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You know, unlike my proprietor, I’m beginning to warm to Transylvania’s very own Michael Howard. But he just keeps failing to take his own thoughts to a natural logical conclusion.
After an ideologically mixed start, particularly with his comments about drugs, and support for his mini-me, David Blunkett, he’s still just coming out with platitudes, rather than policies, particularly with his speech yesterday entitled, The British Dream:
Too many are cheated of the decent education that is essential for people to make the best of their lives. Too many are cheated of the first class health care that they deserve. Why? Because we have a State that does too much, that interferes too much, that is too unaccountable.
No Michael, it doesn’t interfere too much. It just interferes. If more government can’t improve a situation, then surely less government is even better. And where does this logically end up? With no government at all. → Continue reading: The British dream
Just as the Tory Party (the party that has given us Chris Patten, Edward Heath and Ken Clarke) cannot be counted on to reverse the march into regulatory Euro-statism (they at best slow the rate at which it happens), similarly the Tory reaction to plans by Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett to lower the burden of proof in criminal cases where the state really wants to convict someone is one of essential support.
So… we are left with only one half-way significant party who seems to care even the slightest about civil liberties in the court room: The LibDems. But then again, when it comes to regulatory statism and abridging economic free association in society at large, the LibDems are even more keen than Labour to replace all social interaction with politically derived formulae for just about any kind of behaviour you can think of.
And people wonder why I urge folks not to vote for anyone? So how does one resist the increasingly panoptic regulatory state? Good question.
You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind (or read nothing but the Guardian) to have failed to notice that there is rather a large constituency in Britain whose feelings regarding the European Union lie somewhere between dislike and loathing.
As a consequence this would presumably lead the leader of the opposition Tory Party to firmly align his troops with the Euro-sceptics, correct? I mean, there is no way in hell that he would sign up the Tory Party to be a member of a group within the European ‘parliament’ who had a charter objective that included “the realisation of a United States of Europe”, right?
Anyone who sees the Tory Party the solution to Labour marching Britain into a bureaucratised regulatory pan-European dystopia is deluding themselves. There is opposition to the EU within the Tory Party but they are not the people in charge, and the LibDems are even worse than Labour.
But of course the Tory Party can talk a fine Euro-sceptic game when it suits them, but then they can also talk a fine ‘we are the party of low taxation’ game when it suits them. It is a delight to hear someone making the moral case against high taxation.
Except of course, ‘white man speak with forked tongue’…he does not actually mean it. The Tories talk about the importance of civil society and yet you will look in vain for a list of state functions that the Tory party intends to amputate to actually stop the regulatory gangrene killing off civil society.
Don’t support the Tory Party… you will only be encouraging more of the same. And of course if you like the state of civil liberties under ‘Big Blunkett’, you will just love them under Michael ‘a touch of the night’ Howard.
Until there is a meaningful choice, do not vote for anyone or you will be deluding yourself that you are making any significant difference.
There is a sense in which I pity this government. No, really I do. When someone is prepared to exploit any sort of human tragedy in order to get what they want, one is forced to conclude that they have very little left in the way of self-respect or decency.
I don’t think any of us truly appreciate just how badly our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, wants a national ID card system but the desire must be intense enough to burn a hole in his soul. It has now got to the stage where there is no bad news too pathetic enough not to be manipulated into a ID card propoganda opportunity, be it a shooting in Shropshire, a murder in Manchester or a child-abduction in Cheltenham.
The latest ghastly incident to be turned into a government rhetorical tool is the 19 illegal Chinese immigrants who were drowned off the coast of Lancashire over the weekend:
A coroner has set up a commission to identify all the mainly Chinese cockle pickers who died after being caught by high tides – but none have been named.
A group of more than 30 cocklers were trapped by rising water in the Hest Bank area of the Lancashire bay on Thursday night.
