Smelling a Rat, Part 2

We have Air Horse OneMargaret Beckett and "Buff" Hoon worming their way out of appearing before being unavailable for Parliament in good time for European constitutional discussions.

I do not know about you, but I smell a rat, a stitch-up. Not only that, I see yet more disregard for the House.

The Bogeyman has said that he wishes to restore the authority and transparency of Parliament. He is quite capable of putting an end to this...or have Beckett n' Hoon realised that with the passing of Shaved Gibbon No 1 and arrival of Shaved Gibbon No 2 their political futures are as good as over anyhow?

We shall see.

Crystalising My Mistrust of Econazism.

Snipped from a comment on a posting on the Bishop Hill Blog a couple of weeks ago (Hat tip: Devil's Kitchen)

I'm also not a climate research specialist, so would not comment on those aspects. I do know, however, that IPCC is an assessment of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, among other things. "Just because 2500 scientists agree". Well, you would trust a pilot to fly a plane, rather than ask the guy sitting down the end row without qualifications, wouldn't you?

Well, madam, if the pilots have baracaded themselves into the cockpit, pushed the stick forward and begun yelling "Allah Akhbar!" then my faith is in the old git at the back, even if he has helped himself to a couple of Johnny Walkers from a plastic cup.

How else can I express my deep distrust at the blind fanaticism of the climate Econazis?

L is for Labour

Just came across this on YouTube.

"L is for Labour, L is for Lice..."

Prophetic, almost. L is for Labour, L is for Lies.

The Green Religion Attacks Heresey

Here we have proof of the rabid frothing mouth that is Environazism. "Dozens" (should that be "Covens"?) of Climate Scientists are attempting to ban or significantly edit down the "Climate Change Swindle" DVD.

Thy hypocracy is staggering. It would be staggering even if the fraudulent, manipulative Gorezilla: Attack of the Disingenuous Icecores DVD was not being thrust upon young impressionable minds by our State Apparatus.

If the proof were clear and the objectives rational one would not need to attempt to ban contra-arguments. Michael Moore can curl out Farenheit 9/11, so why not this DVD?

hat tip: luckylucky via Samizdata.

Self-Loathers Strike Again

More self-loathery from the Sociofascist machine. A Gurkha who won the VC is being refused entry to the UK.

Just some background on this gentleman's VC:

"...a Battalion of the 6th Gurkha Rifles was ordered to attack the Railway Bridge at Moguang ...the enemy opened concentrated and sustained cross fire at close range from a position known as the Red House and from a strong bunker position two hundred yards to the left of it...both the leading platoons of "B" Company, one of which was Rifleman Tulbahadur Pun's, were pinned to the ground and the whole of his Section was wiped out with the exception of himself, the Section Commander and one other man. The Section Commander immediately led the remaining two men in a charge on the Red House but was at once badly wounded. Rifleman Tulbahadur Pun and his remaining companion continued the charge, but the latter too was immeditely badly wounded.

Rifleman Tulbahadur Pun then seized the Bren Gun, and firing from the hip as he went, continued the charge on this heavily bunkered position alone, in the face of the most shattering concentration of automatic fire, directed straight at him. With the dawn coming up behind him, he presented a perfect target to the Japanese. He had to move for thirty yards over open ground, ankle deep in mud, through shell holes and over fallen trees. Despite these overwhelming odds, he reached the Red House and closed with the Japanese occupants. He killed three and put five more to flight and captured two light machine guns and much ammunition. He then gave accurate supporting fire from the bunker to the remainder of his platoon which enabled them to reach their objective.

His outstanding courage and superb gallantry... were most inspiring to all ranks and were beyond praise".

Extracts from London Gazette 9 November 1944

And the self-loathers appear to prefer to see the entry or the continued residency of people who would do us harm or to hand over welfare to people who have absolutely no regard or respect for themselves or others. Some like to shower their largesse patronisingly over those they feel are inferior. Mr Pun is not such a person, but is one who exposes their own weakness and hubris.

A common coward would look up to Mr Pun and respect him, knowing their own flaws, accepting them while being grateful for the courage of others. The self-loathers response is beyond contempt. Someone please justify why there might be one other person wishing to enter the UK in the last 10 years who has a greater claim?

