Nov
29
Why Eastenders leads to Big Government
Filed Under Uncategorized
First Published - Tuesday 26th November 2002
Every week 13 to 17 million people across the nation tune into Eastenders. This programme is often derided as trash. I would not agree. Eastenders is very clever television. The production values of the show are high, and it skips very cleverly between story lines at least every 90 seconds, which means that the viewers are able to keep numerous plot threads in their minds at once. Eastenders also carries a message. This message is: “Your life is miserable. No matter what you do, it will go on being miserable. You are unable to look after yourself, therefore you need the state to look after you.” Eastenders creates a demand for an intrusive government.
In Eastenders a person in a suit is almost always a villain. This must cause many of those watching the show to distrust men in suits. Men in suits are often businessmen. Whenever a big corporation pops up in Eastenders it is more often than not to cause trouble for the cast. Big corporations never seem to offer jobs and opportunities for individuals in the fictional world of Albert Square.
The cast of Eastenders are always in a perpetual state of misery. They never seem able to surmount the obstacles in their way. Whenever a cast member seems to find a problem too overwhelming to deal with, the state is generally expected to solve the problem.
Eastenders also pushes the Blairite constitutional agenda, and seeks to undermine the institutions of this country, which protect liberty. New Labour has so far failed in its attempt to abolish trial by jury. In Eastenders, the character of “Little Mo” was found guilty of attempted murder even though she was innocent. “Little Mo” was found guilty by a jury of her peers. The message this gives out is that trial by jury doesn’t work and that a centralised judiciary would do a better job.
In Eastenders nobody seems to better themselves substantially. There appears to be little room for entrepreneurial vigour in the world of Albert Square. When a character leaves Eastenders, it is not to pursue opportunities elsewhere. It is due to death, going to prison or the desire to flee from some problem or person.
Compare Eastenders with the Australian soap Neighbours, which is also shown every weekday on British TV. Neighbours offers viewers a positive message: “Life isn’t miserable. Hard work will get you somewhere. You don’t need the state to solve your problems. There are opportunities if you seek them out.” . In Neighbours, characters often leave due to opportunity elsewhere. The state rarely appears, and when it does it is usually a nuisance. Alas, the production values of Neighbours are lower than those of Eastenders, and Neighbours only attracts an audience of 7 to 8 million viewers per episode.
If you sat two children of identical background and mental health in front of a television set for a year, with one watching Neighbours and the other watching Eastenders, the child who watched Neighbours would be less dependent and happier than the child who watched Eastenders.
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Nov
29
The History of Classical Liberalism
Filed Under Uncategorized
First Published - Thursday, December 26th 2002
All written history prior to the advent of Classical Liberalism is the history of an elite oppressing the masses. This elite has been at different times socialist and feudal. Classical Liberalism is an individualistic philosophy. It respect the property of the individual and considers all taxation as theft and therefore by definition evil. This philosophy thrived in the mid-19th century after the repeal of the Corn Laws. After the great depression Socialism and Modern Liberalism became the dominant political philosophies of Britain. Even the U.S.A. – a nation whose constitution is fundamentally of a Classical Liberal nature – experimented with Modern Liberal economic policies after the depression. Classical Liberalism although it appeared dead as a practical philosophy found it’s ideas once more accepted after the stagflation of the 1970’s had brought the economies of the west to ruin. Bizarrely the former foes of the Classical Liberal approach – Conservatives- found themselves as the ones responsible for it’s resurgence.
The birth of Classical Liberalism
Classical Liberalism was born in 18th century Britain. The main advocates of this philosophy were Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Locke. These men are now considered the intellectual greats of their day. At the time in which they were writing however they were in a minority among their peers. The views that they expressed were radical. Locke preached that the only role of government was protection of life, liberty and property. Smith broke the mould by suggesting that men acting out of self-interest produced the greatest benefit for society and by advocating faith in the “invisible hand” of the market and free trade. Bentham created a brand new philosophy of which the individual is central – the philosophy of Utilitarianism.
The Triumph and Fall of Classical Liberalism
By 1846 Protectionist policies had led to the starving of the poor due to the artificially high price of domestic corn. The Conservative Prime Minister of the time, Robert Peel, viewed this situation as intolerable. The intellectual elite looked for a solution. There was only one realistic solution -accepting the principals of free trade that Adam Smith had so masterfully propagated 70 years earlier. The low taxation and free trade policies of Smith had led to 30 years of prosperity for Britain.
