MEPs lacking oxygen of publicity

MEPs have it tough, don't they? All that time on their hands, nothing to spend their money on, because so much is given them for free. No need to even compile lengthy expense claims, as the reporting system only requires them to think of a number, double it and add a couple of noughts. No need to turn up for work, as absence is counted as voting in favour of whatever regulatory framework for paperclip recycling is being debated. But worst of all is the deprivation of that one thing all politicians crave even more than money: an audience.

Sadly, news companies are paring down their staff in the non-capital, in part as a consequence of the economic downturn, in part - I suggest - in recognition that no one cares what the free-loaders say or do.

[MEPs] say they find the trend "extremely worrying" and have advocated "supporting those currently in Brussels".... some MEPs believe that fewer accredited journalist covering the EU from Brussels could result in a much lower new coverage for EU activities, including parliament

Well, I doubt that will affect England much. The only time the Euro Assembly gets a mention is when Nigel Farage says something mean to the bank clerk they've put in charge.

.... Improving communication would help bridge the democratic deficit ...

Not at all. The democratic deficit is due to the 'European Project' to create a unitary federal state, ruled by an unelected, unaccountable cabal. The democratic deficit is well illustrated in the imposition of the Lisbon treaty after it had been rejected by the demos in France and the Netherlands, and in the decision of the British government, with the connivance of all three major parties, to cancel the referendum here. These things and more prove the power structures of the EU to be anti-democratic. This cannot be improved by more coverage. Indeed, the MEPs ought to be grateful so many people don't know what they get up to.

Thorium: fuel of the future?

The Telegraph has an interesting article on the use of thorium as fuel, and it sounds too good to be true. Apparently:

A tonne of the silvery metal produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week.

Thorium eats its own hazardous waste. It can even scavenge the plutonium left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. "It’s the Big One," said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering.

"Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said.

Thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product if they try to dig up rare earth metals. The US and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall. You do not need much: all is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7pc for uranium.

Reading further, we learn how the usual problem of vested interests has held back progress. Let us hope that, for once, the interests of humanity can come out on top.

Update: Apparently this is old news, at least to sci-fi buffs (see above). Well, hell, we're living in the 21st Century, after all. (Hat tip to the Sniper).

Atomic bomb test veterans insulted again

The shameful treatment of ex-servicemen who witnessed British atomic bomb tests continues unabated. Now the puppet Speaker of the House is trying to stop MPs asking questions, as if this will shield the MOD from the disgust that their actions invoke. It won't. The MOD has acted in a contemptible manner, cynically stringing the case out, no doubt hoping that all the ex-servicemen will die before it has to come clean.

For fifty years now, the government has committed itself to upholding the obvious lie, that the terrible health problems, high rates of cancer and premature death suffered by the ex-servicemen is nothing but a curious coincidence. Some of these men were only teenage conscripts at the time and their lives were wrecked.

Is it too much to ask the MOD to act in an honourable way?

Lehmans, Enron and three card monte

This isn't hot off the press, but worth a quick view. Ex-regulator William K. Black telling it straight about the Lehman Bros collapse. He gives a staggering figure for the amount of fraudulent loans - 90% - and likens the scam to three card monte, demonstrated here.

For further information about just how crooked Wall Street and the Fed has become, check out Alex Jones' interview with the guy, first part here.

Ancient & Modern

Something to blow the cobwebs outta ya mind.

Is it a crime to call Barroso an etc etc

Well, with the European Arrest Warrant and the European Investigation Order in force, and my country run by traitors who should be put up against a wall and machine-gunned, I guess I'll find out soon enough.

For those who question this outburst, read this post from DK and follow the links. Feel the anger rise in you, as you gaze at the dark, satanic majesty of the European Union, and how our political class handed over, without a shot fired, what so many thousands, indeed millions, of our ancestors fought and died to protect.

NB I edited the title of this, as I was tired of seeing it. It referred to Barroso doing unspeakable things with donkeys. TT 24/11/10

Max on the war racketeers

From maxkeiser.com

That Spirit Level nonsense

Via Dick Puddlecote, I come across this defence by critics of 'The Spirit Level', which pours scorn on the authors of said book for wingeing of a 'right-wing conspiracy' to rubbish their work. Apparently the nasty people are 'professional wreckers of ideas'.

However, claim the critics, it's got nothing to do with politics, it's merely that the scientific basis for 'The Spirit Level' is flawed beyond redemption. Thus, whether or not a more equal society brings all manner of benefits, this book doesn't prove it.

So far, so good. My will to live is holding up, so I go further and start reading the comment string. Big mistake, especially on my first coffee of the morning. Here's an early comment:

"Fair enough, I've not read the book, but I understand it proposes that a more fair and equal soceity is benificial for the majority and therefore soceity as a whole. Picking away at a few graphs doesn't stop that being an obvious truth."

To paraphrase this person "okay the book is bollocks, but the book is still right, as it's asserting an 'obvious truth'".

And here's another one, and I will go no further down the thread:

"Science is about testing empirical claims, which is what we've done."

"Meh...this is sociology, which is about as scientific as astrology. This argument is like listening to Russel Grant attacking the rigour of Mystic Meg.

That said, the sympathy of any compassionate human being will sit with the authors of The Spirit Level in this circumstance. Why? Well mostly because...

ANY HUMAN SERIOUSLY CLAIMING INEQUALITY MAKES SOCIETY BETTER IS SELF EVIDENTLY A TWAT.

...it doesn't take science to prove that point, just a conscience."

