Napoleon and the French Revolution

A bit of an odd monologue today, but it has a point.

I heard some time ago of the Khan Academy, a great resource for autodidacts. At the time the only history available there was the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, so I watched the whole lot; what a horrifying series that was. What a barbaric forerunner of the 20th-century communist revolutions, what terrible conflicts for the grandiose ambitions of one man.

What is more worrying, and certainly more current, is the French attitude to both the Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte. They are both openly revered. The French motto is the motto of the Revolution; the French National Anthem is the Anthem of the Revolution, schools are named after its violent leaders (I went on exchange to École Robbespierre). Although the French are a little more ambivalent towards him, Napoleon Bonaparte is still widely considered a French hero, or else considered to have helped France or Europe in some ways; Metro stops are still named for his generals. The pupil I exchanged with at École Robbespierre was utterly adamant that Napoleon had ended his wars victorious; he would not believe otherwise.

Violence of the French Revolution: this time, ironically, the execution of Robbespierre

Why do I consider these things today, and why are they important?

Here I have a confession: I was reading the Daily Mail. I usually refuse, for personal reasons, but I was in a coffee shop awaiting my wife, and that was all that was available. In it A.N. Wilson has an article on the bicentenary of the battle of Waterloo (for those educated in Britain, that will be in 2015) and the lack of official plans for celebrations.

Yet this was a victory every bit as important for modern Europe as the victory over Nazism and Fascism and the victory over Communism. We celebrate these victories in some official way. We honour the great figures in these victories, with a statue to Ronald Reagan having been unveiled today, Independence Day.

The Communist Parties and Nazi Parties are widely reviled today, most importantly in their own countries (with the possible exception of Russia). People recognise that these were evil regimes. People would not wish to be associated with the political ideals of these regimes (even when their views happen to coincide).

Yet in France it is not so, and it is just accepted that victory over Napoleon and post-Revolutionary France are something to keep quiet about, not to be triumphalist, as if the violent, repressive, French dominance of Europe was something that could have been allowed to remain, the victory in these terrible wars something to be ashamed of as we are now allied to France.

Napoleon Bonaparte was an egotistical bastard. He set a continent ablaze, killed on a scale never seen before, not to be seen again for a century. He did so for his own personal satisfaction.

A.N. Wilson puts it well, in comparing the two opposing commanders that day.

When told he risked his life by riding to and fro on his horse, [Wellington]replied: 'The battle's won. My life's of no consequence now.'

Napoleon would never have said that. To such a megalomaniac, his own life was all-important; those of the people he killed and enslaved were of no consequence whatever.

It is about time France recognised the horrors of the Revolution and the subsequent wars, as the Germans did with the Nazi regime, and that French honour for the Revolution and Bonaparte is challenged. This attitude is at the core of an unhealthy French nationalism, that leads directly to some of the most damaging aspects of the EU and of French dealings with the world.

On a final note – what do the three evil regimes compared here have in common? The French Revolutionaries, the Communists and the Nazis all started out as socialists.

Edit: just to add a comment to any that seriously doubt that the French revere the monstrous post-revolutionary regime. 25 years ago I was on a school exchange in southern France, to a modern secondary school. It's name? Ecole Robespierre.. Named after Maximilien Robbespierre. I doubt the name has been changed.

Bercow Not Such a Berk

Although I stand by previous comments about Bercow and his pompous decision to appoint himself a special advisor. However I was always willing to give him a shot at the job before condemning him as speaker. I hoped he would do well by the House, even as I feared he would not, but it seems he might be making a decent fist of it. At the least he is far better than Michael Martin, perhaps with time he can come up to Betty Boothroyd and Sir Bernhard Wetherill’s standard. We can only hope this continues.

The ‘Far-Right’ and the Left

The media always term the BNP and other neo-Nazi or neo-fascist organisations ‘far-right’. This is despite the fact that they are always socialist, of course the term Nazi explicitly includes socialism. Despite the fact that they appeal to disaffected Labour voters in the UK, hence the BNP success in areas where Labour once held sway.

So I am far less surprised than Lucy Lips at Harry's Place that left-wing Labour MP Clare Short and Liberal Democrat peer Jenny Tonge shared an anti-Israeli platform with neo-fascist MEP Kristina Morvai of the Hungarian nationalist party Jobbik, as well as the usual supporters of terrorist Hamas.