Until I have evidence to the contrary, it is my belief that the present administration has been hijacked.

Thoughts of Chairman Miliband

Further to my commenting on David talking authoritiarian rubbish (bin there, done that we are) I saw the documentary on Mao's bloody revolution. A blending occured.

Miliband encourages the formation of The Green Guard - earnest young types brainwashed in recycling and ecofascism. They carry aloft their "Little Green Books" containing the Sayings and Thoughts of Chairman Miliband. They denounce their own parents for not separating the paper from the card. They humiliate "carbon-roaders" in public with dunces caps and slogans, often with gratuitous beatings. They smash symbols of the old traditions of travel, freedom, individualism. Those who oppose The Green Guard are shipped off to the countryside to be "re-educated" amongst a bunch of bearded sandalistas and forced to empty the waterless earth toilet and collect pig manure for conversion into biomass fuel.

Once The Green Guard have ravaged the country and show signs of being a self-contained and autonomous upity organisation, Chairman Miliband will ship them off to the Sink Estates so they can "learn from the dependent underclass".

Thugs Reid and Blair...I told you so.

Not content with acting as if they run a police state, these two authoritarian shaved gibbons actually want to make one.

Yet again we have more law - more powers instead of following through or implementing existing or ancient powers.

Yet again we have the Sociofascist behaviour of breaking something that worked so they can remake it to suit their twisted, dysfunctional dogma and feed their lust for control.

Best way to stop the unknown or undesireable roaming the streets is to be more careful of who you let in and if they do get in, kick them out unceremoniously. It would also help if the UK was not known as a soft touch for unearnt cash and housing, too.

We have too many lawyers in government, if you ask me. To them everything is a lawyerly nail - i.e. more and more complex and convoluted legislation that can aways have the toss argued at our expense.

I do think we need a reliable means of ID, but why should it be a Government monopoly and a toy of the State? I bet if they did not have the prospect of a juicy set of contracts to dish out they would not be half as interested.

The role of the Government is to "Enable its Citizens to go safely about their lawful business without let or hinderance". By "enable" I do not mean "permit" or "allow" as in the State granting - how dare it get so presumptuous indeed! - I mean the Citizen shall go about and the State is tasked to proactively ensure no obstacles stand in the Citizen's way.

If I am a subject of anyone at all, it is a Subject of HM The Queen. Her Majestey's Government is most certainly not in my reporting line!

We know Hodge is a Barking MP, but...

...a grain of logic does occur in parts of what Margaret Hodge says - it is more measured than what the disingenuous Alan Johnson has said in reply.

Do not get me wrong, I do not wish to endorse Hodge, for I do suspect she was told what to say by someone (I suspect a Brownite lackey suggesting she walks towards a political cliff-edge) and that it contains much that I do not "agree" with due to it being an argument on territory and terms I do not wish to fight over.

I noted that the Labour talking head on the BBC Daily Politics, Fri 25th May, was very careful to talk only about EU economic migrants as part of his rubbishing of Hodge's point. I doubt this group is the main gripe affecting the beleaguered residents of Barking or indeed elsewhere and for them to dismiss Hodge's position was disingenuous at best. I am certain he knows what is being discussed - Council resources used to house immigrants before being used to house indigenous people.

Part of the problem is the focus on "need" and the metrics thereof which factors into the concept of "entitlement". I suspect many immigrants will cope with higher overcrowding, for example, far better than locals will and so this is used to gain a higher score in "need" terms.

What is not often discussed is:

Immigrants have chosen to arrive by free will - why should their self-generated situation be the responsibility of the State?

If someone is dependent on the State for housing, why does that enable them to claim others are dependent when applying for visas or other forms of entry? A person who is dependent is surely not able to claim that others are in turn dependent on them because in reality, by consequence, they all are dependent on the State. No, the State should be the one to decide that and the State should not be obliged to take on further "bootstrapping" dependents.

Further, anyone in State housing who has additional children is responsible for their predicament - it should not be the obligation of the State to provide them with ever greater housing.

