The Last Ditch

Compare and contrast

Sir David Nicholson admits failings over Mid Staffs but refuses to resign - Telegraph.

Sir David Nicholson, were our society organised as the defunct British Communist Party to which he once belonged might desire, would now be put up against a wall and shot. In our wet British version of Soviet Healthcare, however, he avoids all responsibility for the NHS's lethal failures. After all, there are plenty more patients where those came from.

Compare and contrast with one Andrew Mason, who wrote to his staff before leaving;

After four-and-a-half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding, I was fired today ... As CEO I'm accountable.

I rather suspect that Mason has put more efficient and vigorous effort into the success of Groupon than Nicholson has to that of the NHS. Yet he was held accountable by his board on behalf of his shareholders and accepted it with grace. Good for him. He failed this time, but with an attitude like that, I am sure he will yet do great things. I would hire him, if I owned a suitable company. I wouldn't employ Nicholson to clean my boots.

So is the success or failure of a company that organises online discounts more important than that of a whole nation's healthcare system? Should the bosses of an internet start-up be stricter with their CEO than Parliament is with the head of the NHS? What other conclusion, exactly, could a man from Mars infer from these two items of news?

Incidentally, Nicholson claimed expenses of over £50,000 a year on top of a basic salary of £200,000 and benefits in kind of £37,600 at a time when he was in charge of health service "cuts". His current wife, twenty years his junior and a former graduate intern in his office, is the £155,000 a year chief executive of Birmingham Children's Hospital. He wrote references for her during her meteoric rise through the NHS management ranks. Ain't life grand in the public service?

The NHS may not have adopted the iron discipline of the Soviet system, but it seems to have all the other elements. Generally, I prefer gentler market systems of accountability, but for aparatchiks like Nicholson, I could make an exception.

There is nothing Conservative about this Government

Anthony Peto QC: A very un-British Bill – my response to Robert Buckland MP.

Conservatives are supposed to defend ancient rights. In their hands the great principles of English Law such as "innocent until proven guilty" and the rules of Natural Justice should be much safer than with progressives who openly seek to sweep away ancient rights to build a new order.

Yet it was John Major who began the present un-conservative trend when he abolished the right to silence - a key element of the presumption of innocence. If a man is accused, it is for the prosecutors to make the case against him. Nothing should properly be inferred from his refusal to co-operate. So it used to be, but no more.

And now it's Ken Clarke who is sweeping into the trash can of history the principle of open justice. He is seeking to introduce secret courts in circumstances where "national security" is at stake. What does "national security" mean in such a context? Anthony Petro QC tells us in the linked article that evidence about a confession having been extracted by torture

...was successfully suppressed by the government on the grounds that it would damage national security...

Not exactly the most encouraging example.

Clarke tells us that we need secret courts to protect our intelligence sharing relationships with other countries. David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of Terrorist Legislation, has branded that a "scare tactic".

Former DPP Lord Maconald has said that 

Mr Clarke’s comments look like a smokescreen for plans which are aimed not at keeping the British people safe, but at sparing the embarrassment of the security services when they get mixed up in wrongdoing. Instead of promoting this thoroughly un-British legislation, which is designed to make our courts secret as though we were living in Europe in the 1930s, Mr Clarke and his colleagues in government should concentrate on holding the security agencies to account when they break the law.

Lest you think that these are just the voices of lily-livered sympathisers with our enemies, consider the words of the former top legal advisor to the British Army in Iraq, Colonel Nicholas Mercer

The justice and security bill has one principal aim and that is to cover up UK complicity in rendition and torture. The bill is an affront to the open justice on which this country rightly prides itself and, above all, it is an affront to human dignity.

 
The fact that some of those individuals who are complicit in rendition and torture can not only assist in the drafting of the bill but also vote to cover their tracks is a constitutional scandal.

The bill attacks the sacred principle of the Rule of Law that "be you never so high, the law is above you." It removes a citizen's right to bring a civil action against high officials for violations of their personal rights. As Anthony Peto QC says, 

These rights are so fundamental that for centuries they have been called the rules of “natural justice”.  This brand of justice has “Made in England” stamped all over it. It is our proudest and most enduring national product. This Bill would tarnish the brand for ever.

Could there conceivably be anything less "Conservative"?

Why can't our security services, like those in other countries, give evidence in court? If that threatens the secrecy of their activities, they can give evidence from behind a screen and via a voice changer, provided the judge is duly satisfied of their status. Then their evidence could be tested, they could be cross examined and justice could be done. Yet the British State prefers to screen them from scrutiny. It prefers to suppress evidence of their wrong-doing. It is entirely out of its box; a self-regarding beast operating in its own, not the national, interest. 

I have never been more sure that the greatest enemy of my liberty is the British State. Nor more sadly aware that this does not vary according to the politicians in charge. There could be no better evidence than this odious bill in which the state seeks to protects its own at the expense of those who are supposed to own it. It rather suggests it thinks it owns us.

Public Drunkenness and Pomposity

Public Drunkenness Can Never Be a Social Norm - Iain Dale - Dale & Co..