So where are the cries of horror in the news? where are the commentators decrying a sitting British MP making common cause with Jobbik, a Hungarian Party that discussed alliance with the BNP?

Although I have some doubt that Jobbik are as extremist as Harry’s Place make out – the evidence that they are anti-Semitic (apart from the anti-Israeli stance common to many left-wing British organisations, placing the only Jewish state as a unique villain for no apparent reason) is very weak. They do however seem to be anti-Roma to rather a strong degree, as well as nationalist. Most telling their MEPs discussed making common cause with the BNP and the French Front National in the European Parliament (they did not join Euronat, the party the BNP and FN MEPs belong to) and Nick Griffin, the BNP MEP spoke at a Jobbik rally.

So Jobbik is not a respectable party. It is far less respectable than the parties in Latvia and Poland that our esteemed Foreign Secretary managed to offend when criticising Conservative alliance with them in the European Parliament. Yet a Labour MP, former cabinet member can openly associate with one of their MEPs, and make common cause without any comment being made.

Nobel Prize Explained

So it appears it was not just the politics of the left but the venality and vanity of the left. It seems that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize to allow Thorbjørn Jagland to meet the world press. Jagland (who I must admit has a great name – sounds like the bastard child of a Norse god and a member of Abba) is the chairman of the committee, and a left-wing politician. He is also general secretary of the Council of Europe.

His own words seem to indicate that he chose Obama for publicity, in order that he would gain reflected glory. Read the final page of the article if nothing else. However the whole thing is worth reading for the political context, and commentary on Jagland’s use of the Prize for his own gain and for politics, but also a sense of his cluelessness that he might have done anything wrong.

Oh, and a great new example of the racism in left-wing politics. “Bongo from Kongo”?

Mandelson the Imperialist Communist?

Did Peter Mandelson’s Communist ideology drive businessmen from Tanzania?

Abbreviated biographies of Peter Mandelson say that he went to Tanzania in the early 1970s (I think 1972) for a year. At the time he was a communist, but could a 19-year-old possibly have influenced government policy?

A few days ago I was talking to a businessman in an hotel bar, while I was away working. He was very intelligent, well-educated and widely-experienced. He asked about my work, and he quickly either knew or was able to grasp what I was talking about. He was also well-travelled, having lived in various countries.

This man was born in Tanzania, where he grew up and ran a business. He was well-off and had a good life, with several servants. However he also worked hard and earned his money, contributing to the local economy. Eventually he was forced to leave, sneaking out of the country, afraid even to be seen packing a suitcase in his car, car loaded with boxes of money for bribes, then left abandoned at the border, and he was relieved to get out safely.

He blames Peter Mandelson for the political changes that forced him to flee for his life. He said that Mandelson had gone in and advised the government on communist ideology – already by then thoroughly discredited and linked with tens of millions dead. He said this was widely known in that part of Africa at the time, and that the British High Commission had made him sign to say he would not write about his ordeal before he could receive assistance to leave Africa.

So, a few questions arise.

How true is this, and are there any more details to be found? A cursory internet search does not reveal any, but how widely known is this part of Mandelson’s life?

Why have the press not held Labour to account for this? The Guardian and BBC condemn Conservatives for working with Kaminski, the Polish MEP, for past connections with politicians who later became extremists, yet one of our own senior politicians, who has rather a lot of flaws anyway, was himself an extremist.

Communism has been the scourge of Africa. It destroyed healthy economies and was responsible for widespread famine, for wars and since Soviet support disappeared for failed states. If Lord Mandelson shares even slight blame for this then it should be known, for he has blood on his hands.

What Is The Effect of Big Government?

This is another video I found on ReasonTV that i think needs wider distribution. In principle it needs to be answered before anyone can argue for more government intervention and a larger role for the state.

Snide and Sickening In Their Bias

The BBC has again shown its true colours, and they are red.

Interviewing David Cameron they used a photograph on a screen in the background that has frequently been used to criticise Cameron and Boris Johnson, of them at university wearing white tie. The photograph has no relevance to Cameron’s leadership, and nor does his personal wealth which Andrew Marr asked him about. The photograph is snide and sneering, but the whole attitude is patronising to viewers and I can see no reason for it apart from partisan politics in which the BBC has no business engaging.

