I’ve been getting off track lately. I worry that I am talking so much ideology that I am losing, not only my ability to communicate what I believe, but also to connect with people. I would, therefore, like to make a brief post about my core beliefs and avoid getting ideological about them:
- I believe in an English Parliament. The UK is currently made up of four countries, three of whom have devolution. This means that MPs elected by Scottish or Welsh constituents are in positions of power in areas that affect England only and it also means that Scottish MPs can vote on matters that affect England only. English Votes on English Matters, the Conservative Party policy, just won’t work and there’ll shortly be a Critique available to buy from the CEP’s website explaining in great detail, why.
- I believe in privatisation. Competition means lower prices for customers and more efficient operation of the services they provide.
- I believe that immigration has eroded the cultural uniformity of the UK — this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, this is just an observation. I believe that a moratorium on immigration for a short period to allow the immigration that has been recently to “bed-in”. I know just one conscientious, hard-working patriot who wishes to remain in this country — most of us can see that a better life can be had in Japan, the US, Canada, Australia or Jamaica. Allowing emmigration in reasonably large numbers is reducing the quality of Britain’s brain-pool and is, sadly, the ultimate expression of democratic failure.
- Following on from the last point, the cost of living in England is too high. I believe this can be resolved with some radical amendments to the provision of public services. Council houses, for example, should be there, not to provide cheap rent to those who are underpaid by their private-sector employers — they should be there as a safety net for those who, through no fault of their own, lose their homes. Why, for example, are asylum seekers and those who get themselves pregnant (when unable to support a family) given a home while those who lose their home to a fire are made to live in a dirty, noisy Bed and Breakfast? Some friends of friends of mine have recently had to start bringing up a child in a B&B following a house fire — where’s the sense in that? The market in private rentals is currently skewed by the cheap (read: taxpayer subsidised) rentals paid for by Council Tax payers.
- Following on from the last point, the cost of food is too high due to the Common Agricultural Policy. We live next to a region of Earth capable of feeding us with ease. The US creates more than its fair share of food prduce, but aside from them, we should be at the fore-front. New Zealand has shown us how it should be done.
- I believe that there is such a thing as global warming, but I don’t believe that humans are as much to blame as state-control socialists would like us to believe. Tell a lie often enough and it is likely to stick. At the risk of sounding like an ‘Intelligent Design’ advocate in a different argument, there is too little understood about the planet’s climate to extrapolate meaningful information from the heating of the climate. The reason, for example, for ice ages is poorly understood. That we are currently in an uncharacterically cool period in Earth’s history and that we are due for a radical heating should make us pause to think.
- Further, on the environment, there are some really important things we should be worrying about more. Recycling of metal and plastic should be our number one concern — there’s only so much of either and if we start to run out, particularly of oil, we’re in for some major upheaval. Global warming is, if avoidable, very expensive to avoid — surely we’re better off trying to provide sanitation, security and food and water to the Third World than trying to ensure that a desert doesn’t expand a few hundred miles? If the cost of keeping the desert small is so exceedingly high that we could have fed the Third World, is it irresponsible to waste the money?
- Among us pramatists, the future of the UK is one of an Islamic country (ONS). If we had a constitution, the country may still be unrecognisable within a short period. If the constituents of George Galloway re-elect him at the next election, we must question (a) their wisdom and, (b) their belief in the rule of law. I am strongly in favour of free speech but that relies on the majority of people sharing my belief in freedom. If the comments Galloway made about murdering Tony Blair go electorally unpunished, what hope of that? The solution is a limit on further immigration until the local populace has managed to distance itself from the actions of those Islamists in the Middle East and east to Pakistan who believe that a woman is there to make more men (hat-tip to CJ Cregg) and any attempts to rise above their station should result in a beating.
- I believe in the right to free protest and freedom from protestor harrasment. The animal rights protestors have a valid point, but their methods are ruining people’s lives and livelihoods. We must protect people from violent protest…
- At the same time, peaceful protest must be allowed. Walter Wolfgang, Brian Haw and Charlotte Denis are the thin edge of a very dangerous wedge.
