Values? The one that really matters is freedom...

Queueing for bread - socialist values in action

This is a pretty typical framing of a left wing values statement - from Julian Dobson:

And that brings us back to values. Do we want a society that turns competitiveness into a totem, blames individuals for social problems and judges success on earnings and rates of return? Or are we looking for something more inclusive and creative, places that recognise the value generated by people’s imagination and relationships and passion for the common good? 

And the typical slightly green, middle-class leftie will feel a little shudder of affirmation through the bones at this statement. Absolutely, our lefty might say, this statement clearly separates the uncaring, individualist from the caring, sharing collectivist. They might add little mutterings about 'trickle down' or 'profits' before smiling again as the high plateau of collaborative, cooperative glory comes into view.

The problem with all this is that it is a delusion, a deliberate self-deception. All this enthusiasts for ending the dark and evil neo-liberal world and ignorant of its central truth - that far more than the state-directed, protectionist systems our caring lefties aspire to create, free market systems are absolutely about inclusion, creativity, passion value generation, imagination and mutual benefit. The secret lies in that magic word 'free' and it is all that freedom that gave us the wealth to ponder such matters as 'values'.

Once the matter of values was something for priests and philosophers. Most ordinary people - and this still stands for a great deal of today's world - were way too busy keeping body and soul together to bother about what it all meant. Then something happened. It wasn't a planned economy, it was a spark of liberty that set us free. And we became free because the trap of subsistence was removed, we could lift our head up from the daily drudge and think about those values, about what we thought the world should be like.

And the match that ignited those flames of freedom wasn't a law, it was capitalism, the liberal enlightenment that opened up trade and allowed business to innovate, to create and to transform - in just a few decades - the entire world.When the likes of Julian Dobson paint free markets in negative terms, when they demonise the idea of choice by talking about competition as a negative, and when they dismiss individual material success as somehow distasteful or exploitative, what these people do is build a mighty man of straw, a grand lie.

This lie is essential to socialism - without that mighty straw man representing capitalism's sins the logic of the left collapses into the terrible reality of a place where people queue for seven hours to buy some flour and some milk. This, rather than sunlit uplands, is the consequence of that focus on the "common good" - for there is no common good other than that determined by the interactions, transactions and exchanges of the people. And the best way to get those mutual benefits isn't through committees, co-operatives and regulations but through free exchanges in a free market. That is why the left must make a demon of liberty because they can't admit that free choice, free exchange and free speech is the best road to a good society, to a place where those values they prattle on about are met for everyone.

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Schools, hospitals and money...give me just a little more choice!

We live in a world of choice. Think for a brief moment about how many different types of cheese you can buy in your local supermarket. Consider the aisle filled with varied and exciting bread. And ponder on a world where one relatively small space can contain over 45,000 different products from, it seems, everywhere in the world. Still further, if you live in Bradford at least, a different journey can also take you to market stalls and shops selling great locally sourced fresh vegetables, fantastic hand-crafted sausages and super fresh caught fish.

Note as well that, when it comes to that convenient portable communications device we all love, there's a still more bewildering choice of handset, of contract and of places where we'll get some informed help making our decision. It truly is a wonderful world, a world created by that simplest of simple ideas - one that's been around since the dawn of time - free exchange for mutual benefit. Or if you want it put a different way - the market.

Yet when it comes to three things that are pretty fundamental to everyone's lives - education, health care and money - we're told that free choice is a bad thing and instead government must decide on the nature, quantity and distribution of these essential requirements. What makes this so very odd is that we can see how free choice in free markets improves the lives of everyone, yet we continue to tell ourselves that somehow markets would be a bad thing in these three vital areas.

Instead of the liberty of markets, what we choose instead for the provision of schools, hospitals and cash is a thing called 'government'. And what a thing that is - confused, secretive, lying, deceiving and troublesome. I was talking the other day with some public health folk and (I forget the precise details) the matter of 'who runs the NHS' arose. Scales fell from my eyes as I appreciated that no-one actually runs the NHS. For sure there's a chap called Simon who has the title 'Head of the NHS' or similar but he doesn't really run this vast many-headed hydra except that, because there is no consumer sovereignty in health care, there has to be a process for allocating the money set aside by government to pay for said health care. And Simon is in charge of that process.  He doesn't run hospitals, he has no say over primary care, he doesn't train doctors or nurses - he sits atop a pile of other people's money and uses it as a bully pulpit.

The same goes for schools - there's no-one in charge and no market either (although there is a chimera of choice in the ability of parents to 'express a preference'). We have Michael who is in charge of Ofsted, we have a collection of 'Directors of Children's Services' in 'Local Education Authorities' and we have the management of individual schools (governors and school 'leadership teams'). As with the NHS these people aren't 'in charge' of the system and there is no fair or efficient system - nor can there be outside of a choice mechanism - for the distribution of either funds or for the making of 'allocation' decisions.

For both health and education we use bureaucracy moderated by the unseemly rabblerousing that is political debate as a proxy for the market. But the systems are too large for effective central direction so some things are 'devolved' to different parts of the system. Except that two things remains - one is what we might call the Widdecombe Principle and the other is our expressed preference for consistency.

The first of these two things refers to Anne Widdecombe who explained that central direction would never change so long as the Minister was dragged kicking and screaming into the Newsnight studio to explain. Even though ministers - like the Head of the NHS and the Head of Ofsted - are not really 'in charge' of the system, they are the ones who get verbally berated when stuff goes wrong.

The second factor is what we say to opinion pollsters - essentially that we don't like 'postcode lotteries' and therefore we don't like difference and variation within national systems. Our slightly warped idea of 'fairness' tells us that everybody should get the same, even if that 'same' is mediocre because the avoiding of difference destroys innovation, initiative and creativity.

All this brings me to the third thing government won't let choice and markets play with - money. It seems to me that what we might called 'modern applied macroeconomics' is predicated on the continued 'control' of money by government. But, just as with health and education, there's only an illusion that someone is in charge of the system. There's Mark who is the boss at the Bank of England - he gets to set interest rates (and, were I a cynic, keeps his job if he doesn't stray too far from what HM Treasury wants to do) but it doesn't seem to me that he's really in charge.

There may be very good reasons for all this lack of choice - that idea of fairness, the convenience for all of a defined and guaranteed currency. Plus, of course, the big important thing for government - collecting taxes. Indeed the scared rabbit reaction of banking regulators to 'cybermoney' like Bitcoin is rather revealing of this fact!