Hat tip to Tim Montgomerie.

Who Are They?

Who do these people think they are, that like to tell us what to do?

I read two unrelated stories today, on first site they could not be more different. One is about American school children cycling the other about customer reviews of British prostitutes. The common link is that both have regard to officials telling others what to do, when rightly it is none of their damned business, and in both cases they are seeking to act beyond their rightful authority.

Both the Saratoga Springs School Board and Harriet ‘the Harridan’ Harman have decided what is good for other people’s safety, and demands that those people fall into line with those decisions, regardless of their own judgement.

Just as without the School Board’s ruling parents would not be forced to send children to school by cycle or foot, no prostitute on the Punternet website is forced into her profession. Note that the website has prominent information for reporting suspected child prostitutes or forced/trafficked girls.

Why does the Saratoga Springs School board have jurisdiction over how a child is brought to school by his parents? Why did a state trooper attend the school to enforce this ban? Why does Harriet Harman think that she has jurisdiction over a website hosted in California, where not even the State Governor or the President has authority to control web content?

Thanks to The Bleat and Man Widdicombe, via Muffled Vociferation for today’s helping of bemusing officialdom.

Global Cooling (updated)

I am doing a bit more work now, so posting has been and will be light.

However there is bad news on the climate front. The world is not warming, to bring us into a new era of prosperity and plenty. It appears it is cooling, and we might be in for a tough time here at the mid-latitudes.

You might have heard of the infamous ‘hockey-stick’ graphs of Mann et al 1998. That paper has been at the core of climate alarm, and has been prominent in every IPCC report since and the graphic of the hockey-stick time/temperature graph prominent in global-warming propaganda. It has also been attacked for many years by a Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre.

It will not surprise readers of this blog that Mann refused to release his data for McIntyre to confirm. Until recently he had managed to publish peer-reviewed articles without releasing the original data. How that can be correct peer-review even I as a humble science graduate with no post-graduate studies cannot grasp. It seems fundamental to me that in order to allow criticism of work (the core of science) the original data must be widely available.

However finally Mann’s collaborator, a Professor Briffa of the Hadley Centre for climate research in Exeter published in a journal that has not lost its balls (and I am pleased to say it is Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, a prestigious British publication) and insists on archiving raw data from any research published.

McIntyre has them. They had simply picked the data to show what they wanted. The oldest con in the in science. A perpetual worry at the back of the mind of any conscientious scientist, that they must not discard results just because they don’t fit, and if they discard one for sound reasons they must have an extra few that do fit to justify that decision.

No, for Mann and Biffa, taking 12 samples and leaving out 34 was fine, just so long as it shows warming.

So what do the data show if all of them are used in a graph? That is the down side to this story. The Earth is not warming, but it might well be cooling. Which is far, far worse, and if the CO2 that we’re pumping out now isn’t helping then we probably can’t do a lot about it!

Basically red line = Mann et al. hockey-stick curve, with the 12 specially-picked ‘good’ results, the black line is McIntyre’s assessment with all the results, including ‘naughty’ ones that refuse to agree with communists. Actually that red is a good colour choice.

Hat tips: Biased BBC, Icecap and Watts Up With That?

Update: The Register has a very readable article.

Update: it seems that my post is a massive over-simplification of an intriguing, truly scandalous story. The Register article has a link to Bishop Hill Blog which goes into all the dishonest, anti-scientific details of this con.

All Hopes Are On Ireland

for the freedom of Europe. Nigel Farage had a very impressive debate against Irish politician Dick Roche and Mr Begg, an Irish Trades Unionist. UKIP is too much of a single-issue party for my tastes, but I always thought that Farage was a wonderful speaker. Watching videos of him speaking to the European parliament back-to-back with Daniel Hannan’s is quite fun. Hard to say who is better – Hannan comes across slightly better-educated, but Farage is slightly more relaxed.

In the debate watch especially when he catches out an audience member who questions him on honesty, without admitting that she is in the employ of the EU for propaganda in university.

Watch highlights of Nigel Farage’s performance at Dazed and Confused or the whole hour-and-a-half at Reuters.

