Everyone said “You can’t unseat the Political EnemyClass by voting them out. Well, I say: “it has never been tried before, and we shall have to see.”

David Davis

Clown or fruitcake?

(from Matt at the DT)

Today, for the first time a rather historically large number of British voters get to be able to elect, if they like, candidates for “Council Seats” (this to say in honest countries – “socialist Soviets”) from the United Kingdom Independence Party. Now, the Libertarian Alliance goes out of its way to be perennially nasty to all the parties extant in the UK, from time to time, and sometimes all at once. But it’s natural that a little more of our ire and frustration is reserved for those which are more truly socialist than others: for I at least can’t figure out how it might be possible to be what some people call themselves, which is “libertarian socialists” (yes I have heard that one) or even “left libertarians”, although that might just be possible.

This round of elections for regional soviets councils is notable for the frantic and public attempts by other parties, particularly the Tories, to make direct and sometimes ad-hominem attacks on the reputations and backgrounds of rather a lot of UKIP candidates. I’ve been watching British elections since 1959, more or less, and haven’t noticed any such thing on this scale ever before. If they occurred, such assaults tended to come from the socialist left.

The entire British political-class, ably egged on by the BBC, appears to have taken fright at the idea that, for once, letting people vote for who they’d like might actually change things, and not to that class’s liking. As I type, there are no results yet from vote-counting, but the morning may be interesting.

I want to continue by offering a libertarian-based policy position document for a party such as UKIP, were it to, let us say, win a majority in a regional soviet, or even a general election. But as rheumatoid arthritis is making my elbows increasingly non-functional tonight, typing is a little strenuous and exciting. So I’ll save that for a post in the next couple of days or so when the painkillers have kicked in.  Meanwhile, commenters might like to add their own suggestions.

 

(Incidentally, the headline owes a little credit to Air Marshall Arthur “Bomber” Harris”, who used a similar expression when someone suggested that “you can’t win a war by bombing the enemy alone”.)

The good is oft-interr-ed with their bones

David Davis

Since Margaret Thatcher is to be in-terr-ed tomorrow, I just thought we’d throw one last punch at her enemies and ours. I found this wonderful piece on The Last Ditch the other day, and one para deserves to be highlighted in our usual way:-

“If you want to know who freedom’s enemies are, mention her with approval. Mad eyes will light up all around you and foul sentiments will fill the air. Note their names and never leave them alone with anything you value; material, spiritual or ethical.”

Yes of course, I _know_ that we object to her having

(a) made the British State more efficient – as a recipe for disaster one would recommend this since the British-Political-Enemyclass is efficient already at making a powerful tyrannical state, and

(b) because she failed to absolutely destroy socialism at home and in the world, before members of that same EnemyClass destroyed her.

But I think that Tom Paine’s paragraph sums up who we are up against, whatever we as classical liberals think of Thatcher herself. I think we can lay her to rest now. May The Iron Lady Rust In Peace.

Ghosts: is there a libertarian, religious or scientific explanation?

David Davis

I came across this a number of years ago while a student, doing a subsidiary on Nuclear physics: it is not an original idea and I have tried to restate  it as I remember.

This was presented as a semi-joky _Physics_  thesis paper at a dinner, and not a metaphysical one. It was presented by a real physicist. The main audience was comprised of Classicists, Lawyers and Historians, with us, the resident hard-Scientists, present and passing the Port round.

Jury Nullification: A Barrister Writes

by Howard R. Gray

Juries have a duty to try the case according to the law: this is trite. The judge is the tribunal of law, and the jury is the tribunal of fact: that is the simple rule of how criminal law works, and also just as trite. Judges in England are allowed broad scope to direct juries on the law and often put forward their views of the facts usually pre-seasoned with the exhortation that it is “up to you ladies and gentlemen of the jury” about any particular point they deem in need of comment.