It seems to me that the next few years - perhaps a couple of decades - will see a huge tug-of-war between these big three government monopolies and a set of technology-driven innovators. Some of these innovators will be looking for a fast buck through exercising some sort of arbitrage while others will be seeking to develop choice models within the systems themselves - building on the availability of data to disrupt that desire for sameness I described earlier.

I don't know how this contest will play out but I hope that, whatever the long term role for government systems, it results in more choice. Or rather in systems where consumer sovereignty is allowed to operate. I hope for this result because it will deliver the greatest rate of improvement for the least effort (and probably least money). There's a big debate in the NHS about a future funding gap - it seems to me that the solution to this challenge isn't running the good old centralised NHS and trimming a bit here or rationing a bit there. Rather the funding gap is closed by allowing innovators to innovate and the best way to do this is by the development of real choice systems rather than the current 'plan and provide' approach.

The same goes for education. And for money. Choice is the best driver of improvement both through consumers exercising that choice and through providers responding to consumers is developing new, different and better way to serve their needs. And what works for bread and cheese, what delivers for mobile phones, TVs and insurance, will given a chance deliver for schools and hospitals and will provide a more stable economy less open to the abuse of politicians buying their way into power or bankers manipulating their way into wealth.

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Accountability, choice and a new political divide

And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England,
They have no graves as yet. 

This isn't intended as a criticism of our current leaders - Chesterton's poem in all its glorious cynicism was written long ago before any of them were born. But it is a common comment on the state of politics, it reminds us that the wisdom of our rulers is always to be doubted and questioned.

Nor am I about to launch into a rant about the inadequacies - even the evils - of government. Rather I want to take you on a personal journey and to show that, despite its current mass and majesty, the days of big government are numbered. I observe that I write this at a time when the power of government is plain to be seen - the bans, the controls, the surveillance, the ordering about, the seizures and the arrogance dominate our news.

Alongside the Chesterton quote I'm taking a reference from Alan Massie in The Spectator. It happens to be about Ed Miliband but it could apply in some measure to any of our current leaders and to too many of those who aspire to be leaders in the future:

Ed Miliband is a puritan.

And a hopeless, nagging, fish-faced puritan at that. A ninny, in other words.

The Labour leader has a rare gift. He knows, you see, how you should spend your money. What’s more, if you fail to spend your cash in the proper Miliband-approved manner he thinks he should be – nay is! – entitled to coerce you into changing your miserable behaviour.

This is, in every way, the essence of government today. The idea that matters need organising, directing and managing. The belief that most people are too stupid or too gullible to be trusted with such simple ideas as advertising, budgeting or the consequences of personal choice. And the certainty that only those investments (and I use this word in the deceiving meaning pioneered by Gordon Brown) under the aegis of government are "good" investments.

I write a great deal about what I term 'nannying fussbuckets' - those New Puritans who think it right that government control and direct - even prevent - personal choices. Mostly, I write about this because it makes me angry - not just the manner in which the evidence is abused but from a principled and essentially Tory belief in personal responsibility. Most of the time it simply isn't someone else's fault. It was your choice.

These are simple matters that everyone can understand - do we ban smoking in pubs, should we fix the price of booze, how much tax should we have on whiskey and can people be trusted with gambling. The typical voter can grasp the argument here - for many these are personal choices they want (or don't want) to make.

But there's another scale, a level at which we don't understand, where these same New Puritan preferences apply - the means by which we pay for something, whether we can sell something we own to someone in another country, where we are able (or allowed) to live and the manner in which we work. These are all things that are matters, largely speaking, of personal choice. Yet, just as with smoking, drinking and eating, our government wants to control and direct our personal choice and, on occasion, prevent us from making that choice.

US singer Kelly Clarkson has been thwarted in her bid to take a ring which once belonged to Jane Austen out of the UK.

We are expected to applaud as this vital piece of heritage is "saved for the nation". But the salvation was only achieved by preventing Ms Clarkson from taking the ring out of the country - as far as I know the singer simply wanted to wear the ring, which seems to me a better use of the treasure than sticking it in a glass case for tourists to gawp at.

Government also want to prevent us from making what we want, where we want. The best examples of this needless (and damaging) tendency is the "protected geographical indication' (PGI):

Only cheese produced in the Yorkshire Dales will in future be allowed to use the name Yorkshire Wensleydale.

The European Commission has awarded the cheese Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status.

The decision means the name can only be applied to cheese which is produced within an area around Hawes in North Yorkshire.

Our sense of Yorkshire pride covers over the truth that this is simply protectionism - we may as well protect Lancashire Hotpot, Oldham Rag Pudding and Jellied Eels. And it is especially annoying in Yorkshire:

A cheesemaker has lost a five-year battle with the EU to keep calling her product Yorkshire Feta.

The European Court of Justice said only cheese made in certain areas of Greece can carry the name feta.

Everywhere we look we see the same - government justifying itself through the imposition of rules that to many seem like a good thing but, when you slice into them, turn out to be either a solution to a problem that either doesn't exist or else is deliberately exaggerated so as to justify the law.

The divide in our society is no longer between workers and owners, kings and serfs, middle- and working-classes but between those who believe that their neighbours' lives are proper things for government intervention and those who do not. This isn't to deny government but to say that too much of modern government, the bans, the cameras, the secret courts, the whole rigmarole of 'post-democracy' addresses an audience of the scared and the servile.

The alternative - personal choice, independence, self-determination and responsibility - is dismissed as 'libertarianism' with its supporters badged as uncaring, selfish and intolerant. The reality is that the position I describe is not 'libertarian' (although many libertarians will agree with it) but a traditional, mainstream conservative position. And the selfish, intolerant, uncaring ones are those who hand caring, choice and community over to the government not the 'libertarians'.

As technology advances, these two positions - the New Puritan nanny state and a society founded on free choice, association and enterprise - become more starkly defined. The technology allows for government to watch us more closely, to record and store what we do and say, and to manage the manner in which we interact with those around us. At the same time that technology affords us greater choice, more free time and wealth - meaning that we have less use or need for government.

There won't be some revolution or overthrow of government. It will gradually become less relevant - the choices and decisions about our bins, the roads, healthcare and education will shift from the contested political sphere to a more sustainable consumer-producer relationship. The great edifices of government will break up, localise and be forced open by us as citizen consumers. And we will be better for this change.

