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.

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 Secret Court and the Media.

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/4_04doXUSic/

Note: My only point of disagreement with Mrs Raccoon is her comparison of the newspapers to the coal miners. Though it was rather expensive and not always reliable, the coal dug out by the members of the NUM was good for keeping us warm. For about a century now, the only worthwhile use for the newspapers has been supplanted by the manufacturers of toilet paper. SIG

The Terror of the Mail.

The Terror of the Mail..

Short animated documentary about police accountability and civil liberties

Dear Libertarians,

I got your email address from your excellent blog and I thought I’d write to you to draw attention to a short documentary we’ve just released online.

My partner Gemma Atkinson was assaulted by the police for filming them on the London Underground. The case was written about at the time by Paul Lewis and Henry Porter in the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2009/jul/09/police-detain-mobile-phone-camera

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.

Press Regulation and the British Constitution

by Robert Henderson
http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/press-regulation-and-the-british-constitution/

The proposed regulation

The considerable constitutional implications of the proposed regulation of the press by Royal Charter and statutory restraints preventing the Charter’s change and legislation creating different classes of plaintiff in civil cases seems to have passed our politicians by.

The proposal is for the normal ultimate control of a Royal Charter by politicians working through the Privy Council to be circumscribed by a clause in a statute. In addition, further legislation to allow exemplary damages and costs. To demonstrate why this raises constitutional difficulties it is necessary to first understand what the proposed system will be and do.

Sean Gabb: A Searchlight Profile

by Mark Pitchford
http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/archive/libertarians-of-the-world-unite-you-have-nothing-to-lose-but-your-credibility

Note: I won’t answer Dr Pitchford’s questions. In part this is because answering any questions from such people implies an admission of moral inferiority. In part it’s because no answer other than grovelling adherence to the pc line will ever be enough for the smears to be withdrawn – possibly not then. However, I’m not sure any answer is needed, nor any comment. Compared with the frequently gross libels for which Searchlight is renowned, this is very gentle stuff. Also, while there may be a tendency here to unfairness, this could be a simple result of misunderstanding. Lefties hardly ever read anything not written by other lefties. When they do, they generally see only what they want to be there. SIG

Libertarians of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your credibility

There is something superficially appealing about libertarianism. Its obvious derivation from ‘liberty’ makes people comfortable being described as a libertarian. Indeed, libertarians’ advocacy of free speech, freedom of association and permissive attitudes towards sexuality resonate both with long-established rights and a more tolerant Britain in which institutionalised bigotry has little traction. Investigate a little further, however, and the libertarian position looks less comforting and more like a fig leaf for closet racists.

Should David Cameron Apologise for Amritsar? by Sean Gabb

Should David Cameron Apologise for Amritsar?
By Sean Gabb

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/2013-02-20-apology-sig.mp3

On Wednesday the 20th February 2013, I was asked by the BBC to comment on David Cameron’s “apology” to the Indians for the events at Amritsar in April 1919. A few hours later, I found myself on air with Keith Vaz MP, who was a Minister in the Blair Government. Without transcribing my words from the recording, here is what I said:

“I do not expect the Prime Minister to apologise for what happened at Amritsar. No more do I expect the Indians to apologise for the Black Hole of Calcutta, or for the bestial atrocities committed by the sepoys against British woman and children during the Mutiny.

“However, while there are doubtless Indians who get a thrill from watching the grandchildren of the white sahib grovel in the dust, this apology or semi-apology is really about British politics. Whether Conservative or Liberal or Labour, we are ruled by a cartel of cultural Marxists. Part of what they are about involves rewriting British history as a catalogue of shame. That alone explains why our leaders keep going about the world, apologising to every group of foreigners who may think they have a grudge against us. I am proud of my country and of its history. I want no part of this.”

To put it mildly, this is not an opinion heard very often on the BBC. But I was then asked about the principle of historic apologies. Instead of discussing the principle more than in passing, I took the opportunity to say this:

Letter to the Guardian on libertarian

by Ian McKay
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/letter-guardian-libertarian

As long time readers of my work know, I’ve been somewhat critical of George Monbiot in the past (awarding him Muppet of The Week, twice). His account of anarchism in his book Age of Consent must be one of the worse ever, making his “critique” completely worthless. I was going to review that book at one stage, but it is so terrible it was impossible to summarise (or even know where to start!) and so that joined the “started but not finished” pile! Suffice to say, he really should do some research before writing about anarchism.