Alongside the calls for ‘more regulation’ (the chief reflexive response), Mr Blunkett popped up on the late evening news (sorry, no link) in a laughable attempt to persuade everyone that a national ID card would prevent this sort of thing happening again.
Complete and utter rubbish, of course. But that does not matter. What matters is the drip-drip propoganda required to facilitate ‘acculturation’.
Mr Blunkett and his underlings must trawl through the daily news bulletins desperately seeking the kind of heartstring-tugging stories that they use to piggy-back their pet project into the public realm. Like teenage crack-whores, there is no part of their dignity these people will not sacrifice in order to get their fix. How sad, how pathetic.
This is almost enough to make voting a worthwhile exercise again:
Tony Martin – the farmer who was jailed for killing a burglar – may stand as an MP.
Mr Martin has been campaigning for a change in the law since being released from prison six months ago, where he after served three years of a five year sentence.
He told the Daily Mirror: “Everywhere I go people tell me how they are living in fear, but none of the political parties seem to be prepared to do anything about it.”
And I am not sure if Mr Martin will be able to do anything about it either but he should stand anyway. The joyous spectacle of the bien-pensant convulsing in a fit of bug-eyed, brain-melting horror as Tony Martin steps up to take his seat in the House of Commons would make the whole exercise worth it. A thousand times worth it.
Go for it, Tony.
UPDATE: Having offered my instinctive support, it has just occured to me that Tony Martin may not actually be allowed to stand for Parliament due to his criminal record. Pity. I get the feeling he would romp to victory.
A leading British police officer has argued that heroin should be legalised, according to this report.
To which I can only say – wow! Of course, the usual suspects in the political world and media will throw up their arms in horror, demand this officer’s resignation and so forth. But to those of us ‘loony libbos’ who have been arguing about the utter futility of the war on drugs for years and pointed out how it has massively boosted organised crime will be pleased that someone from the Boys in Blue has had the moral courage to make this point.
Let me say straight off that I recognise that this is not a straightforward issue. Some who are sympathetic to the legalisation argument will nevertheless argue that our society has been so infantilised by the modern welfare state that it would be dangerous in the extreme to legalise what are seen as the most harmful drugs without at the same time making important social reforms. There is no doubt in my mind that if heroin were legalised straight away with no other parallel changes, a lot of vulnerable people could die. Any reform of public policy has to take that into account.
But for far too long any discussion of drug policy has occured in a sort of fairy-tale land, in which a whole area of debate has been shut down in advance. I find it a sign of the times that it is now even thinkable for a senior police officer to broach the subject of legalisaing heroin in public. Ten years ago it would have been unimaginable. By the standards of British public life, that is progress.
They are off on a recruitment drive again:
A minister gave a strong hint yesterday that the Government will press ahead with plans to lower the voting age to 16.
David Miliband, the schools minister, told a conference of A-level students that it was illogical to prevent 16-year-olds voting when they were allowed to get married and work at that age.
Do you think he was playing to the gallery at all?
The Electoral Commission is investigating the case for lowering the voting age and several ministers have said they have an open mind…
An ‘open mind’? Is that what they are calling it now? I always thought of it as vast, untamed wilderness situated between their ears, full of tumbleweeds and bleached bones.
The Labour Party has floated the idea in its “Big Conversation” policy document and Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, has called for a debate on this “very important” issue.
Yes, it’s keeping me awake at nights.
The voting age was 21 until it was lowered to 18 as a result of the Representation of the People Act 1969. Most countries have a minimum voting age of 18, although it is 17 in East Timor, Indonesia, North Korea, the Seychelles and the Sudan, 16 in Brazil, Cuba and Nicaragua and 15 in Iran.
North Korea!!? Now there’s a thriving engine of lively democratic values to which we can all aspire. And let us not forget the important contributions to the advance of citizen empowerment being forged in Cuba and Iran. These are the trail-blazers of mankind, Ladies and Gentlemen. Ours is but to give humble thanks for the gifts they have bestowed upon us as we eagerly take up the mantle of their enlightened legacy.