ACPO Advises Breaking the Law

I have mentioned ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers, before. It is an organisation I believe should be disbanded, and its officers charged with corruption if there is a law general enough to cover their actions, exposed in the press otherwise.

ACPO is not a government body, a QUANGO or even a staff association or union. It is a company limited by guarantee, answerable only to its guarantors. I can only assume it is specifically permitted to leave out the term “Limited” in its name. This is usually required, and leaving it out masks the nature of ACPO.

Now ACPO is advising senior police officers to break the law and keep DNA samples despite a court ruling. Now I disapprove of the European Court of Human Rights. I also disapprove of large tracts of human rights legislation that conveys rights, having seen no case that these rights are inherent. However police of all people cannot just go around obeying only those laws they choose to obey.

Of course there are solid arguments against keeping DNA of innocent people on a database. Political argument (it is unpopular), theoretical science (a large database is arguably less useful) and experience (it has rarely if ever been used to solve serious crime) argue against keeping such a large database.

Anticipating that new legislation on DNA retention will come into force next year, a letter from ACPO states

“Until that time, the current retention policy on fingerprints and DNA remains unchanged.

Individuals who consider they fall within the ruling in the S and Marper case should await the full response to the ruling by the Government prior to seeking advice and/or action from the police service in order to address their personal issue on the matter.”

Why is an unaccountable body making policy? Why is it doing so in secret? On what authority does ACPO determine what any officer ‘should’ do? Why moreover is an independent body coercing the police to break a court judgement?

Is Climate Catastrophism Harming the Environment?

“We can’t save everything, but we have to save the richest places, and the richest places on Earth are forests like this”

This is a quote from the documentary programme about New Guinea, “Lost land of the Volcano”. Obviously it is a point that I think can be debated, but I think it has as good a claim to a valid environmental concern as any. Personally I would argue that it has a greater claim than most.

So what is the best way to protect rainforests? There have been many methods tried, with mixed results at best. However there are some ideas to consider that might point to a long-term strategy that might be of great indirect benefit to the rainforests.

Rainforest destruction is usually connected to economic activity. Logging, slash-and-burn agriculture and crude mineral extraction is primitive economic activity, of a kind that tends to reduce importance to the community as the economy develops.

Environmentalists’ claims that economic development increases environmental destruction is not as obvious as they claim. Vaclav Klaus has pointed out that the Czech environment, destroyed by the Communist economy, only improved with the developments in the economy of a free Czech Republic and Slovakia. Developing economies not only allow resources for clean technology, but also for activities not essential to everyday survival, such as the leisure to take interest in long-term environmental protection.

In the UK, and I believe other western economies, the number of trees has increased in the last few decades. Outside areas with direct population pressure the forest land has all but stopped retreating, and in many areas is being managed to either keep its extent or even spread. This is after massive destruction of forests for centuries. In Britain continuous forests once stretched from the south coast to the Scottish Highlands.

Economic development also tends to lead very quickly to population stability and even reduction, reducing environmental pressure. Human populations explode when they have western medicine available and food aid or improved agricultural technology but not education and other cultural changes which lead to family planning. The most economically-developed nations are almost all suffering from reducing populations.

Is the solution to the preservation of the rainforests as simple as economic development? I doubt it. Rule of law and property rights will be essential both for that economic development, but also for ensuring that someone has an interest in the forests beyond short-term gain, and that those guardians are able to protect their wards.

Unfortunately environmentalists seem to have a knee-jerk reaction against economic development. There are many connections with communism, with many former communists and fellow travellers prominent in the environmental movement. They have a dislike of economic independence and also of property rights and the strict rule of law.

I would argue then that for many years the environmental movement has opposed development that might have helped protect the environment. However without authority they brought attention to important issues, but struggled to make a great impact until a few years ago. A weak hypothesis, supported by models that skated over the most critical issues using fudge factors made up by true believers, was trumpeted as The Great New Truth.

Politicians with little understanding of the science or of scientific process used this claim to their own ends, to take power over people, and to keep themselves in office. The science is uncertain; the politicians bought the certainty of scientists, and distorted the channels of communication until they only heard what they wanted to hear. That might just seriously damage some of the wonders of nature, not just in parallel with but because of condemning billions to poverty.

