Independent TV news has just reported that Tony Blair has been admitted to hospital with a suspected heart irregularity.
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These must surely be salad days for our Labour government. Free of any concerns about an effective opposition, they can roll up their sleeves, spit on their hands and get down to some really serious looting:
I think some clarification is required because the opening paragraph is not entirely correct. Currently a tax of 40% is charged on all capital gains which includes the capital gain made on the sale of property or land. However, one’s principal dwelling home has always been exempt from this charge. Now HMG is proposing to abolish this exemption (although the effect is the same as imposing the tax on ordinary homeowners).
‘Lightly taxed’?!! The guy has got some nerve. And it’s abject drivel that this is about controlling the ‘bouyant housing market. This has been on the cards for a while. Gordon Brown has already plundered private pension funds and I knew that it was only a matter of time before he turned his avarice on the last stores of privately owned wealth. There was no way he could leave all that booty untouched with a ballooning public sector into which money must be shovelled like coal into a roaring furnace. It’s a no-brainer for the government. A general election is still as much as three years away and they are going to win it handsomely anyway. In the meantime they can placate their opponents on the left and reward their supporters in the state sector. The way things are now, there is nothing to stop the state from growing until the bones of the last taxpayer have been picked clean and left to bleach in the sun. October 19th, 2003 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Each passing day seems to herald a further deterioration in the state of the British Conservative Party. [From the UK Times]
So, they are languishing in the opinion polls, their leader is seen as ineffective by most of his own Party and most of the public; he is also under a Parliamentary investigation for alleged impropriety; the Party is shot through with factional in-fighting and now their financial backers are beginning to walk away from them. If the entire Party succumbed to an outbreak of leprosy it could hardly make matters any worse. October 18th, 2003 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some people are just so selfish. Rather than queue patiently for their state ration of bread and cabbage, they’ll conjour up all sorts of ruses to get an unfair advantage: [from the UK Times]
Obviously an extreme right-winger and an enemy of the people.
Well, in the circumstances I suppose this indiscretion can be overlooked. But anymore tricks like that and it’s re-education for her. October 16th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is probably going to be rather difficult for our non-UK readers to believe this but there was a time when the Church of England was known to campaigners on the old left as ‘the Tory Party at prayer’. It was not meant as a compliment but then neither was it entirely unjustified. As the official Church of the State its function was to bolster the moral underpinnings of the old ruling class. In its ethos and operation it was every bit as conservative as the political party that represented the secular interests of the same old order. But not any more:
Dr.Williams omits to tell us precisely what those ‘goals’ are and why they are ‘moral’. A mere oversight, I’m sure.
‘Of course, I condemn terrorism BUT…..’
Excuse me but isn’t that the precisely the wrong way around? If this was a one-off, a weak moment or an aberration that would be grounds enough for criticism. But it isn’t. Ever since his inauguration as the Head of the Established Church of England, Rowan Williams has been busily establishing his own profile as a political campaigner. From his regular public denouncements of ‘consumerism’ and ‘greed’ to his ringing endorsements of bigger government and more state spending, Dr.Williams has mapped out his unimpeachable credentials as a shill for just about every green/marxoid canard in existence. Under his stewardship the, the Church of England has finally completed its transformation into the Church of Post-Modernist Pieties, ever-ready to provide spiritual edification for the new ruling class. It is inaccurate to label this as an about-face because in many respects it reflects the traditional function of that institution. Like most other branches of the British state, it has been co-opted by the Gramschian project and set to work as impeccable disseminator of a new governing ethos. The best we can hope for is disestablishment. October 15th, 2003 | 55 comments - (Comments are closed)
