Very Brief Reflections on Welfarism

My women and I spent yesterday with some friends who live in South East London. They gave us chapter and verse on a thoroughly dispiriting symbiosis of financially corrupt bureaucrats and quasi-bureaucrats and an underclass almost too radically degraded to count as human. To do justice to what I heard would take a long essay that I don’t currently have time to write. But I will give the instance I heard of an illiterate youth admitted to a college. He was let in so the college could get funding for him. Because of his illiteracy, he was provided with a “reader” and a “scribe,” presumably at further cost to the taxpayers.

It’s clear that, even if seriously intended, the Government’s welfare reforms are misconceived. I suspect that the only answer, short of cancelling all welfare entitlements without exception, is something like this:

How It Happened, chapter 1

Note: The Libertarian Alliance does not recommend or condone the use of violence to achieve political ends. Of course, the story published below is merely advice on how lawfully appointed Ministers of the Queen should proceed once in office. As such, it falls within the section of the Bill of Rights providing “That it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.” But the Directors and Officers of the Libertarian Alliance devoutly hope that the restoration of constitutional government will not require such extremes as are described below. SIG

The trouble with gay marriage

The issue of gay marriage comes back to the House of Commons this week, and the Prime Minister cannot by now be ignorant of the fact that his proposals are not exactly flavour of the month with his party. Indeed, I cannot remember anything quite this unpopular with the Tory rank-and-file since the heady days of the Maastricht Treaty, and the Conservatives are not by nature kind to leaders who appear to have lost touch with the grass roots – this, I recall, was one of the leading charges laid against the late Baroness Thatcher at the time of her downfall. How long now before a stalking horse rears his or her head against Dave?

I should begin with a simple statement of libertarian principle. The state has no business being involved in any way with marriage. It has adopted that role as a consequence of the mess Henry VIII engendered when he merged Church and State. Since marriage within the Church of England is governed by the law of the land, and not simply by canon law, it follows that when marriage takes place between persons who are not members of that church, the state must act as registrar in order that those marriages have equivalent legal standing. One simple answer to the matter would be to disestablish the Church of England and thereby reduce marriage to a matter of private contract with an optional religious component, but this is not under consideration at present.

What to do about political parties in the UK, and about democracy

David Davis

First of all, please could I admonish all the Chimpanzee-Type-writers who have posting rights from the Nissen Hut, that each chimpanzee ought to post his name is italics, and in blue, at the head of each post that he lets to be typed by the junior-chimpanzees? I’ve been doing it for years, but some of the other chimpanzees, particularly the “newbugs” recently inducted in the “1995 conscript class”, don’t seem to be complying with this order. It’s merely the good old collectivist principle of “best practice”, which of course drives most forms of modern British State Repression, that prompts me to ask this favour, of course in the interests of “enhanced health and safety”.

Then, what of all this “swivel-eyed-loons” business? We certainly can’t suggest on here who said it, or even if it had been said, but

Life versus art

It has been reported that pressure groups representing the survivors of rape, sexual violence and childhood sexual abuse have called upon the BBC to remove a statue by the sculptor Eric Gill that adorns its London headquarters. The statue, from 1932, is a depiction of Prospero and Ariel, the latter depicted as a naked boy. This is not a new demand.

While the BBC has, entirely properly, refused this demand and pointed out that Gill, for all his sins, remains a major British artist whose work is widely regarded as of importance, this situation illustrates a phenomenon among the Left that is worth examining further.

An Evening with James Hansen

by James Oliver Deckard

The famous climate “scientist,” James Hansen, spoke at the London School of Economics on the 16th May 2013. Here is an account of his talk and its attendant circumstances.

A Case for Plebiscitory Democracy

by Eddie Johnson

For too long our political system has been under the control of a group of people who have never represented the people that elected them. A person who is elected by a constituency should no longer have the right of personal opinion. Their only concern should be voicing the concerns of the majority of their constituents.

When there is a vote in Parliament the elected representative should simply vote on what the majority of his constituents want.