Apropos of my previous post and the widespread delusion that candid photography is against the law, Iain Dale is busy digging himself deeper into a hole after an ill-advised photographic tweet on his way home last night (click to enlarge).

I defend his freedom of speech, of course, but I think he should be happy the lady cannot be identified as the publication is arguably libellous.

As a libertarian, I think the laws of defamation fall under the category of "de trop", but for so long as they exist (and they have been around a long time) Iain needs, particularly as a professional communicator, to bear them in mind. Fortunately for him, the first time anyone would have chance to consider the effect on her reputation would be if she were rash enough to identify herself by suing. So she won't. Before she even considers it, she ought to read about the role of an ill-judged defamation suit in Oscar Wilde's downfall.

It's a surprising lapse for Iain who is famous for his media skills and a highly accomplished communicator (usually of not very much). An amusing Twitterstorm has ensued, as the professionally-offended on the Left take up chivalric cudgels while calling him a c**t and a w*****r without any sense of irony. They are also ranting on about the breach of this anonymous lady's privacy, which is nonsense. Firstly, she's still anonymous and secondly she was in a public place. Anywhere you can lawfully be looked at, you can generally be photographed. People take photos on trains all the time, and - although usually incidentally - there are almost always strangers in the frame.

For what it's worth, I think Mr Dale is guilty of bad manners and a surprising, for him, lack of media savvy. He says she was behaving badly, but the picture doesn't illustrate his point in any way. She could just be depressed or tired. As it comes down to his word, he should probably have left it at words.

Iain is in danger of being seen as using the hammer of his influence to crack the nut of his irritation with a minor disturbance to his peace (allegedly) caused by this woman. Sadly he comes off looking like a pompous prat. In his own interests he should have apologised immediately but having rashly mounted his high horse he's having trouble getting off. His lines of defence look tortured and weak (can he really not have realised the sexual connotations of 'slapper?') and are doing him no good.

The only benefit to his not apologising is that the stream of gleefully sanctimonious responses show the British Left up for the insufferable prigs they mostly are. Ironically, if this tweet represented his true character, it would be a trait Iain had in common with them.

There are two ways of looking at this

Cowardly Bullying on the Web - Yasmin Alibhai-Brown - Dale & Co.

Am I alone in believing that, such are the appallingly illiberal beliefs (in the classical, correct sense of the word 'liberal') of Ms Alibhai-Brown, she would be subjected to far greater abuse on the internet were she not of the fairer sex and did she not so relentlessly play the race card? 

This notion is perfectly testable. All she needs to do is set up a blog under a false and less protected identity so that she can experience the full richness of anglo-saxon invective. How far we have come since George Eliot adopted a male identity to help her writings be taken seriously. How far, in so many ways, in the wrong direction.

We men and women of conscience thought, in the third quarter of the last century, that we were campaigning for all humans to be judged by the content of their characters, not the colour of their skins (or the nature of their genitalia). Who knew it would actually lead to such wimpish bleating for special protection from the people supposed to be liberated? Woman up, Yasmin. And do try to keep up with the news. This story was msm'ed and blogged to death ages ago.

Smug pensions moocher accidentally makes sensible point

Signs of protest: the best banners at the public services strike marches around Britain - Telegraph.

Lost wisdom

Libertarians, no matter how they may conduct themselves in private, are subjected to the blanket accusation of selfishness by their political opponents. Now-conventional thinking contrasts them unfavourably with left-liberals who "care" so very noisily when there is anyone about to take note. On this subject, in De Profundis, Oscar Wilde offered this interesting observation:-

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes them to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he?

Quite. Nominations in the comments section please for the most selfish person in Britain judged by this wise standard*.

*Not Harriet Harman, please. There is nothing more tedious than the obvious.

King had a dream, but blacks now face a nightmare

American Thinker: King had a dream, but blacks now face a nightmare

The linked article is sad and touching. When will the minority groups in British society come to the same realisation? Their hopes and dreams have been ruthlessly exploited by the Left in exactly the same way - and with the same outcome. The racism industry is never going to declare victory, because that would be to make its hordes of parasites redundant. It is going to go on and on redefining itself. Racism is just too valuable a meal ticket (and an electoral dog whistle) ever to give it up. This, no matter how much it saps self-confidence, self-belief and self-reliance by giving certain groups (as capable of success as anyone else) a reason to fail - or at least a reason to stop trying.

At each election liberals say that blacks need protection from conservatives, but there are no conservatives anywhere near us. The only thing that all of the people who set the policies that affect us have in common is that they are all liberal. Our cities have been under liberal control for decades and they are also where the black economic and social indicators are the worst; and the mainstream civil rights movement, that claims to represent us, never questions whether or not liberalism is partially to blame.

Don't get me wrong. There were and are racists. They are stupid people, focussed on a trivial irrelevance. I can only pity people who have nothing more to be proud of than their ethnic origin. They should take up macramé or something; at least a well-crafted bedspread would be their own achievement. I first learned to pity them growing up among Welsh Nationalists; people focussed on a difference so trivial as to be laughable. People who admit they are defined only by their sense of cymreictod; a sense I once had, but abandoned when I realised I was expected to hate people I loved.

