Malcontents & Chaos

From my post yesterday morning I see some more folk have enforced my very low opinion of humanity; my growing misanthropy is being fed daily.

They defiled a statue of Winston Churchill by urinating on it, ripped flags from the Cenotaph – the nation’s sacred memorial to those who died in the name of liberty – then lit fires and sprayed slogans on the ground in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament.
...
Windows were smashed at the Supreme Court building. Even the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square – a symbol of peace and goodwill – became a focus for senseless vandalism.

These are not the actions of urban warriors fighting against apartheid; they are not followers of the spirit of great men like Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jnr fighting against the injustice of state-mandated segregation, racism or imperial oppression - if anything they are arguing for more of the latter - and they are certainly not Anarchists (capital A) in the honourable sense; anarchy is the noble belief in absolute liberty and freedom of the individual to rise or fall by their own merit and to contract as they like with whom they like. These are Chaotists and malcontents and are not fighting for a noble cause but against one; they could strive to achieve great things in later life, be entrepreneurs and donate their wealth to real charities helping give poor kids their "right" to a decent education; instead they moan about being forced to make difficult decisions about where totals their life- in effect, being forces to grow up and face reality*.

My company took us on a retreat this week in thanks for all our hard work making it profitable year on year; they hired a motivational speaker who told us that FEAR is 2 acronyms- the first: False Evidence Appearing Real- these demonstrators would do well to understand that this is not the collapse of a "right" but it's genesis.

Me? I prefer the second acronym: Fuck Everything And Run.

* = yes I did get my education "free; I consider it a "privilege", not a right and the following points should be made:

-6 years on my pay is only now coming to levels where I am asked to pay for it; a consequence partly of events in my own life and the New Labour experiment choking the life out of every job market in the country.

- I pay in excess of at least 40% of my wage in taxes of one form
or another, a third being lifted before I even get my weekly pay cheque, the rest extracted by billed taxes like council and road tax. It is probably above the 60% mark in terms of taxation when you consider VAT and ancillary costs of regulation on consumer goods & services which are passed on to the consumer.

- Are education system is incredibly closed down and illiberal; I can download top American university lecture series onto my iPhone for free and learn but how would I get accredited learning this way? Whilst the cost to the education supplier is actually going down due to technology, the cost to the consumer goes up; this is a direct result of a government monopoly in education.

Giving Back

A Major Hunt, Yesterday.

Waking up this morning to Jeremy Hcunt hectoring the middle classes to donate more of that shrinking disposable income to charity.

A millionaire minister has risked angering the middle classes by lambasting the better-off for not giving enough money to charity.
Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, also believes they should do more to help their communities by volunteering.

I am too tired and cranky this morning to deconstruct this bilge, but it does bring up recent feelings that have been fulminating recently.

When the youth group I give my own time voluntarily to came back from the half term break I was told that at least several members that we knew of had been involved in criminal acts, had vandalised others personal property or bullied them, and, somehow worse, had been a little forthright about how they felt about the various youth group leaders who had been selflessly giving their time (and in one very dramatic case their health) to try to make their lives a little bit more comfortable.

Last week, when the snow was at it's worse, I dropped the car at the bottom of my hill (which becomes impassable once the ice sets in) only to have it broken into, 2 windows smashed, one which was electric, so some crack head could steal my 16-month old daughters toy, which they later abandoned down the street; the cost of repairing the windows (luckily) was less than £150 - the cost of cleaning the glass, snow and water damage out of the car, nor the emotionally tiring arse-ache of ringing the (frankly useless) police or my insurer (who dutifully informed me I could claim for the damage after much the runaround, but would lose my no-claims and crank up my premiums massively next year) hasn't been ascertained yet.

These 2 events, and the fact that the impetus towards and ever expanding state hasn't slowed, have led me to a somewhat depressing conclusion: the people of this land don't want change.

As such I am beginning to come to the same conclusion of Rand's character John Galt came to: that we are a nation of looters and mediocratists, and that the only way this will change is to stand well back and let it play out to the inevitable conclusion.

I will not be helping out at my youth group anymore; right or wrong to inflict collective punishment on innocents these are the product of multiple generations of looters who continue to perpetuate the current kleptocracy rather than take the grips that need to be got; civil society is collapsing and sadly nothing I have seen, nor seemingly that of my betters is indicating otherwise.

That's not say good things aren't still happening; my wallet fell out of my pocket and a school child turned it in to his teacher who handed it to my bank nearest me. It is just that for every good thing I am seeing 20 bad.

We are at a false dawn; Cameron promised much but appears to be as venal and corrupt as his new labour predecessors. I'm going back to bed; I've been working all night long.

Happy Christmas

So how's everyone first day of December treating them?