I went out for a drink this evening and had two, which given my (in)ability to function under the influence of alcohol is the equivalent of more like four or five. So this posting may be erratic and won’t have any links. But it’s been a slow day here, so every bit helps. I picked up a nice political anecdote while imbibing. It seems that not long ago, Blair’s media enforcer Alastair Campbell wanted the political editor of the Sun, Trevor Kavanagh fired. Kavanagh is the sort of bloke we like and who would like us, and may actually like us for all I know. So anyway, Campbell invited himself to the office of Kavanagh’s boss, a man called … can’t remember but it may come to me. But this Boss, the editor I assume it must have been, was not as easily intimidated as Campbell would have liked. Because, as soon as Campbell started in on his usual effing and blinding and threatening and carrying on, the Boss pressed a button on his desk, which had the effect of broadcasting all this Campbellising all over the Sun offices. Everyone could hear it, and they were both appalled at its barbarity and amused by its presumption. The usual description of Alastair Campbell is that he is, or was, a “Spin Doctor”, a job description which implies nuance, subtlety, finesse, and also mental stability and poise. None of that is true. “Attack Dog” would be nearer the mark, and it says a hell of a lot about Tony Blair’s true character that he should have such a bizarre and unbalanced individual as his Number Two, and for so long. Campbell in full flood is apparently a remarkable sound, but this time, it hurt him more than it hurt his victim. Trevor Kavanagh kept his job. I still can’t remember the Boss’s name for sure, but it may have been Yelland. David Yelland, I think. Commenters feel free to correct me. As I say, this wasn’t that long ago. Politically, in Britain now, the times they are a-changing. October 14th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
I can’t wait to see their election manifesto:
The Green hostility is understandable. They can’t very well be expected to just sit back and do nothing in the face of this open challenge to their monopoly on crackpot drivel. October 14th, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
The GATSO killers must be starting to give the state a serious headache. From the UK Times:
And then other cameras to film those cameras and still more cameras to film those cameras and……
Of course this means that the closed-circuit security cameras will become targets as well. It seems that the campaign of the GATSO killers is moving beyond the sporadic outbursts of pique and onto a low-grade insurrection. October 13th, 2003 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Could there be such a thing a ‘Legal Laffer Curve’? What I mean is, a point where there are so many laws that the State cannot possibly enforce them and their agents start to wilt under the pressure of trying to do so. From then on the whole thing starts to go downhill and the lawlessness begins to grow uncontrollably. Has that point been reached?
A very telling admission from a man who is clearly under pressure. However my sympathy-meter is stuck at nought. The police have spent decades campaigning vigourously to abolish just about every right of the citizens to preserve their own security and, of course, the means to do so. The natural consequence is that they have arrogated that burden onto themselves and it is a burden the can neither cope with nor discharge. Truly that is a zero-sum game. Yes, I think something will have to ‘give’ but knowing this country as I do, I doubt very much that it will be the pathology of total control that has caused the problem in the first place. October 10th, 2003 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
I honestly think I have grossly underestimated the entrepreunerial skills of the social-working class. It must take a certain talent to keep inventing new make-work schemes and then successfully sell them to the government. I cannot imagine how I would begin to pitch this one:
I just love the idea of porcine civil servants being sent to huff and puff their way around an army assault course but I rather think they are not the intended target of this new ‘war’. Anyway, it seems the government is losing the war. They cannot make fat people slim again by bureaucratic means. I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you.
‘Epidemic’! Now there’s a panic-inducing trigger-word if ever there was one. I bet that was the deal-closer. ‘Minister, unless you write out a blank cheque there’s going to be an epidemic!’.
At £9.6 billion, yeah I would say that’s bloody serious.
And HMG is going to keep spending money until the target of Zero deaths from all causes is reached.
How can they possibly know that?
Well, it might be helped by fat people going on a diet but we wouldn’t want them taking the law into their own hands, would we.