Firstly, sociology is a science. As we humans are the object of study, it is more contentious than looking at rocks and butterflies, but this doesn't make it not a science. Scientific principles can and must be used. The problem is that long ago socialists and their ilk lept upon social sciences because they believed that they would be able to use them to prove the scientific case for their erroneous ideas, and when this was not the case, they started denying that such things as sociology and economics were any more than sub-divisions of politics. This fellow above shows the tendency. Firstly the critics of 'The Spirit Level' are not claiming that inequality makes society better, merely that the book doesn't prove the opposite case. Secondly he gives the anti-scientific game away by stating that science should be subservient to a conscience, a clear rejection of science. So his view can be summed up as 'sociology is not science... but even if it is, my morally-superior conscience out-ranks it'.

It's difficult to argue with such a position, as argument involves the use of reason, and he has explicitly rejected reason, so ... I'll just call him a prick.

Britain leading in Europe

It may not be very clear as an image, but it's certainly clear what it shows. This is from the Eurobarometer report on public opinion vis a vis that crew of crooks, maoists and state-worshippers who sail under the cursed EU flag. The question: do you trust the EU? The UK is on the far right, and blue is those chumps who answered 'yes, I trust the EU', and red stands for 'no I fucking don't. Do I look like an idiot?'. As you can see, me and my fellow islanders are somewhat out of step, or, as I would put it, leading the way (as usual).

If any of you 20 percenters happen by, you might be interested in some beach front property I have for sale in a lovely seaside resort called Birmingham.

Friday night quiz

1 Which lasted longer?

A The Labour leadership election
B The Hundred Years War

2 Including those who died from boredom, which of the above had the higher casualties?

3 France eventually won the Hundred Years War. As for the Labour leadership contest, does anyone actually give a fuck?

Answers:
1 - Too early to say,
2 - Take your pick, the data is lacking,
3 - No, absolutely no one gives a fuck. They are all cunts, and everyone hates Labour

No parents needed for the Battle of the Anthill

Confederate troops' advance halted by call of 'tea time!'

Classic Mail story here: 'One third of parents think playing with their children is boring'. This, apparently, is cause for concern, that some kind of art is dying.

Certainly in things like card games and chess, my dad and mum were happy to play, time permitting, and were sure to give no quarter. The family competitive spirit and disdain for bad losers was instilled at an early age. A child crying because they lost a game was treated not with sympathy but derision - and rightly so.

These kind of games allowed us children to enter into an equality with adults, and taught us the manners of social interaction, quite different to the games I would play by myself, with my toy soldiers and child's imagination. Without doubt, the flights of fancy of the young mind, the role-playing of numerous 2-inch-high gun-fighters, facing off across an anthill in my back garden was of no interest to any adult, nor should it be.

Contrary to the implication of the article, parents playing with their kids in this latter sense is a very recent phenomenon, inspired by the most dubious of trendy psychologistic wank.

Sweden suspends swine flu shot

"Finland’s National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) has suspended the use of the H1N1 vaccine over fears that the shot is linked with a 300 per cent increase in cases of the neurological disorder narcolepsy among children and young people over the last six months."

Read the article at Prison Planet.

Watch out people, because they've got boxes full of vaccines from last year, which they tried to push on us last year, but failed, and they're getting ready to start pushing them again - this time new improved, combined power, vaccine ultra.

The same shit only older. Don't touch 'em, and if they try to shoot your kid up, don't let them.

My message to you all

Homage to Liberty Fund

For a long time I've had it in mind to post on my favourite publishing house, Liberty Fund. I struggle to find the superlatives. Their range is magnificent, the prices most reasonable, the quality of the finished product a sensual pleasure to touch, feel and gaze upon. All this before you've read a word. Not only this, their online library makes available for free many of these books and much more besides.

At present I am working through various works of Ludwig von Mises, and eagerly awaiting the re-issue of Marchamont Nedham's "The Excellencie of a Free State: Or the Right Constitution for a Commonwealth". ('tho he were born in a cursed place' said Thompson)

This quote is from von Mises' "Theory of Money and Credit", from a short passage added to the 1922 edition, dealing with a criticism levelled at the first edition of 1912. I won't try to explain what the point was, but it's a good example of Mises' duelling style.

The sort of procedure that Professor Lotz adopts here for solving a problem of economic science must necessarily end in failure. It is not enough to collect the opinions of businessmen—even if they are “leading” men or belong to “leading” houses—and then serve them up to the public, garnished with a few on the one hand’s and on the other hand’s, an admittedly or so, and a sprinkling of all the same’s. The collection of “facts” is not science, by a long way. There are no grounds for ascribing authoritative significance to the opinions of businessmen; for economics, these opinions are nothing more than material, to be worked upon and evaluated. When the businessman tries to explain anything he becomes as much a “theorist” as anybody else; and there is no reason for giving a preference to the theories of the practical merchant or farmer. It is, for instance, impossible to prove the cost-of-production theory of the older school by invoking the innumerable assertions of businessmen that “explain” variations in prices by variations in costs of production.

Nowadays there are many who, busied with the otiose accumulation of material, have lost their understanding for the specifically economic in the statement and solution of problems. It is high time to remember that economics is something other than the work of the reporter whose business it is to ask X the banker and Y the commercial magnate what they think of the economic situation.

From the end of chapter 8.

Exponential Growth: a definition

"New crimes brought in since 1989 fill three volumes of the criminal law record, Halsbury's Statutes of England and Wales, taking up 3,746 pages.

All the crimes established in the 637 years between 1351 and 1988 fill only one volume."

From the Mail.

