|
|
By Toby Baxendale, on 2 September 10
Today’s Telegraph reports
The International Monetary Fund has warned that long-term fiscal reforms will be required among advanced economies as it projected the UK’s gross debt to gross domestic product would rise to 90.6pc in 2015.
According to Mark Littlewood at the IEA,
These statistics underscore the need to drastically cut government spending. Only through cutting spending and subsequently lowering the tax burden will growth be stimulated in the UK economy.
The IMF is right to point to the UK’s spending on health and pensions as areas of concern. However, when pensions liabilities are taken into account, UK national debt already stands at a staggering 333% of GDP; far worse than the 90.6% the IMF predicts for 2015. It is time for politicians to be frank and honest about our real debt levels.
The coalition government has made a start, but it must be bolder and more radical if it truly is to deal with this gargantuan task.
The 333% figure comes from an IEA report published in June, A Bankruptcy Foretold 2010: Post-Financial-Crisis Update, which uses standard accounting practices to estimate the true level of UK government debt.
Regular readers will remember the Cobden Centre article by Prof. Kevin Dowd, which suggests the figure may actually be as high as 530% of GDP — “Two different methodologies by reputable researchers, both painting a very bleak picture”.
By Toby Baxendale, on 1 September 10
In the UK there is little if any discussion on Intellectual Property Law. I think it would be correct to say that it would be considered a backwater of law for specialists and of not much relevance to the better running of society . Tucker and Kinsella, in this article, put IP law at the very heart of the advancement of a free society. Most readers of this site will know and understand that private property rights exist only when there are scarce goods, but what of goods where there is no limit to them such as an idea, or a copy of an original bit of digital data? They argue conclusively that these are truly free goods and that there is no ethical, moral or philosophical justification for the coercive restrictions on the use of these free goods. This may well be a challenging read to your commonly perceived views, but well worth a read no less.
As I reflect on this article and what this would mean to wealth creation is that if all IP laws were removed, we would unleash a tsunami of intellectual excellence that has been applied (restricted and protected thus limiting its use) in a proven fashion by entrepreneurs, in technological improvement for example, that would massively benefit more people.
I spend my time explaining to monetarists and underconsumptionist crackpots how wealth is really created:
You can only create wealth in society by entrepreneurs thinking about new ways to mix existing factors of production in better ways, by invariably investing in more intense capitalistic methods of production to produce better more plentiful and cheaper goods and services. No amount of increasing the money unit or taking from existing pools of wealth to spend via the government will create wealth; only entrepreneurs will, by going though this continuous process over time. Government should get as far away from this process as possible by not taxing corporate profits, not taxing wealth transfers from one generation to the next, not trying to “pick winners” via an Industrial Strategy, and not imposing rules and regulations over and above standard common law protections for consumers.
Now I will add “not giving monopoly privilege to creators of technology, ideas and know-how, as this prevents their widespread application; these are unlimited free goods, do not need to be economised, therefore they should not have property rights attached to them.”
By Toby Baxendale, on 31 August 10
Not many people are aware that on the 5th of April 1933, the US citizens were instructed to deliver up all their gold (money at the time) to the Federal Reserve and get less in purchasing power back. This confiscation of wealth would make even Emperor Nero or Henry VIII blush with its boldness.
Congressman Ron Paul has always campaigned for the Fed to open its books and have this gold counted as there are rumours that all of it is not there. An open audit would settle the matter. The Fed refuses. You can draw your own conclusions from this.
I reader sent this link to me:
By Michael O’Brien – 08/30/10 10:21 AM ET
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said he plans to introduce legislation next year to force an audit of U.S. holdings of gold.
Paul, a longtime critic of the Federal Reserve and U.S. monetary policy, said he believes it’s “a possibility” that there might not actually be any gold in the vaults of Fort Knox or the New York Federal Reserve bank.
The libertarian lawmaker told Kitco News, a website tracking news about precious metals, that an audit was necessary to determine how much the U.S. maintains in gold reserves in case the government were to use gold to back the dollar.
