Next Tuesday (21st February) we have both a lunchtime and evening events. Patrick O’Flynn, Chief Political Commentator at the Daily Express, will be speaking about his paper’s campaign for EU withdrawal [...]]]> We have an array of fantastic events coming up over the next few weeks so here is a reminder of what’s going on.

Next Tuesday (21st February) we have both a lunchtime and evening events. Patrick O’Flynn, Chief Political Commentator at the Daily Express, will be speaking about his paper’s campaign for EU withdrawal in our first Freedom in the City event of 2012. More details can be seen by clicking here. That evening we have Ruth Porter, Communications Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, speaking at this month’s Free Spirits. She will be discussing the shortfalls of the U.K’s approach to foreign aid, explaining how the billions which the government currently spends have no benefit on recepients’ economic growth. Don’t miss what is sure to be a fascinating discussion on the importance of a radical redressing of our aid policy. More details can be seen here.

If you’re a student in or around Cambridge, don’t miss out on our event with the Cambridge Union Conservative Association on February 27th. The enigmatic Nigel Farage will be speaking. Details can be seen on the CUCA website here.

On March 6th is our next Westminster Village Pub Quiz. If you’re a fan of trivia with a political twist, come and join us for some light-hearted but competitive fun.

Last but not least, our March Free Spirits (on Tuesday 13th) will be with author, blogger and political commentator, James Delingpole. A self-described libertarian conservative, he writes for publications including The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. He will speak about his recent book ‘Watermelons: The Green Movement’s True Colours.’ The book offers a refreshing voice to widespread public skepticism over global warming, emphasising that the “crisis” has been engineered by people seeking to control our lives by imposing new taxes and regulations. Don’t miss what will be a fascinating event, and an opportunity to hear James speak with his customary wit and candour. Signed copies of the book will be available to purchase on the night. To attend, click here.

We hope to see you at at least one of these fantastic events in the next few weeks! Our events calendar for the next few months will be updated soon, so remember to look out for updates on our events page, Twitter and Facebook. Members of The Freedom Association get advanced notice and priority booking of all our events (amongst other benefits). We need your support, so if you aren’t already a member please do join us today.

Now [...]]]>

It has been two years since Steve Hilton, the strategic ‘mind’ behind Dave Cameron, founded a ‘behavioural insights team’ at Number 10. The team includes a ‘behavioural nudge’ unit, whose mission is to nudge people towards the kind of life Dave thinks is good for them. What people themselves think is naturally immaterial.

Now my assumption, one that has yet to be proved wrong, is that, when the government has to attach unsightly names to its projects, the projects have to pursue unsightly aims. If an official is called a facilitator of optimisation or an optimiser of facilitation, you know he’s up to no good. When an office is called a diversity unit or social adhesion group, you know it’s a quango for mindless, immoral bureaucrats.

Witness the latest ‘insight’ by David Halpern, director of the ‘behavioural nudge’ unit. But before I tell you what it is, what’s the greatest problem the government has with old people? Right. There are too many of them, too many wrinklies soaking up their pensions, depriving the state of the funds badly needed for foreign aid and to pay all those facilitators of optimisation. With people living longer, the giant pyramid scheme called National Insurance simply can’t cope: too many able-bodied young people are encouraged to sponge off the government to have much left for the elderly.

Image via Wikipedia

And the solution? For people to retire later and die earlier. This puts the ‘insight’ into its proper context, and do remember that Dave Halpern works for Dave Cameron. According to Dave H, retirement is worse for old people than smoking: it makes them lonely, and they die sooner. It’s much better for them to work till they are carried out, feet first. ‘Work matters, particularly for older people, not just for money but absolutely for social contact,’ was how Dave H expressed his ‘insight’, with the elegance we’ve learned to expect from government stooges.

I’m deeply moved by this show of concern for our well-being. My eyes are misting over, but I’m still able to make out the outlines of a canard. First the state taxes our income mercilessly, making it hard for us to provide for our own retirement. Then it yanks out another 12 percent in National Insurance ‘contributions’ — an amount that would make an average Brit a wealthy, BUPA-treated retiree if he could invest it into a private pension and insurance. And then the state tells us that we haven’t spent enough years ‘contributing’, so could we please spend more. It’s for our own good.

Call me a cynic, but I have a sneaky suspicion that in this instance the context determines the text. The state, due to its own criminal, self-serving wastefulness, is — to use a technical term — skint. It’ll try anything in this desperate situation, in this case under the guise of touching concern for our ‘social interaction.’