Hat tip: Witterings from Witney

Pat on form

Reminds me of a time I went round to see this Irish friend of mine. I said 'you've got very high ceilings'. He said 'ah yes, the wife persuaded me to knock two rooms into one'.

Boom boom.

(Hat tip: Captain Ranty)

Exclusive! Barroso being ...

Okay, I can't actually be bothered to photoshop such a sordid image (or indeed spend any time tidying up the one below), but if I did it would go some way to expressing my utter contempt and hatred for the Union European and the traitorous quisling scum who took us into it and keep us there.

The reason for my present ire is this statement on VAT 'harmonisation', including the following statements:

"New cross-border rules introduced on January 1will prove a cash cow for troubled national exchequers to be followed by harmonised rates and registration. The moves, last stages of which are going through the European Parliament and Council of Ministers will provide massive liquidity injections to countries with lower rates such as Britain and Germany."

"In Belgium some 300,000 associations are being caught by the rules enforced by crosschecking introduced in every member state. They face VAT bills going back seven years for which they can only claim back for three years."

These vampire cunts. Imagine how they are salivating at their latest plan to plunder us all. Only when they have finished bleeding us all dry will they realise that the parasite needs the host. If the parasite kills the host, the parasite also dies.

I recognise that this post is not particularly eloquent. Indeed some may find my way of expressing myself offensive. But what the fuck. My country's being destroyed from within by a bunch of traitors.

N.B. I edited the title of this post, as I was tired of seeing it come up due to, I presume, fucked up people looking for something else. It referred to Barosso being known in the Biblical sense by a canine. TT 24/11/10

How to deal with RSPCA officials

Probably the most humane way is to shoot them in the head with an air pistol, although Natural England recommend putting them in a sack and battering them with a big stick. Drowning them in a water butt is effective but not recommended.

Although some will be too squeamish to take such action, they are vermin and carry a contagious virus.

(Hat tip: Ambush Predator).

Look who's profiting from crime

Maybe Peter Wells, aged 70, didn't have a convincing argument for why there was £500,000 stashed in his karzi, but the fact that the police and CPS couldn't get a conviction for money laundering and could still grab the old guy's money using the 'proceeds of crime' legislation only proves that a lower standard of evidence is needed for the latter.

Effectively under 'proceeds of crime', the defendant has to prove his innocence, and the presumption is that Big Government can help itself to whatever it likes of the property of convicted criminals, even if the conviction is years past. As usual, the state acts like the big boss, taking a cut of all the petty gangsters' hoards, and unlike the rest of us, is expressly permitted to profit from crime. You will note, all that money ain't going in the treasury furnace, but rather the coffers of the rozzers.

Anyone convicted under a law introduced by the last socialist government has a prima facie claim to be a victim of a miscarriage of justice. Labour hate our liberties and don't understand the principles of our law. Letting Labour run the legal system is like lending your new i-phone to a chimpanzee. Now it's not working properly and covered in monkey shit.

Made in America: Banned in America

The Korea Times reports that the U.S. government is blocking the re-importation of a large number of old M1 Garand and carbine rifles. According to a Korean official:

“The U.S. insisted that imports of the aging rifles could cause problems such as firearm accidents. It was also worried the weapons could be smuggled to terrorists, gangs or other people with bad intentions.”

Oh, sure... it's not that you're a bunch of America-hating, gun-grabbing scum, with a hard-on for taking people's freedom away, then?

Hey, Felipe! Go fuck yourself

The fucking gall of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, trying to blame the bloody plight of his failed narco-state on American freedoms.

"Calderon described US arms dealers as “greedy and ambitious,” and said their “business is to sell arms to criminals,” AFP reported."

No, mother fucker, US arms dealers' business is to sell arms to American citizens, in keeping with the inalienable liberties enshrined in the Constitution, all the more necessary due to your murderous compatriots, streaming over the border, unimpeded by the Federal government, who'd rather pursue union with Canada and Mexico through the back door, and convert the illegals into democrat voters.

If Calderon wants to know why Mexico is fucked up, he needs to look a little closer to home.

Hat tip: Infowars

Dr Kelly pathologist calls for inquest to be re-opened

I guess you could accuse me of spinning that headline, but Nicholas Hunt did say:

"I would welcome an inquest, I've nothing to hide."

As earlier posts illustrate, I am of the opinion that Dr Kelly was murdered and the British government covered it up. If I'm wrong, it wouldn't be the first time, but the British government is not going to get any benefit of the doubt from me. As Bill Hicks eloquently put it:

"All governments are liars and murderers."

So let's have it then. Let the inquest be re-started and let the evidence from all concerned be heard. For all we know Nicholas Hunt may only be shouting 'don't throw me in the briar patch'.

The logical fallacy of statist paternalism

"Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

Thus spake Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, March 1801. I must try to commit that to memory for the next time I argue the case for individual freedom and responsibility, as opposed to state coercion and paternalism, which takes the abberant behaviour of the few as justification to trample the liberties of us all.

Hat tip to Witterings from Witney, where I saw the quote.

The anonymous truth

Over at Mark Wadsworth's blog he covers the reported handbags between Georgie Osborne and Ian Duncan Smith over the latter's welfare reform plans. This elicited the following comment, which I think sums up very well one of the key problems with welfarism:

"The current welfare system is seriously flawed and provides virtually no incentive to try and pay your way. My son was made redundant, he has a partner and a child. He believes in working but due to the lack of jobs could only find part time work, minimum wage and minimum 16 hrs / week but sometimes more. Variable income makes claiming benefits a nightmare. 16 hours means he is better off by £22 per week. 20 hours equates to £26 per week. 30 hours means he is better off not working!!