Rather than grand committees of experts planning and directing as if in some Kafka-esque dystopia, we will have more local choices - some private, some government but all of them responding to the consumer, to us as people exercising our right to choice. A right newly empowered by the might of the on-line world with its connections, its forums and its ability to raise an army where once there were just one or two with paper and a pen.

But in getting to this state we will face resistance from that New Puritan state. From the people who believe that pleasure is addictive and should be stopped for the sake of health. From those who want us all watched from morn to night out of fear that one or other of us might do something wrong. From those who want to police our words, who find offence in anything and everything. And above all from those who, like Saruman, are beguiled by the false hope that power can be wielded without corrupting its wielder.

In the end government will always serve the interests of government before it serves the interests of the governed. But the closer those governed are to government, the less that government is able to ignore the interests of those people. I wrote the other day that democracy isn't enough. Someone asked me was was enough - I think the answer lies in accountability - not just the accountability of the politician to the electorate but the direct accountability of the people providing services to the people receiving services.

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Freedom, choice, Nigel Farage and the unpleasantness of The Guardian

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The nannying fussbuckets have been in full cry what with plain packs, banning smoking on hospital grounds and the, almost certainly untrue, estimate that 600 children a day start smoking. Indeed the good thinking folk who advocate that public health is good for us are bouncing around all chipper as government slips down the slope to a controlled, constrained and, incidentally, crime-filled future of health intervention.

This brings me to an especially unpleasant piece of ad hominem in The Guardian. Don't get me wrong, I think Nigel Farage has become something of a self-parody, a sort of avatar for the pub know-all but this attack is unpleasant and incorrect in equal measure:

Nigel Farage's cigarettes are often depicted as one of the most appealing things about him. To date, his deployment of crafty or, occasionally, cheeky ciggies, while all around him conform to public health advice, has been a remarkably well-received token of his libertarian vision.

So the article begins, continuing in this vein with the author (in her left-wing nastiness) seeking to imply that not only does Nigel want us all to die but that this is the essence of 'libertarianism'. The word is used in almost every paragraph until the author realises her argument is pretty thin and decides to deepen it by invoking 'Godwin's Law'  - suggesting that Nigel is really a 'fascist' (on the basis of a couple of uncorroborated stories about his youth).

What depresses me most isn't that The Guardian is publishing an attack on Nigel Farage that is so shallow as to be almost dried up but that the basis of this attack is that he is a libertarian. Not just because - as his party's policies on immigration and gay marriage show - Nigel is anything but a 'libertarian' but because the author suggests that there is something terrible about a belief in personal choice.

And this is the divide. The Guardian and its friends (that, in this matter, include The Daily Mail) do not believe in personal choice and personal consequence. They believe - completely without evidence - that the dark evil of Big Tobacco, The Drinks Industry, The Food Industry and their accomplices in Advertising are combining to force children into smoking, drinking and eating the sort of food a Guardian reader would never allow in the house (far too common).

The truth of this is that Nigel Farage thinks you should be able to drink, eat and smoke legal products without being ostracised, taxed to the hilt or banned. However, he doesn't think people should be able to marry who they wish or that freedom includes free movement.

The Guardian, on the other hand is fine on the marrying bit but doesn't think working-class people are able to make choices about drinking smoking or eating and should be told what to do. The Guardian is also opposed to free movement - especially in Cuba.

Given a forced choice, I'd back Nigel over The Guardian. But there must be a better choice than between 'nanny knows best' social democracy and the slightly xenophobic world vision of Nigel Farage? I read and hear people saying the right things - some right, some left, some muzzy middle - about choice and freedom (that they are rights not privileges granted us by some benign authority) but see too little of this arriving in public policy. There I just see more reasons to interfere with choice and freedom, more of the man in Whitehall knowing best, more regulation, more tax.

And the result is less choice, less freedom, less opportunity and more poverty.

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The case for school choice...

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Some - mostly from the wealthy left-wing commentariat - seem not to get this simple truth:

Why is this important? Because it indicates that school choice leads to more integrated communities. The British system, which Fiona Millar & Co seem so keen on, entrenches inequality by increasing house prices around good state schools and decreasing them around worse ones. The rich live with the rich, and the poor with the poor. School choice has the potential to break this pattern of social segregation. And this is precisely what recent American research suggests: with more choice decoupled from residence, house prices and average incomes decrease around more sought-after schools and increase around less sought-after ones. In other words, we see an equalisation among communities – school choice reduces residential segregation.

I guess Fiona Millar and her ilk don't want to mix with hoi polloi?

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Robots and the successors to Captain Swing....

Sir, Your name is down amongst the Black hearts in the Black Book and this is to advise you and the like of you, who are Parson Justasses, to make your wills. Ye have been the Blackguard Enemies of the People on all occasions, Ye have not yet done as ye ought,.... Swing

We are told - by people far wiser and more knowing than me - that the future of employment is bleak:

Could the jobless recovery be signalling that technology has lead to the sort of abundance and productivity that leaves NAIRU — the unemployment rate below which inflation rises — with no choice but to recalibrate higher, if returns on capital investment are to be protected?

The point being made here is that the future of making stuff rests with robots not with people. And that means there won't be enough work for all the people. The result of this is a lot of frothing and excitement and calls for something to be done. And is accompanied by the emergence - blinking in the lights of the 21st Century - of Captain Swing from his nearly 200 year rest.

For men who smashed up the threshing machines under Swing's directions, just as for the followers of Ned Ludd, the objective was to constrain technology. By preventing its spread or by limiting its application (or as in the print industry by requiring more overlookers and operators than the machine required) we protect jobs and the livelihoods of workers.

The simple truth of technology is that, while technology improves productivity, causes prices to fall, demand to rise, more workers to be hired, and the economy to grow, there is a practical limit. If all the work is done by robots all the productivity gain serves no purpose since there is no work and no earnings - no-one to buy the things the robots make.

The central issue here isn't whether we have a job but rather whether we need to have a job. In simple terms, the people who own the robots don't need a job because the rents generated from that ownership would provide. The problem - if the argument about technology destroying all the jobs is correct - is with the people who don't own the robots (or at least not the robots that make all the stuff).

The modern day successors of Captain Swing think they've a great solution - let's either pay everyone a basic income with no strings or else fund a guarantee of a job. We have to assume that the money for this system (whichever is chosen) would come from taxing the robots - or rather the returns the robots generate for the people who own them.