“If there was no question about the gold being there, you think they would be anxious to prove gold is there,” he said.
“Our Federal Reserve admits to nothing, and they should prove all the gold is there. There is a reason to be suspicious and even if you are not suspicious why wouldn’t you have an audit?
“I think it is a possibility,” Paul said when asked if there was truth to rumors that there was actually no gold at Ft. Knox or the New York Fed.
Paul had been one of the Republicans to spearhead a broader audit of the Fed as part of the Wall Street reform bill passed through Congress this year. The provision, which was weakened somewhat in the final version, found Paul joining with a number of Democrats to require the Fed to open its books and outline its assets and liabilities.
The gold reserves, which Paul’s new bill would audit, are generally seen as a guarantee on a nation’s currency, but the U.S. moved the dollar away from being tied to the price of gold in 1972.
Paul stopped short of calling for the reinstitution of the gold standard and instead called for the government to allow the use of hard currency — gold and silver tender — alongside the use of the dollar.
“If people get tired of using the paper standard they can deal in gold or silver,” he said.
Desperate times lead to desperate measures and on a side note, I wonder what is being planned now. I remember being told at the start of my business career by a wise old multi millionaire, “remember, when the banks or the government need money, they can only come after you if you have money,” i.e. they can’t confiscate what you do not have.
By Toby Baxendale, on 30 August 10
A reader has sent in his thoughts about the recent proposals to reform the regulatory apparatus of the UK banking system:
Last Friday I had a quick view at the report by HM Treasure on a proposal to reshuffle the institutional setting for financial system regulation and oversight in the UK. The introduction (4 pages) is interesting but sometimes depressing. It openly recognised that UK authorities (Bank of England and FSA) failed to see the problems coming and to react adequately. Good. However, the solution it proposes is not to improve the understanding of the building up of bubbles and imbalances, or to reinvigorate the political will so it can make decisions even if those affect the banking status, or to stop trying to achieve the unachievable (a big apparatus able to foresee everything in the system as a whole), but… just rearranging chairs… (every one else in the world, G20, ECB, FED, is rearranging chairs too, so this reshuffling is quite mainstream). However, maybe in the case of the UK there is a possibility to introduce sound thinking in this new Bank of England-based structure (and stop the endogamic kind of thinking within current monetary authorities), through the external members of the newly created “Financial Policy Committee”. The report says (p. 17) among other things:
2.43 It will be important to ensure that the external members of the FPC are able to provide sufficient levels of expertise and challenge to the Committee’s deliberations – this will not only include experience of banking, but also other financial sectors such as insurance and investment banking and, of course, macroeconomic expertise.
2.44 In addition to the chief executive of the CPMA, the Chancellor will appoint four external members of the FPC using a similar recruitment process to that used for the MPC. The Government will look carefully at the best way to ensure that external members demonstrate ample relevant knowledge and experience and the ability to work constructively in a committee environment, without conflicts of interest that would prevent them participating fully in the work of the Committee.”
My take on this is that the external members of the FPC have to be radically different in make up than the internal members of the current MPC i.e. usually a academic, or some who has come from that background. Entrepreneurs, great business leaders and representatives from the SME sector , all who operate at the coal face would have more of an idea about what is and is not actually going on in the economy, better still, why not think about reforming the whole system anyway so we do not rely of 20 or so central planners to determine the value of our very currency, arguably with language, the foundation of civil , peaceful society.
Above all, if we are only tinkering and not radically reforming, he concluded “please appoint those WHO DID SEE it coming and who have a sound theoretical framework behind it (and kick out those who were clueless…)”
Bravo to that, we can name a number of Austrian School economists and Austrian influenced fund managers and entrepreneurs who could do this job.
By Toby Baxendale, on 30 August 10
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/08/26/129451895/how-to-spend-1-25-trillion
Cranky money policy or real economics?
Is this the start of the decline of the American Imperial Empire we are observing?
By Toby Baxendale, on 27 August 10
”The National Health Service is the closest thing the English have to a religion,” wrote the former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson in his memoirs.