The system stinks."

Schadenfreude: a definition

That warm feeling of levity I feel when I read Lord Two Jags in the Guardian reveal:

"The Labour party stands on the verge of bankruptcy. We are more than £20m in debt, facing a long-term decline in membership and a crisis in funding."

Ho ho ho.

P.S. Prescott, why not ask one of those multi-millionaire troughers who enriched themselves at our expense during your woeful misrule of my beloved country, e.g. Mandelson or Blair?

(Hat tip: the Boiling Frog)

Like a limp cock in a heavy-duty condom...

... David Blunket was 'insufficiently sensitive', as Home Secretary under the late, unlamented, Labour administration, to how European arrests warrants would be used. He was right to impose them, in any case, according to him.

However, there are no surprises in the way these warrants are being used. It was made clear at the time that they would expose British citizens to the lowest common denominator that passes for justice in the benighted ex-states of the Union of Europe. It's not that Blunket was insensitive, it was that he didn't give a flying fuck, drunk on power, using the police as his private security force, guarding his concubines etc.

The Labour administration worshipped at the altar of Bruxellian power, presenting the hard-won liberties of the English as burnt offerings to their Bismarckian Baal. Their replacements from the other wing of the centrist, statist, Keynesian leviathan are 'committed to reviewing' our extradition arrangements. Hmm, tough talk, but Cameron and Clegg are both also committed to our nation's ever-deeper enslavement to the UE, so I wouldn't expect much.

(Also covered at Witterings from Witney)

The future Keynes' spurned

The economic policy of post-war governments has followed the principles of Keynesianism. John Maynard's economic ideas are summed up in his famous quip: "In the long run, we're all dead". And indeed, Keynes is now dead and the people he said it to are all dead. And we, who are quick, that is to say alive, are left with the acumulated mess that Keynes' system put off to the never-arriving tomorrow. Thus Schumpeter refers to Keynes' "childless vision".

What's that rattling in the cupboard?

That would be Dr Kelly's skeleton.

Crime I can live with

If I must be a victim of crime, let it be this.

A dirty pebble

Hold on to your mojo.

EU: the enemy over the water is always busy

It's easy to forget about the EU, to let life continue on its course, without concerning yourself on what our mortal enemies are plotting in Brussels, and what their operatives, embedded at the very top of the political power structure in our country, are scheming to implement.

But when you do turn your attention to the EU, the dark majesty can mesmerise you, dumb-struck and staring at a pyroclastic flow of red-hot, suffocating regulation, rushing towards you. 'Harmonisation' the harpies screech overhead, the last thing you hear and then - silence. The Anglo-saxon culture destroyed, drowned in dust, the Bismarckian State has triumphed.

Such are my thoughts when I follow a thread from this Commission action plan, wondering what Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA on racism and xenophobia meant. Here we find:

Article 1

Offences concerning racism and xenophobia

1. Each Member State shall take the measures necessary to ensure that the following intentional conduct is punishable:

(a) publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin;

(b) the commission of an act referred to in point (a) by public dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material;

(c) publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined in Articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin when the conduct is carried out in a manner likely to incite to violence or hatred against such a group or a member of such a group;

(d) publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising the crimes defined in Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal appended to the London Agreement of 8 August 1945, directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin when the conduct is carried out in a manner likely to incite to violence or hatred against such a group or a member of such a group.

2. For the purpose of paragraph 1, Member States may choose to punish only conduct which is either carried out in a manner likely to disturb public order or which is threatening, abusive or insulting...

A balance is struck with these two articles. The second one gives dispensation to include a qualifying hurdle, that the act of racism or xenophobia - howsoever defined - must disturb public order etc. The presence or absence for such a requirement makes a world of difference. If the point is to harmonise laws across the provinces (the erstwhile member states), this seems to negate it, but only seems. In reality such grey areas provide avenues for further regulatory expansion.

How much longer must we tolerate national unsovereignty? EU membership is a curse, it's like being swallowed by an enormous slow-moving, cold-blooded creature. Our feet went in; the people grumbled. Our legs went down; the people gesticulated. Now we're up to our necks - ALAS!

Cassandra Award winner for 1891

... must have been Eugen Richter, for his astoundingly prescient 'Pictures of the Socialistic Future', a black comedy set in a future where socialism has triumphed. Here, his ever-hopeful narrator discusses the recent allocation of housing:

Upon the cornpletion of this casting lots for residences, exchanges of the rooms that had fallen to the various ticket-holders were permissible. Those persons who desired to remain together, such as married couples, for instance, but who had got their quarters in different streets, houses, or storeys, were allowed to exchange as best they could. For my part, I had to put up with a tiny room, a mere cupboard of a place, adjoining the room vvhich had fallen to my wife's lot, and, in order to get this cupboard, I had to give up my nice room in a neighbouring house to a young man to whom the cupboard had fallen; but the main thing, after all, is that we do not get separated.

Not that all married couples have, by any means, yet been successful in obtaining a satisfactory exchange of rooms. There may be even some who do not take any particular pains to secure this end. Marriage is a private affair; and, therefore, officially, there can be no lotteries of larger dwellings for married people, and of smaller ones for those who are single. Were such the case, then, the termination of a marriage contract, for instance (which ought to be attainable at any moment), might have to be put off until single rooms for the individuals concerned were procurable. As it now is, each compound dwelling formed by the two halves to a marriage contract can, at a moment's notice, on the termination of the contract, be resolved into its original halves. All you have to do is to make a division of the furniture, and the thing is settled.

