Is the UK state just too big?

Is it too big? If you have visited this blog in the past then my opinion will be quite clear to you - Of course it is..

This article By Iain Martin in the Telegraph examines the matter intelligently and is well worth a read.

Time to roll back the state.

Is it time to shrink the state to more manageable proportions?

The Telegraph asks an interesting question today “Who is the 'right leader' for our hard times”? Sparked by Broon’s waffle about providing the right leaderhip.

Even more adventurously they ask: “Do we need a politician running Britain at all”?

Maybe the question they should really be asking is: “Do we need anyone running Britain at all”?

Personally I am not really sure I want much so-called leadership at all. Belgium seems to have managed well enough with no parliament recently. Could we manage mostly at a county level?

We have after all a perfectly good royal family to represent the country. The queen probably knows more about politics than any two prime ministers put together. They are certainly more in tune with practical environmentalism than the average politician.

So combine the Royal family with a parliament that has responsibility for maintaining the legal system, the armed forces and the currency. Claw back every last parliamentary privilege and power ceded to the unelected EU commission.

Have a watchdog to police MPs propriety and finances. Make it impeachable to renague on election promises. These people should be the servants of the Nation, not it’s patrician ruling class.

Given that we have had a millennium’s worth of very, very, bad legislation in the last decade let's make it as difficult as possible for them to ever pass any new legislation again. Without at least 75% in favour.

The state should be kept very firmly away from telling the citizen what to do.

Let local democracy, take care of all the other details.

Works for me…

Can a child really be detained for being overweight in London?

I heard something disquieting on the radio. It was Friday just before 2 pm, one of those radio phone ins on LBC.

The caller Identified himself as a Metropolitan Police Officer. The discussion was centred around how much police time is taken up with paperwork – A truly staggering amount these days by the sound of it.

What concerned me was when the officer mentioned some sort of initiative called something like ‘Every Child Counts’, you wonder who thinks these ghastly titles up.

He was holding it up as something that eats up police time unnecessarily, but as he explained it, it sounded more than a little sinister. It bothered me that he was apparently quite willing to implement it with little concern for civil liberties, but only objected to it as a poor use of police resources.

The idea is apparently some draconian Nanny State version of concern for child welfare.

The scenario offered on the radio was: An officer sees a ‘child’ (presumably anyone apparently under the age of 17) they judge to be overweight out in public on their own.

Said officer Stops the child (on what grounds was not made clear). The child would be required to provide full details of name age address, parent’s details, etc. – again why on what grounds?

The officer would then feed the details into the ‘system’ for onward transmission to social services and possibly interview the parents, presumably after having taken the child home.

There may be more criteria involved, time, location, age. But from what the officer said it could as easily happen to a 12 year old child minding their own business on the way to a football match, in the park, on a Sunday afternoon.

If this is actually the case then it is absolutely outrageous. Truly an example of the burgeoning New-Labour fascist state at work.

A young person, detained, though presumably not officially arrested unless the officer is doubtful of the details given to them, prevented from going about their lawful business – apparently for the crime of being a little overweight.

It would be interesting if anyone can verify this or deny it.

New Labour Back bencher threat to agency staff

One wonders if the MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston, New Labour's Andrew Miller, is actually intent on damaging the UK economy, or if it is only a side effect of his attempt to grab more influence for the unions.

Supported (of course) by the trade unions he has tabled a private members bill to force the same rights/benefits as full time employees receive on agency staff, such a sick pay.

The union said there should be a "level playing field" with permanently employed people.

I have often heard full time employees express slightly jealous amazement when they find out what agency staff are paid by comparison.

The fact is that agency staff usually get a higher pay scale than permanent staff. This generally makes up at least the financial difference for sick pay and annual leave, etc. that they don’t get.

They usually also get a premium to make up for the lack of job security, as they generally fill posts where full time employees are off long term sick, having children, or the post is unable to be filled. They are also used when capacity suddenly and temporarily needs to be expanded for a project.

These people tend to be independent and avoid union membership. They also tend to take far less sick leave; so can spend that portion of their wage as they choose.

If they had the same rights and conditions as full time employees they would no longer be competitive, or of any use to an employer, in the capacity they are generally used in. It would not be economical to pay them the same rates as they get now.

If these rights were introduced then this sector would become much less competitive and be markedly reduced. The knock on is that all the businesses that make use of them to fill in would be less efficient and less cost effective.

This would in turn force them to look for redundancies more often and make full time employees positions a little less secure. It would of course strengthen the union’s position.