Daniel Hannan MEP was torn to pieces politically for daring to say that in his view the service provided was not optimal. In the book he co-authored book with Douglas Carswell, The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain, they suggest alternative solutions.
In the late summer of 2009, in the run up to the General Election the following year, this sparked David Cameron into a defensive stance, and being the astute politician he is, he sensed the political mood music and declared his “wholehearted commitment” to the NHS. He suggested that the NHS represented a “simple, practical, common sense, human understanding of a fantastic and precious fact of British life”. He added “That’s why we are committed to the NHS and the principle of a healthcare system that is free at the point of use, based on need and not the ability to pay.”
It is generally understood that if you wish to be taken seriously in this country, you must never be critical of the NHS. Suggest a reform here and a fine tuning there, but don’t so much as imply that fully taxpayer-funded and state-provided health care might not the best solution for the people. Should you dare go down that line of thinking, you are sure to be dismissed as a wide-eyed loony!
It is assumed that the market for health care is naturally monopolistic as the medical profession can organise at the expense of the consumer, who is ignorant. Naturally, the State needs to step in and protect the ignorant consumer. This is akin to saying that food producers know more about food (essential for life!) and they will have a tendency to organise at the expense of the consumer, so the State should step in and we can have a National Food Service (God forbid: an 18 month wait for a can of Baked Beans!) and all those starving people that the private sector does not provide for will be fed! Also private provision will never cover the poor, already sick, and the needy; therefore the State must step in. Historically this has notbeen the case.
David Green in 1985 wrote a magnificent book Working Class Patients and the Medical Establishment: Self-help in Britain from the Mid-nineteenth Century to 1948. He shows that health care provision prior to the 1911 National Insurance Act was spontaneously provided by worker-organized mutual or friendly societies. Indeed, 75% of all provision was via these organizations with the balance paid for by private provision by those who could pay on the nose directly for medical related services; and for the utterly impoverished small minority, the Poor Law provision. Interestingly, these societies were paid for by a flat subscription fee for all. Green shows that only 4.5% of applicants were turned down.
These societies employed doctors, on the whole provided drug dispensing services and sick pay for their members. Doctors were often elected and answerable to the committee of lay people of the society. This democratic control was detested by a vocal minority of doctors as it afforded accountability. They also detested the dominant consumer. Many, though, were happy and content.
The societies, who negotiated individually with doctors, would ensure a good wage for the doctor, but some in the General Medical Council viewed this to be “infamous conduct” — lowering your wage to be affordable to the masses was enough to get you struck off. Ironically the Trade Union thugs and dinosaurs of the 70’s and 80’s would have no doubt approved of this closed shop, restrictive practice which was so much at the expense of the working-class patient. How the original trade unionists, who were so supportive of the friendly societies, would be spinning in their graves.
The great success of the mutual provision of a private welfare state was in effect its own downfall. Lloyd George sought to extend the benefits that the freely chosen mutual provision of the masses had achieved to cover the very poor. Green shows us how during the passage of the bill, the medical profession, which did not like working for the proles and being governed by lay committees, managed to advance arguments that would deliver control of the goods and services provided by the mutual societies, demanded by the patients and the lay committees that ran them, to the medical profession themselves.
It was successfully argued that the pay that the Doctor received on contract to the Society prevented him from providing a full unbiased professional service for the benefit of the patient. It was argued that the practice of certain doctors in competing for the individual subscriptions of members by undercutting other doctors was bad for the provision of medical care. Working-class fraternalism was the BMA’s worst enemy, as competition for patients kept the doctors’ pay at levels that the masses of working-class people could afford.
The commercial insurance companies too had long detested the competition that the Societies had given them and with the BMA, they formed themselves into the Combine and extracted concessions to the Bill.
Green says
The essence of working-class social insurance was democratic self-organization: amendments to the Bill obtained by the BMA and the Combine undermined it. Doctors pay had to be kept within limits that ordinary manual workers could afford: under pressure, the government doubled doctors’ incomes and financed this transfer of wealth from insured workers to the medical profession by means of regressive poll tax, flat-rate National Insurance contributions.