I’d like to offer my own insight to the two Daves: you don’t have to have a 9-to-5 job not to be lonely. Neither my wife nor I go to an office, and yet we never suffer from solitude. We have our friends, our colleagues (mostly writers for me, mostly musicians for her), our families, our church. And, above all, we have each other.

In fact, marriage is the best way of preventing loneliness, and you don’t even have to buy a dog. Hence if the state struck a blow for marriage, it would strike one against loneliness. So how can the state do that?

By activating the only effective mechanism at its disposal: taxation. Or rather by using what I call negative taxation for positive purposes. It should gear the system of taxation towards rewarding marriage at the expense of bachelorhood or unmarried cohabitation. The idea is hardly ground-breaking: just about every Western country has marriage tax allowances, designed to promote the most crucial social institution in any society — and, as a corollary, to help people not to feel lonely in their old age.

And this is precisely the measure that our government has refused to introduce in its next budget. Advice to Dave C and his hangers-on: spare us your nauseating, touchy-feely bleating. We’ll sort ourselves out, thank you very much. Just don’t enslave us with extortionist taxation, nor fritter away our money on all those ‘behavioural nudging’ units.

Another insight of my own I can offer is that a government that pretends to do a lot for you will inevitably do a lot to you. To that there are no known exceptions. If this insight could help you ‘nudge’ this lot out of government, that would be no bad thing aesthetically. In practical terms, however, one struggles to come up with any alternative within our political class. They are all the same.

By Alexander Boot

The three [...]]]> Tim Montgomerie has scored something of a coup for ConHome with his revelations recently about the doubts of Cabinet Ministers on Lansley’s NHS Bill.  The story dominated the media agenda on Friday and Saturday, and is clearly an acute embarrassment to the government, and especially to the Conservative Party.

The three dissenting ministers remain anonymous, but knowing Tim a bit as I do, I am quite prepared to believe what he says.  And it says something rather worrying about the state of cabinet government in Westminster if these ministers feel that they can talk to ConHome, but not to the Prime Minister.

The whole NHS debate is complex and technical.  I am satisfied that the NHS needs urgent reform, and that key elements of this reform need to be a reduction in excessive administration, and more commercial involvement.  We know that competition delivers superior performance for supermarkets, airlines, telephone companies.  So why does Ed Miliband get the heebie-jeebies about the idea of competition in health provision?

I am yet to be convinced that Lansley’s specific plans in the NHS bill are going to work, and I am listening to Stephen Dorrell and others who argue that most of the objectives could have been achieved within the existing legislative framework, without a confrontational and divisive new Bill.  The Bill gives the opposition a banner around which to rally.  No surprise that Labour, who hate the private sector, and the producer interest, who like Arthur Scargill hate the idea of competition and the profit motive, should rally against it.

We have the need, we have the plan, but the presentation has certainly been appalling, and here we have to blame Lansley.  He hasn’t sold it.  Someone suggested on television that he should be tasked with setting out his case in a 140-character Tweet.  This would be a good idea, and maybe I as a Conservative parliamentarian could get my head round a clear, simple case for the Bill, which I could use to commend it (and indeed to convince myself of its benefits).

It’s not just the NHS.   We seem to have a series of policies which are very difficult for politicians to defend, and difficult to get Party members and voters enthused about.  Take pension reform: nearly everyone agrees that public service pensions need radical reform to achieve both fairness and affordability.  Yet here we seem to have a lack of resolve, with so many concessions made to the unions that according to some reports, the current plan on the table may save little, or even cost more than the status quo.

On welfare (and I’m very gung-ho about IDS’s plans, which could transform our society and working culture), we have started to sound worried about the predictable attacks from Labour.  Of course some families on welfare living in expensive properties in inner London will have to move out.  But the average “hard-working family” can’t afford to live there, so why should a family on welfare do better?  We need to stick to our guns.

On tax, we know what we ought to do, but we’re afraid to do it.  We stick with the 50% income tax rate for purely presentational reasons because we lack the courage to go out and argue our case for jobs and growth.  We accept Nick-Clegg’s zero-sum assumption on tax-and-spend, when we should be talking about self-funding tax cuts — like NI holidays for young workers.  We should be more decisive in slapping down the Lib-Dem “bash the rich” proposals like ending higher-rate tax relief on pensions, and the proposed mansion tax.  We need to match fiscal continence with a growth strategy, which must mean lower taxes.

