thousands of poor families and throw them away.
Leave aside for the moment that no one was compelled to take the appalling bargain offered by Farepak in the first place, and that no one, including the same poor families, has an option about the taxes going to the mad NPfIT or the destruction of their privacy that it entails. Leave aside that, even if one counts as robbery in the same way as the other, the NPfIT is more than 120 times as bad. (Though one couldn’t pass that topic without noting Gordon Brown took out of the nation’s pension funds in one early budget, what it would have taken 300 Robert Maxwells to steal.)
Cohen has recognised (1) that there is something not quite right about the disproportionate outrage lavished by the left on the Farepak disaster, when government spending takes money from people who need it and gives them nothing; and (2) that some other people do not share the reflex. He offers the insight as a matter of electoral strategy for Labour, so insight (1) may be a bit weak. But it looks to me like progress. Cohen can not quite see what is wrong with his viewpoint clearly enough to shift his ingrained value-judgements, but he can see that it might be wrong.
There has a been a Treasury report indicating taxes will increase for the next 50 years. If that does indeed come to pass it would be, to state the bleedin’ obvious, a Bad Thing. However that is really not what I want to comment on, but rather…
Last night the Conservatives said the 3.2 per cent increase was equivalent to just over £40 billion in today’s prices or 11.5p on the basic rate of income tax. […] The Conservatives said the Treasury figures exposed the true cost of Mr Brown’s policies, in particular the failure to ensure that taxpayers were getting value for money for the extra spent on schools and hospitals.
Now talk about having your cake and eating it too, or more correctly having our cake and eating it too. Such remarks by any Tory commentator are obviously predicated upon an assumption of wishful thinking and a mayfly-like memory amongst their intended audience. Does anyone remember ‘Dave’ Cameron’s plans to confiscate and redistribute wealth? Or add more expensive ‘green’ regulations to govern people’s lives in order to pander to the voodoo science of the enviro-mentalist lobby? The notion that the Tories are a lower tax/less regulatory alternative to Labour is preposterous if the words of the party’s leader mean anything whatsoever.
So how can a ‘Conservative’ spokesman keep a straight face and claim that rising taxation is a facet of Labour governments when ‘Dave’ have been going to such lengths to make it clear his Tory party represents continuity with Labour’s ideology of authoritarian centrist regulation? If all the UK does is continue to alternate between largely identical Tory and Labour governments, Britain really can look forward to fifty years of increased taxation and the economic and social decay that will bring.
Fortunately I do not see either party lasting anywhere near that long as dominant political forces.
Labour has contrived to do something very difficult indeed… they have made the ‘Conservative’ party look good. By announcing that failure to produce your ID card will make a person liable for a £1000 (about $1,850) fine if, for example, they cannot find and return the ID card of a recently dead relative, they have allowed David Davies, the Tory shadow home secretary to very reasonably point out that the ID card scheme…
…will hit the taxpayer not the terrorists” and is “just another Labour stealth tax” [..]”It is shocking that the Government is considering charges and fines on people at some of the most sensitive times in life. The Conservatives would scrap this plastic poll tax and invest the savings in practical measures to improve security.”
…which puts me in agreement with the ‘Conservative’ party and that does not happen very often.
A couple of years after the University of Cambridge rejected government (in the shape of one of its agencies plus the recently ‘reformed’ charity commission) ‘guidelines’ for the control of universities (i.e. giving great power for the Chief Executive and a board of management with a majority of non-academics upon it) the University of Oxford has now done the same: first by a meeting of the academics and then by postal ballot.
Oddly enough many ‘conservatives’ think this is a bad thing. Lord Butler (a former civil servant who now, for some reason, is master of University College at Oxford), John Redwood MP and the Daily Telegraph newspaper have all campaigned in favour of the “reforms”.
Their arguments are two fold.
Firstly they say that universities should carry out the changes or the government will force them to. This is clearly the argument of cowards “bend over or the bully will just make you do so”.
However, there is a second line of argument. It is claimed that the changes will help the university be run “like a business”.
Either something is a business or it is not. If it is a business its objective should be to make money and it should be under the control of its owners (or those they appoint).
Claiming to “run something like a business” is one of the great fallacies of our time. Bringing in people who have worked in private companies into government departments or charitable activities does not make these things run better – it just inflates the administration bill. → Continue reading: Good news from Oxford
Signs of technical advancement from Britain’s own constitutional monarchy.
In the latest body blow to the British Army, Scottish soldiers have been denied their heritage as the latest supply shortages hit the infantry.
The British army’s decision to end its 150-year relationship with a kilt maker has left Scottish regiments with a shortage of dress kilt uniforms.
The 5,000 soldiers in the Royal Regiment of Scotland only have enough kilts for one out of every 15 men, The Daily Record of Glasgow reports.