Thus we see that everything in the new Community has been settled in a logical and sagacious manner. All the arrangements guarantee full personal liberty to every man and every wornan; and how humiliated must those feel who used to maintain that Socialism meant the subjugation of the individual will.

Indeed. Find the book at the Ludwig von Mises site.

From our correspondent in Pyong Yang

Gratuitous picture of a woman on a bicycle from James Higham's vast collection (#295)

Coming across this article on the Grauniad's 'Bike Blog', for some time I couldn't work out what I was looking at. What country is this talking about? The picture gave no indication, but the content indicated it was some kind of failing, Eastern Bloc-type, quietly-into-the-night-slipping nation. Yep, that's right; my own.

Apparently the last government has been running a ridiculous scheme, giving tax breaks to people cycling to work, and now in the present austerity it's facing the chop. In common with other Brownite tax schemes, it would not be necessary in the first place, if the government hadn't already stolen so much of our money. It also serves another of their false gods by creating needless bureaucracy.

The article includes a quote from a biking org, along the lines that the scheme should be reformed rather than axed, and calling for tighter application of rules, with inspectors scurrying around, checking cyclists are using their subsidised bikes for work and not just leisure.

Libertarian Liberal position: Axe the scheme, and axe the tax that subsidises it. Cut out the government middleman between you and your own money.

A door creaks...

... as I slip into the lecture theatre. Murray Rothbard has already started.

Reductio necessarum

The lib-tory government is doing the usual: rattling the paddle at benefit fraudsters, which will achieve little I imagine. Going after the fraudsters is all very well, but what about the ones we read about in certain newspapers who are scooping thousands and living it up, breeding irresponsibly and all within the bloody rules?

It plays to the gallery for the government to act tough, and gives the leftists a chance to wag the finger at tax-dodgers, so everyone's happy. I doubt the government has the power, the inclination or the virtue to properly reduce the welfare state (to rubble, ideally).

From the Austrian Archives

I have become interested in the work of Wilhelm Röpke, one of whose books I quoted below. Here is another interesting passage, this time from 'A Humane Economy'. He is looking back on the lessons from the first fifteen years after the Second World War, giving a lesson on the follies of socialism and a stout defence of liberty ...

What has been the impact of this experience and of its interpretation on a man like myself? Perhaps the one thing I know most definitely is something negative: I can hardly describe myself as a socialist in any meaningful or commonly accepted sense. It took me a long time to become quite clear on this point, but today it seems to me that this statement, properly understood, is the most clear-cut, firm, and definite part of my beliefs. But this is where the problem begins. Where does a man of my kind take his stand if he is to attack socialism because he believes it to be wrong?

Is the standpoint of liberalism the right one to deliver his attack? In a certain sense, yes, if liberalism is understood as faith in a particular "social technique," that is, in a particular economic order. If it is liberal to entrust economic order, not to planning, coercion, and penalties, but to the spontaneous and free co-operation of people through the market, price, and competition, and at the same time to regard property as the pillar of this free order, then I speak as a liberal when I reject socialism. The technique of socialism-that is, economic planning, nationalization, the erosion of property, and the cradle-to-the-grave welfare state--has done great harm in our times; on the other hand, we have the irrefutable testimony of the last fifteen years, particularly in Germany, that the opposite-the liberal-technique of the market economy opens the way to wellbeing, freedom, the rule of law, the distribution of power, and international co-operation. These are the facts, and they demand the adoption of a firm position against the socialist and for the liberal kind of economic order.

The history of the last fifteen years, which is that of the failure of the socialist technique all along the line and of the triumph of the market economy, is indeed such as to lend great force to this faith. But, if we think it through, it is much more than simple faith in a social technique inspired by the laws of economics. I have rallied to it not merely because, as an economist, I flatter myself that I have some grasp of the working of prices, interest, costs, and exchange rates. The true reason lies deeper, in those levels where each man's social philosophy is rooted. And here I am not at all sure that I do not belong to the conservative rather than the liberal camp, in so far as I dissociate rnyself from certain principles of social philosophy which, over long stretches of the history of thought, rested on common foundations with liberalism and socialism,. or at least accompanied them. I have in mind such "isms" as utilitarianism, progressivism, secularism, rationalism, 'optimism, and what Eric Voegelin aptly calls "immanentism" or "social gnosticism."!

In the last resort, the distinction between socialists and nonsocialists is one which divides men who hold basically different views of life and its true meaning and of the nature of man and society. Cardinal Manning's statement that "all human differences are ultimately religious ones" goes to the core of the matter. The view we take of man's nature and position in the universe ultimately determines whether we choose man himself or else "society," the "group," or the "community" as our standard of reference for social values. Our decision on this point becomes the watershed of our political thinking, even though we may not always be clearly aware of this and may take some time to realize it. This remains true in spite of the fact that in most cases people's political thinking is by no means in line with their most profound religious and philosophical convictions because intricate economic or other questions mask the conflict. People may be led by Christian and humane convictions to declare themselves in sympathy with socialism and may actually believe that this is the best safeguard of man's spiritual personality against the encroachments of power, but they fail to see that this means favoring a social and economic order which threatens to destroy their ideal of man and human freedom. There remains the hope that one may be able to make them aware of their error and persuade them by means of irrefutable, or at least reasonable, arguments that their choice in the field of economic and social order may have consequences which are diametrically opposed to their own philosophy.