That being said, there is a plethora of rules that they must use to put to a jury about particular points of law and about the standard of proof that must always be there in their directions. For example the “you must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt” and “satisfied so that you are sure”, then they go on to give examples. There are the Turnbull directions on corroboration of witness testimony and so on. Each factual element that has a contentious nature must be directed upon in the judge’s homily to the jury at the end of the trial. Failure to adequately direct a jury can result in the verdict being set aside on appeal. Jurors needn’t be too worried that justice will be denied; appeals are often successful.

I think we need to say things about these fellows

David Davis

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/p480x480/554557_10151488913732518_711477817_n.jpg

Why Obama is Good News For England

Why Obama is Good for England

by Sean Gabb

November 12, 2012

I can understand that American conservatives and libertarians are upset at Mr. Obama’s reelection. It means another four years of government by someone whowants to make their country into a Third World dump. But my view as an English libertarian and conservative is that he is very good news for England…..

http://takimag.com/article/why_obama_is_good_for_england_sean_gabb/print#ixzz2C019Dfwj

“The Last Ditch” ventures inside The Door Of Hell, and manages to return

David Davis

The grand-challenge-cup award for brave man of the week is to go toTom Paine.

What is “Wireless tele-Vision” for? Discuss.

David Davis

[late edit...] [ I have suddenly wondered to myself what it's for, given that the global % penetration of small handheld (or not much larger) devices that can access news, comment, blogs and the opinions of millions, is approaching a majority. ]

One the one hand, the British Political EnemyClass has created what it seems to be admitting is a monster - this says “ban television for the under-threes” (or words to that effect.) Yet on the other hand a modern repressive police state would be a more difficult one in which to manage thought-control, regulate the opinions of, and generally farm for eliciting the “correct public responses” without this machinery. I have drafted a few of my own thoughts, rather fast this morning, in response to a typical Daily Mail mob-hysteria-inducing breakfast-article.

Of course, an invented device can’t be uninvented. The Wireless Tele-vision [WT] (and quickly also with post-receive injected sound subcarrier) was a marvellous development of the pure Sound-wireless, but like all technologies it’s been stolen and corrupted, Morgoth-style, by governments for their own purposes.

In the British State’s case,  WT’s purpose was to anaesthatize and render uncurious “The Masses”, over decades so nobody would notice except

One down…only a few million to go

David Davis

The foul Marxist pig Hobsbawm is dead, I am advised. As the nominal “blogmaster” of this chimp-typist-filled nissen hut, it falls to me to write an obituary for the bugger. This thus brings a little cheer to an otherwise drizzly day.

What a seriously foul, repellent and wicked man this Hobsbawm bastard truly was. Basking in the uncritical, almost sexually-driven, adulation of his almost equally-repellent Marxist peers and (worse) his students, he sat on his butt in the West, looking and acting the superior intellectial “thinker: all the while pontificating languidly to all, about the essential rightness and morality of the gigantic Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist open-prisons of the Communist bloc.

It is such a tragedy, an abiding one yet, that his tracts are staple material for vulnerable British students at our universities, not to mention our (too many) “universities”. Worse still, he features prominently on the A-level Philosophy and Politics courses, a matter which I regard as promoting child-abuse.

I really am so pleased the bastard is dead. His departure gains me nought, but the planet is a cleaner place.

Actually, thinking about the disgusting old fellow, I just want to shout….”KNICKERS!”

The “Football Association” is now a “Court” – official.

David Davis

A private “Sports Governing Body” (whatever that is for) has set itself up as a “Sondergericht”. It has issued a “judgement – a Fatwah, if you like -  and attached a “fine” – a strange sum: £220,000….Makes you wonder how it was arrived at? No?

When I’m Principal Secretary of State For War, in the Democratic-People’s-English Revolutionary-Liberalist-Party’s*** first government (minimal-statist, conservative, libertarian) private institutions that have previously and triumphalistically-set themselves up as “judges and juries” under the current climate of rampant GramscoFabiaNazism, will find themselves “under investigation”.