On education, I applaud Michael Gove’s vision for schools.  This is one of the best policy areas for the Party.  But all the Labour-style emphasis on “fair access” to universities, and the proposed appointment of Vince Cable’s protégé Professor Ebdon as “Fair Access Tsar, is a slap in the face for our best universities.  It shows a determination to dumb-down, to oppose achievement and excellence.  University admissions should be based on academic performance, plain and simple.  Nothing else.

We are also picking the wrong battles, with grand political gestures that don’t stand up to scrutiny, which waste money, and which alienate the Party’s natural supporters.  Wind farms and HS2 spring to mind.  We need clear and credible policies based on conservative principles.  I am increasingly doubtful that we will get them from Cameron’s Conservative Party.

By Roger Helmer MEP

Related articles

• Conservative Home’s assault on the NHS bill isn’t about Andrew Lansley: it’s an attack on David Cameron (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
• Tim Montgomerie, the man who takes the Conservative pulse (guardian.co.uk)

I remember once complaining to a lawyer at a New York party that one [...]]]> Why do the same medical procedures often cost three times as much in America as in British private hospitals? The answer is, malpractice litigation, much of it spurred on by lawyers’ contingency fees, ‘no win, no fee’ in common parlance.

I remember once complaining to a lawyer at a New York party that one of my numerous medical problems had at first been misdiagnosed. ‘Sue!’ he half-shouted, as New Yorkers do. ‘But I’m not sure it was their fault…’ I objected meekly. ‘Whaddaya, a lawyer?!?’ He added a few decibels. ‘It’s not YOUR job to decide whose fault it is! That’s what we’ve got JUDGES for! And JURIES!! YOUR job is to sue everyone you know when something goes WRONG!!!’

Such division of labour between ambulance chasers and those in the ambulances has effectively destroyed, or at least greatly compromised, what used to be a most effective system of medical care. Worse still, it gave President Obama an opening to indulge his socialist instincts by reviving the late Teddy Kennedy’s pet project: socialised medicine.

Obama is obviously inspired by the resounding success of our dear NHS, whose champions nowadays defend it by saying that on balance it helps more people than it kills. But it’s a two-way street: Americans learn socialism from us; we learn ambulance chasing from them.

Apparently £15.7 billion, one seventh of the NHS budget, is set aside for settling malpractice claims, many of them brought up on a no win, no fee basis. Last year the number of negligence claims went up by 30 percent on the year before, with about £1 billion paid out in settlements and God knows how many more billions outstanding. Many of these billions are a direct result of Lord Justice Jackson’s 2010 endorsement of contingency fees in Britain.

The concept has a different meaning in Britain, compared to the USA. There lawyers are allowed to receive a cut of the settlement, often as high as 60 percent. Here this practice is still banned, but no win, no fee lawyers are allowed to charge much higher fees if they win than they would do normally. The American system encourages tort lawyers to press for the highest possible award; ours encourages them to draw out the litigation as much as possible. Both are iniquitous.

Obviously victims of gross negligence, especially of the kind that leads to loss of income, ought to be entitled to compensation, and their ability to seek it shouldn’t depend on their wealth. There should exist a network of public-spirited advocates to handle such claims for small fees provided by either Legal Aid or the claimant, and much of this is already in place. Effectively, however, this means that the system is biased towards those who are either rich enough to afford legal fees or poor enough to qualify for Legal Aid.

Empirical evidence suggests that those in the second category are much more likely to sue for malpractice than those in the first. And they can do so at no risk to themselves: even if their claim is patently frivolous and they lose as a result, they bear no costs. The winners are those lawyers who are paid by Legal Aid; the losers are tax payers. You and me.

The thin-end-of-the-wedge argument doesn’t always work, but it does in this case. I’m certain that the culture of litigation will spread like brushfire here, just as it did in America decades ago. For example, it’s a foregone conclusion that sooner or later our tobacco industry, just like its American counterpart, will have to pay out billions in claim settlements — as if smokers had been unaware of the link between smoking and lung diseases.

Before long we’ll be reading about cases like the one I remember in New York, where a woman once claimed that, as a result of a bus jerking to a stop, she had become frigid. She, or rather her lawyers, estimated the monetary equivalent of that trauma at a million dollars. Given the aesthetic and legal problems involved in obtaining forensic evidence against the claimant, the City of New York settled out of court for $50,000, which was serious money back in the 1970s.