I can see a sense of irritation if it is indeed true that Asylum Seekers are placed in private rented accomodation while the indigenous are placed in Sink Estates.

However, it is very narrow to discuss this issue on such terms. The problem is State housing or subsidised housing, period. The entire concept needs review and reform.

As I have posted before, I see nothing wrong with short term basic State housing for those who are genuinely proven to be an Asylum Seeker, but they should then switch to "commercial rates" to move them off into their own housing after, say, 6 months. There should be few places and few people that truly qualify for such status - e.g. practically nobody from E. Europe or places where a change of district or shift to a neighbouring country would not suffice.

This country has plenty of very cheap housing for the "terminally unemployed" but not where they want to be - "tough", is my response to that, frankly. Part of the problem of State housing is the very fact that it creates sink estates and often even when not, it blights the neighbourhood. Private slums can rapidly be sold on or rejuvinated if the desire or architecture permits. Voluntary groups such as Peabody do not have Sink Estates. To me this is down to the fact that to be housed by them is not a matter of "entitlement" (via forms, "need", buggins turn whatever) but of discretion.

The State is systemically incapable and pretty much by definition not able to employ the concept of discretion in such things as Welfare and housing. This then suggests the State is not the vehicle through which such things are provided.

Improving the Policeman's Lot

I wish to post here an Anon comment to a post at Iain Dale's Diary concerning the experiences of an MP working as a Policeman in North Yorkshire. I agree with the whole piece:

Shipley Conservative MP Philip Davies says there are five policing issues that Home Secretary John Reid urgently needs to consider. JIM GREENHALF reports.

Philip Davies has spent 22 days watching the various parts of West Yorkshire Police at work.

The day before Shipley's Conservative MP met me to talk about his experiences, he had been at Wakefield with the Scientific Support Unit - the British version of CSI in the United States.

He said: "It's been an absolute eye-opener, probably the best thing I have ever done. The police were very open. I made it clear that I was coming in to learn about the service - warts and all. They were open and receptive. Colin Cramphorn, the late chief constable, said I was the only West Yorkshire MP who had ever done that."

One of the reasons why Mr Davies enthusiastically took advantage of the Parliamentary Police Scheme, which allows any MP to spend a minimum of 22 days working with their local force, was because crime always comes out as the issue about which his constituents express most concern.

A wide-ranging talk he gave on the subject to Baildon Men's Forum during the Christmas holidays attracted a lunchtime audience of about 70.
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"Expectations of the police are greater than on other organisations. A police officer will tell you that his job is to enforce the law, not decide which laws are good and which are bad. I am sure a load of laws could be scrapped from the statute book.

"The police are put in a very difficult position. West Yorkshire Police has a £15m shortfall in its budget. Nobody disputes that. The police are having to choose between keeping open police stations and putting more officers on the beat. The number of stations in Shipley has been halved. I don't think officers should be stopping people who aren't wearing a seat belt, with all the other crime going on," he said.

From his experiences watching the police at work, Mr Davies has outlined five areas of concern.

l Ineffective sentencing by magistrates and judges.

"Many officers told me that removing ten particular people from the streets would reduce crime in my Keighley Division by half; taking 20 people out would cut crime by 90 per cent. Yet this small number of persistent offenders are forever bailed and given pathetic jail sentences. On one occasion I witnessed a court bail the same person to two separate addresses!"

l Cases being tested by the Crown Prosecution Service instead of tried by a court of law.

"There is a clear feeling that the CPS will not proceed unless it is almost certain to result in a successful conviction. They should allow more cases to be tested in court and allow juries to take some of these decisions rather than lawyers acting as the jury themselves."

l Protracted delays inside police stations.

"Custody sergeants are so scared of anything happening to a prisoner in their custody, the waiting time - four hours is not uncommon - pales into insignificance. The Home Office should invest in creating extra capacity at all custody desks to eliminate these queues."

l Officers afraid to take decisions because they are obliged to service the system rather than serve the law.