The unhappy outcome of this legislation initially intended to extend to all citizens the benefits of friendly society membership, already freely chosen by the vast majority, was a victory for the political muscle of the Combine and the BMA. They achieved a very considerable transfer of wealth and power from the relatively poor working –class to the professional class.
Post 1911, the doctors were paid out of the state insurance provision and ultimately by the state via the National Health Service, post 1948. Popular, affordable, voluntarily-funded healthcare was crowded out. We now have inefficient Soviet style provision of health care. Dress it up how you like, but essentially the state is the prime provider of health care. Private provision is sidelined and often only available to the wealthy. Choice in services is limited. Patient consumer control of the doctor / medical provider is negligible. Until we have consumer control, our service will always be suboptimal.
David Cameron and the Big Society: Could this be a return to mass private affordable consumer controlled democratic provision of medical care?
I have previously written here about my enthusiasm for the Big Society project.
On August the 13th 2010, 12 projects were launched that allowed public sector workers to take control of delivering services. Could it be possible that we could take control of our local general purpose hospital and local GP services? For this to happen, we would need to get a full tax rebate for all participating members and form a traditional friendly society and extract those services from the state and return them from whence they came, on the whole, to the working-class mutual societies that Green writes so eloquently about.
Would the government be prepared to give a rebate in our tax so we could use the money as our ancestors did, to arrange our own healthcare in a mutual format? Can we see the lay people of say Welwyn and Hatfield, where I live, rise up and form a mutual for all its members benefit? That is a truly wonderful thought. At the moment, our local QE11 hospital where my youngest child was born is facing closure with only the A&E services and one or two other things being left open, and there is much popular support to keep it open. Do the people want to go this far? If we were given our tax back I am confident most citizens would seek to pay their subscriptions, vote in their doctors, and arrange for the full service that they want on a lowest cost basis. Could consumer control and patient power return to Britain?
How bold are Andrew Lansley and David Cameron?
Readers interested in more from David Green may enjoy his 1993 Civitas paper, “ Reinventing Civil Society: The Rediscovery of Welfare Without Politics“.
By Toby Baxendale, on 27 August 10
Yesterday I discovered a brilliant article by Graham Stewart about the legal challenges to the Coalition budget launched by the Fawcett Society:
successive anti-discriminatory legislation, culminating in Harriet Harman’s statutory behemoth, the Equality Act (which received its Royal Assent in April), forces all government departments to undertake an impact assessment on the likely outcomes for ‘protected’ groups in society before implementing policy. Where such an assessment shows a policy may widen rather than close inequality gaps, the government is expected to take corrective action. The Equality Act defines the ‘protected’ groups as those who suffer discrimination on grounds of age, race, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, religion and belief, pregnancy and maternity.
…
But the cuts must go through or the United Kingdom faces ruin. And it will be a ruin that will not discriminate between men and women, the able bodied and the disabled, the unisexuals from the transsexuals or whatever other section of society the Equality Act wishes to ring fence as exceptional. So the choice for the Government is clear. Either the budget must be enacted in full or the obstructive passages of the Equality Act must be repealed.
I recommend the whole article, available at Critical Reaction.
By Toby Baxendale, on 24 August 10
John Bright and Richard Cobden are forever associated because they were both industrial capitalists, Corn Law Reform free traders, Anti War campaigners, and founders of the “Manchester School” of working class classical Liberalism. We have published some articles in the past about Cobden, after whom I named this Educational Charity, the most recent by Tom Woods, a brilliant work of scholarship. This piece has prompted me to dig out from the vaults this most moving and brilliant speech given in the House of Commons on the 23rd of February 1855 on the war against Russia in the Crimea.
On the 22nd of February 1855 four senior Cabinet Ministers including Gladstone had resigned citing that they were being censured by the new Palmerston led Administration, as members of the prior Administration, they had decided to go to war; Palmerston was now arguing for peace. Cobden and Bright had always stood opposed to war, indeed Bright was a principled Quaker.