The questions we have to ask are firstly, will there really be a wholesale destruction of jobs without new ones to replace them? And secondly would a basic income or job guarantee actually work? There is a third question - is it morally justified to pay people to do nothing - but this is a far bigger question and we'll leave it for now.

Apple reckoned recently that the app economy (just the iOS bit) has generated nearly 300,000 jobs in the USA alone:

The app revolution has added more than 291,250 iOS jobs to the U.S. economy since the introduction of iPhone in 2007

These are jobs that we hadn't thought of - for all the jobs destroyed by technology there are new ones created.  Izabella Kaminska may talk about the 'jobless recovery' but there's precious little evidence for it - other than in the sclerotic, over-regulated economies of Europe. It could be argued as forcefully that supply-side barriers to employment, the lack of need to work (especially among young people receiving benefits and contributions from the bank of mum and dad) and poor education are more of a problem than the rise of the robots. That government is more of a barrier to future job creation than robots.

A further factor in all this will be that - as has happened over the past decades - we'll see a further decline in average working hours. Back in Captain Swing's day the workers toiled for six days - probably for ten, even twelve hours, for wages far less than any basic income we might propose. And despite this the Captain and his mates smashed up the machines so the workers could carry on with back-breaking, life-shortening heavy manual labour.

Today, the average working day is under eight hours and people work just five days - our time working nears half that of those Captain Swing and Ned Ludd protected. And yet our incomes are immeasurably higher - even the wealthy owners of those threshing machines would be amazed at the life, the comforts that the poorest Englishman enjoys today. What is to suppose that this trend continues? That we work only 25 hours before enjoying the benefits of that work (and let's face it most people work because they want the money not because their work is such an exciting thing to do)?

It seems to me that the bounty of the robots' efforts will be more leisure time for all. And not some ridiculous idea that allowing anyone - at any time - to down tools and toddle off to live on their basic income. Get a good summer and no-one would be working (I appreciate that many of the believers in basic income also follow MMT - "magic money tree" - fantasies and the delusion that this doesn't matter). This indeed is rather the point of it all - we know that, given half a chance, people will swing the lead (you only need to look at sickness statistics in local government to understand this), so if we legitimise swinging the lead we'll just take advantage. As Flanders & Swann noted: "you can't change human nature."

This argument - 'there'll be no jobs, you know" - rather reminds me of Paul Ehrlich's bet on resource depletion. Following one thread takes you to a point where logic and common senses collapse. The theory still looks shiny and right but it has lost any contact with reality. Which, I guess explains why seemingly intelligent people are sucked into believing the sort of nonsense that is basic income (or worse job guarantees that are essentially slave labour directed by the state - we feed and clothe you and you do whatever work we demand).

If there is more stuff (in the widest sense of the word stuff) for us that is good especially if that more stuff comes without us having to work more hours. And that increased earning means more time for arts, sport, celebration, fun and games (and for all the people that provide such pleasure).

So let's be optimistic about what the robots bring and let's escape from the controlling, dictating approach that is captured by one advocate of basic income:

And I don't think anyone from the basic income side would dispute that the public sector might need to help those who are not self-starters to find useful and productive things to do.

And this from someone who self-describes as a "liberal" - such a view is as far removed from liberal as it is possible to get. Look folks, the future's a great place - there'll be flying cars, jet packs, holographic opera and leisure trips into space. And, even better, nearly everyone will be able to afford this stuff. So let's get on with the free markets that make it work and give up on the idea that the solution lies in either a vast lump of unmotivated drones paid to do nothing or else a slave labour force for the masters to direct to projects of their choice.

Above all let's remember - always remember - that government, mostly and most of the time, is the problem not the solution. And let's enjoy the future - it will be better than the past.

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Today's nannying fussbucket is another Tory MP: Dr Phillip Lee

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Welcome to the world of judgemental government, to nudging with a baseball bat. Welcome to Phillip Lee MP (he's a GP too so this comes as less of a a surprise) and the punishing of people for their lifestyle choices:

Tory MP and GP Phillip Lee made a striking call this morning for patients suffering from lifestyle-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes to pay for their prescriptions as part of a larger shake-up of the NHS. He was speaking as part of a series of presentations from members of the Free Enterprise Group ahead of next week’s Autumn Statement on their proposals for spending cuts which would allow George Osborne to meet his target of having debt as a proportion of GDP falling by 2015/16.

But Dr Lee's proposal isn't for everyone with a lifestyle problem - he's not suggesting that horse riders pay for having their broken legs plastered or Sunday morning footballers for patching up their sprained ankles. No these punishments fall only on "Officially Disapproved Lifestyle Choices". And the good Doctor gives us a clue:

‘If you want to have doughnuts for breakfast, lunch and dinner, fine, but there’s a cost.’

Choose the things we disapprove of and you won't get free treatment on the NHS. That's the message from Dr Lee MP.  So Dr Lee wants a world like that proposed - and rubbished by one of his colleagues - by Katie Hopkins, the well-known former apprentice contestant.

Former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins argues that people who eat, drink and smoke more than is good for them should pay more towards the NHS health care they need, as she sets out her calls for additional payments for some health services.

Please Dr Lee MP, just will you shut up with your fussbucketry, with your judging of folk for lifestyle choices and leave us alone. And if you want people to pay for healthcare, say you want them to pay rather than picking on the few who choices you don't like.

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Choice

It was never simple was it? They just pretended that bread was bread and cheese was cheese. That slightly chewy off-white stuff - Mother's Pride or whatever - married to a slice of something akin to packaging material but somehow just falling within the trades descriptions act definition of cheese.

And the only way to make it palatable was to toast it and add some sauce - brown, red or, latterly, chilli. The tangy, spicy, vinigary-ness made up for the total blandness of the bread and cheese.

Now there is choice! Wonderful, exciting, confusing and adventurous choice. Black bread made with rye (hopefully without its lunacy-making fungal pal), sweet Jewish white bread studded with poppy seeds and breads with spelt or oats mixed in to make them, well... more spelty or oaty.

And that cheese - once there was cheddar and, if you were posh, red leicester and stilton. Now the table heaves with cheeses of every kind imaginable - soft cheeses made to spread on the bread, crumbly ones that make your mouth water with anticipation and fabulous blue cheeses, that perfect entwining of fungus and milk.

