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.

Guess Who?

by James Oliver Deckard

So let’s start by talking about someone who lives off the state and has little experience of the world of work you and I know.

He is 58 years old and has suckled upon the publicly-funded teat for most of his life.

He’s signed on the dole. He’s had four children and received child benefit for all of them. He has put them each through private school, too.

His wife hasn’t worked since they married, except for 15 months in which he got her a job paid by the taxpayer.

He and his colleagues eat and drink food you subsidise in a palace you pay for, he is driven around in a car you own, and when he is too old to ‘work’ any more you will pay for him to have a better pension than you, too.

He started out at the age of 21 with six years of taxpayer-funded military service, during which he acted as bag-carrier to a Major-General.

Then in 1981, aged 27, he left the Army and signed on the dole for several months.

He then began a period of ordinary work based upon the skills he had gained at the taxpayer’s expense, and worked in sales for arms dealer GEC-Marconi.

He then moved on to a property firm, where he was made redundant after six months, and then sold gun-related magazines for Jane’s Information Group.

After 11 years of this all-too brief career he succeeded in once again boarding the publicly-funded gravy train in 1992.

In the intervening 20 years he has been paid by the taxpayer every year more money than most taxpayers earn. He has topped it up, along the way, to more than six figures for a few years here and there by being more pompous than the other pigs.

In 2001 he helped his unemployed wife to have a suckle, arranging for you to pay her £15,000 to be his diary secretary.

These days he is given the grand total of £134,565 a year from the taxpayer.

He lives for free in a £2million Tudor farmhouse on his father-in-law’s ancestral estate in Buckinghamshire.

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.

Should There be a Minimum Price for Alcohol? by Sean Gabb

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/2013-03-01-drink-sig.mp3

Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance, speaking on BBC Radio 5 on the 1st March 2013.

The background to this discussion was a report from the Alcohol Health Alliance, calling for a minimum price of 50p per unit for alcohol, and various restrictions on the advertising and sale of alcohol.

Sean argues these points:

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

Abusive Bailiffs: Old but Possibly Relevant Thoughts

That Sheep May Safely Graze
by Sean Gabb

This evening, the 26th September 2006, the BBC will broadcast its latest Whistleblower programme. This investigates the sharp and often illegal practices of court bailiffs. They are accused of tricking debtors—and frequently third parties —out of thousands of pounds that are not owed.

According to a report in The Daily Mail, the bailiffs in one firm are accused of:

• Doubling or tripling a judgment debt, and then appearing generous by deducting £100—and keeping the whole excess for themselves;
• Telling the relatives of debtors that they would have their own possessions seized;
• Threatening debtors with violence;
• Breaking and entering the premises of debtors and of third parties.

So far as they are true—and I have not seen the programme in question—these accusations show patterns of behaviour of which I was not previously aware.

Why is the State Involved in Childcare?

by D.J. Webb

Women are forced out to work by house prices. This is the real subtext to absurd plans for the state to pay £2,000 to each working woman for childminding. With high taxes and council tax, high transport fees and high childminding bills, it is hard for women to make work pay — and the only result of their trying to do so is to push up the income on which mortgage loans are calculated, thus supporting the property Ponzi scheme.

Drink and the Unemployed: How Stupid Do These People Think We Are?

Libertarian Alliance News Release
Contact Details: Dr Sean Gabb
07956 472 199 sean
Wednesday the 19th December 2012
Immediate release

Drink and the Unemployed:
How Stupid Do These People Think We are?

Conservative MP Alec Shelbrooke has introduced a Bill to prevent welfare claimants from buying alcohol and cigarettes, among much else.

Speaking today in London, Dr Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance, comments on this proposal:

I won’t ask if Mr Shelbrooke is stupid. What matters more is how stupid he thinks we are. His proposal is insultingly worthless to achieve his stated end.

Poverty and Libertarians, Old and New

by M. George van der Meer
http://c4ss.org/content/15343

Poverty and Libertarians, Old and New

Early last week, one of many creepy U.S. bureaucracies reminiscent of the Ministry of Truth released new statistics on poverty, among various other metrics that it sees fit to keep track of. If we’re to accept the government’s data as true (and this is hardly an argument for that conclusion), nearly a third of all American counties saw a “significant increase in poverty” during the four years leading up to 2012.

Informers and Benefit Fraud

Informers and Benefit Fraud:
A Libertarian View
By Sean Gabb
February 2010

I have just been sent one of the most disgusting newspaper articles I have seen this year. It is from today’s issue of The Guardian, and describes how the British Government is considering a scheme to reward those who inform on benefit cheats. Astonishingly, the Ministers seem to think this will make people more inclined to vote Labour at the next general election. If they are right, I am not sure how much longer I want to live in this parody of a country.

But, now I have said enough about the proposed scheme, let me explain what I find so disgusting about it.

In Defence of Loan Sharking

Loan Sharking: A Brief Defence
By Sean Gabb

The British Government has announced it will cap the rates of interest on the loans people take out to tide them over till payday. It will amend the current Financial Services Bill to give the planned Financial Conduct Authority the power to limit charges.