Defeating the Third Reich didn’t require this many people. And, therein lies the rub because even this public admission of failure will do nothing to stop the flab-fighting government juggernaut now that it has been sent rumbling forth onto the highway of national life. The conspicuous failure of fat children to shrink to normal size will merely prompt demands for ‘more resources’ to fight yet another phoney war. Problems are not meant to be solved because careers aren’t built that way. Problems are to be fabricated and then carefully nurtured and maintained until…well, ever. The £9.6 billion wasted thus far was merely the appetiser. Small change. Petty cash. Mere peanuts already swallowed up with a forest’s worth of reports, initiatives, projections, surveys, committee minutes and action plans. This is Britain where the new national ethos is to throw good money after bad into the bottomless sinkhole of guilt and paranoia. If any reader is tempted to laugh out loud at the Swiftian absurdity of it all then I can hardly blame them. But really it isn’t funny, it’s pathetic and it is only a matter of time before it moves beyond the sad to the downright nasty:
This is what they call a ‘consciousness raising exercise’, a customary pre-cursor to new expansions of state power. ‘The voluntary approach hasn’t worked’, they will cry. ‘What we need is tough legislation’. And they will most likely get it too and disapproved products will start to be pulled from supermarket shelves and nobody will be allowed to open a bank account until they can produce a ‘Physical Fitness Certificate’. This may sound alarmist but the one thing I have never underestimated is the vanity and ambition of our political classes. Britain isn’t obese, it’s anaemic. It’s life-blood is being drained from it by an army of worthless, self-propogating parasites. October 9th, 2003 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
It may be silly that sport affects politics, but it does. In 1966, England won the soccer World Cup, and it definitely did rub off on the Labour Government then in power and on Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. British proles can do it, who needs the bloody toffs?, etc. etc. Wilson certainly milked that win all he could for his political team. So when, in the quarter-finals of the next World Cup in 1970, the England soccer team was gut-wrenchingly beaten 3-2 (after being 2-0 up) by the very same opponents they’d beaten in the 1966 final, West Germany, they were widely debited/credited with tipping the balance in favour of the Conservatives at the general election held very soon afterwards. The proles weren’t so cool after all, you see. The England soccer team has never since scaled the heights of 1966, but the infusion of television money and foreign stars nevertheless gave English soccer in the 1990s a glamour and a cultural clout that it had probably never had before. Soccer now completely dominates the sports pages, having utterly routed the now very forlorn cricket as England’s “national game”. And (“New”) Labour has once again made use of all that in its propaganda about rebranding and modernising and generally being Cool Britannia. There is now another World Cup approaching which may have a similar, although more muted, political effect, in the form of the Rugby Word Cup, which kicks off next Friday when host nation Australia plays Argentina in Sydney. England are strongly fancied to win this, although the truth is that any one of about half a dozen closely matched teams could win, of whom England are just one. If England do win or at least do very well (by winning through to the final in grand style and then being heroically and narrowly beaten, say), this could have party political vibes back here in Britain. If England disappoint, ditto, in the sense that the dog I am about to describe won’t have barked after all. Basically, it would suit the Conservatives if the England rugby team were to triumph, while many Labour supporters would probably prefer England to make a humiliatingly early exit. → Continue reading: How the Rugby World Cup might influence British party politics October 7th, 2003 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
There has been much amusement lately at the promises made by the Conservatives here in Britain – higher government pensions and lower taxes. Although Arnold S. in California has been making similar promises (indeed he actually got a new spending program passed in California as recently as last November – the after school thing). Whilst I would agree that the Conservative Party does look very silly with the headline “Conservatives promise higher pensions and lower taxes” (whatever the details about getting the money by abolishing certain means tested benefits for the old and getting rid of a lot of the “New Deal” – “welfare to work” programs), I think that the all the amusement does miss an important point. There seems to be no great support among the voters for the reduction in the size and scope of government. Now I can remember when there was such support – the late 1970s, then very many people (perhaps most people) supported the reduction of government spending, but this is simply not true now (in spite of government spending on the Welfare State being vastly higher now than it was then). To abolish the Conservative Party and create a new party of the ‘centre right’ would solve nothing if there is no market for such a party. To be fair some of the enemies of the Conservative Party seem to understand this. For example Peter Hitchins (of the Mail on Sunday) wishes to get rid of the Conservative Party, but he does not wish to replace it with a free market party. No, he fully supports government railways (in fact he still bangs on about the foolishness of the private ownership of the railways even though the structure was re-nationalized some time ago), and he supports anti-Americanism, the B.B.C. ‘Licence Fee’ (TV tax) and lots of other nasty things. It would not be fair to say that Hitchins and his ilk favour “Social Democracy plus black leather and goose-stepping” (Peter Hitchins is not a Nazi), but he and his friends are certainly not free market folk, and have nothing but contempt for the old free market ‘ideology’ of Britain. They are rather like the old ‘socio-imperial’ crowd of paternalists that surrounded Joseph Chamberlain. Whether the Conservative Party continues to exist or not the problem (for free market people) remains the same – the vast majority of voters do not support cutting back the Welfare State and the believe that every economic and social problem should be met by new government laws or better enforcement of old laws (this, again, was certainly not true in the late 1970’s – when most people supported deregulation). Why has public opinion in Britain changed so much? This is a question too long and complicated for me to answer here (if I can answer this question at all), but I do know that until public opinion changes or can be made to change, no political party favourable to liberty will prosper in Britain. October 5th, 2003 | 47 comments - (Comments are closed)
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