The only function of economic forecasting is
to make astrology look respectable

Let us give thanks for those who, in the day of decision, ventured their all for the liberty that we now enjoy.

May we strive to maintain freedom in our nation, in Europe and in the world, and to safeguard the peace which was won at such cost.

Today, I will be joining the Mayor of High Wycombe, Cllr Chaudhary Allah Ditta, at the Remembrance Day parade and service at All Saints, where I will lead prayers. In the evening, I will be joining a Bible study.

On 11 November, I joined teachers and pupils from Crown House School in a remembrance ceremony at the war memorial on the Rye.

A number of my constituents have contacted me about the situation in Sri Lanka and the allegations of war crimes.

I wrote to Alistair Burt, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, seeking more information. He recently replied as follows:

The UK wants to see lasting peace and security in Sri Lanka. We have encouraged the Government of Sri Lanka to involve all communities in a fully inclusive process which addresses the underlying causes of the conflict.

On 25^th April the UN Panel of Experts published its report on accountability for alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the military conflict which ended in May 2009. We are studying the report carefully, but the serious allegations made in it make it clear that the issue of accountability must be resolved before lasting reconciliation can be achieved in Sir Lanka.

We have consistently called for an independent and credible investigation to address these allegations which is why we fully support the decision of the Secretary-General to establish the Panel of Experts. We encourage Sri Lanka to use its response to the UN report and the report’s recommendations to strengthen the process of accountability.

I await the Government’s extended views when Sri Lanka replies to the UN report. In the meantime, here is the full report.

Via The Telegraph:

Tony Blair sidelined the Cabinet over the decision to invade Iraq because he feared ministers would leak sensitive material to the press, the head of the civil service has said.

For the moment, this speaks for itself and to the nature of the Blair government, but I’m looking forward to the eventual report of the Iraq Inquiry.

In the meantime, you may wish to read the brief treaty which is the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. It provided for the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. Obviously, it failed, but Great Britain was a signatory and I understand it is still in force.

Via BT ruling could open pension claim floodgates – Telegraph:

Taxpayers could be on the hook for tens of billions of pounds to cover a string of privatised companies’ pension schemes after the precedent set by BT’s landmark “crown guarantee” victory.

What next, I wonder?

Between the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, The TaxPayers’ Alliance and The Cobden Centre, it is pretty clear that the British State owes trillions of pounds.

Yes, trillions of pounds. Somewhere between £4,800,000,000,000 and £7,900,000,000,000. That is, up to about £300,000 for every household in Britain.

Much of this comprises unfunded pension liabilities, so default or inflation would be particularly wicked.

Worse, even funded pension schemes hold government debt, meaning that private pension schemes also rely on the State.  Vast swathes of the population are relying on someone else being taxed later.

The idea that the State can underwrite BT’s pension scheme is a denial of the facts. And yet, as Disraeli wrote, “Despair is the conclusion of fools.”

If we are to find a hopeful path between denial and despair, then, sooner or later, we must reinvent this country. We must stop lending to the State and start saving by investing in productive activity. Everyone who can is going to have to seek to live at their own expense. The State will have to get out of the way and let the entrepreneurs – and that is all of us – turn our fortunes around by searching creatively for opportunities to produce value for others.

The keys are these:

• Peace – a consistent doctrine of non-aggression.
• The family as the basic building block of society, not the State.
• Equality before the law, not after it.
• Freedom from arbitrary government – the classical Rule of Law.
• Property – the unity of ownership and control.

No doubt we must rediscover virtue too, but the law cannot deliver that.

A forthcoming Channel 4 documentary will explain our situation and make the case for the reinvention of Britain. I contributed a substantial interview, although I do not know the extent to which it will be used. Its working title is Britain: The Horror Movie. It will be transmitted sometime this Autumn

In the meantime, I recommend Bastiat, who wrote:

The state is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

In response to my remarks on the illegitimacy of banning particular items of clothing, I have been criticised for asserting the concept of self-ownership: the idea that each of us has an inviolable property right in our own person. It turns out this is a difficult concept:

Property is the most fundamental and complex of social facts, and the most important of human interests; it is, therefore, the hardest to understand, the most delicate to meddle with, and the easiest to dogmatize about.

– William Graham Sumner, quoted in Boundaries of Order.

However:

The conflicts, disorder, and destructiveness that are so expressive of modern society arise from our confusion over the nature of property as a system of social order. So insensitive have we become to the role of property as the most important civilizing influence in our world, that we have even learned to regard the infliction of our wills upon the lives and property of others as expressions of “socially responsible” conduct.

– Boundaries of Order, Butler Shaffer, 2009.

Questions relating to society are rarely considered in terms of property, and yet it is the most fundamental of social facts. What is property, how is it to be controlled and by whom? What does “ownership” mean? These are some of the questions which Butler Shaffer sets out to answer in Boundaries of Order – Private Property as a Social System.

Shaffer shows that control is the defining factor in the ownership of property. Liberty is not an abstract philosophical principle, but a way of describing the autonomous nature of life in its myriad forms. Liberty and spontaneity express the essence of living systems. Shaffer’s book is about how and by whom authority is to be exercised over individual lives. He demonstrates that whether or not we choose to claim self-ownership goes to the heart of what it means to be a free person and that liberty and self-ownership are synonymous: “We are free only insofar as we insist upon the exclusive authority to direct our own energies and other resources.”

I shall leave the subject here. If you wish to explore the concept of self-ownership and property as the basis of a peaceful, cooperative society, then I recommend Shaffer, which may be bought or downloaded here.

In the meantime, in the words of Number 6:

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.