I do not believe in amnesties for socialist behaviour, adopted and deliberately pursued with malice-afforethought, and in the face of all empirical evidence that such behaviour was designed on purpose to kill, destroy the effective lives of or otherwise harm as many people as possible.

The FootBallAssociatioNazis will be “hauled in for questioning” by the War Secretariat’s “Operational Services Department Personnel (Domestic Division)”. A version of a reverse-PPI-Claim will be applied to their staffs, who will be “invited to re-imburse John Terry the sum of £220,000 plus interest plus 8% plus a “sum to be decreed” for “damages”.”

I said something similar on Facebook a couple of minutes ago. In case any blogreaders here can’t read Facebook, I have posted the text of my piece there:-

How states set bad examples of behaviour

David Davis

I don’t follow foot ball, and I have had to be told who John Terry is. But this keeps on cropping up on my screen.

It is not for a State to decide what people can or cannot say, or think. Even I, who’d like to muzzle GramscoFabiaNazis – because they are _objectively_ wrong, not just misguided – cannot justify doing it, even under the auspices of the War Secretariat.

People ought to be free to think or say, things that might be offensive to others. There are Natural Rights: but there is no right to not be offended if someone says or thinks something that offends you – or worse – “may offend” third parties not even present at the time. This is utterly ridiculous.

Oh, and YOU MUST NEVER use the phrase “political correctness gone mad”. Doing that legitimises “political correctness” as a credible way of dictating the terms of public discourse in a liberal civilisation. You must not do it. Ever. (I know that no readers of the Libertarian Alliance would ever do such a thing, but you must tell others. We’re wasting our breath and time otherwise.)

The poor bugger will probably go down for £2,500, and then we will be forced to watch the

All around is fire, and yet the buggers won’t leave the burning building

David Davis

These are very interesting times. The Euro is toilet-paper, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus are really absolutely quite fully-bust, Germany’s central bank is saying “sort yourselves out”, and yet….and yet….

This country’s government has already given £14 billion in aid to a currency that we don’t belong to, were nearly bullied into joining, and have no interest in….and furthermore, it says “there is no popular support for a referendum on the European Union”.

The current shift of Chimpanzee-Type-writers in the draughty Lancashire Nissen Hut is really not sure what to make of this. Or perhaps they are: When this government (or any for that matter) says the magic word “The People”, it probably means “the people that it has victoriously elected in the latest round of _people’s elections_ “, which is to say: itself.

I don’t recall any recent polls asking about the EU that said anything other than a clear majority of the British People would like to leave it. Does anybody else have any different information?

As Brutus said…”I pause for a reply”.

D.J. Webb on Anglo-Irish Relations

British-Irish Relations: “Not Entirely Benign”? David J. Webb

Historical Notes No. 53

ISBN 9781856376501 ISSN 0267-7105 (print) ISSN 2042-2571 (online)

An occasional publication of the Libertarian Alliance, Suite 35, 2 Lansdowne Row, Mayfair, London, W1J 6HL.

© 2012: Libertarian Alliance; David Webb.

David Webb studied Chinese and Russian at Leeds University, where he was involved in Marxist politics.  He has since become a conservative writer, contributing to The Salisbury Review and Right Now!, and more recently contributing extensively to the Libertarian Allianceblog.  He lived for four years in China (Tianjin, Kunming and Chengdu) and now writes freelance on Chinese politics and economics.  He is also a student of the Cork dialect of Irish and runs the Cork Irish website at http://www.corkirish.com.

The views expressed in this publication are those of its author, and not necessarily those of the Libertarian Alliance, its Committee, Advisory Council or subscribers.

FOR LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY!