Jeff Duncan, campaign manager for Reinstate Our Army Regiments, blamed Prime Minister Tony Blair.
“Mr. Blair promised they would get whatever was needed — what they need is a change of government,” he said.
This is a government that cannot provide basic equipment for its soldiers. Private Widdle would be shivering in the Khyber Pass but he would probably be dead, due to a lack of body armour.
Is the UKIP really a single issue party any more? I have been asking that question for a few months now and I keep being pleasantly surprised by the answer. Sure, I am all for getting out of the EU but that does not change the fact that the biggest threat to the liberty of British people is very much home grown. Just ditching the EU is not enough, not by a long shot.
However more and more the UKIP seems to be sounding more than just a single drum beat… their latest satirical offering on the web is not just about the €uro-nanny superstate but rather just about the nanny state in all its forms and its message is overtly anti-Big Government… and not just Big Government from Brussels, the tag-line “Big Government needs little Hitlers”. Outstanding.
It would appear their slogan of It’s time we governed ourselves! means not just independence from the corrupt political machine in Brussels but time we as individuals had more ability to govern our own private affairs without domestic nanny-states and nanny-super-states alike regulating every aspect of life.
I may not agree with all their platform but more and more frequently they are putting out messages I can get behind without any problem at all.
The only way to view the present, imploding Labour government as it fights over the cash-for-peerages issue, is like a bunch of street rats at each others’ throats. This story in the Sunday Telegraph states that Tony Blair is willing to let one of his top cronies and fund-raisers, Lord Levy, take the hit for the scandal.
In many ways, what strikes me as so distinctive about this government and its ministers is that the big bust-ups, the big fights, were not on issues of principle. At least the Tories, for all their manifest faults, fell out over things like the euro and the Maastricht Treaty, which were serious, major issues. But then the Tories were once a grown-up party, with grown-up people in it like Margaret Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson. Say what you like about these personages, but their rows were over issues of major substance.
It seems an awfully long time ago.
There is an article in the ‘Independent‘ regarding the report stating that the case made by HMG for attacking Iraq and deposing the Ba’athist regime was a big fat pack of lies. And, if your primary justification for supporting bringing down Saddam Hussain was the threat of WMDs, then this is probably alarming new (and that was indeed the core of the UK and US government’s case).
If however your reason for supporting the ouster of Saddam Hussain was not the same as Tony Blair or George Bush… who cares? Sure, I bought the logic of Saddam having a WMD programme as his behaviour seems to suggest it, but that was always just one of many reasons to want him gone. Those of us on record as taking a rather different line regarding the main reason to go in (i.e. he is a mass murdering tyrant and deposing him will not start WWIII) are unlikely to lose much sleep over these revelations.
The article says the government lied. Well I’ll be, the government lying? Who’d a thunked it? No, if you supported getting rid of Saddam Hussain because you see deposing tyrants with volunteer armies as a good in and of itself, and would rather see your tax money spent on that rather than all the other crap it gets spent on, do not need to change their position one whole hell of a lot due to this. Really if you did not (and do not) buy the argument that leaving the mass murderer from Tikrit and his psychopathic sons in charge would be ‘okay’ and in the interests of people in Iraq, then the UK and US governments problems are of only incidental interest.
Am I happy about how the post-war insurgency has been handled and the preposterous obsession with imposing ‘democracy’ in a tribalised society? No, not at all, and I am astonished that the US seems to have unlearned so many of the lessons of the Vietnam War… but in the overall scheme of things I am still of the view that the world is better off without Saddam Hussain.
In fact, seeing Tony and Dubya in political difficulties as a consequence of their own mis-judgements is hardly bad news but is perhaps the best of all possible worlds. Saddam gone, the home grown US and UK Big Government administrations in trouble… yeah I can live with that.
Frank Johnson (journalist, editor, columnist and all round newspaper man) has died at the age of 63.
Mr Johnson was of working class origins in the East End of London and left school at 16. However, he never viewed any of this as a reason why he should be hostile to high culture and from his boyhood was a great admirer of opera and ballet. Indeed Frank Johnson was fond of pointing out that many individuals among the working classes were once a lot more cultured than their self declared friends of more fortunate birth gave them credit for, with (for example) the biggest sales among early recordings of music being for serious works, and many men whose hands were hard often being also very well read.
Mr Johnson was no friend of the left – either in the Labour party, or of those in the Conservative party who were patronising statists (always out to ‘help’ the poor with more government spending, taxes and regulations).
Nor was Mr Johnson afraid to write unpopular things. For example he pointed out that for working men in the south of England and in the Midlands, the 1930’s were not a time of collapse, indeed that Britain did better in terms of the rise of real incomes in the 1930’s than National Socialist Germany – and vastly better than FDR’s vaunted ‘New Deal’ United States.