Socialist Blind Spot

It has always seemed to me that many socialists don’t just dispute that a free market works to benefit all involved, but that they are incapable of understanding that it might, or even that some rational people believe it does.

As far as I can see that is why a significant proportion actually think that to be capitalist, libertarian or worst of all Conservative is to be evil, is to be utterly selfish. They don’t believe it is actually possible for the free market to help people, anything without altruistic motives cannot have a positive result. Of course nurses, doctors and fire crews are never selfish in working for pay or even in demanding higher pay, they are altruistic whether they work hard or not, and whatever their pay.

I watch little television, and on the BBC it is strictly QI, Top Gear or Have I Got News, but I am visiting my parents. On Thursday night Hard Talk was on, and Stephen Sackur was interviewing Steve Forbes, CEO of a major magazine publisher and editor-in-chief of Business magazine.

Sackur just could not understand that Forbes could lay responsibility for the financial collapse on government rather than bankers; it was not that he disagreed, he just seemed unable to accept that someone could hold that opinion. Forbes made a case that monetary indiscipline and regulations, especially the unpredictability of government intervention, were the root cause, but Sackur just kept asking Forbes to condemn bankers and accept that capitalism was dead. He was obsessed by it, and showed little sign of listening to Forbes’s arguments and no sign at all of understanding them.

OK so the BBC should not show this sort of naked socialism in its interviewers, nor have a non-entity who cannot understand basic economics interview a man like Steve Forbes on that topic. However what struck me was a classic case of a leftie assuming that evil capitalists, and the evils of free markets must be to blame, and government must have a role in recovery but did not have any responsibility, and utterly incapable of understanding that a very knowledgeable person might disagree.

The Importance Of Opposition

Why I doubt the wisdom of consensus politics

Life is easy for anyone who has power or authority if no-one questions their use of that power. Life is extremely difficult if alongside power and authority there is effective opposition.

However without effective opposition then good decision making on difficult or controversial matters is almost impossible. Arrogance and ignorance dominate if the only voices heard are in agreement. That is why the term ‘yes-men’ is so pejorative. Any decision important enough to be taken by government is also important enough to hear and judge the reasoning for both (or indeed all) sides. To listen requires at least some level of doubt.

The Conservative Party seemed at one time to recognise this, and when Margaret Thatcher was seen not to be listening to those who disagreed with her she was removed. New Labour only ever cared about power, and silenced internal dissent ruthlessly while despising the opposition. For most of the time opposition was weak, and Labour took full advantage of that weakness. That is why so much New Labour legislation has had unintended consequences where they have been incompetent, or consequences that were not those the authors claimed to be striving for.

Barack Obama never had effective opposition before he entered the race for the White House. He was a Chicago politician in the Democrat Party, which not only has all-but-guaranteed office but a party machine of legendary ruthlessness and corruption. Even in his work as a law professor Obama did not have the usual academic opposition, for the simple reason that he appears not to have published anything. He lectured, but there was little to challenge what he taught.

During campaigning Obama did see opposition, but once he was the Democrat candidate the media shielded him from and effective scrutiny of his policy (or lack of it) and political history. When he did see any his response was petulant, aggressive and ignorant. Obama wanted to silence opposition, not listen to it and response, and he or his agents have often used his skin colour to do so, accusing anyone who disagreed with him of being racist however strong their argument.

Once in power Obama did not anticipate opposition, with Democrats holding the House of Representatives and a filibuster-proof Senate majority.

However opposition to Obama’s policy out in the real world has been so consistent and vocal that it has had practical influence. The massive changes he wanted to make to the healthcare system in the USA are unlikely to pass in anything close to the form he wanted.

How did Obama respond to the debate about the issue ion his latest major speech? As Power Line notes in an excellent article he called it bickering. Now this is one line in a long speech, but I see it as the most telling. Along with many other attacks on his opponents it shows that Obama does not understand the importance of debate, the vital role played by debate.

In addition the Power Line article highlights several passages in Obama’s speech where he claims the opposition is lying when it seems he is the one being dishonest. While the bill might not have death panels or give free coverage to illegal immigrants the results are the same. British experience with NHS tourism (people who are not entitled to care coming to Britain just to get treatment) and the decisions of NICE suggest that Power Line is right.