The Electoral Commission will publish its report on the subject towards the end of next month and it is expected that it will support enfranchising 16-year-olds.
Go ahead, make my day because this has got ‘backfire’ written all over it. The teenyboppers will just constitute yet another demographic block that stays away from the voting booths in droves. Either that or they will all earnestly rush to the polls to vote for the BNP. However it pans out, I predict disappointment or disaster or both.
Do you love red squirrels? I love red squirrels. They are very red and they are very squirrely. I love them. There are also some ecologists in England who love them too, almost as much as I do. They just love those big fluffy red tails.
They love them so much they hate anything which may come to lessen their numbers. They particularly hate grey squirrels, with a determined pathological intensity. They hate them so much, that they find great pleasure in killing them, wherever they can find them. Fine action for beardy ecologists, you may think, wiping out one species with murderous fury, to preserve another specially blessed one. But in this case, it’s OK, because the grey squirrels deserve it. Check out the Redsquirrel.org.uk home page, to find out why. Notice the lead phrase:
Sadly, thanks to the invasion of its grey cousin introduced from America, RED SQUIRRELS have been driven out from much of their territory
Invasion. America. Their territory. → Continue reading: Better dead than not red
If it was not so late and if I had not had such a long day, I would launch myself into a rooftop-raising rant about this. But it is late and I am weary and, besides all of that, I am beginning to wonder precisely what good a rant from me (or anybody else for that matter) would do anymore:
Home Secretary David Blunkett wants new anti-terrorism laws to make it easier to convict British terror suspects.
He has discussed lowering the standard of proof required by a court and introducing more pre-emptive action.
Possible plans, revealed on his six-day trip to India and Pakistan, also include keeping sensitive evidence from defendants and secret trials before vetted judges.
Is there any significance to the fact that David ‘Mugabe’ Blunkett elected to unveil his sinister plans on a trip to South Asia? Was he driven into delirium by the heat and the dust? Or maybe a particularly acute case of Delhi-belly left him feeling all bilious and vengeful.
But civil rights groups have condemned the proposals as shameful and an “affront to the rule of law”.
It’s not an ‘affront’, it’s a point-blank dismissal. ‘Lowering the standard of proof’? ‘Pre-emptive action’? ‘Secret trials’? ‘Vetted Judges’? What next? Trial by Ordeal, Ducking stools, Iron Maidens and The Rack?
The truly frustrating thing here is that not only is Big Blunkett unlikely to be opposed to any meaningful degree (the Conservatives are already weighing in on his side) but his ripping up of our last remaining bulwarks of civil liberty is probably going to make him more popular. That is because civil liberties are unpopular. They are merely the boring obsession of pot-smoking hippies and wishy-washy do-gooders; a shielding sanctuary behind which terrorists and child-molestors can hide from justice.
So, go ahead, Mr Blunkett, kick the crap out of them. With a bit of luck nobody will miss them until they have gone (by which time it will be too late).
In today’s Telegraph Charles Moore has an excellent summary of what is wrong with the BBC, its deeply entrenched institutional bias and its undeserved influence:
It seems to me that the BBC today is the enemy of conservative culture in Britain. This is not immediately obvious, because elements of the BBC’s output, particularly on radio, are justly loved by many conservative-minded people. But it is nevertheless the case. The few glorious programmes are used as the camouflage behind which political correctness can advance.
How does the BBC approach subjects such as American power, organised religion, marriage, the EU, the Middle East, the actions of the Armed Forces, the rights of householders to defend their property against burglars, public spending, choice of schools, or any perceived inequality?
Who will be more politely treated – Gerry Adams or Norman Tebbit, a spokesman for Hizbollah or Paul Wolfowitz? If someone appears on a programme described as a “property developer” with someone described as a “green activist”, who will get the rougher ride? If a detective drama features a feisty lesbian and a chilly aristocrat, which is more likely to be the murderer?
