Mind the gap

A fine and rigorously argued post by John Ward over at The Slog challenges the latest incarnation of left wing Utopian orthdoxy, The Spirit Level.

Going back over a hundred years before the CIA was ever imagined, Jeremy Bentham proposed – without the benefit of any data – exactly that truthful empiricism of balance: ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’, he felt, should be the aim of every society. Not only was Bentham a brilliant, instinctive observer of social anthropology before it was an ology, he was also a man blessed with a complete absence of bollocks in his thinking.

Sadly, the same can’t be said for Nick Cohen. For his assumption in the Guardian/Observer piece is that, by definition, the Tories don’t want ‘more’ equality.

I wonder: is he mad? Cameron has had to work day and night for four years to explain away his background. The current Labour Party’s MPs are more middle class and Oxbridge than the Coalition’s.

Actually, Cohen’s a bright bloke and he isn’t mad: it’s just his job (and his preference) to keep on insisting that all Tories are evil and greedy…..unlike Mandelson, Prescott, Byers, Blair, and Hoon.

The Guardian’s Salvation Army will never accept that the differences between Labour and Tory policy on equality are ones of strategy and definition, not objective.

Quite, although the only question this blog would ask, and which John hasn’t addressed (at least in this post) is which is more desirable and more practical, a society where all social strata of are better off but the gap remains the same, or failed attempt after failed attempt to pursue a theoretical egalitarian Utopia, which always, but always, has the net result of leaving everyone worse off, and invariably only succeeds in replacing one imbalance with another?

For a more detailed (and thoroughly enjoyable) critique of The Spirit Level, try this.

That blasted horse has gone and bolted again….let’s lock the stable door

Remember those heady days….ooh….about a month ago when the Coalition came up with a cracking wheeze to make us feel that they actually represent us and that our vote means something? Remember the ‘Programme for Government’?

Well, with what some might think is indecent haste (surely they can’t have prepared the answers before launching the programme), they’ve answered our questions, so in the interest of spreading the joy around a bit let’s take a closer look at this revolutionary exercise in open government. Dear reader, I give you the Coalition’s Response to public comments on the Coalition Government’s approach to Europe….

We understand that so many of you feel jaded and sceptical about the EU. Speaking about the EU in Parliament, the Foreign Secretary said he knows there is “a profound disconnection between the British people and what has been done in their name by British Governments”.

Correct. We want a referendum on our continued membership.

We want to deal with this.

Excellent! Here’s an idea; why don’t we have a referendum on our continued membership or the repeal of 1972 European Communities Act?

That is why we have said we will not agree to any further transfer of sovereignty or powers from the UK to the EU during this Parliament. We are committed to ensuring that the British people have their say on any future proposed transfers of powers to the EU. So we are introducing a law to ensure that any future EU Treaty that transfers competences or areas of power from the UK to the EU will be subject to a referendum.

Further transfer of sovereignty? Setting aside for a moment the fact that Parliament, in ratifying the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty, replaced a millennium of Anglo-Saxon Common Law with the Code Napoleon at a stroke,  What sovereignty would that be, and at precisely what point did EU opt-outs cease to be “cosmetic”?

As a result of our EU membership British firms can sell their products and services in the 27 countries which make up the Single Market. That’s 500 million potential customers.

So all trade with the EU would automatically end if we withdrew?  That seems a pretty bold assumption to make given that our balance of trade within the EU is negative.

Doing things through the EU helps in other ways  too: from the laws that protect our birds as they migrate between the British Isles and Africa,  to working with other EU countries to get our collective voice heard in world affairs.

Ah yes, the birds, high minded stuff. What do you suppose Deborah Dark and Michael Turner think about the birds?

The Coalition Government wants to listen to what you have to say on this issue and, where there’s room for improvement, act on it.

Ripper! Have I mentioned a referendum yet?

The ratification of Lisbon was no less than an act of High Treason. Our right to a referendum must be upheld by Parliament and then we should decide what to do with the perpetrators. Mealy-mouthed platitudes on a website are no substitute for democracy.

Brits 2, Czechs 0

Quote of the week

From Douglas Carswell….

I fear the notion of the Coalition as Whig radicalism re-born, or as Edmund Burke dot com, which really would change Britain, might not have made it into this evening’s script.

So, the BBC is still trying to find a distempered right wing Tory to attack the Coalition. So much for impartiality.

Turkeys voting for Christmas

Daniel Hannan is perfectly entitled to continue as a Member of the European “Parliament”, despite the fact that is a body whose legitimacy and sovereignty he questions. He is, after all, only following the time-honoured custom of champions of liberty like Charles Stewart Parnell, but one can’t help but wonder which audience he thinks he’s addressing here.

Doctrinally not quite up to his usual high standards….

Yellow card, Daniel.

Any enlargement of the EU is wrong because the EU is, in and of itself, wrong.

If Mr Cameron wishes to conduct bi-lateral diplomacy with a country that for decades protected our south-eastern flank against the Soviet Union (in the best Tory tradition, as you say) that is one thing, but to wrap his discourse in honeyed phrases about Turkey’s eventual entry into the EU is quite another. It is merely a continuation of the treason, committed by others and compounded by him, when he failed to deliver a referendum on Lisbon.

It won’t be the Liberal Democrats who bring down the Coalition, it will be the libertarian right that reclaims the party of Pitt and Peel.

Turkey lurkey

Another stiletto between the shoulder blades of democracy from iDave as he talks up  Turkey’s membership of the EU.

He compared hostility to the membership bid in some parts of the EU with the way the UK’s entry was once regarded.

Trust me, Dave, the UK’s entry into the EU is still regarded with hostility, not least in Britain.

Meanwhile….

Adding comments has been disabled for this video.

Says it all really.

Well, that was a nice holiday

10 days in Búzios. Nice.

Ah well, back to reality.

Why capitalism and libertarian conservatism are better than socialism….