So we choose - sometimes we go with what we've tried before. But now and then we take a punt, we try something different - listening to the man at the counter we dip our toe into explosive welsh cheddar and the bread lady persuades to to try some bread made from a Croatian recipe. And we combine them, perhaps with a pickle or other condiment from an equally bewildering array, another fantastic choice.

And they try to tell us choice is bad? That we don't really want choice? And that someone else knows better what is good for us!

Right now, in education, health and social care most people are getting that barely digestible bread and that chewy cheese.  And others - who can buy their way out from that absence of choice - tell us this is the right way, the only way. And that choice is a bad thing.

They are wrong. Bread and cheese tells us they are wrong. Bring on the choice.

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Food snobs, nannies and the attack on food choice

Fat and getting fatter. That’s the message our media proclaim today and at the front is the ever-so-slightly chubby and terribly righteous celebrity and master of ‘slam some food in a dish and call it cooking’, Jamie Oliver:

The country's bill of health is shocking, and it's not going to get any better over the next 30 years if a clearly-defined plan isn't put into place soon. We simply can't afford the financial or health costs of doing nothing.

To be fair to Jamie, when given the chance he proposes precisely nothing by way of alternative strategy which is rather a good thing. But others are at the head of the charge screaming loudly that it’s the food industry that’s at fault not us for eating too much and exercising too little:

But Professor Philip James, of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, said it was a "stupid" and "pathetic" response to the problem.

"It is not simply a question of personal responsibility. There is an environmental problem in terms of the food system we have."

He went on to say that the junk food industry "manipulated" individuals into consuming their products and that was why legislation was needed.

Sorry Professor James but you are wrong – not just because you really haven’t the first idea about how the food industry works - or advertising for that matter -  but because you deny the facility of free will to the poor.

They’re all out there explaining how it isn’t the poor consumers’ fault they’re getting fat but the fault of the “food industry” – here’s Billy:

One half of the obesity crisis is calorie dense food. Calorie dense food is food that contains high levels of fat and sugar. Fat and sugar have been commoditised by the food industry, and are now sourced from wherever is cheapest on the day. So what was already cheap is getting relatively cheaper all the time.

That’s right folks, the solution is to make food more expensive. In the heart of the deepest and most painful recession since the 1930s, people are proposing that we make food more pricey. And who would suffer from that? The poorest and most needy. It makes me so angry to see the self-righteous know-it-all left showing yet again their utter contempt for the lifestyle choices that ordinary people make. That’s right – choices, you know freedom, liberty and the right to live our own lives uninterfered with by the acolytes of the Church of Public Health.

However, dear reader, there is one last killer fact that underlines why Jamie, Billy and the Prof are wrong. Obesity rates are falling. That’s right – we aren’t getting any fatter any more.

It looks like all the warnings about kids being overweight might be paying off, as a group of experts reckons the rate of child obesity is slowing.

The National Heart Forum found evidence that far fewer of you will be badly overweight by 2020 than people previously thought.

Or maybe you’d prefer a source that isn’t CBeebies;

Despite the government ignoring the anti-obesity lobby's urgent suggestions for traffic light labelling on food and suchlike, the latest figures show that obesity amongst men has fallen to 22% and the female obesity rate has fallen to 24%.

Just as the alcohol pandemic is a myth, so is the obesity crisis. And the solution isn’t to condemn the food choices of the poor, to make food more expensive, to ban transfats, to limit advertising or any of the other clobbering nudges preferred by those who wish to denormalise some foods (the ones they disapprove of for aesthetic reasons, in the main).

The solution is precisely what the government has done. Encourage people to eat less and to exercise more.

But then the Church of Public Health doesn’t like the bleedin’ obvious, do they!

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America!

 

"...sudden burst of sunshine seemed to illuminate the Statue of Liberty, so that he saw it in a new light, although he had sighted it long before. The arm with the sword rose up as if newly stretched aloft, and round the figure blew the free winds of heaven."

OK, so Franz Kafka was wrong about the sword but the symbolism of arriving in America is so often written that we forget why so many arrived there. Today we seem only to hear the shrill, snide, judging voices of anti-American sentiment. And we forget. We forget that - almost uniquely - the USA was founded on the principle of freedom. On the idea that government has no right to rule. That rulers must act with the consent of the ruled. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are not merely the founding documents of the United States but represent a voice of liberty - symbolised by that statue - that echoes today.

Yet so many continue to condemn the USA. To cry foul at its every act. To point at its flaws and failings. To focus on its mistakes - or rather on the mistakes of its rulers. And they are wrong to condemn a whole nation - to claim that the aim of expanding liberty and freedom bequeathed to US government by John F Kennedy is somehow an evil force in the world. The United States remains a force for good - for all its errors a beacon of liberty in a world where too many still believe the state exists other than with the permission of the people, who want some role for priests in government and who prefer the disposition of bureaucracy to the choices of free men.

Today we remember a terrible attack on America. An act supposedly committed in the promotion of god's rule on earth. An act that chose terror over conversation, murder over persuasion. An unforgivable and inexcusable act that saw thousands killed without reason and, in a cry of collective pain, led Americans to acquiesce to a set of military adventures - some with good reason and some without. But the deaths the anti-Americans point to were not caused by America - they are the direct result of that unwarranted, that evil attack on New York and Washington in September 2001.

And that attack was an attack on liberty. On the ideas that founded the USA. On the principle of inalienable rights. And on the power of choice in the world of men. It was as much an attack on Bradford, on Paris and on Islamabad as it was an attack on the USA.

I will not forget. I will always remember the stunned silence in the room as we watched - over and over again - those planes crash into the twin towers. The images of smoke, fire, chaos and confusion will never go away. Nor will the quiet heroism of ordinary men and women faced with such an act of evil.

The United States of America is a great country - its very act of foundation brought more good to the world than the sum of its sins since that date. And the power of freedom and choice allowed the USA to lead man's advance to greater wealth, happiness and health. I am - and you should be - grateful not envious. Appreciative not condemnatory. Thankful not fearful.

Long live America!

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I like choice - and so should you

Vivienne's masterpiece salmon

We hear often of the sin that is "consumption". Not the 18th and 19th century killer of literary genius but the preference that many of us have for spending a fair old chunk of the limited time we get on stuff we actually like doing. If you want to call that decadent, uncaring or planet-threatening that's fine by me. But I intend to carry on consuming.