The Power Line article also shows how useful opposition could be if Obama really wanted to improve healthcare (as opposed to help his socialist backers). The debate has brought up many ways of improving healthcare, such as opening state markets, tort reform and decoupling insurance from employment, that would certainly improve health and be supported not only by Republicans but most importantly by the people.

In his election campaign Obama claimed to want that consensus politics that I so distrust. In fact what he wanted was for others to agree to his ideas, he didn’t want to listen to theirs. I am glad in a way that he does not want consensus, glad he has not reached out for a cross-party back-room deal. It has energised his opposition; the health bill has been studied by opponents while proponents admit to not having read it.

Even better his opposition is within the people, it is a grassroots movement, whatever socialists say. The Republican Party has so little to do with the effective opposition that it has been wrong-footed. It has not taken advantage and realigned itself with the protesters, many of whom are non-aligned or even Democrat voters.

However it is a pity he didn’t use the opposition, listen to those opponents.

The demands for consensus politics must be resisted. Any action of government should be challenged by intelligent, reasoned opposition. Then it is far more likely that new legislation will not only have the intentions stated by proponents but it might actually achieve those intentions as its sole consequence.

Liking Cameron More

I really respect politicians who will talk like real people, not like media-friendly quote-generating machines. In last year’s US election I was hoping Fred Thompson could gain the candidacy, and it is one reason Daniel Hannan and Boris Johnson are so impressive (I see no need to talk like real, uneducated people).

That is of course one thing that annoys me about David Cameron. I can see why he is timid with the media. They have misrepresented the Conservative Party for so long, and spread so much socialist propaganda that it is very hard to persuade people that racists are not necessarily right-wing for example. Cameron does have to be careful what he says, as do all his senior people, as the Guardian and the BBC will wilfully distort his words, and the new media do not yet have the reach to correct them.

However I think he has generally been too careful. Most critically this means he has failed at times to argue the case for capitalism and small government. On top of this it has made him seem far more bland than I think he really is.

I think that is why Guido Fawkes's quote of the day pleased me, and made me think better of Cameron.

“…in the restaurants on the parliamentary estate you can treat yourself to a ‘lean salad of lemon and lime-marinated roasted tofu with baby spinach and rocket, home-roasted plum tomatoes and grilled ficelle crouton’ for just £1.70. That’s all thanks to you: taxpayers’ cash subsidising a politician’s food and drink. Well I suppose LibDems have to have something to eat…”

Now that is the sort of thing real people say about rivals.

A relevant point is made with banter, apt and witty without being nasty. Suddenly Cameron the toff seems more human and more ‘of the people’ than any Labour postman or ship’s steward.

I’m Calling Buckingham For UKIP

And which of us would be disappointed?

Despite already having a staff of press officers and media advisors attached to the office of Speaker, John Bercow has decided in his image and profile needs to be raised. No, Mr Bercow, it doesn’t. Your image is irrelevant to your role. I suspect and hope that your constituents agree.

Mr Bercow was one of very few non-Labour MPs involved in flipping, among the most dishonest practices relating to abuse of allowances. He has taken the unprecedented step for a Speaker of appointing a special advisor. That adviser is a former Times journalist, and as the Telegraph puts it “Among his duties will be raising Mr Bercow's personal profile”.

It appears that Mr Hames duties will also include the creation of a "broader external role for the Speaker". The role of speaker is critical to the constitution. It is not for the fatuous Mr Bercow or anyone he appoints to redefine.

Mr Bercow’s vanity has never been well-hidden, but this really takes the piss out of us, along with up to £107,000 per annum plus benefits.

Ed Balls Was Right

Stop the presses, I agree with something Ed Balls said, and history is on his side. It is just a pity he said it in 1991, then became a member of the government that did exactly the reverse of what he recommended.

Guido Fawkes always has an excellent quote of the day. The current one from Balls is

“The allure of a minimum wage is deceptive and should be resisted … Fostering a high wage, high skill economy is the only way to reverse Britain’s relative economic decline and to generate the resources to eradicate poverty. But the minimum wage is not the answer. If anything the minimum wage will make it even harder to achieve these ends”

Unfortunately he has proved prescient.

I never trusted Balls because he is not stupid yet is on Brown’s coat tails.