"There is a debilitating risk-aversion culture with the police, an unwritten and unspoken rule that it is better to avoid making a bad decision than it is to make a good one. Officers of all ranks are so petrified of this they would rather waste any amount of resource or time to ensure that nothing can go wrong and that their backs are covered. This has to stop."

l Too much bureaucracy.

"Whatever a police officer does there appears to be a form to fill in afterwards. There range from a form for stopping somebody to the 19 pages when a missing person is reported. There needs to be a root and branch analysis of all forms, a simplification of some and a bonfire of others."

Before winning Shipley from Labour's Chris Leslie at the 2005 General Election, Mr Davies worked for 11 years for Asda, latterly as a senior marketing manager.

He said: "I believed that the people best placed to know what we should do to improve our performance as a company were the people who worked in our stores.

"Therefore I also firmly believe that the people who are best placed to know what we should do to tackle crime are the people who are dealing with it every day - police officers.

"There have been 54 Criminal Justice Acts in nine years. Parliament is packed with lawyers. Debates on crime can look like a lawyers' dinner party. What we lack is a police perspective. We are not going to tackle crime until we get an effective police perspective on dealing with it.

"It is extremely frustrating to me that, instead, we have to endure a lawyers' intellectual perspective on human rights."

Going behind the scenes soon showed him one glaring structural weakness: the police service is a top-down organisation in which the Home Secretary tells chief constables the criteria on which they will be measured. These priorities are then relayed down the chain of command to divisional commanders.

"It would be better for the police officers on patrol to be the kings and queens of the organisation, feeding up issues they are facing and what would help deal with them. This would lead to the Home Secretary consulting with the police on what barriers needed to be removed.

"Politicians should stop pretending they know everything about everything and accept that they should merely deliver the tools for the experts to get on with the job," he added.

12:27pm Tuesday 9th January 2007

More Nuclear Wrangling

Such a shame that Gordon Brown sold off our own Nuclear Power Station technology provider in the shape of Westinghouse to the Japanese. I hear that their technology is to be used to build a multitude of new Power Stations in China for a tidy profit.

Ok, so we now need power stations too. Gordon has sold off a major UK provider, . Not only have we lost potential foreign exchange revenue and intellectual property, we are now facing the prospect of paying foreign companies to build our infrastructure.

People think Gordon is some kind of economic genius. On this he is an imbecile.

Bin there, done that we are.

More total nonsense from David Miliband who appears over-eager to gold-plate yet more EU Statist, authoritarian hogwash.

A bin tax. Of course, we see talking heads rabbiting on about how we are "running out of landfill" and we need to tackle or offset the "landfill tax" with "landfill credits". Er, excuse me - these concepts are entirely new and synthetic, a creation of the EU. Nice revenue earner. Nice way to control the population. Having a landfill tax means you need to find ways to reduce the tax and simultaneously pass it on to households and so some conniving scumbag has used this as an excuse to bug our bins.

Wheelie bins are totally incompatable with most homes. They are an eyesore. Any move to impose a volume tax will result in more fly tipping and cheeky sods trying to palm their rubbish off into other peoples' bins.

The best way is education, not fines and taxes. I don't need some fine to make me separate paper and glass but I will object seriously if some interfering little hitler wants to fine me because one particular week I have two sacks instead of one. The real issue is packaging and commercial/industrial waste, which I believe constitutes the vast majority of landfill volume.

Deal with this? Oh no, construction companies are best mates of the NeueArbeit Commissars.

Sociofascist Media on the Prowl?

Further to the previous post...What a surprise. The BBC has "been handed" a report document showing a school being rude about pupils.

The School? In Kent. Selective foundantion school taking Sec Modern and Grammar.

If anyone is unfamiliar with the pungent aroma of Ratus Ratus, fill yer nostrils.

Tories Abandon Selective Education.

Dave "Two Brains" Winnets Willetts is to announce that Tory policy no longer supports Grammar Schools and selection.

There were few enough reasons to vote Conservative vs NeueArbeit as it was. This has removed another.

He displays unreason in his argument. Grammar schools are "dominated by the middle class" he says, so lets turn our back on them is the answer. Willetts, you have fallen for the Sociofascist ploy of undermining something then using its weakness as "proof" it was wrong to start with. You have become a "useful idiot". Grammars are not performing properly in this regard because there are not enough of them and their catchments do not cover the country. How difficult is that to work out?