As far as I myself am concerned, what I reject in socialism is a philosophy which, any "liberal" phraseology it may use notwithstanding, places too little emphasis on man, his nature, and his personality and which, at least in its enthusiasm for anything that may be described as organization, concentration, management, and administrative machinery, makes light of the danger that all this may lead to the sacrifice of freedom in the plain and tragic sense exemplified by the totalitarian state. My picture of man is fashioned by the spiritual heritage of classical and Christian tradition. I see in man the likeness of God; I am profoundly convinced that it is an appalling sin to reduce man to a means (even in the name of highsounding phrases) and that each man's soul is something unique, irreplaceable, priceless, in comparison with which all other things are as naught. I am attached to a humanism which is rooted in these convictions and which regards man as the child and image of God, but not as God himself, to be idolized as he is by the hubris of a false and atheist humanism. These, I believe, are the reasons why I so greatly distrust all forms of collectivism.

From 'A Humane Economy' by Wilhelm Röpke; cap 'Reappraisal after fifteen years', page 2.

Descending to the level of the mainstream media...

... What's the big political story here? That Dave bottled it over cutting school milk. The phantom of the Milk Snatcher rises from the misty cemetery.

As a child in the 1970s, may I say that Maggie couldn't have saved me quick enough from that rank, turning milk they'd force on us.

Not shattered, but softened

A HUMANE ECONOMY
The Social Frame·work of the Free Market
by Wilhelm Ropke

From Chapter IV - The Welfare State and Chronic Inflation - (Page 159)

The situation which the leading welfare-state countries have already reached, and which others are aiming at, startlingly coincides with the famous vision which Alexis de Tocqueville, Heine's contemporary, saw in his mind's eye when he described the coming state in his classical work Democracy in America: "[The government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the· most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." (Vol. II, Book IV, Chapter 6, p. 319.)

Find the book (and many others) at Ludwig von Mises Institute

The sort of filth Dawkins abhores

Raphael's Sistine Madonna. See it before the atheists ban it and burn it.

Council housing debate: no half measures will work

Cameron's suggestion that council housing tenure should not be for life has not so much sparked a debate, as allowed all the old arguments to be taken out of the cupboard and given an airing. The real solution would be to move as rapidly as possible to the abolition of council housing.

As with so much of welfarism, council housing incentivises all the wrong types of behaviour, and Cameron's tinkering will change nothing. If the idea is that those tenants who have jobs to support themselves are to be turfed out of their below-market-rate rents, you introduce a new reason to remain resolutely at the bottom of society, or at least appear to be so.

It is not hard to imagine a couple deciding to fake separation after five years of occupancy, in order to reduce the stated level of household income, nor for someone to turn down a job if in doing so, he'll lose his home. So the rule would add to the downward pressure exerted on anyone caught in the honey-trap of welfare.

If the full abolition isn't likely, here's my suggested tinker: After five years, you have to buy it or move on.

Naked body scanners: a correction

Remember those assurances that images would not be stored from the naked body scanners which our hitlerian governments all rushed to unveil after the underpant bomber incident?

Yeah. That was a lie. What they meant to say is: "Shut up slaves. We own you and if we want to use our dumb thugs at the airport to coerce you and your children into our scanners, and store thousands of such images, that's our business."

A Libertarian Liberal writes...

I just finished a long and, I thought, eloquent comment at Longrider, and the thing got bounced into oblivion as suspected spam, so I'll reiterate it here, where I should be assured publication. The post draws attention to a strange haven of leftist lunacy under the pompous title of 'Tax Research UK'. It claims to be a blog, but the writer lacks the blogging spirit, as a perusal of the commenting rules makes clear.

Only comments are allowed from sycophants who share the writer's weltanshauung (some kind of sick, utopian fallacy, as far as I can gather). Which is all very well, if you're a humble, unprepossessing scribe, deep in thought on weighty matters, but instead he spends his time throwing dirt at other people and expounding ludicrous economic theorems, which cry out for correction and refutation.

My advice to him, is if he doesn't want libertarian commenters refuting his ad hominem slurs, he shouldn't make them. If he wishes to make them, he should defend them. Sadly he's all cock and no balls. This below is an 'acceptable' comment (slurp slurp):

"This is absolutely fascinating Richard - if the attacks by right-wing “libertarians” (I’m putting that in inverted commas because if their objective is to eliminate dissent from anyone who doesn’t share their POV then they’re anything BUT libertarian) on your blog are part of the same pattern, it explains a lot."

Notice how this person equates attacking someone's arguments with trying to eliminate dissent. Typical leftist position: having so little virtue in themselves, they sink into misanthropy, and accuse opponents of being as valueless as they are. They look in the mirror and what they see scares them - and it should! He uses the word 'dissent'. His marxist logic tells him to struggle for hegemonic control of the orthodox, at which point dissenters can be persecuted, therefore he assumes his opponents seek the same thing.

I think it is true that libertarian ideas are growing in popularity, and we should welcome the opportunity this presents, and guard against the dangers that come also, such as those contained in the leftist conflation of 'rightwing' and 'libertarian'. Partly this comes from the leftwing's definition of rightwing as everything that isn't leftwing (similar to Baldrick's definition of a dog: 'Not a cat'), and partly this comes from people who identify themselves as rightwing libertarians, based on the overlap between those two ways of thinking at this juncture, but we must beware libertarianism being used as a flag of convenience by people ready to oppose the big state when run by a leftist faction, but have no intention of dismantling anything once the levers of power are in their hands. For this reason, and others, I believe libertarians should raise the liberal banner alongside the Gadsden Flag.