And I am not swayed by the righteousness of some folk who, having failed to persuade us - the consumers - that consuming is a bad thing - have shifted the attack. The problem, they tell us, is choice - there's too much of it, it is making us anxious, stressed and meaning that we are no longer "organising ourselves and making a critique of society".

This little animation from RSA (entitled "Choice") peddled all this stuff - including the quote in the above paragraph. We have here all the regular left-wing anti-choice arguments including jolly little stories about how some bearded professor was uptight about which wine to buy in a restaurant or how some self-indulgent journalist wrote that sex life wasn't like the sex lives described in the pages of Cosmopolitan. Plus the usual rubbish about the stress we get from being over faced by the range on offer in the supermarket.

I feel so sorry for all these sensitive folk living in their convenient little anecdotes. But the argument - so typical of pop psychology - is founded in story and prejudice rather than in the reality of consumer behaviour. Yes, consumers will tell you they don't like choice. But consumers also use heuristics to mange and moderate choices - mostly they're called brands although they may also be choices about shopping location or, today, the use of comparison web-sites. There is an entire academic discipline - consumer behaviour - that studies such stuff.

More substantially, however, the argument against choice presented here tiptoes towards anti-capitalism - not just through an ignorance of what, precisely, we might mean by capitalism (it is presented as the creator of our consumer society) but through the contention that choice is used by "capitalism" to prevent us from achieving "social change". I have to smile at the manner in which "capitalism" is anthropomorphised - made to have an existence as master of an "ideology of choice".

But what is the alternative to this "ideology of choice"?  Logic tells us that the only alternative must be an "ideology of choice denial". Our choices - whether of wine with dinner, of places to live or of clothes to wear would be constrained, limited and even stopped entirely (bit like healthcare really). And one presumes - although this isn't stated - the limitation of choice would require mandation. Somebody will have to set out the choices we can have - assuming that "somebody" actually thinks we should have any choice at all.

So the argument presented - for all its wit and literacy - is profoundly illiberal, requires a mechanism for limiting choice (so we are not stressed or otherwise pained by our choices) and represents the continuation of the Nancy Klein attack on that choice. Or rather on the "wrong sort of choice" (as we can characterise Ms Klein's argument) - the idea that the brand "McDonalds" is essentially different from "Liberal " or indeed from "Chateau Lafitte Rothschild". All are those pesky heuristics - short-cuts to decision-making - that enable a complex consumer society to work.

Although the RSA do not present any alternative - "organising to achieve social change" is as far as it goes - the vision, characterised by the use of bees as a metaphor, owes more to Aldous Huxley than to a happy vision of the future. Indeed it could be this:

"Our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel-and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get."

Please let it not be so. Let us be free. Stop speaking of some idea of social change as if "social change" is absolutely desirable. And stop offering excuses that permit governments to control our lives, to remove our choices. And stop already with this angst, this post-millennial ennui, this pseudo-guilt trip - choice is good, it makes us happier, healthier, wealthier and, each day, the chance to do it differently means that innovation, change - even social change - takes place.

However, the sad little assault on choice will continue, partly because some folk makes choices that people who do cute animations for the RSA disapprove of (you know getting drunk, smoking and eating the wrong food) but mostly because the social change that is driven by choice isn't the "social change" such people want. Rather than the controlling hand of the benevolent masters directing the ignorant towards enlightenment, we get a messy, exciting, chaotic mish-mash of changes - some fantastic, some problematic but all of them driven by the individual actions, initiatives and, yes, choices of men and women doing stuff they like doing.

Choice is good. And don't ever forget it!

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New Cavaliers! A Call to Arms!

In the past couple of weeks I have written a series of articles on the New Puritans – these have been aimed more at understanding than at castigation. We have to appreciate that these people are not bad people but that they believe absolutely that the role of public health is to change behaviour:

“This should be mainstream agenda. This is not an add on , this not the responsibility of a single professional group, the new public health is what we should be all about and move way beyond this set of current reforms and into seriously addressing these issues of behaviour change.”

Your behaviour, my behaviour, the bloke next door’s behaviour are all to change so as to meet the requirements of proper behaviour. And this proper behaviour is not about swearing, politeness or refraining from sleeping with fallen women but about what we consume – our food, our drink and, for some, our smoking. The purity being sought by the New Puritan isn’t the purity of Christian faith that past Puritan’s sought but a purity of living – the temple is our body not the church of Christ.

Are health educators the new puritans? Yes, of course they are. They would cleanse and purify the new religion. The new religion is a paltry faith. It is worship of self.

And with this desire to perfect mankind comes an associated accountants dream – that tallying up of the cost to “society” of this bad lifestyle.

Unhealthy Britons are costing the NHS, employers and themselves £17.7 billion every year through their lifestyle choices, according to a study by health insurance firm Bupa. And obesity, smoking and excessive drinking could cost us all £33 billion by 2025, unless something is done.

Against this New Puritan onslaught there is little challenge – most of us start from the premise of “so what” when these dreadful figures are pointed out to us. We respond to the accountants by pointing out that those smokers and drinkers pay plenty in extra duty and VAT and tend to die younger – more than making up for the extra cost of their bad lifestyle. But this counts for nothing since the object of veneration is not the NHS budget but the perfectible human body, the temple of hubris.

And our anger is not co-ordinated or directed – smokers rail against the ban on indoor smoking unsupported by groups like CAMRA who, we hope, will die in the ditch to halt the New Puritan assault on drinking. We turn to those who make the products and find that they quite like the restrictive environment – one where business entry is hard and the resulting oligopoly contributes to higher profits:

Diageo wants to see "full equivalence" between all kinds of alcohol, so that one unit is taxed at the same rate, regardless of the drink. The strongest drinks would therefore pay the highest level of tax. Diageo is proposing the move as a way of staving off political pricing on drinks such as alcopops and strong cider, targeted by health campaigners for encouraging binge drinking.

So we arrive at the point where an ill-directed bunch of people connected only by a preference for personal choice and liberty face the huge New Puritan faith backed as it is by large amounts of taxpayers’ cash and the subventions of self-interested multinational businesses. And it is no wonder that, in response to my description of the New Puritan world one commenter had this to say:

The ideological struggle in Anglo nations has been between roundheads and cavaliers since Cromwell and, the puritan faction are now in the ascendant again. But I fear that sitting back to wait for them to self-destruct isn't going to work. They have never done so in all the preceding centuries. If there are internal contradictions to Puritanism, it hasn't stopped them so far. We do need to raise an army, of an ideological nature. These people will not stop on their own. They have to be stopped.