- I can see the benefits of a database that lists all the country’s people, but that should not be a new database, it should be a concatenating checking mechanism attached to the government’s existing databases. The government, currently, has no meaningful way of linking that chap who paid for road tax, with the same man who is claiming he cannot provide CSA payments to his ex-wife and children; the government is incapable, currently, of linking that person who requested a disabled parking permit with that person who should be receiving disability-related tax-relief but who isn’t currently claiming it. Yes, there is a need. But an ID card database is not the answer — this is a further expression of a government who, through their own incompetence, shifts the burden of effort away from the state and toward the individual in an ironic and exact mirror of its simultaneous power-grab as it takes more and more free choices away from people (pension compulsion as a key example).
- I believe that the NHS has a place to play in a humane country — nobody should be made to pay for a bandage if they honestly cannot afford it. This, of course, should be provided by charity, but in the 1950s the whole mechanism for providing this was dismantled. Now that we have the NHS we must work to improve it. A key to this is to encourage people to invest in private health provision. There needs to some sort of incentive to going private.
- Anyone who declines a job they are physically capable of performing while claiming unemployment benefit should not lose a proportion, as is currently the case, they should, after a reasonable time, lose all their benefits. Unemployment benefit should be there to provide for those who cannot find a job, not as an alternative lifestyle choice. Some people, I have spoken to, say “I’ve paid tax for XX years, they owe me some time off.” I do not owe you that.
- Children born outside of a permanent relationship (one where both parents are living together at the time of conception) should be supported by the payment of vouchers — having a child must not be an alternative way of getting independence from your parents.
- Tax should be cut. And cut hard. Paying, as we do currently, approximately 50% of our wages in tax is not the way to make a successful country.
- Infrastructure must be expanded urgently. If I were a US business looking to start a European branch, I would seriously consider locating in Germany or the Netherlands just because the infrastructure there is up to scrutiny. If you want to have a meeting with people around the country, you don’t want to have to budget for excruciating fuel costs (which are, sadly, in place across the EU), as well as congestion, Congestion charging, water restrictions and crowded trains. A business that wishes to start in Brighton (as I live nearby) has to contend with a crowded A23 (road) to London, a railway network which is unable to provide seats to even two stations-worth of passengers and which costs a small fortune; it has to contend with sky-high land and property costs, sky-high costs, basically. It also has to contend with an increasingly uneducated populace…
- Education is not being provided to our young people. Universities, apparently, are now so expensive that graduates must pay for them all the while Chemistry, Engineering and Physics departments close and tax does not reduce. Children are being stabbed in schools. There are very few cases, so far, but that ubiquity of knives is bizarre and must be stopped. Educate children.
- Finally, for now, state-funding of political parties must never be allowed. What is wrong, for example, with saying to the parties that there is an absolute maximum that any single person/organisation can donate to a party — a level playing field without my taxes going to fund the SNP and Labour Party (let alone Respect and BNP, which are in their own class of vile)?
May 31st, 2006 at 12:44 am
Wow, I bet you’re glad you got that out.
Just one thing. You said “I believe in privatisation. Competition means lower prices for customers and more efficient operation of the services they provide.”
But then say “a railway network which is unable to provide seats to even two stations-worth of passengers and which costs a small fortune.”
I know you’ll blame it on 9 years of Labour misrule but the idea of ‘flabby’ government institutions being superior than ‘lean’ private business is wrong.
May 31st, 2006 at 3:42 am
Ahem if you really think “the future of the UK is one of an Islamic country”.
And you don’t particularly want to stop that? then the rest of what you want counts for nothing because we will be living under sharia law, which was made by god and not debatable.
- I don’t understand your immigration policy, you want to be restrictionist so we can get along better so we will be more agreeable to open borders, huh?
- I agree on CAP but how does Britain change if other EU countries don’t want to, we can’t leave our farmers to be screwed by other neighbouring countries unfair competition?
May 31st, 2006 at 9:54 am
On immigration I believe that, eventually, a homogenous and co-operative society can be brought about by the removal of the artificial national boundaries that currently separate us culturally. In the short-term that would mean the removal of immigration restrictions between pairs of countries in unilateral agreements much like the free-movement allowed by the European Union.
While there is no prospect of that freedom of movement, though, we must talk about policy within the current political system…
The CAP does not have to continue. The UK could, and morally –should — block all negotiations while this Third World-killing policy remains.
The railway network is not really a private concern yet. The railways grew most during the Victorian era when genuine entrepreneurs and investors were building it up. They did this for only one reason, profit.
May 31st, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Hmm.. I’ve been visiting here more recently, probably because you have looked at the underlying ideologies behind your thoughts. Pragmatism and popularity cannot replace ideas in politics.