Sadly this speech could have been made in recent years. Free trade, more interaction with other people and not war is the best approach. War only ever delivers up an enlarged State and a diminution of freedom with widespread destruction of life, limb and property.
Notes: The seat of Tiverton was Palmerston’s. Lord John Russell was MP for the City of London negotiating the peace treaty at Vienna. Steve Baker MP advises us that his colleague the great Bill Cash is writing a biography of Bright. A quick web search and I see the great free trader himself is flying the family flag as Bright was his great grandfather’s cousin (see here).
The official copy of the “Angel of Death” speech is to be found in Hansard. Needless to say, it was given unscripted.
“MR. BRIGHT
I am one of those forming the majority of the House, I suspect, who are disposed to look upon our present position as one of more than ordinary gravity. I am one, also, of those, not probably constituting so great a majority of the House, who regret extremely the circumstances which have obliged the right hon. Gentlemen who are now upon this bench to secede from the Government of the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton. I do not take upon me for a moment to condemn them; because I think, if there be anything in which a man must judge for himself, it is whether he should take office if it be offered to him, whether he should secede from office, whether he should secede under a particular leader, or engage in the service of the Crown, or retain office in a particular emergency. In such cases I think that the decision must be left to his own conscience and his own judgment; and I should be the last person to condemn any one for the decision 1756 to which he might come. I think, however, that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman is one which the House cannot have listened to without being convinced that he and his retiring colleagues have been moved to the course which they have taken by a deliberate judgment upon this question, which, whether it be right or wrong, is fully explained, and is honest to the House and to the country. Now, Sir, I said that I regretted their secession, because I am one of those who do not wish to see the Government of the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton overthrown. The House knows well, and nobody knows better than the noble Lord, that I have never been one of his ardent and enthusiastic supporters. I have disapproved much of his policy both at home and abroad; but I hope that I do not bear to him, as I can honestly say that I do not bear to any man in this House—for from all I have received unnumbered courtesies—any feeling that takes even the tinge of a personal animosity; and, even if I did, at a moment so grave as this, no feeling of a personal character whatever should prevent me from doing that which I think now, of all times, we are called upon to do—that which we honestly and conscientiously believe to be for the permanent interests of the country. We are in this position, that for a month past, at least, there has been a chaos in the regions of the Administration. Nothing can be more embarrassing—I had almost said nothing can be more humiliating—than the position which we offer to the country; and I am afraid that the knowledge of our position is not confined to the limits of these islands. It will be admitted that we want a Government; that if the country is to be saved from the breakers which now surround it, there must be a Government; and it devolves upon the House of Commons to rise to the gravity of the occasion, and to support any man who is conscious of his responsibility, and who is honestly offering and endeavouring to deliver the country from the embarrassment in which we now find it. We are at war, and I shall not say one single sentence with regard to the policy of the war or its origin, and I know not that I shall say a single sentence with regard to the conduct of it; but the fact is that we are at war with the greatest military Power, probably, of the world, and that we are carrying on our operations at a distance of 3,000 miles from home, and in the neighbourhood of the strongest fortifications of that great military empire. I will not stop to criticise—though it really 1757 invites me—the fact that some who have told us that we were in danger from the aggressions of that empire, at the same time told us that that empire was powerless for aggression, and also that it was impregnable to attack. By some means, however, the public have been alarmed as if that aggressive power were unbounded, and they have been induced to undertake an expedition, as if the invasion of an impregnable country were a matter of holiday-making rather than of war. But we are now in a peculiar position with regard to that war; fur, if I am not mistaken—and I think I gathered as much from the language of the right hon. Gentleman—at this very moment terms have been agreed upon—agreed upon by the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen; consented to by the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton when he was in that Cabinet; and ratified and confirmed by him upon the formation of his own Government—and that those terms are now specifically known and understood; and that they have been offered to the Government with which this country is at war, and in conjunction with France and Austria—one, certainly, and the other supposed to be, an