Most of what the Labour government has done in twelve years, and almost everything Brown has done in that time has had the aim of furthering the Labour Party, and in the latter case furthering Brown within the Party. I think Balls knew quite well that much government policy would not have the effect proclaimed, even have the reverse effect. However that would not be obvious in a simplistic reading, by the BBC and the parts of the population the policy was targeted towards.

These policies were intended to give a good impression while making ever more people beholden to the Labour Government. This is government for the purpose of gerrymandering, with no other aim.

Orwell’s Forgotten Predictions

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book from which most people only know one concept, that of being under constant surveillance. It is far from the most important concept in the book.

Not a Sheep highlights today a satirical comparison of 1984 and Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s idea of socialist Utopia. The cartoon goes much further than that shallow idea of being watched, but does not address what I always felt to be the most important themes in 1984, Newspeak and corruption of history. It is too long since I read Brave New World, and I cannot remember if or how Huxley addressed these issues.

In 1984 language was changed to control thought. Words were not to be used, others no longer had all the same meanings and others still had their meanings reversed. In that way it was intended to control thought, because abstract thought without language is very difficult (and all but impossible to communicate) and control of language allowed control of what could be thought in that language.

While I agree with the cartoon that Huxley’s vision is closer in many ways to developing reality, Orwell did get the language concept right. The authoritarian left is quite literally doing what Orwell predicted.

There are words we cannot say, concepts we cannot express without being the object of contempt or hatred. Other words and concepts have been twisted to the reverse of their original meanings. Words such as 'liberal', 'tolerant' and 'progressive', concepts such as anti-racism, anti-fascism and diversity are used to mean exactly the opposite.

An important slogan in 1984 is “Whoever controls the past controls the future. Whoever controls the present controls the past”. Winston Smith, the protagonist, works is the Ministry of Truth changing the records of history, the control of the past.

The left has altered history, in a wide variety of ways. We are told that European culture is solely responsible for slavery, when the truth is that until European culture developed to ban slavery it was almost universal. We are told that FDR saved the world from depression with his ‘Keynesian’ and other socialist policies, when they actually deepened recession into depression, and Keynes later disavowed them. We are told that racism is historically right-wing, when from the Democrat Party and unions in the Southern USA to Nazis and Communists it has been far more a factor in the left.

Unless we wish to succumb to shrill left-wing authoritarianism we must take back our history and take back our language. In order to do so we need to challenge bias in government, education and the media, especially powerful, influential special interest groups like the NUT and the BBC.

Be Thankful For Bickering Nations

We can only hope that the G20 group will reach no substantive agreement as they argue for different measures, and so will not further damage their economies.

Gordon Brown has argued that nations must keep on overspending. This is the tactic that has failed to work in Britain and the USA, as the economies of France and Germany, which conspicuously did not try to spend their way out of recession, start to recover. Since Britain was best placed to weather the recession according to one G. Brown of Westminster and Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, the massive increase in already bloated public spending cannot have done much good.

A massive splurge of public spending during recession does not work to help recovery. It can create artificial growth (or of slow-down in contraction of the economy) in the same way as spending on your credit card can artificially increase your spending power. It does so at the expense of the future and also at the expense of private-sector growth. In the meantime it damages the free market as government interferes, intervenes and distorts the labour market.

If Britain is ever to recover we need other economies to be successful. Let us hope that other governments do not heed Brown, and continue to reduce their 'stimulus' spending.

Speaker of the House

I have to agree with Shane Greer that the convention that the speaker stand unopposed is undemocratic.

It strikes me that the Conservative plan to reduce the number of MPs is an ideal opportunity to resolve the issue, with a rather more considerable change than simply contesting the Speaker's seat. Why not also have a Speaker who is not an MP at all? Elect an MP to the chair, but his or her appointment triggers removal from the seat and a by-election. Then not only is representation restored for the constituency of the Speaker, but it would be easier to avoid the bias Speaker Martin showed in favour of his party.

I realise that this would be a considerable constitutional change, but not nearly as great as the changes Labour instigated to the post of Lord Chancellor. They screwed that up, but if the Conservatives use more forethought this could happen in a couple of years, starting a convention that the Speaker resigns in the middle of an administration, not so close to an election that a constituency has two elections in a few months. A good excuse to elect a new Speaker on those revised terms, and Bercow can stand again for his job.