The seeds for the downfall of Classical Liberalism had, however, been sown in 1867 when the 2nd Reform Act was passed. This Reform Act had given working class men the vote for the 1st time. The political parties then had to fight for the votes of the newly enfranchised. Many in the Liberal Party felt that the way to do this was by offering the working classes better living and working conditions for votes. In doing this they were turning their backs on Classical Liberalism which preached that the majority would be better off the less the government intervened. The logic they used to justify this turn around was that people needed certain things to be free- healthcare, fewer working hours, education, housing, free cocktails and chocolate éclairs etc. This philosophy became known as Modern Liberalism.
In 1929 Wall Street crashed – causing mass unemployment. Those of a Classical Liberal mindset advocated letting the economy sort itself out as any government intervention would slow down the process. The intellectual elite was in fear of fascists or communists being elected and so looked for solutions. They rejected F.A.Hayek’s laissez-faire solutions offered in his1931 book “Prices and Production” and instead opted for the interventionist policies of J.M.Keynes, which offered “quick-fix” solutions to the problem. Even though Hayek warned of the damage that Keynesian policies would cause in the long run in his review of Keynes’s “Treatise on Money” in “Economica” in 1931, Hayek’s warning were ignored.
The Wilderness Years for Classical Liberals
After the Conservative landslide defeat of 1945 to the Labour Party, a Modern Liberal, semi-socialist cross-party consensus emerged. This consensus would remain in Britain until 1976. In these post-war years it appeared Classical Liberalism was dead. There were however Classical Liberals who rebelled against this consensus. In Britain the most noticeable rebel was Enoch Powell. Powell had lead the rebellion of January 1958 in which the entirety of Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan’s Treasury team resigned due to the government’s monetary policy. Powell had predicted the stagflation that was going to occur in just over a decade. In 1971 Powell published a book called “Still to Decide” in which he laid the foundations for Thatcherism. In this book Powell advocated radical Trade Union Reform and Privatisation, although he called it De-nationalisation. It would be difficult to claim Powell was a Classical Liberal however due to his views on Immigration and other issues being distinctly not Classical Liberal. It is important though to recognise his contributions towards keeping many Classical Liberal ideas alive in Britain in an age of Keynesian consensus.
Powell was not the only intellectual rebel. F.A.Hayek, in 1944, then a professor at the LSE published a book, which was barely acknowledged at the time called “The Road to Serfdom”. In this book Hayek illustrated the errors of socialism and preached Classical Liberal economics and social attitudes.
An American Economist, Milton Friedman, published a book which would one day revolutionise society in 1962. This book was called “Freedom and Capitalism”. In it Friedman explains how the Great Depression was caused by Government mismanagement of the money supply and not by Classical Liberal economics.
While all 3 of these publications were barely noticed when published they would become responsible for the resurgence of Classical Liberal ideas.
The greatest threat to Modern Liberalism in the consensus years came in the U.S.A. and not Britain. In 1964 Barry Goldwater stood for the Presidency on a platform virtually identical to the one that swept Ronald Reagan to victory in 1980. Goldwater, however, lost the election due to goodwill felt towards the Democrats in the aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination.
The Classical Liberal Phoenix
In the winter of 1976/77 Labour Chancellor Denis Healey accepted the biggest loan the IMF had ever given a nation in return for changing Britain’s economic policy. Modern Liberal policies had lead to an artificial build up in unemployment and massive inflation. Together this was known as stagflation. While the western world was suffering the consequences for ignoring Hayek in the 1930’s, the intellectual elite were baffled. It took the IMF forcing the monetarist policies of Milton Friedman onto Britain and the dynamic reforms of Margaret Thatcher to fix the nations economy. At around the same time Ronald Reagan was making similar reforms in the U.S.A.
Reagan and Thatcher while Classical Liberal in the economic sense were Conservative in the domestic sense. Hayek in the “Constitution of Liberty” had written a chapter called “Why I am not a Conservative”. In this he explained that he believed in a state, which does not interfere in any action taken by an individual who does not affect the property of another individual. This attitude as seen by the Conservative attitude towards euthanasia and drugs is not Conservative but Classical Liberal. Thatcher and Reagan can be described as neo-Liberal or neo- Conservative for their politics of the free economy and the strong state.
Classical Liberalism as a result of the 80’s reforms however has received a renewed interest and looking at the increasing membership of Classical Liberal [popularly known as Libertarian] institutions it is obvious that Classical Liberalism is now a dominant political ideology once more.
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Nov
29
The Philosophy of Classical Liberalism
Filed Under Uncategorized
First Published - Thursday, December 26th 2002
Classical Liberalism is an individualist political philosophy. The Classical Liberal believes that an individual has certain rights, which may never be violated by either the state or other individuals. The Classical Liberal philosopher John Locke claimed these rights were life, liberty and property. Later Classical Liberals have narrowed this down to property. This is because they claim that a person’s life is bound to their property, as a person’s body is his own property. They also claim that liberty is the ability of the individual to do what he wishes with his own property subject to it not violating another man’s property rights.