And when it comes to a war – it applied both in the Falklands and in Iraq – the BBC takes a pride in being what it calls “even-handed”, which means inventing moral equivalence between the forces of our country and those of aggressive dictatorships.
None of these attitudes is unique to the BBC, but what is unique is the BBC’s power to impose them. In order legally to have a television in your home, you have to pay the BBC £116 a year. This allows it to dominate virtually all forms of broadcast media, many of which have nothing to do with any idea of “public service broadcasting”.
Out of the deference that this power instils, senior BBC executives are paid more than anyone else in the entire British public service. Greg Dyke, the now ex-director-general and editor-in-chief who seems to have been too busy to edit, got £464,000 last year. BBC executives are like the princes of the Church of England before the commutation of the tithes. They are rich and powerful, and no doubt they mean well, but there comes a time when non-conformists get fed up with paying for their sermons and their privileges.
That time is surely near. We must find a way of abolishing or hugely reducing the licence fee while reviving the core of public service broadcasting. How half-witted of Tory Britain to hand this chance to Tony Blair, instead of claiming it for itself.
Apologies for such a long quote but apart from a tiny disagreement about the license fee – it should be scrapped, not just reduced – I have nothing to add.
…is that so many people are astonished that a paragon of the establishment like Lord Hutton should take the view that whatever the government’s ministers say should be presumed to be correct whilst that of mere journalists, even those working for the state owned media, should be assumed to be dissembling.
Did anyone seriously think the outcome would be otherwise?
I realise this is The Story Of The Moment, but simply cannot get that worked up over the difficulties of institutions of which I have such low regard to begin with.
Paul Smith is a man with a profound interest in driving and road safety. As a driver myself I, too, have a vested interest in these matters. Whenever I depart from point A I much prefer it to be overwhelmingly probable that I will reach point B with all my favourite limbs and organs in situ and functioning as nature intended.
The British government and its various agencies claim that they share this interest as well. Moreover, they assure us that the solution to the problem lies with forcing everyone to drive more slowly and punish those drivers who fail to comply. Hence the virus-like proliferation of the ‘GATSO’ or ‘Speed Camera’ which (just by complete coincidence I am sure) has also raised tens of millions of pounds for the public coffers from already over-taxed motorists who infringe blanket and arbitrary speed limits.
In response to the wave of discontent this has caused, the government, the police and the various lobbyists that support them, have doggedly stood their ground and explained that, yes, it is all very regrettable but the point of the GATSO’s is most assuredly not to raise revenue (no, perish the thought!) but merely to save lives. In other words, they are relying on the canard that freedom must be sacrificed in order to achieve safety.
Well, they are wrong and Paul Smith has made it his business to prove, publicly and beyond argument, that they are wrong. His website, Safe Speed, cuts a swathe through the cant and the piety:
We have never seen any credible figures that put road accidents caused by exceeding a speed limit at even 5% of road accidents. We object to speed cameras mainly because they fail to address the causes of at least 95% of road accidents. The Government claims of 1/3rd of accidents being caused by excessive speed are no more than lies according to the Government’s own figures.
I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!
Mr Smith has amassed a treasure trove of documentary, audio and video evidence that entirely discredits the myth that Tax Speed Cameras are anything whatsoever to do with either road safety or saving lives. In fact, so confident is Mr Smith in his own research that he throws down this gauntlet:
So here’s the challenge. We promise to publish here (in this box, on the first page of the web site) web links to any serious credible research that implies a strong link between excessive speeds and accidents on UK roads.
So if you are one of those people who thinks that the GATSO is a life-saver, you know exactly what to do.
In the meantime, more power to Paul Smith and his campaign for common sense and reason. When we eventually win this battle, the victory will be due in no small part to the dedication and integrity of people like him.
Cross-posted on White Rose.
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