Having trudged back 6 and a half miles from the centre of Leeds after my bus got caught in the mother of all traffic jams due to several inches of global warming bringing traffic to a near standstill I now have to work on metrics for the last year's work based on incoherent figures pulled together haphazardly from my predecessors notes, organise a mass cleanup of my department area remotely for an impromptu VIP visit for which I have had my boss "delegating" tasks to me, and entertain my 16 month-old daughter whilst she is teething and feeling extra-clingy.

This on the back of a dose of norovirus last week in which I shat and vomitted myself half a stone lighter along with my wife, daughter and immediate family, and having to sort out a car insurance claim after someone smashed my passenger-side electric window so they could steal my baby-girl's broken phone we gave her to play with.

Couple that onto the fact that my car, now full of broken glass and unable to get to my driveway for the global warming, will now almost certainly be breaches past my imperfect cardboard and plastic bag seal to let huge mounds of snow and ice in.

How's your December starting out? Good?

Petition for Rationality

Reading this yesterday got me thinking: how do governments guarantee certainty? For all it's demerits, it's big-talk-small-action and it's downright illiberal poo-gravy this coalition has at least done one (good?) thing; it has stopped the mass capital flight that Eire is currently undergoing by assuring the markets that things, though not ideal, are at least stable.

So I felt obliged to create this petition (annoyingly missing the last word off which is "limit").

My logic can be no better summed up than in these famous words:

I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. The reason I am is because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. The question is, "How do you hold down government spending?" Government spending now amounts to close to 40% of national income not counting indirect spending through regulation and the like. If you include that, you get up to roughly half. The real danger we face is that number will creep up and up and up. The only effective way I think to hold it down, is to hold down the amount of income the government has. The way to do that is to cut taxes.

-Milton Friedman

Ultimately the stranglehold is that of our elected representatives and the fact that they have the keys to some very powerful tools:

- The legal use if violence.

- The legal use of counterfeiting

I simply say that the problem of abuse of these tools can be fixed by arbitrarily limiting what proportion of the economy politicians can control and staple it to a written constitution protected by democratically elected but separate powers in the judicial services (which are long overdue an overhaul).

Will people join me?

So Much For £480 Million...

Thank God for Dave "cast-iron" Cameron eh? If it wasn't for him we would be paying considerably more to the EU on seriously nebulous grounds while public services are wound down to levels we can't afford rather than levels we hilariously could never afford in our lifetimes.

Oh.

British taxpayers could be liable for up to £6 billion of Irish debt under a potential rescue package for the Republic's stricken economy, it emerged today.
Downing Street said the UK was responsible for 12% of a €60 billion (£50.94bn) stability mechanism that might be used in a bid to restore confidence in the Irish economy.

Yes I am aware that this was a bit of scorched earth policy that Labour put in to stick it to an increasingly compromised europhilic-in-europhobics-clothing Bory party, but it goes to illustrate just how un-erring our political masters are to the grand EU project; they are willing to pile on a few extra thousand on each of us for the moral hazard of absolving another nation of it's actions, all in the name if "ever closer union".

I am not even going to attempt to list what you could buy with this kind of money; if the left weren't so buried up the arse of the EU to see what a bad idea it is they would no doubt point out that that covers a fairly massive part of the welfare cuts proposed- the EU are quite literally taking money out of poor peoples hands & putting it in bankers in Ireland.

I Wants One

Backlash after budget supermarket Lidl launches reindeer meat for Christmas

Lidl, which has more than 500 shops in Britain, is the first multiple grocery retailer in the UK to introduce reindeer meat in the run-up to the festive season.

Guess where I'm headed after work?

Well There You Have It

Count Yourself Lucky It Was So Warm, Ye Gods.

Anyone else listen to Radio 4's Material World last night?

Apparently last winter was a consequence of other factors including sea currents and so other cyclical phenomena which apparently don't affect the underlying trend in rising global temperatures.

So in a nutshell, were it not for our polluting, mother-earth bashing ways it would not been freezing cold but freezing bollock, nuts firmly trapped in the freezer cold.

Remarkable; has it not occurred to any of them that global temperatures themselves might vary in temperature?

Reasons To Be Cheerful

After seeing the odious YouTube efforts of convicted murderer John Hirst gloating about winning his "Hooman Royts" battle with the government I couldn't help but wonder "if he is on licence should he really be smoking dope? Won't that land him back in jail?"

It seems I'm not the only one who questioned this and that John Hirst may soon be practicing his new found "rights" in jail.

This folds in the increasingly hilarious fact that Cambo has basically no real sovereignty or power on matters usurped by the EU:

- He failed to tell the EU where to go on a billion pound budgetary increase (and there is no guarantee that will be the end of it)

- He failed to grasp the ECHR's very simple request to clarify the rules on prisoners voting rights, and by doing so left them to rule in favour of the odious little turf Hirst (Labour naturally share most of the blame or allowing this to languish but surely a dyed in the wool conservative wouldn't need to give this a second thought would they?)

