Be careful what you say in these enlightened times. As Miss California found out when answering a question put to her during the Miss USA Beauty Pageant. Her honesty meant that she missed out on being crowned Miss USA, yet the outcome says far more about what have become acceptable personality traits in today’s society.
The question that was put to her, from Perez Hilton was, “Vermont recently became the 4th state to legalise same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?" She could have gone on to discuss the Tenth Amendment and state’s rights and given a politician’s answer, but she chose to speak openly about what she believed in. Replying with:
Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offence to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be - between a man and a woman. Thank you very much.
And for being principled she finishes second. In modern times free speech and the values that it encompasses have become belittled and undermined; debate has been sidelined. If you do not think as the ‘establishment’ want you to, then it will be ensured that you do not succeed and that your voice is not heard.
NB: Same-sex marriage should be state-by-state issue decided by the voters in each individual state. The various benefits that ‘married’ couples have accrued need to be stripped back so that it equalises the commitment between two people their genders having no influence on the contract they enter into. Once the benefits have been marginalized marriage simply becomes a contract between two people, something that others should have no say over. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been an acceptable face for Miss USA, but castigation of her beliefs is no way to ensure that the issue is debated properly. The riposte she received highlights how the right for people to choose is overlooked by those who believe they hold the moral high ground: it is the foundation of authoritarianism.
Yes, I know, in the wake of Ian Tomlinson´s death praising the police is not all that fashionable an occupation. However, just as we should and must point to the failures and perversions of what policing should be, so must we point to those instances where the very highest standards are indeed maintained.
John Vidal doesn´t seem to see this the same way that I do but then he writes for The Guardian:
It was a beautiful, crisp, sunny morning in April 2005. At 6.30am the environmental group was just minutes away from its target – a Land Rover factory in the Midlands. The meticulously planned action involved people bursting through the perimeter gate, past drowsy guards and occupying the factory line. Little did they know that almost 50 policemen were already there, drinking cups of tea and waiting for them.
Fortunately for the activists, an advance guard spotted the helmets and the bus carrying the climate change protesters was turned round. It was obvious that someone had tipped off the police. There was simply no other explanation.
From the Peelian Principles about how the police should act and react:
The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
The presence of the police at that factory that day did indeed precent crime and disorder. How wonderful. Back to Vidal:
This week it was almost certain that the 114 people arrested outside Nottingham were also shopped by an informer. Nearly a week before the action, police warned all power companies in the Midlands and the north that a major action against a coal-fired power station was likely and told them to increase security.
Peel again:
The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.
I agree that not all of the nine principles are observed in each and every police action, but as I say, we should celebrate and point to those times when they are. Here we have two incidents where the police were able and willing to prevent crime and disorder, without the use of physical force, with nothing in fact more than simple information about what the potential criminals intended to do and being there to stop them doing it.
Now to work on principles 2 through 8 perhaps....number 6 seems to be being breached regularly enough.
Finally and belatedly the Home Office is to investigate the use of surveillance by local authorities for trivial offences. The thinking is that there has to be "proportionality," and that approval for surveillance must be attained at "a sufficiently high level." As we have repeatedly pointed out, if these people are given powers, they will use them. Even if surveillance is approved for high crimes and misdemeanors, it will be used to check that people are clearing up dog dirt and closing the lids of their garbage bins.
The first step is to deny surveillance powers to any authority except police and security services. It is all right for private firms to use CCTV to guard against burglary, but it is not OK for non-police officials to use them to ensure compliance with their regulations. Even this is only a first step, given the major and chronic abuse of police powers revealed in recent cases.
The second step is to pass an act limiting the use of anti-terrorist powers to cases of suspected terrorism. It is fine to use them to stop people blowing themselves up in shopping malls, but not to stifle legitimate protest or free speech. It sounds so obvious, in that this is why these powers were originally given, but it needs to be spelled out. If they have these powers without limited use, they will use them in unlimited ways.
After the first and second steps, we need to examine the case for a consolidated repeal bill that can restore en masse the liberties lost by 12 years of erosion by governments that have shown no understanding, feeling or sympathy with the principles that have helped define our national identity. The Prime Minister talks of "Britishness," without grasping the most basic essential that it has been and ought to be a free country.