ally of this country. Now, those terms consist of four propositions, which I shall neither describe nor discuss, because they are known to the House; but three of them are not matters of dispute; and, with regard to the other, I think that the noble Lord the Member for the City of London stated, upon a recent occasion, that it was involved in these terms—that the preponderant power of Russia in the Black Sea should cease, and that Russia had accepted it with that interpretation. Therefore, whatever difference arises is merely as to the mode in which that “preponderant power” shall be understood or made to cease. Now, there are some Gentlemen not far from me—there are men who write in the public press—there are thousands of persons in the United Kingdom at this moment—and I learn with astonishment and dismay that there are persons even in that grave assembly which we are not allowed to specify by a name in this House—who have entertained dreams—impracticable theories—expectations of vast European and Asiatic changes, of revived nationalities, and of a new map of Europe, if not of the world, as a result or an object of this war. And it is from those Gentlemen that we hear continually, addressed to the noble Lord the Member fur Tiverton, terms which I cannot well understand. They call upon 1758 him to act, to carry on the war with vigour, and to prosecute enterprises which neither his Government, nor any other Government has ever seriously entertained; but I would appeal to those Gentlemen whether it does not become us—rewarding the true interests and the true honour of the country—if our Government have offered terms of peace to Russia, not to draw back from those terms, not to cause any unnecessary delay, not to adopt any subterfuge to prevent those terms being accepted, not to attempt shuffles of any kind, not to endeavour to insist upon harder terms, and thus make the approach of peace even still more distant than it is at present? Whatever may be said about the honour of the country in any other relation in regard to this affair, this, at least, I expect every man who hears me to admit—that if terms of peace have been offered they have been offered in good faith, and shall be in honour and good faith adhered to; so that if, unfortunately for Europe and humanity, there should be any failure at Vienna, no man should point to the English Government and to the authorities and rulers of this Christian country, and say that we have prolonged the war and the infinite calamities of which it is the cause. Well, now, I said that I was anxious that the Government of the noble Lord should not be overthrown. Will the House allow me to say why I am so? The noble Lord at the head of the Government has long been a great authority with many persons in this country upon foreign policy. His late colleague, and present envoy to Vienna, has long been a great authority with a large portion of the people of this country upon almost all political questions. With the exception of that unhappy selection of an ambassador at Constantinople, I hold that there are no men in this country more truly responsible for our present position in this war than the noble Lord who now fills the highest office in the State and the noble Lord who is now, I trust, rapidly approaching the scene of his labours in Vienna. ["Hear, hear!" and cries of "No, no!"] I do not say this now to throw blame upon those noble Lords, because their policy, which I hold to be wrong, they, without doubt, as firmly believe to be right; but I am only stating facts. It has been their policy that they have entered into war for certain objects, and I am sure that neither the noble Lord at the head of the Government nor his late colleague the noble Lord the Member for London will shrink from the responsibility 1759 which attaches to them. Well, Sir, now we have those noble Lords in a position which is, in my humble opinion, favourable to the termination of the troubles which exist. I think that the noble Lord at the head of the Government himself would have more influence in stilling whatever may exist of clamour in this country than any other Member of this House. I think, also, that the noble Lord the Member for London would not have undertaken the mission to Vienna if he had not entertained some strong belief that, by so doing, he might bring the war to an end. Nobody gains reputation by a failure in negotiation, and as that noble Lord is well acquainted with the whole question from beginning to end, I entertain a hope—I will not say a sanguine hope—that the result of that mission to Vienna will be to bring about a peace, to extricate this country from some of those difficulties inseparable from a state of war. There is one subject upon which I should like to put a question to the noble Lord at the head of the Government. I shall not say one word here about the state of the army in the Crimea, or one word about its numbers or its condition. Every Member of this House, every inhabitant of this country, has been sufficiently harrowed with details regarding it. To my solemn belief, thousands—nay, scores of thousands of persons—have retired to rest, night after night, whose slumbers have been disturbed, or whose dreams have been based upon the sufferings and agonies of our soldiers in the Crimea. I should like to ask the noble Lord at the head of the Government—although I am not sure if he will feel that he can or ought to answer the question—whether the noble Lord the Member