I’m with you on the English Parliament and privatisation.
I disagree with you on immigration. Our system is broken, because it tries to ignore the market. The solution 1) abolish trade barriers 2) make everyone who comes here pay their way 3) reduce over-regulation of the work place to reduce the incentive to employ illegals. That would change the economics of immigration, replacing artificial limits with market equilibria and re-balancing immigration towards more skilled workers and entrepreneurs.
Banning immigration won’t stop emigration any more than making it illegal to fire people will create new jobs. There is a study here that suggest cultural homogeneity is responsible for larger welfare states so it would likely be counter-productive.
Yes the cost of living is too high. Points one and three above would go some way to helping that. So would reducing barriers to developing land. Food is too expensive - the protectionist tariffs under CAP cost this nation £10bn p/a but the real cost is in basic manufactures where tariffs cost £30bn p/a. We should be importing our food and goods from the third world who are the main victims of all this.
On global warming I largely agree with you, we should focus on adapting to change rather than preventing it. After all, deserts may expand but Russia and Canada would see enormous gains in wealth. Recycling should be left to market forces.
I think you are being a little apocalyptic about Islam. As I said above, the solution should be to use the markets to change the make up of immigration towards people who are more educated and open to change. I am quite sure that if Muslim men were not allowed to live on benefits they would be more incentivised to engage with society.
I’m with you on protests, both points.
I totally disagree about the database. Overarching system are likely to be chaotic resulting in false information. Plus there is a lot of information I would not like shared across all departments.
The NHS is broken, not just managerially but fundamentally. It needs replacing.
We should have US style welfare reforms (along the lines implemented by more conservative states). All benefits should be on a contributory basis only.
Vouchers? I have very little opinion on that.
Yes taxes need to be cut on a massive scale. We should abolish all taxes designed to manage us and concentrate on taxes like VAT which have the lowest dead-weight burden.
Infrastructure should be expanded but not by the state. Privatise roads and rail and do it properly. The non-privatisations of the Major years were a disaster.
People should pay the full cost of their university tuition so that we have a proper free market instead of a tax. Under 18s should be educated initially under a voucher scheme until the private and voluntary sector can take over.
Absolutely we should not have state funded parties.
May 31st, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Wow, that was almost as long as your original post.
May 31st, 2006 at 5:47 pm
You nuts mark, Islamic terrorism isn’t from poor people who are living off the welfare state, if you look at the 7/7 attacks and 9/11 they were mostly well educated and came from well off families.
Make all immigrants pay their own way? what about the ones who pay their own way by robbing us? Britain is a soft touch and an easy target for criminals. We need a tough immigration policy for that reason.
I would favour a points system, but not too many coming per year cause otherwise we lose control, as has happened now.
June 1st, 2006 at 11:05 am
Gav was talking about Britain becoming an Islamic country, which is what I was responding to.
Thanks to the welfare state some Muslim communities have completely shut themselves off from the rest of Britain. They have have high crime and social decay. Yet these communities are not self-supporting, they need the state’s assistance to survive.
Not having to work is a path into criminality and isolationism whatever your background. For this reason, 2nd generation Muslims are more radicalised then their parents. Since these people are technically British, controlling immigration would not solve the problem. Making our benefits work on a contributory basis would combat the high unemployment/high crime environment in which radical Islam can flourish.
Stopping immigration isn’t going to change our system of penalties and enforcements that has made us a soft touch on crime. Changing our system of penalties and enforcement will do that. As disagreeable as our system may be, it is the British public that voted for it. If I’m not mistaken, Muslims have a far more robust approach when it comes to offenders than the chattering classes do.
June 1st, 2006 at 1:18 pm
It is too simplistic to say that radical Islam is a product of poverty — Bin Laden and Britain’s own suicide bombers, as Dave said, are/were not poor.
But you’ve hit the nail on the head with the isolation — the isolation that untempered immigration has allowed and, in some ways, enforced, means that Middle Eastern prejudices (the attitudes towards homosexuals and women that we have and which are an abomination to Islam) can survive in England.
I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to move to another country and be surrounded only by people who share your culture to then assimilate with the host culture. If you move to a particular part of Birmingham, Bradford or Oldham, what exposure to English culture would you have?
I understand your ideological position on immigration, Mark, but I seriously doubt it will work until all the Earth’s cultures (or at least those that would take advantage of a free immigration policy) believe in, at the very least, freedom.