This is not to say he does not get it right at times. He does, particularly on green issues (such as refuting climate-change deniers). He gets it right in this recent article for the Guardian: This bastardised libertarianism makes ‘freedom’ an instrument of oppression. In response to Monbiot, a letter from Dr Sean Gabb, the Director of the so-called Libertarian Alliance was published. I replied to that and amazingly the Guardian published it on 24^th of December, unedited. This letter is included at the end of this blog, but first a few comments on the original article and the propertarian letter.

State-Regulation of the British Press: So What?

State-Regulation of the British Press: So What?
By Sean Gabb
Published in The Libertarian Enterprise
25th November 2012

At the moment in England, our masters and their clients are discussing censorship of the newspaper press. After months of submissions, a government inquiry into newspaper conduct has finished, and its report will almost certainly call for what is called “a rule-based framework of regulation.” The surface argument is between those who want controls backed by the law, and those who want “voluntary self-regulation.” No one who matters, though, disputes that something must be done.

It’s the Demographics, Stupid.

by Anna Raccoon
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnnaRaccoon/~3/_ehg31luzVo/
It’s the Demographics, Stupid.

It has been an interesting week for the Establishment. And a bad one for the Republicans.

The Republicans lost an election because there are too many Hispanic, black and female voters and too few white, working and lower middle class men. The so called Rainbow coalition will continue to grow. That is the nature of “the American Demographic” and it is irreversible. This is the nature of history.

BBC news – Jimmy Savile, George Entwistle and the balance of probabilities

by Robert Henderson

http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/jimmy-savile-george-entwistle-and-the-balance-of-probabilities/

Jimmy Savile, George Entwistle and the balance of probabilities

Robert Henderson

George Entwistle gave as an abject a performance by a media experienced bigwig before the Culture, Media and Sport select committee(( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2221520/Jimmy-Savile-Panorama-documentary-reveals-BBC-suspected-DJ-sexual-abuse-40-years-ago.html ) as you will ever see. He adopted the BBC equivalent of giving nothing but his name, rank and number. (How on Earth did this timid personality with all the authority of a jellyfish become Director-General?)

BBC = ‘Bad Boys Club’ – a lamentation

by the Reverend Dr Alan C. Clifford
HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN!

The BBC is now exposed as a decadent institution. As both a victim and promoter of anarchic, sex-perverted secularism, it is the official media face of a corrupt culture.

“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:-

Well, at least there wasn’t a six-foot dancing penis

Well,  at least there wasn’t a six-foot dancing penis
Robert Henderson

Prior to the  opening ceremony of the  London Olympics,  the last time Britain put on a taxpayer-funded  entertainment that was  meant  to project the country to the world was on 31 January 1999.  The event was broadcast   from the  Dome (now the O2 Arena)  to mark the new millennium.  True to the politically correct  dicta of the time, the Millennium show  said precisely nothing about British history or culture and was an exceptionally  trite mishmash of  the “we are all one happy global family” variety of painfully right on exhortation and posturing  (see http://wwp.millennium-dome.com/news/news-dome-990916show.htm).  The lowlight of the show was a six-foot dancing penis. Tawdry is the word which comes to mind.

Should the British State should do more to regulate drinking?

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/2012-07-19-drink-sig.mp3

Sean Gabb on BBC Radio Bristol, on Thursday the 19th July 2012, to discuss whether the British State should do more to regulate drinking.

Sean says no for these reasons:

• The ruling class and its mainstream media specialise in fabricating “problems” which always require a bigger and more empowered state to solve them. We have seen this with the global warming scam and the campaign against “passive smoking.” There is no reason to believe any of the statistics put out over “alcohol abuse.”
• Even assuming there is a problem, this is an effect of earlier state intervention. When public drinking in England was in small, local pubs, the generations would drink together. This allowed the young to absorb the cultural restraints of their elders. If there was disorder, it was on a small scale. Now, measures like the smoking ban, which has closed thousands of small pubs across England, and the systematic privilege given to big chains have transformed public drinking. Thousands of young men come together in big, anonymous drinking barns in city centres. The licensing laws mean they are relased all at the same time onto the streets. It is not suprising there is trouble.
• So far as one exists, this is a problem caused by the State. The best response is for the State to stand back and let individuals and voluntary collectives of individuals sort it out.