According to the Telegraph he is said to assert that

Now, 40 years on, children had such different experiences that it was a fantasy to think that an exam could fairly distinguish between them.

"Such different experiences"? 40 years ago middle class kids had very different experiences to the working class. Now, the issue is the chav mentality of entropy that has the upper hand. What David is implying is basically defeatist. He is abdicating. He is giving in to the State-sponsored entropy that is Welfarism. He is also yielding to the hat-stand idea of multiculturalism where people are encouraged and nurtured to grow up in ghettos. I consider chav to be a separate "effnik" culture to my own, btw. The reason why nonWorking Class kids live such a different life is because of the world of Welfarism and the lowest-common-denominator that is Comprehensive eductation ferments. David Willetts wishes to entrench that, even if he does not realise what he is doing.

The BBC reports that

In his speech he will say it is "fantasy" to think selection at age 11 can be fair.

For an intelligent man this is a worrying statement. Selection at 11 is not fair, but it is the LEAST UNFAIR system we have available. It is irrelevent to talk about the unfairness of one system without discussing the unfairness of the alternatives. If you think it is unfair to at least try and find out who are the more academic kids, how unfair do you think it is to not bother and just leave them to rot in Comprehensive hell-holes surrounded by chavs who will root out the least sign of ambition and endeavour. The issue of selection at 11 is dealt with to an extent by allowing kids to migrate in to Grammar Schools after that time and in some way to reward the original school by publishing the fact. Imagine a non-Grammar school that has an excellent record for improving kids so they can hop to a Grammar before the GCSE coursework starts in earnest. Surely non-Grammars would fight for such "bragging rights". They would get those who failed the 11+ and give them a very achievable goal.

One Solution:

The entire country should be covered by the catchment area of at least one Grammar school so that bright kids of whatever socio-economic background can have a chance at bettering themselves. It would be good to have overlapping catchments as well, so Grammars compete with each other too.

Ideally schools would operate outside of the LEAs and use vouchers without top-up inititally, pending a review of that policy. Private companies should be free to compete for the vouchers. Non-Grammars would be encouraged to put forward their best for "promotion" to Grammars. Grammars would then be free to expell unruly children to enable the brigher kids who are now blossoming to take up the opportunity.

The Sociofascists hate such ideas as they know what it will mean - the proof that monopolistic State-controlled, State-provided education is utterly wrong-headed.

NHS Crisis. Answer: Make it worse

The BMA are calling for an independent board to run the NHS to protect it from "constant political dabbling".

Ok, so their answer to political dabbling in a State run and State-enforced funded de facto monopoly is to hand it over to an unelected QANGO.

What would Sir Lancelot say?


You...you...ignoramus!

EDIT: I have already posted on what I think should happen to the NHS - a move to Swiss-style, State regulated but independently run, pluralistic service.

Sir Patrick Moore tells it like it is

Sir Patrick Moore blames women for the dumbing down of the BBC.

His empirical evidence does appear to be very strong. Soaps are almost entirely a female thing, and as SirP says:

Fortunately, Sir Patrick has a solution. Institute a gender divide and create BBC Bloke.

He said: “I would like to see two independent wavelengths – one controlled by women, and one for us, controlled by men. I think it may eventually happen.”

Soaps could then safely be produced and watched by women. Sir Patrick said: “I was in hospital once and I watched a whole episode of EastEnders. I suppose it’s true to life. But so is diarrhoea – and I don’t want to see that on television.”

Yes, EastEnders is diarrhoea. Spot on. Maybe he read my earlier post on the BBC dumbing down...

That Speech By Letwin

Conservatives 'put winning society first'

Power Society is at the heart of David Cameron's Conservative Party, party policy chief Oliver Letwind has said.

In a speech setting out the party's fudge stall principles he said the old economic arguments were abandoned over and that society was the new ideological battleground du jour.
Labour, says the Tories, have no new significant policies and David Cameron has none either, so has been dubbed the "heir to Blair".
But Mr Letwind said the Tories differed "radically" from Labour's top-down approach towards society, by being arse-backwards instead.

