BBC News - Lord Smith: Environment Agency 'bound by Treasury rules'.

Ingredients: 

• One rich free-range nation, reared on fertile terrain
• Millions of productive citizens
• Thousands of intellectuals, incubated in ivory towers well away from reality
• Complacency
• Belief in the virtue of the state apparatus (common name: credulity)
• Problems (foraged ingredients, to be found anywhere)
• Demands for government to solve all problems
• Left or right-wing political pretexts (according to taste)

Equipment:

A big stick

Method:

We don't call them police forces any more. That's too explicit an acknowledgement of their role as the enforcers of our all-powerful state. Policing, God help us, is now a 'service'.

The question is; whom do our policemen serve? Is it us, the public, or the political class that guarantees their unfunded pensions from the incomes of taxpayers yet unborn? If, as they claim, it's the public, why does it sometimes feel they are serving us in the agricultural sense; as a bull serves a heifer?

Ordinary people don't believe the official crime figures because they don't accord with our experience. For years the Establishment line has been that the figures are accurate but that our fear of crime is the problem. We are neurotic and should be more trusting of our benevolent masters. Yeah right.

PC James Patrick, an analyst with the Metropolitan Police 'service' recently gave evidence to a House of Commons committee that the figures are improperly manipulated by senior officers to make police performance look better. He said

Things were clearly being reported as burglaries and then you would rerun the same report after there had been a human intervention, a management intervention, and these burglaries effectively disappeared in a puff of smoke.

How embarrassing for the political class that has used the rigged numbers to assure us it's doing its job of public protection! It seems our 'neurotic' belief that they were feathering their own nests while not giving a flying expletive about us except as sources of feathers was well-founded.

I have been waiting with interest for the state's response to this revelation. And, the Alistair Campbell approved interval for the story to die down having elapsed, here it comes. The Times reports this morning that PC Patrick has been placed on 'restricted duties' and forbidden to speak to public or media. The whistleblower has received his usual reward.

So that's clear then. Lying to make the state look good is fine. The public has no right to know the truth about the performance of the police service it is forced to fund. The career of any public-spirited person with a sense of duty and honour is unlikely to advance in the Met. In marked contrast to that of an officer who heads a botched operation that blows the head off an innocent man, for example.

Nothing to see here folks. Move along now please or you might just find yourself being served.

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

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.

Euro Puppets: The European Commission’s remaking of civil society | Institute of Economic Affairs.

In the last year five times more Labour people were appointed to public bodies than Tories The Tory Diary.

The Tories over at Conservative Home are in a tizzy about dilettante Dave's failure to be as ruthless about political patronage as New Labour was. I can see their point. The Civil Service used to be, at least in theory, impartial but Blair and Brown packed its highest echelons with their people. Indeed my one contact within the judiciary tells me they were similarly ruthless there, which - as judicial impartiality is a keystone of civilisation - is even more worrying.

Perhaps the problem is more fundamental? Is the British state simply now too enormous to be staffed by competent, conservative-minded individuals? Most such people would anyway presumably prefer, because of their world-view, to be in profit-driven ventures? Labour-minded individuals, on the other hand, can presumably be relied upon not to give a damn about whether their lives are economically productive, as long as they get to boss people about, indoctrinate their children and conduct socialist agitprop at the taxpayers' expense?

I applaud the BBC's decision to allow Panorama to investigate what it knew about Jimmy Savile's misconduct and why the Newsnight story about his alleged paedophilia was pulled. The video is available for a while to UK residents on the BBC iPlayer here:

Any organisation that is not dependent upon its customers, whether a state or private monopoly, will eventually become self-serving. During my career I was party to many conversations about how to maximise profit for the owners of our businesses and provide attractive employment terms for our staff, but they all turned in the end to what our customers would want, or at least accept. We spent much more time worrying how to please customers than please ourselves. Satisfied customers who choose to come back are the only guarantee for owners, managers and workers in the private sector that they can achieve their personal goals.

As will all state enterprises funded by taxation, the BBC has become, in effect, a worker's co-operative. The "customers" have to pay regardless, so they become irrelevant and the focus turns to the interests of its own people. No private business would survive the shit storm that is heading the BBC's way. The share price would now be collapsing as investors tried to get out before the lawsuits begin. I confidently and sadly predict however that the BBC will survive. It has the coercive power of the state behind it and will simply take your money to settle the cases. It is the left establishment's propaganda arm and they will rally to restore its reputation.

We are about to have an instructive, but depressing, demonstration of the realities of modern Britain. We will be able to compare and contrast the BBC news and current affairs teams' handling of this story with their campaign against News International. Just imagine if the phone-hackers had worked for Newsnight and Savile had worked for Sky News!