for London has power, after discussions have commenced, and as soon as there shall be established good grounds for believing that the negotiations for peace will prove successful, to enter into any armistice? ["No! no!" and "Hear, hear!"] I know not, Sir, who it is that says “No, no,” but I should like to see any man get up and say that the destruction of 200,000 human lives lost on all sides during the course of this unhappy conflict is not a sufficient sacrifice. You are not pretending to conquer territory—you are not pretending to hold fortified or unfortified towns; you have offered terms of peace which, as I understand them, I do not say are not moderate; and breathes there a man in this House or in this country whose appetite for blood is so insatiable that, even 1760 when terms of peace have been offered and accepted, he pines for that assault in which of Russian, Turk, French, and English, as sure as one man dies, 20,000 corpses will strew the streets of Sebastopol? I say I should like to ask the noble Lord—and I am sure that he will feel, and that this House will feel, that I am speaking in no unfriendly manner towards the Government of which he is at the head—I should like to know, and I venture to hope that it is so, if the noble Lord the Member for London has power, at the earliest stage of these proceedings at Vienna, at which it can properly be done—and I should think that it might properly be done at a very early stage—to adopt a course by which all further waste of human life may be put an end to, and further animosity between three great nations be, as far as possible, prevented? I appeal to the noble Lord at the head of the Government and to this House; I am not now complaining of the war—I am not now complaining of the terms of peace, nor, indeed, of anything that has been done—but I wish to suggest to this House what, I believe, thousands, and tens of thousands, of the most educated and of the most Christian portion of the people of this country are feeling upon this subject, although, indeed, in the midst of a certain clamour in the country, they do not give public expression to their feelings. Your country is not in an advantageous state at this moment; from one end of the kingdom to the other there is a general collapse of industry. Those Members of this House not intimately acquainted with the trade and commerce of the country do not fully comprehend our position as to the diminution of employment and the lessening of wages. An increase in the cost of living is finding its way to the homes and hearts of a vast number of the labouring population. At the same time there is growing up—and, notwithstanding what some hon. Members of this House may think of me, no man regrets it more than I do—a bitter and angry feeling against that class which has for a long period conducted the public affairs of this country. I like political changes when such changes are made as the result, not of passion, but of deliberation and reason. Changes so made are safe, but changes made under the influence of violent exaggeration, or of the violent passions of public meetings, are not changes usually approved by this House or advantageous to the country. I cannot but notice, in speaking to Gentlemen who 1761 sit on either side of this House, or in speaking to any one I meet between this House and any of those localities we frequent when this House is up—I cannot, I say, but notice that an uneasy feeling exists as to the news that may arrive by the very next mail from the East. I do not Suppose that your troops are to be beaten in actual conflict with the foe, or that they will be driven into the sea; but I am certain that many homes in England in which there now exists a fond hope that the distant one may return—many such homes may be rendered desolate when the next mail shall arrive. The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two sideposts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and the lowly, and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal. I tell the noble Lord, that if he be ready honestly and frankly to endeavour, by the negotiations to be opened at Vienna, to put an end to this war, no word of mine, no vote of mine, will be given to shake his power for one single moment, or to change his position in this House. I am sure that the noble Lord is not inaccessible to appeals made to him from honest motives and with no unfriendly feeling. The noble Lord has been for more than forty years a Member of this House. Before I was born, he sat upon the Treasury bench, and he has devoted his life in the service of his country. He is no longer young, and his life has extended almost to the term allotted to man. I would ask, I would entreat the noble Lord to take a course which, when be looks back upon his whole political career—whatever he may therein find to be pleased with, whatever to regret—cannot but be a source of gratification to him. By adopting that course he would have the satisfaction of reflecting that, having obtained the object of his laudable ambition—having become the foremost subject of the Crown, the director of, it may be, the destinies of his country and the presiding genius in her councils—he had achieved a still higher and nobler ambition; that he had returned the sword to the scabbard—that at his word torrents of blood had ceased to flow—that he had restored tranquillity to Eu- 1762 rope, and saved this country from the indescribable calamities of war.”