I wonder if they did it on purpose

David Davis

[Subsequent edit by author] Further to receiving one-star ( = very poor) I should just rectify my omission, which was clearly observed by the respondent. I forgot to mention the requirement, that will encumber any incoming Libertarian or Revolutionary-Liberalist administration, whether in England, or the UK, or elsewhere, to criminalize and proscribe the existence of any bodies calling themselves “Trade Unions”, which behave in ways shown by the 19th- , 20th-  and 21st-Century British models of same. These outfits have proved themselves, through the deliberate policies and actions of their “officers”, to be far far more insidiously dangerous to life and liberty than any “terrorist” organisation, even the IRA and “Al-Quaeda” (whatever that might be), both of whom might be thought responsible for the deaths of up to 10,000 people each. The deaths probably attributable to the prevalence of “Trade” “Union” and “Workers’ Council” actions within the past 120-odd years probably run into the millions, aside from the planned and avoidable destruction of the UK’s heavy industries, docks, mining industries, railways and shipyards. (None of this needed to happen: the ability to fire all redundant labour upon the advent of better technology, thus keeping wage rates and hours to JapoChindoBraMexican levels, was prevented.)

Roll on the custard pies and rotting tomatoes….but Libertarians ought to begin speaking for real people, not just metropolitan political intellectuals like ourselves.

The coagulation-government is getting stick and rotting-cabbages from various quarters, for seeming to allow Francis Maude (who is, I admit, a bit of a slimy toad at times) to suggest that people should stock up on motor fuels before any putative strike by tanker drivers.

But I wonder…there could be a subtext here. Perhaps some clever Tory strategist thought that by artificially creating a fuel shortage at the pumps before any strike took place, the mass of inchoate but not negligible public opinion could be turned angrily against “UNITE”, whatever sort of GramscoStaliNazi front-organization that might be. I mean to say, it describes itself as a “Trade Union”, although it’s f**k-all to do with trade, and isn’t a union in any meaningful sense with regard to its members’ welfare – only its “officers’ ” wefare, power and prosperity.

Some of this unfocussed but very public mob ire might then rub off against the “Labour Party”, which predictably has failed to come out condemning the “union” – only mouthed platitudes about “the way to solve the crisis is by the negotiations”, as if there was anything meaningful for the drivers’ employers to talk about.

I just wonder if it’s a “cunning plan”. Of course, the predictable mainstream-media-response has been to toast the coagulation for its incompetence and “dangerous advice” (I mean to say! We used to keep old Duckhams 1-gallon oil cans and keep petrol in them for year after year – I always had 6 gallons in the house at any time, when in London years ago – about two-thirds of a tankful). But them the MSM is not on the side of any administration that is not overtly and aggressively GramscoStaliNazi. Perhaps because it thinks that most people viscerally are that, inand to their very bones….and they may sadly be right. Hitler got in, after all, by not misreading the mood of the German general public.

Compensating the British for slavery

David Davis

I have had occasion, this morning, to get very annoyed over at Facebook about what some jumped-up-politicoWoman has been saying over in Jamaica.

It appears that the old lie, told often enough and being a big enough lie, about how the British have been the prime-movers of slavery, persists. Frankly I’m not surprised. Two reasons come to mind:-

(1) We as a people are far, far too busy keeping on doing what we do, which is to keep buggering on and working and doing stuff and inventing things and selling other stuff, to be able to devote much time and energy to defending our reputation. We sort of take that as read. We _/Taught The World How To Live/_  , as I never tire of saying. It should be utterly obvious to all on the Planet that we were, are and will be for always, good people. We are So Unlike GramscoFabiaNazis***, most of whom are British sadly and shamefully, and who do harm out of all proportion to their numbers, and who are axiomatically not good.

(2) Socialism, in its various strategically-morphing-disguises, as is natural for Evil to want to adopt from time to time, is a specifically anti-English phenomenon. To be anti-liberal, as opposed to be anti-English-Civilization-culture-and-thought, is a mere triviality, a mere minor generality by contrast. It’s the various modern forms of socialism that have most orgasmically-jumped, salivating and ejaculating, onto the antislavery bandwaggon, carrying anti-Englishness with them while nobody noticed they’d got it in their swagbags and could take it off them first. We were, as I said, too busy to notice.