As for the sacred cow of British politics – the Welfare State, Frank Johnson pointed out that it is not a matter of it being “something designed in the 1940’s which must be adapted for changing times” (as cowardly people on the conservative side of British politics used to like to put it), but something that had a powerful negative side from day one, both collectivising hospitals that had been provided free for the poor by charitable effort and helping to destroy the tradition of self help and mutual aid that had once been the greatest aspect of the working classes (of course such things as the Friendly Society movement had been undermined by government activities all the way back to the early schemes of the ‘New Liberal’ government that was elected in 1906).
Even the supposed higher living standards of the 1940’s being an illusion – the war time “prosperity” (boasted of by upper class leftists like A.W. Benn) being a matter of American aid and eating our overseas investments. And the post war time being a matter of rigged stats (claiming that wages were higher than the 1930’s whilst ignoring real inflation – i.e. the black market price of rationed goods) and neglecting future investment. Although it is worth remembering that government spending on the Welfare State started off in a very small way (the real economic harm of the late 1940’s being nationalization, general high taxes and high government spending and the vast web of regulations by which the “educated” men in Whitehall told everyone else what to do and what to do). The real growth of the Welfare State and, more imporantly the changes it was making in the British character (as opposed to such things as the decline of the Friendly Societies and other voluntary associations), did not really even start to be seen till the 1960’s
Mr Johnson remembered the “stoicism of the London working class” (of course he accepted it was more than the London working class – but he was a Londoner), as to what there is now it is best to say nothing.
I will miss Frank Johnson.
One of the reasons why I like the idea of a “flat tax” is that, by sweeping away all the existing loopholes, it removes a whole group of people who have a vested interest in pushing for special treatement from the Inland Revenue and instead creates a simpler system that is far easier to run, less distortive of economic activity. As a libertarian, of course, my main aim is to see the overall burden come down rather than be flatter; the flatness of the tax code is not, ultimately, as important as its weight.
One of the groups that have managed to chisel a tax break out of finance minister Gordon Brown is the domestic film industry. Apparently, the End of Civilisation As We Know It may possibly be arriving soon if we no longer make movies in England. It is all tosh, of course. Many British actors, directors, producers, technicians and photographers work all over the world, very successfully too. While financed with U.S. money and so forth, many of the biggest hits in recent years have had strong British themes, such as the Harry Potter series, and even the latest James Bond movie.
Boris Johnson has a nice article demonstrating the absurdity of trying to define what is a “British” film for the purposes of qualifying for tax treatment. Just get rid of these loopholes and focus on cutting taxes across the board, Boris. And please do inform your statist-minded Tory leader, David Cameron, about that aim.
The other day I wrote about the charms of Suffolk, that county in East Anglia in which I was brought up. A place famous for gentle, flattish countryside, nice buildings, coastal scenery, fine beer and a once-very-good football team (Ipswich Town FC won the FA Cup in 1978 and the European UEFA Cup in 1981 in the glory years when the team was managed by Sir Bobby Robson).
Alas, Ipswich is now likely to be known some time for very different, appalling reasons.
Now is not the time to really go into much analysis of the crimes themselves. My heart goes out to the friends and families of the victims and like most people, I hope the piece of scum that carried out these killings is quickly brought to justice. While I have my doubts about using the death penalty in a world when so much of our Common Law has been damaged by stupid governments, it is hard not to feel sympathy for despatching such a lowlife rather than leaving him – I assume it is a he – to rot in jail for years at the taxpayer’s expense.
The victims in this case are described as prostitutes. Blogger Tim Worstall has thoughts about the nexus of drug use and prostitution and, being the pro-liberty guy he is, reckons that the women who ply this trade would be safer if prostitution was legalised. I agree (I had quite a joust with an authortarian if probably well-meaning chap by the name of Martin on Tim’s comment thread). I think that a person who sells his or her sexual favours for cash is entitled to do so with consenting adults and it is no business of the state to say otherwise. The harms that people usually associate with prostitution stem from the fact that it is often illegal and thus controlled by organised criminals, many of them drug-pushers as well. Legalising it, and taking prostitution out of a legal twilight zone is not a cure-all for the ills some people associate with it, but it would reduce problems, I think, such as sexually transmitted diseases, and perhaps reduce the sort of horrors that we have seen in the Ipswich area. Of course, if this monster strikes again and this time attacks someone from a very different set of circumstances, then the debate will shift.
This terrible saga also prompts me to wonder what could and should be done to encourage people to learn and practice self defence, but that is a whole topic in itself and I don’t have the time right now to explore it, but I am sure that commenters will want to think about it. I’d be interested to know if there are comparable recent incidents from other parts of the world and what happened subsequently. Send in any examples.
Perceptive article on the local area by Times columnist Libby Purves.
(Update: fixed silly typo in original).
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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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