Predictable though it all was, it was still disturbing to follow Panorama's account of the decision-making process within the Corporation. There was lots of high-falutin' stuff about editorial independence and a clear concern for the BBC's reputation. There was also some po-faced nonsense about depending on the trust of a public that, trusting or not, it will continue to plunder by use of state force. Not one person (apart from those making official statements once the story was out and the lady reporter from Newsnight who will no doubt pay for it when the storm has passed) expressed any convincing concern for their customers-by-force. Some of whom have, it seems, been abused by members of the collective and friends under their protection.

I watched the faces of the people making the allegations and it brought back another memory from the days of watching Jim'll Fix It. I found a girl from my school in a drunken heap at the side of the road on my way home from a date with my girlfriend one night. I tried to help her to go home. It turned out she was in social services care and lived in a nearby childrens' home. When I offered to take her there she begged me not to. She offered sex if I would take her somewhere, anywhere, else. Indeed, "offered" is something of a euphemism. If I had a victim mentality, I would say she attempted rape. I was able to restrain her and decline her offer.

I asked if she had relatives and she told me about an uncle who lived in the area. In retrospect, I worry that she made him up or that her relationship with him was rather different, but I was a naive teenager. I took her to a nearby pub and gave her the money to call him. I left her in the care of the publican, once assured her uncle was on his way.

I later found out that she lived in one of the homes at the centre of a notorious scandal. It rather explained both her reluctance to go there and her use of sex as a currency. I now dread to think what she was going through while I was enjoying a safe and happy childhood. I am ashamed to have ever thought myself hard done to by my strict parents, when I consider what that girl had been put through by the "caring" state professionals paid to look after her.

Here is the fatal flaw in all collectivist thinking; the reason why public service organisations are all more or less corrupt and can never fully be trusted. Here is the reason why Britain's public intellectuals are not merely gullible, idealistic, fools but a serious threat to our welfare.

All organisations funded by force are essentially immoral.

In their detachment from the relentless reality of having to satisfy customers and in their assurance that livelihoods do not depend upon that satisfaction, selfish, abusive behaviours will grow among their staff. Whether in care homes for the elderly, childrens homes, the Parliamentary expenses office, army barracks or police stations bad things will happen not by accident but flawed design. To be clear, I am not saying that public sector workers are all, or even mostly, evil or ill-intentioned. I am just saying that a disproportionate number of the lazy, greedy and wicked in any society will be attracted, as Savile was, to positions they are able to abuse. Nor am I saying there should be no public sector. I am not an anarchist. I accept the need for a state. But here is a strong argument for it to be kept to an absolute minimum.

There is a reason socialist states have always had to resort to prison camps and shootings to maintain discipline and reduce corruption in the ranks. At least, that is, within limits that don't threaten the corrupt gains of their ruling elites. In the absence of Stalinist discipline, what happened at the BBC - the way the collective closed ranks to protect an insider - is not a sad exception to the rule. It is the rule.

Should Romney Seek the Public Sector Vote? — The American Magazine.

This is one of the more interesting posts I have read on the US elections and I wonder how similar the statistics would be in the UK. Libertarians and small state conservatives tend to generalise about public servants in negative terms, but the author Pete Peterson makes the point that:

...it might serve Republicans better to take a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” approach to their attacks on government spending. The attention should move from the personal to the systemic—to bureaucracy—and its naturally problematic qualities.

It's fair enough to complain about useless, pointless jobs in the public sector, and even more so about "public service" jobs that actually harm the public. That doesn't mean our fellow-citizens who do them are themselves useless, pointless or deliberately harmful.

Some public sector jobs actually attract people with conservative, if not libertarian, values. Think of policemen, soldiers and - well there must be a third category even if it doesn't immediately spring to mind. While joining the judiciary sadly appeals to some busybodies and even authoritarians, the role of judge is - especially in a Common Law system where the law did not originate as a tool of government - a public service job that suits libertarians. Indeed the role of the judges in upholding the Rule of Law against the over-mighty in government and business should attract them.

The statistics in the linked post even suggest that American public servants are not as pro-Big Government as their own self-interest might seem to dictate.

61 percent of the government employees surveyed ... agreed with the statement that “the federal government has become a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests.” While not as high as the response by private sector respondents (74 percent agreed) this is still a revealing admission.

Even more encouragingly:

...more than half of both public and private sector workers “believe government and big business work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.” And 59 percent of government employees surveyed agreed that they “trust the judgment of the American people over political leaders.”

What results would a similar poll in Britain produce?

Less surprisingly, American public servants are more likely to vote than their private sector counterparts. Some of this can be accounted for by demographics. Public servants there tend (wastefully) to be better educated than the general population and the more educated an American is, the more likely he is to vote. The rest may be accounted for by a desire to influence government to spend more, but America's public sector vote at least is not uniformly leftist. President Obama's lead among the 21.7 million American public servants is only one million. If Romney stopped bashing bureaucrats, who knows how that might change?