Continuing to tolerate this level of libel, slander and malicious defamation without riposte is strategic ideological madness. It does two things:

(a) it causes onlookers to think there may be something in the charges against us. Mud sticks: you can’t help it. Sticking is, after all, what mud is for.

(b) it lulls the attackers into thinking they have kicked and booted us on a weak spot and that they are actually right, even though they know full well that they aren’t.

Does anyone on here, all of you being super-intelligent, have anything to offer about a solution to this problem?

***They will have to go, but it will unfortunately take quite some time, and there may be an Endarkenment Stage in which they’d have to prevent their stray children being killed and eaten by starving mobs who have re-learned how to operate in the dark with rushlights, while their searchlights are out and their Argentinian-plastic-mined gateways are temprarily down.

A Brief Argument for English Independence

A Brief Argument for English Independence
by Sean Gabb

The normal English response to Scottish nationalism is to ignore it, or to see it as an irritation, or to try shouting it down with reminders of all that shared history, or to point out the value of English subsidies and to wait for common sense to win the argument. None of these, I suggest, is an appropriate response. None takes into account that England and Scotland are different nations, and that the loudest and most energetic part of the Scottish nation has decided that the current union of the nations is not in Scottish interests. This does not make it inevitable that the union will be dissolved. It does, however, make this desirable. Scotland may or may not have suffered from the union. But the union has done much to bring England to the point of collapse, and it strikes me as reasonable to say that England can never be safe while there are Scottish members in the Westminster Parliament.

What War with Iran Might Look Like

Note: Most Englishmen who comment on American politics fit themselves into the world view of either the Republican or Democrat Parties. Therefore, most English comment on Mr Obama proceeds on the assumption that what he has done to America is supremely good or supremely bad. But I am not pro-American. I judge American politics purely by their impact on England.

For this reason, I regard Mr Obama as an excellent American President, and very much hope he wins the next election. He may have turned America into more of a police state than his opponents would have done. He may simply have turned it into a different sort of police state from the one his opponents had in mind. I don’t care. I’m not an American. I don’t live in America. What happens there is, in itself, of no more consequence to me than what happens in Ecuador or Nigeria. What I do like about Mr Obama, however, is that he is the first American President in over 30 years who has not started any wars. Doubtless, he has not made the world a safer place. But he has done little to make it even more dangerous than he found it.

Since Ron Paul will not be the Republican candidate this year, the American presidential election will be a contest between a man who has started no wars, and whatever unwrapped mummy has bellowed the loudest that he will go to war with Iran/North Korea/Russia/China/Somalia/Cuba, etc, etc. Unless you really want the world to be blown up because “Jesus would have done it,” I suggest it isn’t much of a contest.

Sooner or later, the dollar will collapse, and America will complete its long transition from barbarism to decadence. We shall all then be able to forget the nightmare of its hegemony, except as a threat to naughty children – “Eat up your greens, or the Americans will come and bomb you!” For the moment, Mr Obama is easily the safest pair of hands in Washington. I may even donate £25 to his re-election fund. SIG

The rot sets in, but be of good cheer, for it usually takes quite some time.

David Davis

The Last Ditch is worth visiting from time to time. Sadly, since Tom Paine’s (that’s his screen name, as it were) wife died, he’s been writing less. I hope he recovers his former zeal for intellectually-flogging the guts out of our enemies, the GramscoStaliNazis.

A recent one is good reading, about the awful slow-motion-descent of the USA into modern British-style post-socialist horror and unredemption.

The deaths of Richard Everitt and Stephen Lawrence: compare and contrast

Note: I am writing a detailed piece on the convictions in the Lawrence case. There is some rather interesting comments in the Macpherson report about the forensic examination of garments etc see http://www.chronicleworld.org/archive/lawrence/sli-25.htm. RH

The Limits of Intolerance

by Guy Leven Torres
16^th September 2011

Our civilisation is slowly but surely collapsing or rather metamorphosing into something else. Let me repeat again my earlier classifications of types of society-