By Toby Baxendale, on 24 August 10
The latest Material Evidence from Sean Corrigan:
The Home of the Free and the Land of the Brave? Wrong on both counts, if we listen to the testimony of no less than Bill Gross, a man who seems to think that a nation founded on commercial liberty and rugged individualism should admit the last two-and-a-half centuries have been a bit of a joke and should promptly nationalize the mortgage market. Yes, why not — and let’s clear out those reactionary Kulaks while we’re at it, shall we, Mr. G?
 Material Evidence, 20 August 2010 Download the report here.
By Toby Baxendale, on 19 August 10
Sean Corrigan has sent us one poem we missed by Thomas Moore that has much relevance today. Enjoy.
Toby Baxendale.
“The Ghost of Miltiades” is about Greek war bonds. As noted earlier, Greece had been fighting for independence from the Ottoman Turks since 1821. In 1824-5, the fledgling Greek government obtained two large, high-interest from English banks, which were then turned and floated as bonds on the London market. Andreas Luriottis was the Greek agent in London. The whole thing did not end well and the value of the Greek bonds collapsed accordingly — ending with the “Benthamite” trader wailing about his subsequent losses and trying to sell them back to the Greeks. “Jerry” is Jeremy Bentham, of course.
[Ah quoties dubius Scriptis exarsit amator! – ah, how often has a message inflamed a doubting lover - Ovid]
The Ghost of Miltiades came at night,
And he stood by the bed of the Benthamite,
And he said, in a voice, that thrill’d the frame,
“If ever the sound of Marathon’s name
Hath fir’d they blood or flush’d thy brow,
Lover of Liberty, rise thee now!”
The Benthamite, yawning, left his bed –
Away to the Stock Exchange he sped,
And he found the Scrip of Greece so high,
That it fir’d his blood, it flush’d his eye,
And oh, ’twas a sight to see,
For never was Greek more Greek than he!
And still as the premium higher went,
His ecstas rose – so much per cent.,
(As we see in a glass, that tells the weather,
The heat and the silver rise together,)
And Liberty sung from the patriot’s lip,
While a voice from pocket whisper’d “Scrip!”
The Ghost of Miltiades came again; –
He smil’d as the pale moon smiles through rain,
For his soul was glad at the patriot strain;
(And poor, dear ghost — how little he knew
The jobs and the tricks of the Philhellene crew!)
“Blessings and thanks!” was all he said,
Then, melting away, like a night-dream, fled!
The Benthamite hears — amaz’d that ghosts
Could be such fools — and away he posts,
A patriot still? Ah no, ah no –
Goddess of Freedom, thy scrip is low,
And, warm and fond as they lovers are,
Thou triest their passion, when under par.
The Benthamite’s ardour fast decays,
By turns he weeps, and swears, and prays,
And wishes the d–l had Crescent and Cross,
Ere he had been forc’d to sell at a loss.
They quote him the Stock of various nations,
But, spite of his classical associations,
Lord how he loathes the Greek quotations!
“Who’ll buy my Scrip! Who’ll buy my Scrip?”
Is now the theme of the patriot’s lip,
And he runs to tell how hard his lot is
To Messrs. Orlando and Luriottis,
And says, “Oh Greece, for Liberty’s sake,
Do buy my Scrip and I vow to break
Those dark, unholy bonds of thine –
If you’ll only consent to buy up mine!”
The Ghost of Miltiades came once more; –
His brow, like the night, was lowering o’er,
And he said, with a look that flash’d dismay,
“Of Liberty’s foes the worst are they
Who turn to a trade her cause divine,
And gamble for gold on Freedom’s shrine!”
Thus saying, the Ghost, as he took his flight,
Gave a Parthian kick to the Benthamite,
Which sent him, whimpering, off to Jerry –
And vanish’d away to the Stygian ferry!
— Thomas Moore, 1828
|
|