In the speech to the Policy Exchange think tank, Mr Letwind, the Conservative policy review chair, said the old arguments about capitalism versus socialism had practically ended with the Thatcher government.
"From Beijing to Brussels, the Statist oligarchy masquerading as the free market has won the battle of economic ideas," he said.
He said the victory had left a "hiatus in political thought", with which the Conservatives had struggled to deal during "a decade of disarray and enforced reflection along with the rest of the hapless UK population".

'Socio-centric' politics

But the party had now recognised that "politics, once insert daft hyphenation here econo-centric, must now become insert another daft hyphenation here socio-centric".

He said Labour saw the state as their mechanism for oppression and looting the "proper provider of public services and of well-being through direction and control".
Targets, reorganisations and initiatives have been imposed on schools, hospitals, the police and councils, he said.

But the Conservatives would put in place some new set of quango-managed puffery frameworks to allow individuals and organisations to be hamstrung as usual by the State "act of their own volition in ways that will improve society by increasing general well being".
Cabinet Office Minister Ed Miliband said the speech exposed but duplicated Labour's craven mendacity showed the Tories opposed an "enabling state".

"It undermines and ignores the essential role of government in sequestering peoples' wealth and spending it to create a population of clay while enriching our mates helping liberate peoples' potential through strong and well-funded public services," he said.

While Labour wanted "a partnership between the State and its lickspittle organizations an enabling state, voluntary sector and communities", a Conservative government would use individuals "as an excuse to allow people to spend their own money as they see fit... to abdicate its responsibilities to fund public services".

Mr Cameron set out to bugger up change the Conservative Party when he took over as party leader in December 2005 and has faced opposition from within his own party ranks to some of his confectionary reforms.

But dead duck soon to sail away grinning like the shaved gibbon he is Prime Minister Tony Blair has said the Conservatives have failed to find a "strategy for government", preferring to "charge off in any direction which the popular bugle sounds, which is our forte".

Kofi Annan - shameless.

Kofi Annan has trotted up to address the Joint Houses of Parliament in the UK.

It seems he thinks the question of why slavery was tollerated for so long needs to be asked. It is not good enough that Britain gave it up voluntarily on moral grounds driven from a grass roots movement and then used its force of arms to impose that ban. No, Annan has to trot down the compensation pathway. For shame.

Well, how about dealing with the present, Mr Annan? How about discussing the real, present day issues in Africa caused by Africans and Arabs, Sec Gen. Annan? Darfur and the Chinese connection? Speak out on that? Ask Africans how they are treated now by Chinese versus the Europeans before? Ask that.

Africa is in poverty because of Kleptocratic leaders. Period. Africa starves because people are kept in subsistence farming and every time a war or drought occurs their lives are straws in the wind.

Africa needs industrial farming, an urban or suburban workforce and most of all Rule of Law. Kofi Annan delays that process by blame-shifting the here-and-now and instilling a compensation culture. In that he is shameless.

Train Wreck: The Gordon Thunderbolt

It is going to be so bad. One cannot look, yet one has to look on in horror.

Gordon skulking about in blacked-out vehicles. Cabinet minister stepping back away from the mess.

I await the Ceauşescu moment any time soon.

CORRECTION: Reuters bid

UPDATE: original reports handed to me suggested the deal had been done. I now edit the post to reflect reality!

After over 150 years, Reuters is subject to a takeover by Thomson. Photoshop journalism by stringers aside, Reuters is, or was, a fine institution with a long and proud history. I used to work for Reuters and I still feel like part of it. I joined in the dynamic, freewheeling and innovative days of MD Glen Renfrew, before the stodge and corporatist kiss-butt of the Job phase.

The M&A Lawyer (Glocer) gets to be CEO of the new entity. The Reuters Trust, who hold a share with 51% voting rights needs to be very careful about this. Of course, CEO Glocer's ego is being stroked and I am certain this is what he would have wanted. In 2001 the Board appointed M&A Lawyer Glocer to be CEO. A hammer only sees a nail. Reuters was prepped for sale and we get a sale.