Such fools are not worth a second thought; to take them seriously is to make something of them they could never make themselves. Just look at the clowns in the BNP. What sane person can do more than laugh? To the extent such people can ever pose a threat (and we must of course be vigilant not to place them in positions of power) it is one to be triumphantly and contemptuously transcended. The way forward for "ethnic minorities" is the same way forward as for anyone else; self-reliance, family, friendship, kindness, education and effort.

No "liberal" or leftist can admit that, because it would be to expose themselves as the exploitative parasites they are.

A riddle

A young man graduates from an Oxbridge college. Left-wing in outlook, he advises all his fellow-graduates that they should become teachers in state schools in order to "put something back into society" by way of compensation for their "privileged backgrounds." The young man himself comes from a family that owns a castle North of the Border and an elegant house in London. At his 21st birthday party, his parents supplied pheasant from the family estate. He is not going to become a teacher to "put something back." He is going into journalism, but will not be working his way up from any local rag. He begins work later this year for a national newspaper.

Which newspaper? Go on, guess.

A tragedy in one act

Edlington case is symptom of 'broken society', says David Cameron | UK news | guardian.co.uk

The local authority began this drama by apologising for its failings. This was both a political statement and an exoneration of every other human being who touched the lives of the young sadists' family. If the reliably incompetent state is responsible for their conduct, then no-one else is. Never mind that "the local community" is tough enough to run them out of town now. They were not tough enough to intervene in the horrors of the boys' upbringing. No, that was up to Social Services, as the council sadly confirms.

Enter David Cameron, stage right. Beneath the fresh, fabric softened woolliness of his lines is the muffled echo of a standard right-wing point. These boys were the inevitable products of welfarism. Bred merely to maximise state benefits, they were unwanted and unloved. No care was taken over their welfare or education nor even to screen them from their parents' vile lives. They grew up, poor creatures, looking on. And they learned, as children will, from their role models. Their outré, Tarantino-like violence is therefore really no surprise.

The left-wing characters in this drama have yet to make their entrances. But there are noises off. The BBC and Guardian accounts mention the horror movies and the pornography meaningfully, without yet seeking to blame them directly. One account (from the BBC) says;

"...the two brothers made their own horror movie..."

Ho hum. Perhaps the trendy QT, purveyor of amusing violence to the intelligentsia, will have a job for them on their release? Once the initial horror has abated, however, a dancing line of Guardianistas will take to the footlights for the finale. And the prescience of a slave in ancient Greece will be proved once again. 

A great city was besieged and its inhabitants were called together to consider the best means of protecting it from the enemy. A bricklayer earnestly recommended bricks as affording the best material for an effective resistance. A carpenter, with equal enthusiasm, proposed timber... Upon which a currier stood up and said, "Sirs, I differ from you altogether; there is no material for resistance equal to a covering of hides; and nothing so good as leather.

The Tory solution will be less welfare. The Labour solution will be more. The Tories will tell us the social workers failed. Labour will tell us that if they were better paid, more expensively trained and more numerous, such horrors could be avoided. The puritans on both sides will blame the likes of Quentin Tarantino for de-sensitising children never sensitised in the first place. The right will seek to ban violent movies and the left (if intellectually consistent) will seek to set a minimum price for horror movie rentals so that only the rich (already lost to morality) can be exposed to their sickening influence.

Finally a chorus of legislators will tell us that new laws will prevent a recurrence. And the curtain will go down on the whole cast bowing before a backdrop of the gleaming city of our collective conscience. Encircled, of course, by a useless leather wall. The drama will have been satisfying though, and the political classes will conceal behind masks of impeccably concerned sadness, just how much they enjoyed their own performances.

Labour; the elite of hypocrisy

Top professions must be less elitist, warn ministers | Society | The Observer.

Once again the oaf Milburn is lecturing the professions on elitism. Once again, I tell him there were more state educated lawyers in firms like mine when I first entered the legal profession than now, 26 years later. Once again, I tell him that it's Labour's fault. Labour introduced and has consistently championed non-selective education. Labour, for its own ideological reasons, destroyed the bottom rungs of the best educational ladder of social mobility this country ever knew. Labour corrupted the once-glorious profession of teaching into a dispirited, unionised rabble of second-class social workers, wasting their precious time on political indoctrination and bureaucracy.

Don't you dare tell us to lower our standards to accommodate yours. Don't you dare ask academic institutions to make allowance for the "contextual information" that you have trashed the educational opportunities of the majority of our young people. We have businesses to run and clients to satisfy. We do not exist to cover up your failings. Instead, why don't you act yourself on the "contextual information" that your apparatchiks in the Colleges of Education are training teachers to believe that achievement = elitism and that ambition is a social disease?

Fix state education. Fix it now or get out of the schools business entirely and let someone else do it. And until you have fixed it, shut up!