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Nov
29
First published on Monday, February 17th 2003
On Saturday, the largest ever protest to hit the streets of London took place. It was a march against a War on Iraq and a fun day out for all or almost all involved. It is estimates that one and a half million people took part on the march. All these people where against the war well apart from me and all the children younger than 12 who were there and all those girls who had come to “meet cute guys” and all those students who had turned up because their friends were coming and they wanted a fun day out. Of course apart from them everyone there was against the war.
The anti war march also was a “free” Palestine march hence the literature on sale from the “Socialist Worker” stand which claimed that Zionists were responsible for the Holocaust. I wonder how many of the people on the march shared the views of these Socialist nutballs.
The pop “star” Ms. Dynamite was at the march and was able to use the event to plug her songs and claim that we shouldn’t go to war because Iraqi children should be free to have a peaceful childhood so that they can write music about there happy childhood. I’m sorry honey, but last time I checked that nice Mr. Hussein is not into the freedom of expression thing but he does like children, why else would he have allowed his army to gas so many innocent Kurdish children and why else would he torture children in order to gain “confessions” or information out of their parents.
Though the march was attended by bored teenagers, out for a good time, and many harmless old hippies there were some pretty vile people at the march. The Communist Party of Great Britain was there in full force for example, protesting for peace while advocating revolution. I can see the consistency in there position there… really. The Commies were not the only ones who suffered from inconsistency. There was for example one group of people holding up a banner saying “Learn from Ghandi”. I’m sure that they did not mean to advocate to their fellow marchers that they should back the war but if they actually knew their Ghandi they would know that Ghandi was a big fan of “imperialist” war given that he did give his support to Indian involvement on behalf of the British during the First World War.
Interestingly for a march with such a large amount of socialists and anti-capitalists taking part there was quite a bit of capitalist trading taking place. I wish I had had the foresight to sell anti-war memorabilia- I would have made a bomb! It was however nice to see a thriving market economy at the heart of a demonstration backed by the Communists.
The Big winner of this March as well as Saddam Hussein was most definitely Piers Morgan, editor of the Daily Mirror, who had supplied the marchers with “No War” signs that also coincidently bore the logo of his newspaper on them. Some of the marchers did fathom what was going on and felt obliged to rip off the Daily Mirror signs from their banners but these protestors were the few and all in all the Mirror was able to gain quite a lot of cheap publicity from the march.
All in all it was a nice walk. It was a bit of a cold day for it though I hope the march against a war on North Korea takes place during a warmer time of year.
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Nov
29
Robin Hood - Socialist or Libertarian
Filed Under Uncategorized
First Published Tuesday 19th November 2002
As a young child the tales of Robin Hood caused me quite a bit of concern. As I saw it theft was theft, so why did responsible adults feed children with tales of a man who stole from the rich to give to the poor. When I questioned adults about this at a young age they gave me the same justification people still give me for the welfare state. That justification is ‘some people do not have the ability to provide for themselves so wealth needs to be redistributed to provide for them’. As I have grown older I have discovered that that analyses is simplistic and impractical. This lead me to the belief that Robin Hood was a tale used to indoctrinate children in to believing tax was good. I despaired that there was no great individualist hero in children’s tales. My view of Robin Hood remained unchanged for years until I decided to write an article on why Robin Hood preached socialism. After some thought about the matter, however, I came to a quite different conclusion. Robin Hood is supposed to have existed in feudal times. In feudal times the rich taxed the poor to build giant palaces. In doing that the rich were stealing off the poor by taxing them. Robin Hood is almost always portrayed taking taxes off the Sheriff of Nottingham and giving them back to the poor taxpayer. This makes Robin Hood appear to be more like an early Thomas Jefferson instead of an early Marxist. What is unfortunate is that parents fail to tell their children that Robin Hood did not really steal from the rich and give to the poor but took from the tax collector and gave back to the taxpayer
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Nov
29
A Blast from the Past
Filed Under Politics
I have been able to find the majority of the articles from my old ConservativeLiberty.com site and shall be publishing them over the next few days … so enjoy reading my work from 2002/3 when I was still a Sixth Former!
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Aug
23
by Stuart Mark Turner - Economics Editor
An interesting article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal highlighted some very interesting figures comparing wage activity in the U.S. and the Euro zone. Examination of these figures may provide some solutions for our own beleaguered economy which failed to grow in the last quarter for the first time in sixteen years.