David Goodhart's article in the Sunday Times makes me want to throw up. His basic argument is: Let's face it, we don't live in a police state – this isn't Nazi Germany or Stalin's USSR, you know – and giving up a bit of your privacy in return for all the benefits that the state provides you isn't so terrible.
Yeah, right. Well, in the first place, I don't actually want to be part of this 'privacy for state services' exchange. The TV Licensing bunch advertise brazenly that our details are 'all in the database'. Oh, great, so I'm giving them all my details for the privilege of paying £142.50 per year to the government so I can watch the State Broadcaster? They should be paying me. Sure, I hand over my address and my cash to Sky, but I had a choice about that. If I want to watch Sky, or any non- BBC broadcaster, I still have to pay and hand over my info, whether I want Auntie's pompous, skewed, dumbed-down 'news' and 'entertainment' or not.
And there are plenty of other bits of the state services 'bargain' that I'd prefer to opt out of, and keep my privacy. Like the local authority which now only collects my rubbish every two weeks, and if I sort it into some arcane categories. Frankly, I'd prefer to hire a private firm. But of course I'd get thrown in jail if I refused to pay the state for its 'services'. As a liberal, I believe people should have choices, and that sort of coercion sickens me. I have the choice of telling Sky to get stuffed, I'm not going to give them my address and bank details. I can't do that with the BBC or my council refuse department.
Meanwhile, under a new EU ruling (which the UK supported and promoted, of course) internet carriers now have to keep all our emails and internet visits in case the authorities demand them. And, of course, they will. They just have to run a search program on our data log and it's an easy cop. They won't be able to resist. They'll pick you up for dropping an apple core, and – just in case this is a sign of much more malicious intent – take a fishing trip through your electronic records. That's the sort of 'privacy must be sacrificed for utility' arrangement I find terrifying.
Eamonn Butler's latest book, The Rotten State of Britain, is available to buy here.
“The Power of Brown compels you!" A seemingly common call, in this age, against the possessed masses as they wilfully follow their chosen course in life. Having successfully strapped teenagers to their desks in schools until the age of 18, after 2013 their spirits will be furthered crushed by announcements that they will have to undertake 50 hours of community service by the age of 19. This is to be done alongside the compulsory indoctrination ‘citizenship’ classes that they will be taking between 14-16 years old.
There is an evil spirit in us all, and the government has identified the surest way to eradicate it. This government is quite brazenly plotting the seizure of the teenagers’ young and fertile minds, brainwashing them into accepting every poisoned pill they put forth in the future. Young people are supposed to question authority so as to broaden their learning, yet what we are seeing with the compulsory education and youth services, is their enslavement to the ideological and moral virtues of New Labour. This would see the final nail in the Enlightenment and a retreat back to the Dark Ages when we have a politically driven morality foisted upon us. This has been evident over the past 12 years, with the continued attacks on hunting, smoking, drinking, obesity and liberty.
What a wonderful, green and unpleasant land this is creating. We will have to become rational actors of state doctrine, informing on those who do not conform. The pronouncements of the government will be taken as read and their actions will continually identify areas of life that need further shaping until we fully reflect their craven image of an ideal human. Only a clunking iron fist can rule over a society created in such a way, unless of course we are pliable after our ‘education’.
Two years ago today I woke up and walked to my Monday morning class, introduction to macroeconomics, and on the way I was informed by a friend about a tragic situation. In my economics seminar we did not discuss fiscal or monetary policy, not even inflation or unemployment, instead we discussed the unwinding events occurring at a school a few hours south of mine, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, more commonly known as Virginia Tech. Amongst the students and professor, various topics were thrown around from a need for increased security on college campuses to calls for strict gun control, but the connection that most students made in the discussion was to a similar event that happened on our own campus four months earlier.
On Wednesday December 6 2006 a fleeing criminal fired shots on police officers in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and upon escaping from the police he entered the campus of Villanova University to hide. This happened around 3:15 in the morning, and by 4 the entire campus was under lockdown. As students tried to leave their residence halls for early morning classes they were sent back to their rooms by Resident Assistants. By 10:20 AM the university was cleared and classes went on as scheduled. No one was harmed at the university because swift action was taken in response to a threat.