If we assume, for a moment, that social security reform won’t happen anytime soon, what we must ask for in the meantime is extremely carefully controlled immigration.
June 1st, 2006 at 2:36 pm
“If we assume, for a moment, that social security reform won’t happen anytime soon
Neither will border security or for that matter privatisation, meaningful tax cuts, an English Parliament, EU withdrawal or a working infrastructure. Things are going to keep getting worse for the forseeable future. Since I have given up worrying which party is going to expand government at the lowest rate I would rather think about what could be done if our leaders had any backbone or principles.
There are several things we should do first before starting to phase out immigration controls which would probably be over a generational time frame. However I believe that we should always try to move in the right direction. A good first step would be extending the entry rules currently applied to EU countries, to all the dominions and the US. Over time we should also expand the rules to other developed nations like Japan and to EU border states like the Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia. As more countries enter the developed world we should add them as well. For other countries we should gradually increase the number of visas granted and make employement conditions less stringent. Any person living here should be required to have health insurance from this point in and be denied any welfare benefits regardless of how long they have lived here.
I believe the tipping point will come when the number of retirees ovetakes the number of workers. When this happens we will have to start competing for workers to pay for our underfunded pensions schemes.
June 1st, 2006 at 4:03 pm
Mark, I think you are really crazy.
When the number of retirees over takes the number of workers in this country, according to current trends it will be mostly whites in retirement.
Foreign workers are not going to come to Britain to have their bollocks taxed off them to fund a bunch of hippy 60’s losers who couldn’t be bothered to have their own children so they can have a jolly retirement.
What is more likely is ethnic strife in which the foreign workers tell the retirees to fk off. It will be a long time coming but will happen in the end, and the 60’s liberals will be too old and too childless to do anything about it.
Britain is a small country, we can’t import the amount of ‘workers’ you would need, and besides that isn’t the solution as they will get old one day as well, it simply delays the problem.
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Saying our ‘multi-cultural’ community segregation is the fault of the welfare state is non-sense. In Iraq, Sunnis, Shi-te and Kurds have segregated themselves just fine. In Egypt Muslims and Christians segregate themselves. In Pakistani Muslims and non-Muslims live seperately. In America whites, blacks and ‘hispanics’ (Mexicans) seperate themselves into different communities. Segregation happens all over the world.
I used to respect libertarians because they seemed to believe in logic and science but now I realise you guys are the biggest blank slaters in the world, and thats why your ideology will never work.
Mass-immigration is the enemy of integration. It allows people to continually bring in friends from the home country instead of becoming involved with wider British community.
Leftist have got it all wrong, if you want better community relations you need less immigration not more.
June 1st, 2006 at 4:12 pm
Gav, can I just ask you a question ?
If Britain was to pull totally out of the EU, and therefor out of CAP, but our neighbouring countries continued to heavily subsidise their farmers what should Britain do?
1, Give our farmers ’some’ kind of help to cope with the distortion?
2, The libertarian thing and just let them be screwed over and take advantage of the cheap food?
3, or what?
Its easier for New Zealand because they are some distance from other major producers so they don’t get as big an effect from the market distortion, but with our guys right on the EU doorstep and cheap food coming through the chunnel how is that gonna affect our guys?
I know libertarians don’t care, but I think there is more to a policy than the short term -/+, don’t you?
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:44 am
“Foreign workers are not going to come to Britain to have their bollocks taxed off them to fund a bunch of hippy 60’s losers who couldn’t be bothered to have their own children so they can have a jolly retirement.
I am taking this that you agree the market will put natural limits on immigration.
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:22 pm
Dave,
I think Mark’s talking from a position of an ideal world. This is fine, when talking in a theoretical sense, but we must bear in mind that the order to events must be particular. We cannot have a completely free world until there is a quantum shift in the proportion of the world that is poor… And there are loads of other requirements. I am concerned that you’re losing faith in libertarianism as an ideal because of intermediate practical problems.
On your questions, I would pick two but with a revision:
New Zealand’s example shows us what can be done without subsidy not because it is remote, but despite it. If New Zealand is able to produce farm goods more cheaply even when the cost of global shipping is included, then we have to ask ourselves what would happen if Britain were to attempt it.
We already import food from New Zealand even though we have ’subsidised’ food on our doorsteps. I think this shows that without the CAP our farmers would not struggle, rather they would flourish.