Wages in the Euro zone are 3.4% higher in the first quarter of 2008 when compared to the first quarter of 2007, while inflation hit 4% during July which most economists expect to rise further still, whereas in the U.S. wages grew by 3.3% over the same period with inflation hitting 5.6% in July.
This leads to the conclusion that living standards are falling at a faster rate in the U.S. than the Euro zone, I have no doubt that this is due to the power of trade unions on the continent, this stance however risks the economy as a whole and limits the opportunity available for the working classes of the Euro zone. The reason for this is that increasing Labour costs in the Euro zone will cause employers to increase prices in order to cover the extra costs (at the detriment to the consumer).This risks giving rise to a wage price inflationary spiral in the Euro zone, the risk of this happening in the U.S. is much smaller according to leading economists.
This of course could have dire consequences for the unemployment rate of the Euro zone which is running at 7.3% and while this is the lowest figure for a decade, it is still much higher than the unemployment rate in the U.S. which is running at 5.5%. Incidentally this has been rising from much lower previous levels, which is to be expected during a slowing of the economy. Now with the main Euro zone economies encountering negative growth in the previous quarter and recession looming large over those economies, any wage price inflation can only lead to increasing unemployment as employers look to cut overheads.
Let us now compare interest rates between the U.S. and the Euro zone as I believe this draws our attention to a divergence between the economic policies of the two respective central banks. Short term interest rates are currently running at 2% in the U.S. compared to 4.5% in the Euro zone, the reason for this being that in the Euro zone interest rates are being used to curb wage inflation, despite the fact that this approach will inhibit economic recovery due to the lack of liquidity in the markets. In contrast with this the Federal reserve along with many economists expect the slowing economy to suppress wage growth and hence suppress inflation, while the lower interest rate will increase much needed liquidity into the market aiding economic recovery.
Therefore in the short term workers in the U.S. may expect a drop in living standards (let us not forget that the average American currently enjoys higher living standards than his counterpart in the Euro zone), however with economic recovery coming around much sooner for the U.S. economy, living standards will soon be on the rise again while maintaining a higher rate of employment compared to the Euro zone.
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Aug
22
A not so quiet Parliamentary recess
Filed Under Politics
by Lydia Smith - Political Affairs Editor
Usually Parliamentary recess is a wind down in the political world, with assistants getting a well deserved break but this year all things political have kept on going.
Where do I start, Russia and the Georgian invasion, Obama and the will he wont he running mate debate, Gordo on his tour of the middle east in order to boost the morale of our troops and then the credit crunch, not only in Britain but the one happening across Europe also.
This year we have had our fair share of political activity, so where to begin. Possibly with the Russia vs. Georgia war. Hmmm so I’m not entirely sure as to who is at fault here; who started what – it’s like the chicken and the egg debate, which came first – a threat from Russia or Georgian troops marching into South Ossetia?
It still appears to be unclear. One may ask, why would Georgia send troops into one of their own provinces, without any obvious sign of threat? It may have been a reaction to a threat made by Russia, although knowing the former soviet countries past record, one can only presume that Georgia would have expected some sort of backlash from the proposition of joining the NATO council. Read more
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Aug
22
Transport and the Economy
Filed Under Uncategorized
by Stuart Mark Turner - Economics Editor
When anybody discusses the state of the British rail system it is quite clear that many consider it to be a disgrace and I would agree with this statement. Trains are not fast enough, punctual enough nor cheap enough when compared with our main competitors. This is a great disadvantage for our economy in terms of global competitiveness.
However the solution being bandied around even among Conservatives alarmingly enough is that a return to nationalisation would be a solution to these problems, I would suggest that this solution fails on all counts and I shall describe why. Read more
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Aug
22
by Lydia Smith - Political Affairs Editor
Considering that we are going through a turbulent economic time, is it really appropriate to be pushing for green issues, especially when the objection by such activists is on a power plant that will reduce people’s power bills?
There has been a camp set up near Kingsnorth power station in Kent, where over 500 people have gathered to protest about the proposed changes to a power station, into a Coal station which E-on has promised to be cleaner than the Coal station currently on the site.
I don’t see where the problem lies personally, an old power station which is outdated and has been creating far more pollution than needs be is to be replaced by a cleaner version which, may even push forward the technological advancements in cleaner Coal as a source of power.
Coal has been a contentious issue for many years, either Miners striking for a better pay deal or green campaigners urging us to use wind or tidal power rather than such a polluting source of energy. However, if we look at the flip-side of the coin, we can see that this proposal will re-open mines and hopefully give a boost to our ailing economy as well as putting hundreds of people back into work. Read more
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