Now, some of the interest rates charged do look astonishing. The loan companies that advertise on Channel Five all charge about 2,000 per cent. Others are said to charge as much as 4,000 per cent. The last time I borrowed money, I paid five per cent. I avoid going into debt on my credit cards, because of the 22 per cent charged on them. It may seem heartless to defend the right to charge very high interest rates – especially as these are charged to the very poor, who then have trouble getting out of debt. However, limiting the rate of interest they can be charged is not the way to help the poor. Let me explain.

A celebration of the backward welfare state or a new crisis in it?

by David McDonagh

On Monday of this week, radio 4 had a special three-hour programme on the welfare state that was worth heeding. We were told that seventy years ago William Beveridge wrote a report that was to lay the foundations for the welfare state. He identified the Five Giants that society needed to slay: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. Using archive from the time, Jane Garvey and Julian Worricker took us back to that extraordinary moment in wartime Britain that has proved so pivotal to the shape of the welfare state today.

Cameron’s Minimum Alcohol Pricing Car Crash

by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/tdJMaJyAvsY/camerons-minimum-alcohol-pricing-car.html

Cameron’s Minimum Alcohol Pricing Car Crash So the rumours were true, today was the day the government announced it was going all-in on minimum alcohol pricing.

It has been reported that this is despite stiff opposition from many areas in Westminster, including the cabinet itself. In fact, it would appear that this policy is being forced on us simply because David Cameron is obsessed with it.

Wages versus Austrian Economics and Wage Slavery

by Brad Spangler
http://c4ss.org/content/14505
Wages versus [Austrian Economics and] Wage Slavery

The following articles were written by Brad Spangler.

Wages versus Wage Slavery

One of the ongoing roadblocks to left and libertarian reconciliation, one which deserves more of our attention, is the matter of conflation of context with causality, an intellectual error committed by most on both sides.

Leftists typically blame markets for state-caused injustice that takes place in markets.

Free-market libertarians often apply a shallow analysis that causes them to defend state-caused injustice merely because its visible manifestation is in the marketplace.

In The Naughty Corner With You, Says Oliver

by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/wj1vkXsUe1o/in-naughty-corner-with-you-says-oliver.html

Some years ago, I found myself being invited to a Conservative Party fund-raising dinner. I’d never been a member of the party so it was something that came right out of left field.

It turns out that a letter I’d had printed in a local newspaper, in conjunction with an e-mail I sent to a Tory PPC, was the reason for my inclusion on the guest list barely two days before the event. I’m still at a loss as to why they made this offer, but as it was usually £50 per head and I was getting nosebag for free, who was I to grumble? Especially since the guest speaker was Oliver Letwin – one of the composers of the Tory manifesto – and a post-dinner question & answer session was promised. Ideal for getting my gobby self close enough to quiz a high profile politician at first hand, I thought.

War, Children: It’s Just a Welfare Check Away

by Thomas Knapp
http://c4ss.org/content/13717

War, Children: It’s Just a Welfare Check Away

When pundits name-check “the welfare-warfare state,” we usually mean, and are usually understood to mean, something along the lines of “bread and circuses at home, military adventurism abroad.”

That’s as good a definition as any, I suppose, and certainly an accurate description of today’s global political environment, but it fails to really capture the nature of the post-WWII trend in US politics.

In America, the “welfare” and “warfare” aspects of the state have, over that period, achieved a near-perfect merger. Rather than representing one side of two mutually reinforcing but nominally separate sets of policies, US “defense” spending has become the single largest, and by far most redistributive, welfare program in the federal budget.

The National Lottery: State Power in Support of Sin

by the Rev Dr Alan Clifford

THE LOTTERY: A NATIONAL SCANDAL

The National Lottery is a national scandal. It is state-sponsored selfishness; Government-led worship at the shrine of godless gain, promoted by blatantly blasphemous advertising.

“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.

In Defence of English Civilisation, by Sean Gabb

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/2012-10-20-qrtb-sig.mp3

On the 20th October 2012, the Traditional Britain Group- a traditional conservative organisation – in conjunction with The Quarterly Review- an historic Tory journal – hosted an all day conference at the East India Club in central London titled, “Another Country – is there a future for Tradition?”

The format involved a number of 30 to 40 minute talks, followed by questions and discussion. Speakers Included: Derek Turner, Lord Sudely, Richard Spencer, Andrew Fear, Pete Myers, Stephen Bush, Peter King, and Theodore Dalrymple.

Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance, spoke last. The title of his speech was “In Defence of English Civilisation.” Here is a summary of his speech. The speech was not written in advance, and was given without notes, and this summary is, in some respects, an amplification on and a clarification of what was said. It also incorporates into the main speech points that were raised in the questions and answers session. This text, however, can be checked against the recording, and can be seen to give a fair account of what was said.

The recording was made with a Samsung Galaxy S2 mobile telephone, and the quality is acceptable, though not outstanding.