Although the circumstances surrounding both situations were vastly different, it made me realise that it is quite difficult to predict or fully prevent events such as these from happening. What matters more is how people respond to the situations when they do happen. Fortunately, my university was competent enough to respond to the matter in an effective way. Under similar pressure, Virginia Tech was unable to respond to the first shootings that morning as effectively, failing to prevent 30 additional murders.
Consequently, because terrorist events happen does that mean students want metal detectors at every university door, security cameras staring down their neck as they walk out of class, or administrators reading their e-mails and message conversations to ensure their safety from attacks? I assure you most students would not desire these measures to be taken. I feel much sorrow for the students who were murdered in the Virginia Tech tragedy, but I do not believe any of the above precautions would have prevented the attack. More likely, those measures would be used to arrest intoxicated students, fine them for dropping trash, invade their privacy, and keep them from getting to class on time.
Following the Virginia Tech incident, my university responded by providing a voluntary service that sends text messages to students’ mobile phones with instructions during emergencies. Since setting up the service, one more shooting occurred near our campus by an outsider, but students were immediately informed [via text] of the location and nothing was harmed, not even our personal liberties.
When our faux-fascist Home Secretary Jacqui Smith proposed that the UK authorities should keep a log of our phone calls, email and internet traffic, just in case we happened to be terrorists (or maybe drug pushers, or speeders, or litter bugs or something), there was a wave of public outrage that forced her to backtrack. Her argument was that the authorities wouldn't actually be recording our calls or snooping into the content of our emails. She and her bumblers in blue just wanted to know who we were corresponding with. They might be terrorists (or maybe drug pushers, or...), after all.
Of course, Jacqui's email and web visit demand has all been overtaken by EU legislation demanding that internet providers keep exactly that information for the authorities to fish through as and when they please. But what about phone calls?
Well, it's remarkably easy to snoop on people's mobile phone conversations. And to monitor, in real time, exactly where they are. You can even programme someone's mobile to record what they are saying. This video shows how bad guys can do this to you.
And what about the good guys? Well, there are all sorts of 'legal safeguards' when the security authorities try such things. But I wonder how many judges actually rule against such phonetaps when the police demand them? And is the division between good and bad guys even clear any more (I cite the recent G20 police-v-protesters footage in evidence).
Eamonn Butler's latest book, The Rotten State of Britain, is available to buy here.
In a Western democracy the Police Force should be a bastion of a safe, civilised society. But the events of the past week have shown there is a growing gulf between the police and the people they are meant to protect.
The police should be there to protect our property, lives and well-being, yet there seems to be a culture of conflict emerging where the police have become separated from society. As Philip Johnston said this week, the videos of police in full riot gear beating the seemingly inoffensive Ian Tomlinson to the ground conjure up images of a paramilitary force under a faraway dictatorship, rather than civilians in uniform serving the public.
Regardless of whether the police directly caused the death of Ian Tomlinson, the video evidence we have all seen is clear. He had his hands in his pockets with his back turned away from the police and was not a threat to them or the situation as a whole. This was not the only damaging story for the police force this week. Clearly the news that a major terrorism operation was compromised because the head of counter-terrorism personally flashed highly sensitive documents to waiting photographers is worrying. At least he has had the decency to resign.
There seems to be a severe lack of leadership within the police force. They resemble a gang who operate as they want and feel free to yield huge amounts of power and ‘flash their badges’ as they see fit with little control from above or suitable repercussions when they make mistakes.
Personally, if I was in need or felt threatened in public, the police would not be the first people I would turn to. Essentially, the police are the front-line agents of the state.
If it were not for Google Alerts I would never have found this website. In fact, if the number of comments are anything to go by, nor would anyone else. Titled ‘Censoring the Adam Smith Institute’ it contains an article to end all parodies of statists, showing with clarity exactly what we are all up against.
Apparently the author of the blog has:
Asked the Netherlands Interior Ministry to censor the website of the Adam Smith Institute, www.old.adamsmith.org. The Institute is the most influential free-market lobby in the United Kingdom. As with earlier censorship proposals, I requesting listing on the national police blacklist, which results in blocking by providers. For the procedure and the background, look here:
The request is based on three grounds:
The Adam Smith Institute seeks to subject others, against their will, to "free-market economic and social policies
The organisation did in fact succeed in that, and had great influence on the Thatcher regime
The organisation obstructs the work of regulatory authorities in the financial sector, by harassing them, lobbying against their functions, and by depicting them as 'enemies of freedom' - and in doing so, it facilitated massive fraud and mismanagement.