The word 'liberal' belongs to us. Yes or no?

Of course yes, if we own the works of Hayek, von Mises, Lord Acton, de Tocqueville and all such worthy and insightful thinkers. It is time to take the battle into the liberal heartlands. Our brethren there are labouring under the yoke of socialistic fallacies, but they are liberal in the recent usage, and this is a start.

The meaning of 'liberal' is changing in any case, due to there being a party in power with the name in its title. The left now curses the liberals and is raising a banner of resistance, which all must rally to. Libertarians should step in and occupy as the left retreats.

Welcome to the 1000th post of Englands Freedome, Souldiers Rights

I surprise myself. Since starting this blog in September 2007, I've managed to clock up 1000 posts. I've not made any real effort to raise its profile or draw in a wider audience, and I have no idea what it's readership numbers are, the only gauge being those of you who leave comments, which are always gratefully received, and I thank those of you who have done so, reminding me that there is a world out there and not just me, dropping ash on my underpants.

When I began, I chose to write under the nom de plume Trooper William Thompson because I wanted to distance myself from an earlier foray into the world of blogging, which was under my own name. I also wanted to pay homage to the original and best William Thompson, a little-known renegade from the English Civil War, whose life was ended in a shoot-out near Northampton in 1649. 'Englands Freedome, Souldiers Rights' was a pamphlet he wrote, whilst being held captive in 1647. I always intended to tell something of his life, as it is a very interesting story. That I still haven't gives me another reason to keep up this blog.

I have always written pretty much for myself, seeing this blog as merely one among many, offering up the hallowed two finger salute to the government whether tory or labour, the bureaucrats, eurocrats, eugenicists, fabian control-freak scum and all their foul lackeys and fellow travellers letting them know that the spirit of William Thompson lives, and that spirit says:

No surrender.

Judge Ball: the stupidest cunt in Christendom?

Back in October, 2009 this blog labeled Judge Christopher Ball 'Public Enemy of the day' for his execrable decision to leave a burglar with over 600 offences to his name at liberty, and not only that to give him a free flat to live in with his girlfriend.

Today the Mail reports how that same burglar has finally been locked up by the same idiot judge, after another spree of burglaries. Judge Testicle declared:

"The public are the victims of your offending and you are responsible for it - no-one else."

Err... hold on a moment. He's surely responsible for his actions, but you're the stupid cunt who set him free last time - you should be in the dock along side him for conspiracy.

Your government understands. Now shut the fuck up

From the FCO website, responding to the many calls, via the government's laughable consultation process, to restore our nation's sovereignty:

"We understand that so many of you feel jaded and sceptical about the EU. Speaking about the EU in Parliament, the Foreign Secretary said he knows there is “a profound disconnection between the British people and what has been done in their name by British Governments”. We want to deal with this."

No, you don't, you lying cunts. I am not jaded, I am not sceptical, and I'm not a fucking idiot. I want my country to be free, independent, sovereign. I want, crazy optimist that I am, my country's government TO OBEY THE FUCKING LAW! And that means upholding our sovereignty.

They may be lazy, but the people are not so stupid to believe your soothing falsehoods, about how you're going to ask us next time there's a treaty. There won't be another treaty. There's no need for another treaty. You treasonous scum gave them everything. There's nothing left to hand over. We know where the Nic Cleggocrats stand - they've always favoured surrender, and we know where Potato-Head stands, because he shivved Vaclav Klaus right between the shoulder blades, when the Czech president was heroically holding out against Lisbon.

So save your words. I'd rather you told it straight. Say what you really think. You'll feel better if you speak honestly. You've betrayed our country, the country of your ancestors. You feel okay about it, because you have the money you stole from us to keep you insulated, and you think you're on the winning team. But history's a funny thing, and sometimes truth and justice does win out.

Just one question...

... The main details of this case, I will leave for others to discuss.

What I want to know is why, and with what possible justification, was Aftab Khan's sentence reduced on appeal from nine years to seven? Was it; 'well, you raped this girl, drugged her, whored her to any number of men, but you're basically not a bad guy'?

Judges: fucking rats, the lot of 'em.

Don't get angry, get lobotomised

The Mail reports:

"Academics say they are close to developing the first vaccine for stress - a single jab that would help us relax without slowing down.

After 30 years of research into cures for stress, Dr Robert Sapolsky, professor of neuroscience at Stanford University in California, believes it is possible to alter brain chemistry to create a state of 'focused calm'...

Last week, a Stanford University colleague, who called the potential vaccine 'the Sapolsky shot', said: 'In humans this engineered virus would short-circuit the neural feedback caused by stress, that lingering feeling of tension after a crisis has passed.

'It would leave you fresher and ready to deal with another threat, so you can maintain your drive, but with more focused calm rather than bad temper and digestion.

'This could change society.'"

Yeah... you want me to take a genetically-engineered herpes virus injection? And then I won't worry about anything ever again? I won't get angry about anything? I guess that would change society. But...

What about things I'm supposed to get angry about? What about the fact that anger is part of the self-preservation mechanism? You see, I get angry when people fuck with me. If I don't get angry any more when people fuck with me, where's their incentive not to fuck with me? I get stressed about things that should stress me out, because things are wrong and need to be righted.

So, Doktor Frankenstein Koksukker Sapolsky, bring a needle near me I'll ram it in your eyeball you cunt! Capisce? Now fuck off.