High as the amusement value of such accounts may be, I doubt many of us would like to pay for this type of entertainment out of our own pockets. But this is precisely what we do now, and will be doing on a higher scale soon, unless someone puts an end to that madness.

That will never happen, for such an action would undermine the real purpose of today’s public spending: pumping money out of private purses into those belonging to the administrative, legal and ‘help’ personnel in and around the government, with the state taking its cut off the top. This is a crying shame, and it’ll be people like you and me who’ll do the crying.

Fast food of dubious provenance. Baseball caps worn backwards. Verbs made out of nouns. And now ambulance chasing. Why is it that we borrow only bad things from Americans and never the good things, such as their industry, enterprise and good-natured equanimity towards others’ success? Admittedly those fine qualities are diminishing even in their native habitat, but that’s no reason not to learn from them.

So why do we only follow the rotten examples? Must be human nature, I suppose. And also a society that no longer suppresses the bad part of human nature, nor encourages the good.

By Alexander Boot

This morning (Feb 9th) the financial pages are hailing the ECB’s [...]]]> I must confess to a certain wry amusement on seeing photos of the EU’s wretched “Crown of Thorns” flag on fire in the streets of Athens.  But the underlying problems leading to the flag-burning are no laughing matter, and can only get worse.

This morning (Feb 9th) the financial pages are hailing the ECB’s latest debt deal for Greece, and the €uro rose on “hopes that Greek politicians were ready to yield to the  demands of their Troika paymasters”.  Yet less than a fifth of the bail-out money actually goes to the Greeks — most goes to foreign financial institutions and the ECB.

If Lord Byron were still alive, he’d surely be in tears.  Towards the end of his tragically short life he went to Greece, to fight for Greek independence against the Ottoman Turks, and he died (of disease, not hostilities) in Greece.  What would he say if he could see the birthplace of democracy reduced to a mere province of Europe, its elected Prime Minister replaced by an unelected Brussels apparatchik, its spending dictated by foreigners, its people subjected to exceptional economic hardship, with no end in sight and decades of depression to look forward to, dictated by, of all people, the German Chancellor.

I feel desperately sorry for the Greek party leaders.  If they accept the Troika’s prescription, ahead of elections, they will be annihilated at the ballot box.  If they don’t, Greece will default, and the consequent hardship will be just as bad.  The economic solution is not politically acceptable, and vice versa.  There is no way out.

What Merkel fails to realise (or rather, must surely see, but refuses to acknowledge) is that the medicine is killing the patient.  It recalls the old operating theatre joke: “The operation was successful, but the patient died”.

Of course the Greeks are partly to blame.  They lied their way into the €uro, knowing full well that they appeared to meet the criteria only by the application of deliberate and cynical accounting tricks.  They hoped for access to vast credit lines at low rates.  We also have to blame Brussels, which arguably understood the mendacious accounts, but nodded Greece through anyway.  The EU wanted expansion at any price (rather as they do today with Croatia), and damn the consequences.  The fact is that Greece has a wholly different economic culture from most of Europe.  They live a Mediterranean life-style.  They enjoy the sunshine, and they don’t pay taxes.  Somehow they got through with a devalued drachma, but they cannot survive the straightjacket of the single currency.

Merkel’s problem is that her medicine (in addition to killing the patient) is merely addressing symptoms and consequences.  We have a failure of diagnosis.  Merkel perhaps knows that the real problem is the €uro itself, but she cannot possibly admit it.  If Greek politicians are in a hard place between politics and economics, Merkel herself is in a hard place between her perceived need to save the €uro, and the reluctance of German voters to send any more bungs to Club Med.

Even the new ECB measures, if they go through, will merely delay the evil day.  Greece cannot survive indefinitely with a massively distorted exchange rate, and unit labour costs 30 or 40% out-of-kilter with northern Europe.  The longer they delay, the bigger the eventual crash.

Greece must leave the €uro, and default and devalue.  They will go through some hard times, but hard times are already baked into the pie.  One shred of hope: they should reflect on the hugely positive impact on the British economy when we left the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.  Leaving the €uro will be the best thing Greece ever did.

By Roger Helmer MEP

You’ll be able to attend masterclasses and workshops with experts in their field. Some are aimed [...]]]> Something for all young and student libertarians and classical liberals! The Liberty League Freedom Forum 2012 is nearly here! It will be held on the weekend of Friday 30th March to Sunday 1st April at Newcastle University.