He has also asked that the “Justice Ministry to issue exclusion orders on the Institute's President Dr. Madsen Pirie, and its director Dr. Eamonn Butler, barring their entry into the Netherlands, on the grounds that they obstruct the work of the financial regulatory authorities. That request is problematic since they are presumably EU citizens, and can benefit from that status in immigration law (although they undoubtedly despise the idea themselves)."
Lunacy, yes; but with the way that freedom is going, the future might just hold such dark visions of justice.
It is not people being poor that causes social ills from school failure, teenage pregnancy, crime and short life expectancy, but the fact that some people are poorer than others. It is not the level of income, but the differences between levels that really matter. It follows that fighting poverty is the wrong battle except if it reduces inequality. The right target is inequality and never mind if reducing it were to leave the poor as poor as before. They, and society as a whole, will still be healthier and happier.
This, stripped of rhetoric, is the latest twist in the convoluted chain of arguments for altering a more or less liberal order out of all recognition until justice proper is decisively subordinated to what some call "social" justice. Explicitly shifting the target from poverty to inequality, to the point where poverty becomes irrelevant as long as it is the same for all, is a radical novelty.
There are more potent ways of fighting poverty than soaking the rich. Inducing people to form and preserve two-parent families, if indeed they can be induced to do so, could be wonderfully effective. Another very potent means is to raise the demand for labour, the main or only thing the poor have to sell. One obvious cause of rising demand for labour is capital formation which, in turn, is fed by public, corporate and personal saving. We can't predict what would happen to corporate saving, but we know that public saving is generally negative. Personal saving is typically much greater proportion of high than of low incomes. Hence the same national income unequally distributed yields more saving than if it were equally distributed. By saving more, the very affluent are, so to speak, raising the price they will have to pay for labour tomorrow. In any event, unequal affluence holds out more hope for the poor than equal poverty.
Be careful what you say in these enlightened times. As Miss California 
Finally and belatedly the Home Office is to investigate the use of surveillance by local authorities for trivial offences. The thinking is that there has to be "proportionality," and that approval for surveillance must be attained at "a sufficiently high level." As we have repeatedly pointed out, if these people are given powers, they will use them. Even if surveillance is approved for high crimes and misdemeanors, it will be used to check that people are clearing up dog dirt and closing the lids of their garbage bins.
“The Power of Brown compels you!" A seemingly common call, in this age, against the possessed masses as they wilfully follow their chosen course in life. Having successfully strapped teenagers to their desks in schools until the age of 18, after 
Two years ago today I woke up and walked to my Monday morning class, introduction to macroeconomics, and on the way I was informed by a friend about a tragic situation. In my economics seminar we did not discuss fiscal or monetary policy, not even inflation or unemployment, instead we discussed the unwinding events occurring at a school a few hours south of mine, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, more commonly known as Virginia Tech. Amongst the students and professor, various topics were thrown around from a need for increased security on college campuses to calls for strict gun control, but the connection that most students made in the discussion was to a similar event that happened on our own campus four months earlier.
When our faux-fascist Home Secretary Jacqui Smith proposed that the UK authorities should keep a log of our phone calls, email and internet traffic, just in case we happened to be terrorists (or maybe drug pushers, or speeders, or litter bugs or something), there was a wave of public outrage that forced her to backtrack. Her argument was that the authorities wouldn't actually be recording our calls or snooping into the content of our emails. She and her bumblers in blue just wanted to know who we were corresponding with. They might be terrorists (or maybe drug pushers, or...), after all.
In a Western democracy the Police Force should be a bastion of a safe, civilised society. But the 
It is not people being poor that causes social ills from school failure, teenage pregnancy, crime and short life expectancy, but the fact that some people are poorer than others. It is not the level of income, but the differences between levels that really matter. It follows that fighting poverty is the wrong battle except if it reduces inequality. The right target is inequality and never mind if reducing it were to leave the poor as poor as before. They, and society as a whole, will still be healthier and happier.