- He has failed to keep public sector reform about service reform and has allowed the unions and Labour to make it about money - ultimately the state is will not only grow bigger but be galvanised by an apparent climb-down by weak Bory's.

- He has failed to address dissent in his own coalition and what's more ignore the gall of a BBC that reports every Bory proposal in a negative light, vilifies Maxwell and friends for wanting to grow whilst ignoring the monopoly it enjoys through it's licensing structure.

- He has abused both the localism movement and the civil rights agenda espoused by the likes of Hannan and Carswell, waxing lyrical about referendums and people power while handing taxpayer money over to fake charities, special interest groups and QUANGOs, albeit slightly fewer than there was when he beganin the latter case. All the while still spying on our emails, still handing over British citizens to foreign governments and ignoring louder calls for a referendum on the EU.

And why is this something to be cheerful about? Because noone's buying it anymore...

Because Sometimes Comments Just Get Too Long

Old Holborn has, as is his way laid down the gauntlet for a very divisive issue, one which sees some very bad people privileged.

The comment I was going to post there got too long I now give it it's own blog here:

It is testament to the state of our country which has thrown natural rights by the wayside that they have adopted so called "human rights"; they are a mockery of natural rights. It is merely a consequence of govt. abandoning the Individualist perspective in place of a communitarian one, born of too much power concentrated in too few hands.

To me the answer is simple; infringing on the natural rights of others (to life, liberty and property) and, regrettably, those laws set forth by our parliament means you give up those natural rights of yours that can be returned or compensated for at a later date if the arbitrating process (I.e. The justice system) fails and your are wrongly convicted.

As all other "civil and social rights" as Mr. Hirst posited are merely extensions, in both positive (eg the right to elect those who minister and formulate the law) and negative (eg the myriad "entitlements" mistakenly called rights, which usurp everyones natural rights) terms, of the natural rights then their denial is intertwined in that of the natural; the right to vote is an extension of the right to liberty and thus is rescinded when the criminal is convicted of infringing on someones own natural rights.

You are correct Old Holborn; what was done to Mr. Hogan is an injustice but only because of the deeper injustice contained in unjust laws and corrupt lawmakers- likewise with speeding.

But, to apply the same logic to a just infringement on someones natural rights is foolish; I would go further in stating that this brings Mr. Hogan down to Mr. Hirst's level.

I'm beginning to understand a very important point about the philosophy of liberty (I believe it was Obo who pointed it out shortly before he gave up, kind of); one of the main "gauntlets" laid down by challengers to the libertarian message could be written thusly: "if your ideas are so great then why not start a political party and see if people will vote you in to pursue that goal" - this is the rationale of the guilty rapist or murderer who will tell himself and his victim that "they were asking for it"; it makes the victim of injustice the offender and turns the concept of justice on it's head.

By removing the right to liberty and property justice is served; to say we must overturn justice when it comes to natural rights because there are miscarriages of justice or the law is abused in dealing with things beyond natural rights (Mr. Hogan for example) is to accept there is something wrong with your argument, not something wrong with their supposition that you should fight for laws that respect natural rights.

Fighting for a prisoners right to vote because their is legislative abuse of the justice system is silly arguement; removal of those natural rights that can be returned or compensated for in the event of a miscarriage of justice is a legitimate action to take on someone who infringes on another's natural rights. We fight a lost battle when we accept that the cause for freedom is something we should bet for, rather than claim by right.

Way too long, hyperbolic, but gets my point across.

Victory At Any Cost

So it appears the Republicans now control the purse strings of government; their control of the house, with it's powers to dictate federal spending is exactly what the TEA party movement needs:

I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. The reason I am is because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. The question is, "How do you hold down government spending?" Government spending now amounts to close to 40% of national income not counting indirect spending through regulation and the like. If you include that, you get up to roughly half. The real danger we face is that number will creep up and up and up. The only effective way I think to hold it down, is to hold down the amount of income the government has. The way to do that is to cut taxes.

- Milton Friedman

This was as much a slap in the face to Bush's big-state conservatism (a contradiction in terms) as it is to Obama's bigger-state socialism; which is why it is especially repugnant to hear so many reporters on the radio this morning talk up the "fact" that "fundamentalist teapartiers" were responsible for losing the senate for the republicans.

It is telling that most paid MSM commentators see it as incumbent on voters of a particular political hue to compromise on most issues in order to get "their man" elected - "the middle ground must be occupied" the sheeples pundits bleat, and in our race to the bottom in our various mediocracies the world over we have bought into this line to our detriment, particularly when "the middle" isn't actually the middle at all but graded to a curve dictated by authoritarian scum.

That is why the TEA party movement is important - ultimately it is teaching politicians that there is no curve, nor is there a "left" or "right" in the way we neatly dress it in out minds; only freedom and slavery, the latter of which we have drifted forward to for too long.