It is encouraging that the merged sub-entity below Thomson-Reuters, a merge between Thomson Financial and Reuters will remain Reuters. I first thought this would mean an asset strip and sell-off, but this may not be the case after all. If Glocer moves out of Reuters it will need a new CEO for the entity...

John Reid keeping his powder dry?

For some reason I feel John Reid is making a very smart move. I feel this is an indication that he strongly suspects Brown will crash and burn, so he wishes to be outside that failure, untainted by the fall-out. Wise mutterings of not being a bitching back bench bore, too, for that could alienate future comrades from the train-wreck that will be the inevitable result when the Gordon Thunderbolt hits the buffers. It might also be that he knows he will not have the same free hand under the control-freak Brown that he has enjoyed under Blair, but I think that is secondary from the greater reason.

Though Reid is not my favourite person, as with Miliband I do not take him for a fool in matters of political chess-play.

However, I still think Hazel Blears is Totally MAD. Her utterances are returning to that more normal utterly bonkers, wild-eyed slave to Sociofascist authority after a brief period during her push for the Deputy Leadership.

The Philosophy of Liberty - Self Ownership

This flash animation is something I can agree with.

It basically outlines liberty, including the consequences of asking others to do bad things on one's behalf.

Such profound statements as contained in the animation should be the yardstick by which government rules. Any new proposal, action, rule or measure should be offered up to this framework to see if it contradicts anything within.

Makes taxation beyond defensive military, police, courts, prisons, border/customs etc pretty difficult to justify. No bad thing.

Hat tip: Guido Fawkes

Imprisonment by Stealth

Re: Alcohol Concern's call to invade our very homes and set son against father outlaw giving alcohol to under-15's in the home.

The problem is, they will outlaw almost everything while enforcing very little. Imprisonment by stealth. People will not know they are encircled until it is too late - like putting in all these very deep, robust fence-posts with no fence panels. All seems open. One day you will wake up and the panels are in, you are trapped and they can decide what law they wish to impose to nail whomsoever they desire.

Honoured by this being made Quote of the Day both at Instapundit.com (April 30, 2007) and at Samizdata.

Identity: Private, plural and voluntary.

After reading a post regarding security at the Olympics over at The Devil's Kitchen, it reminded me that I had not laid out my views on ID cards prior to a more systematic post over at Roger's Manifesto.

I have thought for some time that if we do have ID, it should be a private, pluralist affair. Banks and Credit Card companies could provide it, or any organisation that is certified. It should also be possible to keep it voluntary - people will use it because it is convenient and those who do provide ID card schemes should be reliable and so the ID itself, if presented, will have value for both holder and checker. Basically, life will be more convenient and cheaper for holders.

I also want to see a 'statement' every month of each time my ID was checked - when, where and by whom. They can do it for my credit card so I am quite sure this can be done for thre'pnce ha'penny by "those already skilled in the art". People like Visa, for example.

This will rapidly allow people to know if they are being cloned and expose routine, petty, government snooping.

The card itself can just be an electronic container for my NI code and a picture of my ugly mug - basically like my Driving License is now. I should be free to change ID card company at any time and demand all records move with me - especially if they charge too much or allow unauthorised inquiries. Information can be permissioned so that each field can be selectively hidden from all except those explicitly identified.

Of course, you will need some form of "Clearing House" to confirm that there are not two copies of you out there on separate providers' databases.

Why the complexities of a clearing house etc? Why not a single database? Well, I hate monopolies. Sometimes they are a necessary evil, but I am not convinvced that a State-enforced, privately run monopoly is anywhere close to being 'necessary' and in the field of ID, it will be an unmitigated disaster for us, the citizens. Holders and checkers need to be free to abandon a company that does not behave itself.

A plural system will enable innovation and manage costs. Witness the competition in the chip-and-pin market. Many providers, each trying to make life simpler and cheaper for the retailers, constantly work to outdo their competition.

I have lived in two countries where I had to hold ID by law - Singapore and Hong Kong. It was most convenient, but then again I knew the authorities had other things to get on with, unlike our current interfering bunch of Sociofascists.