In the long-term, I think most people will come to accept, if they haven’t already, that Thatcher was right to stop subsidising the coal industry… The same will be the case about agricultural products that we can import.
Milk, though, needs to be produced reasonably locally and, ultimately, when the taxpayer is no longer burdened with the cost of subsidising inefficient milk production, they will have more money to spend on efficiently produced milk — the farmers and consumers will benefit.
On a quick detour back to your previous concerns, libertarianism per se, will not work all the time there are competing religions which genuinely believe that all other religions must be false. Most Christians, all Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, Zoroastrians, most Jews and tolerant Muslims are able to cope with that truth.
Conversations about an English Parliament illustrate the community segregation you speak about. Despite being part of the same country for 300 years, the Scots still have a largely different outlook on their Christianity and politics. Freedom to move around does not necessarily translate into freedom from communities.
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:27 pm
[…] My post, Getting off track, has been added to ‘The Atlantic Affairs’ website. […]
June 2nd, 2006 at 4:12 pm
No mark I don’t think what I said means a natural limit on immigration at all. I think when the number of non-workers outnumber the workers and predominantly the non-workers such as pensioners will be whites, with a large number of the workers (maybe a majority) being non-white, there will be an ethnic conflict in this country.
At the very least they will refuse to pay the extremely high taxes needed to support all the pensioners.
The welfare state could very well be totally busted.
June 2nd, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Gav, New Zealand may export cheap food here but because of their isolation their home market is naturally protected so they have a secure starting point. If British farmers had those conditions I would be very much in favour of total libertarian policies. But my concern is the cheap food from the EU would wreak our guys before they had chance to adapt, I don’t think that would be fair, its different than with coal because we were producing coal that neither we nor anyone else wanted at the time, we will always want a supply of food, and I’d say a secure supply.
I do think libertarianism is best for economics, but when someone else desides to distort the market, how do we respond to that? I don’t think the answer is always to just take advantage of the cheaper produce. Take for example the aircraft industry, Europe wouldn’t want to have no manufacturing capacity and neither would the USA, they would want to preserve what they considered an important knowledge base. Neither is going to allow their industry to be screwed over.
I don’t and never have, and never will think libertarianism is best for immigration policy. Ofcourse if I was a blank slater and believed there was no difference between different groups of people I would, but the fact is different groups people are different and as such there may be (will be) social problems if mixing these differing groups together.
June 4th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Your point about New Zealand doesn’t make any sense — if they can export it cheaper than we can make it locally, surely we could, were we cheaper due to subsidies, ship it to them and sell it for less… How are they protected?
On your last paragraph on immigration, I agree — periodic and/or small-scale immigration has worked for Britain historically, but the current 40-year immigration situation has changed Britain’s make-up and has, since 1989 contributed to England’s loss of low-crime status.
Race relations are hurt by the Muslim Council of Britain and the Commission for Racial Equality, too.
June 5th, 2006 at 10:55 am
I think when the number of non-workers outnumber the workers and predominantly the non-workers such as pensioners will be whites, with a large number of the workers (maybe a majority) being non-white, there will be an ethnic conflict in this country.
At the very least they will refuse to pay the extremely high taxes needed to support all the pensioners.
The welfare state could very well be totally busted.
By reaching a tipping point, I meant that when dependents reach an electoral majority, not just here but across the Western world, political attitudes towards importing workers will change. Pensioners do not share typical (misplaced) concerns about fewer jobs or lower wages as they would be net consumers of labour. Most that intended to move would be moving to a smaller house so any concerns about population increasing land values would be seen as a net positive.
Yes, workers will refuse to pay high taxes to fund pensions but not just non-whites. Labour will increasingly become a global commodity and workers will be able to sell themselves to the highest bidder. People won’t riot in the streets for lower taxes, they’ll just walk. Far from trying to shut out labour, I see us as competing with other nations to attract it. Worker benefits will be slashed as will punitive tax rates.
I don’t see an across the board shift in attitudes just yet. Mostly I tyhink this effect will be confined to predominantly white countries or at least countries with some common culture. In the long run, our language and culture is being spread around the globe by capitalism.
Despite the “legacy costs” attatched to our ageing populations and over-borrowed governments Western nations may well have enough residual wealth (infrastructure, stable society etc..) to attract workers over future world powers like China and India.
The welfare state is busted. I am not contesting that, merely speculating as to how it will meet it’s demise.