Hence this call for New Cavaliers, for a troop of people to take on the army of the new Puritans, that army threatening our leisure and pleasure, that would restrict out freedom and our choice. We should heed the words of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester:

But thoughts are given for action's government;
Where action ceases, thought's impertinent:
Our sphere of action is life's happiness,
And he that thinks beyond, thinks like an ass.
Thus, whilst against false reasoning I inveigh,
I own right reason, which I would obey:
That reason which distinguishes by sense
And gives us rules of good and ill from thence,
That bounds desires, with a reforming will
To keep 'em more in vigour, not to kill.
Your reason hinders, mine helps to enjoy,
Renewing appetites yours would destroy.
My reason is my friend, yours is a cheat;
Hunger calls out, my reason bids me eat;
Perversely, yours your appetite does mock:
This asks for food, that answers, "What's o'clock?"
This plain distinction, sir, your doubt secures:
'Tis not true reason I despise, but yours.

We are not placed here to serve some masters – be they kings, presidents or some collectivist concept of government – we are here to consume nature’s bounty. Yes we must work, we must create but this is purposeful only in that it allows us to consume, in that it permits us our choice of pleasure. So we must resist those who would have us join the Church of Public Health, expose them as – in Wilmot’s words – thinking ‘like an ass’ concerned with something beyond happiness, beyond the idea of pleasure.

So what should we do? Here are a few thoughts – feel free to add to them:

1. Question, petition and challenge your politicians – don’t listen to those who would see this as waste. Remember that politicians respond to a full mail bag and if it is full of challenges to the New Puritan message from voters many MPs will start to listen. And don’t limit yourself to MPs – target councillors, parish councillor and the candidates from different parties at elections

2. Support your local pub, chip shop or burger bar – raise petitions in support of licensing, write letter to the press in support of good licensing. Don’t be scared to offend or upset those – and especially those from public health and police – who would restrict licensing to an English version of the six o’clock swill

3. Get involved in local bodies – whether we’re talking about campaigning groups like CAMRA (boy do they need some spine) or local community groups. Get onto Parish and Town Councils – these bodies are always looking for new members and, for a few hours work a month, you get a chance to oppose the message of the New Puritans

4. Write to the local paper – it may have a declining readership but it still matters. Speak to the editor too – ask him or her whether you can have an opinion piece, especially if you represent a local group or organisation. Also add comments to new stories challenge the New Puritan message

5. Join health bodies – register as members of Hospital Foundation Trusts, get involved with GP Patient Participation Groups, sign up to Alcohol Concern, ASH and other such bodies. Attend the AGMs of these groups and challenge the report on public health and other statements in annual reports.

6. Attend health scrutiny panels of local councils – if you’re a group ask to present, to speak. Provide councillors on these panels with reasons why the New Puritans are wrong. Identify and support those politicians who agree or sympathise

All these actions are done without any disobedience, without breaking the New Puritan’s rules. But there may come a point when disobedience is necessary, when we must challenge the orders that allow police to confiscate drinks for no good reason, must protest at stupid smoking restrictions such as those on windy station platforms and must challenge the lunacy of licensing decisions that mean you can drink outside on a fine summer’s evening.

And we must be loud about all this – intolerant of those who tell us to shush because they disagree or else don’t want a row with the New Puritans. My friends – my fellow cavaliers – get that feather in your hat, straighten the beard, dust the ruffles on your shirts and raise your sabres in the charge. We are going into battle – a battle we may lose but would we not rather lose a real battle for liberty and choice than sit idly by? And find ourselves thinking, “maybe I should have said or done something”, as we sip slowly at the half-pint of beer that the Government’s weekly ration allows us? To look up from our approved low calorie, trans-fat free veggie burger and ask ourselves, “how did we let this happen?”

After all we’ve nothing to lose – except the right to choose. The right to drink a couple of pints, to smoke a few fags and to eat hamburger and chips – the right to choose the path of Epicurus over the cursed Narcissism that the New Puritans promise.


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The 'Free School' genie is out of the bottle...

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I received a briefing note from Bradford Council's Strategic Director, Children's Services on the matter of academies and free schools. The note simply set out how the governance status of existing schools is changing - there will be at least 15 academies in the District soon - and listed the proposals for free schools (there are nine so far).

Now Bradford's a big place - getting on for half-a-million people - so these numbers still represent a minority of schools but, it seems to me that the advent of free schools and the simpler academy process represent a very profound change in the City's educational landscape. And I'm inclined to agree with Michael Gove on how important this agenda is to parents and children - the most profound and welcome change in education since the destruction of the grammar school system that started in the 1960s (a destruction that still continues today - as parents in Reading are discovering).

Add to this the significant changes in the management of admissions - allowing, in effect, successful schools to expand - we have a welcome shift away from the dominating monolith of the local education authority:

With pupil numbers determining school funding levels, ministers believe liberalising admissions policies will stymie what they view as attempts by local authorities to keep underperforming schools going by preventing popular schools taking on more pupils.

The genie is out of the bottle - and will start weaving the magic of freedom and choice around our schools. I for one am pleased.

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Conservative things...

I’m a Conservative – a bit like Iggy Pop’s a conservative. I don’t see the need to change things that don’t need changing, I think that most of the time people can get on with each other and with their lives without the need for the state’s guiding hand and I believe that the place we’re from and the place we choose to settle shapes who we are and encapsulates our values, our culture if you will.

I look across Yorkshire’s green hills, listen to the birds singing and look at those things seeming timeless – the beer, the food, the walls and trees, the rounded vowels and, above all, that view that this land is ours to cherish. To understand what it means to be conservative, you have to grasp that this is everyone’s.

James Delingpole – who probably isn’t a conservative – writes today in his usual polemical manner about the Conservative Party’s predicament:

...the Conservative party in Britain is in dire, dire trouble. And the root of this malaise is precisely this mix of snooty remoteness, intellectual woolliness and odious wetness exhibited by senior party figures like Oliver Wetwin.

And it’s true – Oliver Letwin, for all his Etonian grandeur, his haughty braininess and his riches, isn’t a conservative.  But the party’s predicament isn’t down to the Letwins of this world – it’s down to us losing touch with the core of our vote. People who are not the scions of fine families, have at best a tenuous connection to the world of merchant banking or the city and whose connection with fine houses comes from trips to visit them using our National Trust membership.