When the glad day dawns on which the state begins to downsize, we can confidently expect the attitudes of public servants to harden. Until the benefits for employment of setting the people free become clear, people will be understandably afraid of losing their jobs. Still, if we are to persuade our fellow-citizens along that path (and as libertarians we have no resort to our opponents' beloved violence, so persuasion is our only weapon) we might do well to play the ball not the man when it comes to discussing the public sector.

Protect your Freedom – Please retweet and respond! — Anna Raccoon.

I refer my gentle readers to Anna's linked post today. It is important. The state is seeking extended powers to interfere in personal relationships between citizens with legal capacity to make their own decisions. Telling social workers to "get lost" will result, if such powers are granted, in actions incompatible with a free society. Telling self-selected statist busybodies to "get lost" is often, of course, the first duty of a free citizen.

Most responses to the Department of Health's consultation will be, in the natural course of things, from the aforementioned self-selected statist busybodies - either those serving the state or their political cheerleaders.

Please therefore consider following the links in Anna's post or this one to obtain the consultation questions and then file your own responses by email or post. I have reproduced my own responses (submitted in my real name) below but please respond in your own words. You might like to consider not picking up the civil servants' poor use of English, for example, as I failed to resist doing. Your objective is to persuade, after all. Good luck with that.

Nobody Important: Democrasy. Is it working?.

Our regular commenter Moggsy is a blogger herself, posting at our mutual friend JMB's site, Nobody Important. Today she considers the problems of democracy. She proposes, controversially, that the votes of different categories of voters should carry different weights. Even more controversially, she suggests that voters be licensed like motorists.

One man, one vote is such an established principle that to challenge it is almost unthinkable. Yet this model of democracy seems to tend to economic collapse. Majorities or decisive minorities of financially illiterate or irresponsible voters demand ever more from the state. Governments (or more precisely politicians who want to remain in government) are forced to tax or borrow from the prudent in order to deliver. Holding down interest rates while inflating the currency with Quantitative Easing is merely one current example of the state impoverishing the prudent to bail out the feckless. If interest rates returned to their historical average (so that the prudent earned from their capital) millions of over-borrowed voters would be bankrupt and house prices would collapse to sensible levels.

So democracy requires that economic justice be denied.

Harvard Professor of Economics, Martin Feldstein, recently wrote in the FT that a mere 3% cut in Italy's public spending would solve its financial problems. I am sure he's right but will Italy's state 'payroll vote' permit it? After all our public sector workers are out on the streets in 'righteous' indignation when our feeble government is not (contrary to their claims) making any cuts at all. Government expenditure in Britain continues to rise. The hated 'cuts' are merely a reduction in the rate of increase. It's as if the massively-indebted British nation was on its way to buy a Bugatti, but 'prudently' decided to buy a mere Ferrari instead. The National Debt continues to rise apace (see the debt clock now in my sidebar). Yet such is their sense of entitlement that our cocky 'servants' demand even more.

It has been said that;

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing.

Could a reform of our democracy prevent that collapse? My own preference would be rather to scale down the state and prevent its re-expansion by an entrenched constitution permanently limiting its scope. We could then safely continue with 'one man, one vote' as, while it's a terrible way to choose a master, it's a perfectly adequate way to choose a servant. But whether you favour my approach, Moggsy's suggested electoral handicapping or some pipe dream of your own, how can any reform ever be achieved when the state payroll vote is now decisive?

Unless a truly charismatic leader emerges to explain patiently, relentlessly and - most of all - convincingly that we can't keep spending more than we earn, our model seems doomed to collapse. Every state's credit has a limit and its cheques will eventually bounce so that its dependents starve. Yes, a small state might then be built on the impoverished ruins of the old, but at what terrible human cost?

Argentina launches naval campaign to isolate Falkland Islands - Telegraph.

The three state services libertarians all support are defence of the realm, policing and provision of an independent judiciary. That's one of the things that differentiates us from anarchists. The irony is that modern governments have focussed so hard on redistributive policies designed to buy votes from the masses by providing non-jobs in non-services with stolen money, that they have become really bad at the basics.

How long do you give it before the Falkland Islands are lost? Even if the boy David was half the man that Margaret Thatcher was; even if President Obama was half the friend that Ronald Reagan was, we simply don't have the military assets to defend them. Perhaps that's why we are deploying the sainted Diana's look-alike boy? Surely no-one is so cruel as to attack the son of the Princess of Hearts?

It's a plan, though not one Nelson would have applauded. Some fully-equipped aircraft carriers might be a more reliable one. But, while we fund a bigger civil service than we had to run half the planet, we don't have the money for that, do we?

h/t The Englishman