A remarkable by-election victory heralds the end of New Labour as the Conservatives’ positive campaign contrasts starkly with the democratic socialists’ desperate return to class war.
Those who believe in freedom, enterprise and responsibility must now rise to the challenge of restoring our classic liberal society.
I just discovered that a long-lost friend is a Marxist.
We agree that we are engaged in a fight for freedom, and so we return to the point on which the debate still turns: should we have a big state and trust the few or a small state and trust the many? State control or free competition?
This debate is an old one, but few actually participate, never mind after researching both sides.
Found this old joke. Posted for posterity:
Socialism: You have two cows; you give one to your neighbour.
Communism: You have tow cows; the government takes both and gives you the milk.
Fascism: You have two cows; the government takes both and sells you the milk.
Nazism: You have two cows; the government takes both and shoots you.
Bureaucratism: You have two cows; the government takes both, shoots one, milks
the other and throws the milk away.Capitalism: You have two cows; you sell one and buy a bull.
First, the Conservatives propose a tax on “problem drinks” and are told EU rules won’t allow it.
Now the Lib Dems propose a cut in VAT on juices to be paid for by extra tax on “some alcoholic drinks”.
I’m now looking forward to a stream of useful policy ideas which conflict with EU laws…
Today, I had two pleasant conversations with strangers in London. Now this is not unheard of in the north, but who speaks to anyone in the City?
People on bikes, it turns out, at the traffic lights. I asked after a bizarre three-wheeled scooter and had a great response from a French guy, who was delighted to be asked and loved my KTM. Five minutes later, a lad on a BMW F650GS pulled up in traffic and asked what I thought of my 950 Supermoto, as he was thinking of getting one: we pulled off the road for a brief chat.
Now this can’t have cost me more than two minutes, but even in the rain and the grime, it was a pleasant start to the day, and for three people too.
Troubling footage of an official of the Giuliani campaign. Worrying in the context of increasingly authoritarian law and recent comments from Muslim leaders in the UK, saying they feel they are being “demonised”.
See also http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/video/2007/dec/27/primaries.rudy.guiliani
First, the Human Rights Act. We really did “bring rights home”, as we said we would. At last British people have been able directly to access and to enforce positive rights in the British courts, rather than having to go to Strasbourg and wait for years in a queue.
Shami Chakrabarti, Director, Liberty, in a letter of December 2007: “Our research shows that, far from being the home of liberty, Britain has the most draconian detention powers in the western world.”
The Today programme had a fascinating debate on 19 Dec 07, which can be found here. Polly Toynbee is quite horrifying, because she promotes complete submission to an authoritarian state because “government is good” even though she accepts that a dangerous state could use current law to oppress the people. Surely history speaks for itself, right across Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.
And people think there are no ideological battles left…
I just discovered Fabian gradualism. Put this in the context of the Lisbon Treaty and Hayek‘s “The Road to Serfdom” and things begin to make sense.
The great ideological battle continues: Hayek shared his Nobel Prize with rival Gunnar Myrdal. The problem is, the combatants are in different places.
While proponents of liberty and enterprise get on with creating their own and society’s wealth, the socialists occupy the halls of power. I’m not sure this is news:
The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without, they come from within. They come from a peculiar type in our country who if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians. But what have they to offer but a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism and the promise of impossible Utopias? — Winston Churchill, St George’s Day 1933
As you might guess from my blog’s change of tone, I decided at the end of October to seek election as an MP. Conservative.
Start immediately, do it flamboyantly and allow no exceptions.
The psychologist and philosopher William James, quoted in the BMJ.