You’ll be able to attend masterclasses and workshops with experts in their field. Some are aimed at teaching you the skills to be an advocate of freedom, for example helping you get inside the mind of a journalist with Alex Singleton, former writer for the Daily Telegraph; or letting you know how to win the key debates, addressing fallacies and persuading audiences with Jamie Whyte, author of “Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking”, and former lecturer in Philosophy at Cambridge.

But we’ve catered sessions to everyone’s interests, with master-classes on activism and setting up a pro-liberty student society on campus, as well as in-depth lectures and seminars exploring the ancient Greek and Renaissance conceptions of freedom and liberty with Angus Kennedy, the morality of food with Rob Lyons, and whether the state should ever intervene in parenting. And that’s not it! There will also be other sessions to choose from, including policy master-classes on free market solutions to the environment, with Mark Pennington, and the ins and outs of free banking and currency reform with the UK’s leading expert on the subject, Kevin Dowd.

As if that wasn’t already enough, other speakers include Chris Snowdon on prohibitions, Madsen Pirie, president of the Adam Smith Institute on economics and philosophy, and Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas. More and more speakers and sessions will be confirmed and announced over the next few weeks, but it’s already an unmissable line-up for anyone even vaguely interested in the ideas and philosophies of freedom.

There will also be time to socialise and meet other young pro-liberty people from across the political spectrum. We attract students from left, right and centre, with one past attendee even claiming his tongue had started to hurt from so much conversation! To facilitate this, we have hired out an exclusive hostel, as well as providing a quiet hostel for those who would rather have a good night’s sleep. Not only that, but meals and drinks will be provided for the duration of the conference too!

All accommodation, meals, workshops and events are included for the exceptionally reasonable price of just £30. But there are limited places available so book your ticket as soon as possible by clicking here.

Sadly Flecker reckoned without President Assad.  There are few of us [...]]]> In Flecker’s magnificent poem “The Gates of Damascus”, he writes “Thou hast not many miles to tread/Nor other foes than fleas to dread/Homs shall behold thy morning meal/And Hama see the safe in bed”.  See the poem here (and spot the typo!).

Sadly Flecker reckoned without President Assad.  There are few of us today who would care to take our morning meal in Homs, or to try to sleep safely in Hama.  A large part of Homs is surrounded by the tanks and artillery of the Assad régime.  There is a brutal assault on the town, with wholesale slaughter of civilians — men, women, children — and indiscriminate destruction of property and infrastructure.  It’s a war zone.  Recent reports say that the artillery is deliberately targeting the field hospital in the besieged area.  Syria is, in short, a tyrannical dictatorship, lashing out desperately with all the military force at its disposal, determined to silence opposition at any cost, including the cost of human life.

So I was surprised by a Telegraph headline on Feb 6th, “Britain as tyrannical as Syria with unelected Lords, says Lib-Dem”. The Lib-Dem in question was one Tim Farron, the Lib-Dem President.  He is sometimes suggested as a future leader of the Party, if the last-century muesli-and-sandals brigade should benefit from the inevitable demise of the Orange Book tendency under Nick Clegg.

Image via Wikipedia

So let’s stand back and get the perspective.  The President of a once-great party is telling us that Britain is as tyrannical as Syria, because the Lords are unelected.

Let’s also recall that we live in a democracy, where we saw a change of government less than two years ago.  We have a House of Lords largely appointed by the elected government, with very limited revising powers.  Meantime the elected Prime Minister can wheel out the Parliament Act to get his business through if he is so minded.

The Lords themselves are, for the most part, a bunch of avuncular figures, men (and women) of good will, if occasionally misguided.  So help us, they even include a good number of Lib-Dems, Mr. Farron’s allies.   They are, to a man (and to a woman) committed to the ideals of democracy and human rights.  And the appointment of these well-meaning folk, with their strictly circumscribed powers, makes us “as tyrannical as Syria”.

We are accustomed to hearing politicians on flights of rhetorical hyperbole, but we surely except them to try to be reasonably credible, at least with their supporters, if no one else.  Yet I imagine that the Lib-Dems themselves are cringing at Fallon’s proposition.  He is on such a flight of fancy that he brings himself and his Party (and the profession of politics) into disrepute.  And he reminds us yet again of the huge irrelevance of the Lib-Dems to the British body politic.

I shall have a lasting mental image of Mr. Farron, waiting wistfully on the pavement outside Lib-Dem HQ, ready in the cause of democracy to throw himself under the tracks of the tanks that never came.

By Roger Helmer MEP