Gordon Brown ‘Concerned’ about Liberty

It seems that Gordon Brown has become sufficiently concerned that the public has finally noticed Nu-Lab’s Big Brother/Fascist-Lite tendencies, to try a little spin to cover them up.

He is apparently concerned about Liberty – One suspects more normally Taking Liberties, in the literal sense.

Of course he would also like to distract the sheeple from such things as: His shilly shallying around over and election and then pathetically trying to claim it was not because he thought he might come off badly that he bottled it. His broken promises over the EU Constitution that is taking another step towards making parliament an irrelevance. Dave and ‘the party formerly known as the Conservatives’ overtaking him in the polls.

Of course he is trying to suggest it was all down to that nasty Blair person’s Government, that was nothing to do with him and things will be different now he is in charge. Trusssst in meeeee Mowglie…..

He of course justifies much of his move towards a total surveillance society, identity cards, DNA testing, etc. on the need to keep us all safe from terrorists. Leaving aside the question of what by the time he has finished will be left of the relatively free society we once enjoyed. The terrorists are winning, even when they fail, by changing or way of life and making our society more like their societies.

Showing rather more of his true colours he insisted he would not compromise the security of the nation. There would be tougher counter-terrorism laws before Christmas. Thanks! Just what we always wanted :-(

He is even threatening us with a debate about a British Bill of Rights and the possibility of a written constitution.

The direction they have been going in one fears that any Constitution Nu-Lab had a hand in writing would be a fascists charter. Still he could always call it something else and argue it wasn’t really a constitution after all ;-) The fact is that any British constitution may be about as relevant as a Town Council’s policies, being subservient to the real EU “Not a Constitution, honest Guv’”.

He also seems to have conveniently forgotten that we already have a perfectly good Bill of Rights - and have done since 16 December 1689 when it became statutory law. But maybe it contains ;-) the wrong sort of rights, by Gordon’s standards…

Maybe he also forgets that Constitutions and Bills of rights are not normally graciously handed down to the citizens by the likes of him and almost certainly wouldn’t be worth the paper they were written of in they were.

Mind you – If he is interested in Constitutions and Bills of Rights then there is plenty of discussion out there on the subject.

Recommended Read

If you have not come across it I must recommend ‘FAT’ by Rob Grant, Published by Gollancz. ISBN 978-0-375-07820-8

Set in the UK, in a scarily (barely) immediate future, who’s probability wave appears to be in the process of collapsing, as Schrodinger might say, even as I write.

It is a good read - funny and also makes some seriously telling points.

In his preface he says:

” When somebody does something you don’t like and then tells you they did it for your own best interest: run. Run till you drop. And don’t look back” - Excellent advice…

Official self congratulation at English smoking ban

Don’t tell a small lie, no one will believe you – but tell a big one…

Trade union leaders have applauded the smoking ban in England as a step forward for workplace safety - describing passive smoking as the "third biggest cause of deaths at work".

This is absolute patent drivel. How many work places actually allowed smoking anywhere, other than in very limited smoking rooms? As we can all attest not many.

Most employers effectively banned smoking on various grounds such as fire safety years ago. It has been banned for years on public transport and in most offices. I don’t know of any factories where it is allowed.

So, even if we accept the ever inflating claims of the passive smoking brigade, this ban will have virtually zero impact in reducing so-called passive smoking, except in environments where smoking was still actually allowed like pubs and clubs.

These days? ‘Third biggest cause of deaths at work’? Indeed...

Alan Johnson the UK Health Secretary lauded the smoking ban in England as the: "single most important public health legislation for a generation". Suggesting the ban on smoking in enclosed public places, would improve the health of hundreds of thousands of people.

It is only likely to really improve the health of ‘hundreds of thousands of people” if it makes smoking so much bother that hundreds of thousands of people were to give up smoking as a result of the ban.

He might have done better, with out setting a dubious authoritarian precedent, by offering a substantial cash bounty, as a one off, to those who gave up smoking for over a year. To be paid back with interest if they took it up again.

Anti smoking figs for death by passive smoking in the UK vary between 1,000 and 4,500 pa. Given the amount of pollutants around how can they tell with any certainty if these are due to cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes, or in the case of older people all the muck from coal fires and smog?

A Free Primer

It’s an oldie but a goodie. A nice animation clearly and concisely, running through the concepts of liberty and self-ownership.

Maybe it ought to be turned into a DVD and circulated to schools… or would that be ;-) an inconvenient truth - State-ing the obvious really?