Hat tip: Infowars

From my misspent youth

The secret treaty we should all be shouting about

From Mises Daily:

ACTA: The War on Progress, Freedom, and Human Civilization

A clandestine international treaty is currently being negotiated among parties including the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the European Union, Japan, Singapore, and Morocco. It can justly be called the greatest threat of our time to the advancement of human civilization. Considering the magnitude of the other abuses of power pervading the world today, this might seem an exaggeration, but the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) contravenes every principle of civilized society, both in its content and in the nature of the proceedings leading to its creation.

It threatens to undo the accomplishments of the great Internet revolution and to thrust humankind back to a time when individuals had no public voice and no countervailing power against politically privileged mercantilist institutions. ACTA tramples on essential rights that have achieved even mainstream recognition: innocence until one is proven guilty, due process, personal privacy, and fair use of published content. Moreover, because of its designation as a trade agreement, ACTA could be imposed on the people of the United States by the president, without even a vote of Congress...

Read the article.

Flu jab banned for toddlers after massive increase in seizures.

Back in the day, I told everyone who would listen not to take the flu shot. The government told you to take it, the Chief Medical Officer told you to take it. Pregnant women were pressurised to take it...

Now I read how doctors are being told not to use one such vaccine on under-fives, due to a ten-fold increase in seizures, and you can bet that there will be many more reactions that have not been recorded as linked to that vaccine.

If you trust these pharma companies with your health, let alone your own children, you are crazy.

Congressman Pete Stark: what a cunt!

Check this guy out. What an absolute wanker. His brand of horseshit lies may work far away in DC, but don't play so well amongst ordinary people. Hopefully his days are numbered.

Hat tip: Infowars

"Even the nazis"?

The world of the Guardian is a strange, topsy-turvy place. They have a story about British army officers wanting to hunt foxes in Germany, where they were stationed in the 1950s, and Churchill putting the kibosh on it, not wanting to annoy the locals. Apparently the nazis had banned the practice. The article says:

"The row has a contemporary political resonance because the modern debate often alludes to the fact that even the Nazis outlawed fox-hunting." (my emphasis)

Come off it, Graun! That's not how it works. The fact the nazis did something is without exception used as an argument against it, although not necessarily a good one. I've never come across anyone arguing the reverse, which is implied here, that something is so self-evidently proper that even the nazis agreed.

Happiness is a warm giro

There's something very distasteful in the Fawcett Society's case against the government's budget. Having read their analysis, it seems to boil down to this: women are the main 'beneficiaries' of the bloated dependency culture created by big government socialism, therefore cutting it back will affect them worse than men.

Their whole argument is predicated on massive state intervention, and marinated in victimhood. As far as they're concerned, equality means the government playing the role of breadwinner, rather than a particular man. They want wealth redistribution through high taxes and generous benefits - in other words they want a Labour government back in power. Tough titty, ladies. They lost, and before they lost, they spent all the money, so there's no point demanding a bigger slice of the cake - there ain't no fucking cake.

What the packaging doesn't tell you

Much as the tendency is to ignore such worrying things, it is better to know the truth, and the truth is we should be very concerned about the expansion of GM crops, the use of sodium fluoride in water supplies, dangerous additives in food and such like. As consumers, we have power and better use it. The first part of this is here.

Catching up with Max

I haven't tuned in to Max Keiser's show for a while. I don't share all his views, but he's always entertaining.

E-Cigs and the Anti-Sex League

Ever since the e-cigarette has been offering smokers a safe and apparently pleasurable (I don't know, not having yet tried) alternative to tobacco, the sons and daughters of temperance and self-flagellation (AKA the anti-smoking lobby) have been wailing and gnashing their pearly-white teeth at this threat to their plans. So, unsurprisingly, they are trying to ban them. Whether this will succeed, I don't know, but this (anonymous) comment at Frank Davis's blog sums up the situation very well:

"Of course they’re going to ban the e-cig. Nothing could possibly be more frustrating to today’s anti-smokers than seeing a group that they so enjoy persecuting and alienating getting round their attempts in a harmless, legal and - worst of all - enjoyable way.

This latest announcement convinces me now 100% that the anti-smoking movement, each and every last one of them, with no exceptions - from the leading lights at the top to the faux coughers and hand-flappers in the local High Street - are sadistic, cowardly, lying, bullying scum. That’s what drives them. Not the cheeldren, not public health, not dislike of pubs, not even the financial rewards. It’s a driving need to dominate, to be seen to be more important, stronger, superior, better. Maybe in the early days there were a few people who misguidedly but genuinely believed that they were acting in the public’s best health interests. Not now. These days every frustrated, worthless piece of snot who doesn’t have any real control or influence in his own life just has to join the anti-smoking bandwagon and - hey presto - they’ve got a ready-made target group upon whom they can, with impunity, vent their feelings of bitterness and anger over the miserable state of their unsatisfactory little lives and the insignificant part they play within them, supported and funded by a Government who are either too blind to see what’s happening, or too cowardly to confront it."

Sunday morning

Most of my fellow libertarian bloggers are a godless bunch, sharing with the leftists a hatred of religion, preferring to sneer about 'sky pixies' and such like, in the manner of sixth form rebels. I remain unimpressed.

Hitchens on form

I like Peter Hitchens, even though he would no doubt wish to see me breaking rocks in an arrowed suit for something or other, but there's nothing I would object to in his blog/column today, all common ground between the cantankerous old conservative and this particular libertarian liberal.

Firstly he notes the Con-Lib government's latest disgusting prostration in front of the imperial throne of Brussels, secondly he champions the young yachtswoman Laura Dekker and her battle with big daddy government, thirdly he swats Cameron - 'Obama's spaniel' and there's more besides. Good stuff.