Last May, my party won seats because ordinary working people started to vote Tory again – among the snobbish elite voting Tory was only acceptable if one knew the candidate or their views were suitably “liberal”. Knocking on two-thirds of professional and managerial voters used to plump for Tory candidates back in the 1970s and 1980s – last year we struggled to 39% of such folk.

By contrast, 37% of the skilled working class – all those men in white vans, those plumbers, chippies and lathe turners – voted Conservative in 2010. Men and women looking for that idea of aspiration, self-reliance and independence that conservatives offer. People for whom the simple sense of place – of village, town or city, county and nation – helps define who they are and who care little for the obsessions of those with the cash to indulge in fine thoughts.

In Bingley Rural – five villages in the South Pennines – there aren’t many millionaires. The roads aren’t cluttered with flash cars, we don’t have fancy wine bars or posh boutiques, the merchant banker is most definitely a foreign beast – but we are pretty conservative. We like the place as it is, we like the features of the villages, the pubs, the farm shops, the butcher, we enjoy the company of neighbours and friends and we want to work. We love the setting and the country around us.

What we ask of our government is pretty simple – protection from crime, good schools and skilled doctors, helping keep the place clean, maintaining the roads, pavements and parks, providing support – when needed – to those in need and preserving the good things about the places. We don’t ask for lectures about “climate change”, about drinking and smoking, what kind of car we drive or holiday we take.

When I knock on doors and talk to local folk, they don’t ask me about the carbon footprint of Easyjet or the need to ban booze advertising. People don’t mention ‘gross national happiness’ or the equalities agenda. What they ask is why the pubs are going bust, how expensive basic staples – food and fuel - have got, how they never see a copper and why their son can’t afford a house in the village.

Simple, easy-to-understand things concerned with the place we live, with keeping it nice, with making it better – conservative things.

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The Blackleg Miner

Some of you will know I have something of a penchant for lefty folk music – well folk music really but quite a lot of it is pretty lefty! And, while driving back from Carlisle to sunny Cullingworth, I was listening to a little ditty entitled “The Blackleg Miner”. Let me share with you some of the lyrics:

Oh, Delaval is a terrible place,
They rub wet clay in the blackleg's face,
And around the heaps they run a footrace
to catch the blackleg miner.
And even down near the Seghill mine,
Across the way they stretch a line
To catch the throat, to break the spine
of the dirty blackleg miner.

Harkening to this, a thought struck me about strikes, unions and the problems of collective action. Essentially, what right do these men have to enforce what they desire through violence, bullying and intimidation? What right do they have to treat someone who just wishes to go to work, earn a wage and feed his family with such bullying intimidation?

By all means disagree with the strike-breaker, perhaps even have nothing to do with the blackleg. But violence and intimidation are wrong however much they are enforcing the desire of the majority. And the punishment meted out to those who break a strike – the intimidatory bullying – continues long beyond the end of the dispute. Here’s a report from 2009 in the Scottish Daily Record:

None of the strike-breakers approached by the Record would agree to be interviewed. Some have died, some moved away, a few defiant individuals stood their ground pleading their case but, to a man, they were reluctant to re-open old wounds.

This includes Jim Pearson, 76, of Dunfermline, who worked at the Longannet pit and was the first-miner in Fife to return to work. Pearson regularly appeared in the Record during 1984 after breaking the strike.

There were furious scenes on the day he returned. More than 150 police clashed with 200 pickets as he made his way to work. His van was ambushed by around 100 brick-throwing pickets and he ran the gauntlet for two terrifying miles with blood running down his face.

All because he chose to challenge the majority decision – to make a different and pretty tough choice about his life.

I guess we make our choices but no-one deserves this kind of treatment just for going to work.

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For heaven's sake leave us alone! A comment on choice, freedom and independence.

It struck me yesterday (while listening to the righteous discuss licensing and other matters at Council) that the idea of free choice, of personal responsibility and our autonomy as individual persons is a minority viewpoint among the political class. By way of example:

1. We debated whether the Director of Children’s Services should be consulted when the private sector wished to develop a children’s home. By the end of the debate I was convinced that the Director of Children’s Services should have no such right – by all means that individual can make representations in the same manner as any other person, put granting the developer's primary competitor (and also supplier) an privileged position is wrong. Yet we voted for such a privilege – it’s for the children, you see.

2. During this debate the matter of free schools arose - mostly so the Labour speaker could get over a pretty lame political point. And when the matter of planning leniency for new schools was mentioned a ripple of applause went round the chamber. I was shocked to see Conservative Councillors applauding an attack on the extension of choice and the reduction of bureaucracy.

3. In a different debate – one on ‘child poverty’ – the Labour speaker again mentioned free schools and academies. And her problem was that these schools reduced the Council’s budget – after all the money goes to the schools not the bureaucrats. Independence, autonomy and freedom were attacked because it meant the Council bureaucrats could not direct and control .

4. So much for debates at Council and onto a wider debate – this time the NHS. A doctor speaks and the gist of her comment is that patients don’t want choice and only ask for it when service is poor. This was compounded – according to the doctor – by the choice being between private and public providers. As I understand her view it was that we shouldn't get choice in healthcare because the public sector aren’t as good at it as the private sector! And the private sector is nasty because it makes a profit. This from someone who profits from the NHS to the tune of £100,000 or more.

5. And then we have the ‘drinking is bad’ debate – the lies and nonsense intended to reduce the access to drink for poor people. The underlying context of this is that old-fashioned middle class busybody view that the poor aren’t bright enough to make their own decisions about their own lives – they must be nudged, shoved and browbeaten into following the strictures of their public sector masters. I guess that talking strangely, listening to cacophonous base-heavy music and appearing on Jeremy Kyle’s daytime show provides the basis for this argument. Well it won’t do – if they want to wreck their lives with drink, fags and drugs that’s (most of the time) their business, innit!

I will not despair but will carry on making the sensible, usually evidence-based arguments that freedom, choice and independence – autonomy as is explained by Anna Raccoon – are the best route to a civilised, happy and successful society. When we’re free we work harder, we play better and we work out means to deal with out differences – all without the need for a political master race to direct our every childish action.

I do not understand why the political class so despise freedom – or rather freedom for other people to make their own successes and failures. And why appeals to authoritarian and draconian reactions – be it on immigration, crime or the economy – get such popular support. Maybe wiser heads might help?

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