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One of the contenders for the leadership of Britain’s Liberal Democrats is Scot, Menzies Campbell, known as “Ming”. I am not sure how he got this moniker. Was it because his friends thought he resembled the villain of the Flash Gordon series, Ming the Merciless? I feel sorry for his supporters. They are destined to be known as a lot of mingers. (That’s enough adolescent humour, Ed). January 20th, 2006 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Only a complete ass would make the cost of ID cards, rather than principle behind them, the main thrust of their opposition to such an imposition. And it would appear that So presumably Cameron, who does nothing not somehow calculated to help return the Tories to power, thinks that such a stance will play well with people who actually care about civil liberties? Well if that really is his objective, does he really think that the NO2ID crew and the LibDems (the two main anti-ID card groups) are really just worried about another small tax? In short, is he really that stupid? And if he is trying to curry favour with ‘Middle England’, is this not the group we are told do not really care one way or the other on the issue? All he needs to do to get the serious civil libertarians to cheer him to the rafters is stand up and say “regardless of what it costs, we oppose them because they are wrong and any government that tries to impose them is not just wrong, it is wicked. And if they are imposed, we will scrap them the moment we take power, again regardless of what was spent to impose them.” There is of course no chance whatsoever he will ever say that because clearly the idea of that ID cards are all about civil liberties does not really resonate with a Blairite like Cameron… but of course I would love to be proven wrong. January 19th, 2006 | 56 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have been trying to get myself all worked up about how the UK Education Minister, Ruth Kelly, approved the appointment of a convicted sex offender to a job in a state school. All very terrible, she is obviously an ass, blah-blah. But nearly every commentary on this shabby business seems to be missing a wider point. What on earth is a politician doing approving or blocking the appointment of a teacher in the first place? There are tens of thousands of teachers, supply teachers and assistants. How on earth is a politician, or even a reasonably competent personnel manager, expected to keep track of all these folk? The centralisation of our state education system has brought this sort of problem to pass. We need to return to the point where individual schools hire and fire teachers, and where parents have the freedom to put their children into a school or pull them out if they are not satisfied. It is not exactly rocket science. January 19th, 2006 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
The headline of the print Daily Telegraph today trumpeted ‘Mini-brothels get go-ahead to operate on your doorstep’. I immediately took a peek at my doorstep but alas nothing to report yet. To recycle a well known quote: prostitution combines free enterprise with sex. Which one are you against? January 18th, 2006 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
To see a term like “Blairite Tyranny” bandied about on a blog like this by people who think things like civil liberties actually matter, is to be expected. However to see those words in print at all in the mainstream media is quite remarkable! More of the same please. January 17th, 2006 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is not much fun being nearly sixty, but it does have some advantages, one of which is that you can just about remember political debates now long dead, of a sort which younger people may have little idea about. And during the nineteen fifties, I recall, there was a debate, at any rate in Britain, engaged in by diehard free-marketeers, about the long term consequences of the Welfare State. The name of Anthony LeJeune springs to mind, but most of his recent writing nowadays seems to have been reviews of crime stories. Anyway, these diehard free-marketeers said that the Welfare State would corrupt the working class and turn then from the upstanding citizens that they then mostly were into barbarians. Diehard non-free-marketeers genuinely could not imagine this happening, and dismissed such fears as absurd. Most politicians, similarly unable to imagine that times might seriously change, concurred with the diehard non-free-marketeers. Insofar as it was then acknowledged that the Welfare State would undermine the social pressures on people to be upright citizens, this was mostly regarded as a good thing. The Welfare State would enable people to escape from narrow-minded social prejudices and live freer and happier lives. I consider the Prime Minister’s somewhat implausible attempts to civilise our current crop of barbarians to be evidence, if you need any more, that those diehard free-marketeers had a point. → Continue reading: Abolish the Welfare State and restore some Respect January 17th, 2006 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
William, Lord Rees-Mogg in The Times says:
There is small sign of such a new mood on the Government benches. Is there one in the country? January 17th, 2006 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Crime in Britain is a serious problem even though people will contest the figures and trends. The present government, no doubt aware that the issue remains a hot-button matter for voters, is determined to be seen to be doing something about it, however ineffectual. In the process, rather than push for tougher sentencing and allowing people to defend themselves, the administration’s approach is to overturn centuries of checks and balances in the criminal law. This is the latest:
The article goes on to say that the government aims to save money from this bracing and exciting new approach to law enforcement. Up to £350 million a year is spent on Legal Aid to court defendants appearing before magistrates. 350 million pounds is a large dollop of money although chickenfeed compared with what the government may end up spending – and we paying for – on ID cards. ID cards are likely, I confidently predict, to be largely useless in reducing crime, and I very much doubt that cutting public spending is a great priority of this government. January 16th, 2006 | 49 comments - (Comments are closed)
Regular Samizdata readers will probably be aware of the cases of Lynette Burrows and Iqbal Sacranie, who have both recently fallen foul of ‘hate speech’ legislation. The latter case prompted Guy Herbert to comment that “whatever it is, it is not freedom of expression”. I propose that we should call it ‘permitted speech’, in contrast to ‘free speech’. For speech to be truly free it must include the right to say things that others would find grossly offensive. If a government uses the threat of prosecution to suppress speech that it considers offensive it is asserting that the people may only express the views that their rulers deem appropriate. No matter how lightly the government uses this power it is still establishing the principle that citizens do not have a right to speak freely, only a license to engage in the officially permitted forms of speech. America has ‘free speech’ and Britain has ‘permitted speech’. Of course, the majority of people are not in the habit of expressing controversial views in the mass media and are therefore unlikely to feel immediately threatened by such restrictions. Even cases like that of the student who was arrested for calling a horse “gay” are likely to be seen as a joke rather than a demonstration of how criminalising the expression of certain opinions affects everybody. However, that just makes it even more important to explain why the right to freedom of speech must be defended, and to make clear that permitted speech is not the same thing at all. January 13th, 2006 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
We have recently had a run of posts about the new Conservative Party leader David Cameron. I think it is an understatement of the year to say that we contributors are underwhelmed by the gentleman thus far. The articles triggered off a good deal of commentary, not least from some belligerent self-styled New Labour supporters who openly admitted that Cameron is the most likely heir of the Blairite political tradtion, unlike Chancellor Gordon Brown. In as much as I understand it aright, Blairism involves a number of elements: competent economic management at the macro level (no repeat of the disasters of yore under Wilson, Callaghan, etc); enthusiasm for blurring the boundaries of business and government; desire to micro-manage personal behaviours (training bad parents to be good parents); an obsession with modernity for its own sake; distrust, and in some cases, open dislike of British history and its tradtions; enthusiasm for transnational progressivism and its institutions such as the European Union and United Nations. Now like all such things my view simplifies things a bit. But that is pretty much what we have got. We have a fairly reasonable economy – albeit one that has performed sluggishly of late – a fast-rising number of public sector workers; a raft of regulations governing the most minute aspects of personal behaviours, and so forth. January 12th, 2006 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
The blessed UK government wants to pass a bill to reduce the amount of bureaucracy. This falls into the category of “government pledges to make water flow uphill” bracket, methinks. There have been dozens of widely touted events by governments (of both parties) to cut red tape and yet the amount of regulations that businesses and individuals have to cope with just grows like ivy up the side of a tree. The solution is not to pass another bill but to reverse the laws we have on the books already. Simple. The actor Clint Eastwood once said that the problem with so many people in politics is that they tended to be folk like schoolteachers rather than people who have had to run a business and meet a payroll. I know what he means. January 12th, 2006 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Nice and fair piece on the late Arthur Seldon, for years the editorial powerhouse at the Institute of Economic Affairs. The writer, Simon Heffer, is not always to my taste, given some of his Blimpishness, but he hits the mark here. One thing that stands out for me about Arthur is that he was not remotely interested in pandering to the short-term vagaries of opinion or attracting the plaudits of the rich and famous. He was also a representative of a style of liberalism going back to Gladstone, one which Britain is sorely in need of. January 11th, 2006 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
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