For those here determined to hate the BBC and all its works, here is a reminder that it does do some useful things. That it isn’t quite in the mould of the fawning state broadcaster found almost everywhere in the world. Along with a reminder that some would like it to be.
This week File on 4 did the first really serious, probing investigation into HM Government’s National Identity Scheme that there has been in any media yet. You can listen to it here, and it is full of fascinating things for the attentive listener.
The most extraordinary is this testimony from IT consultant Peter Tomlinson:
The meetings were called by people in the Cabinet Office. There were topics on the agenda that were set by people in the Cabinet Office and we kept on thinking: why are we not seeing people from the Home Office.
Why are we not seeing technical people from the Home Office, or people involved in technical management? Eventually they began to come along but they never produced anyone who had any technical understanding of large-scale systems. We were just completely puzzled.
This is the first really solid public evidence I have seen that the scheme really is [or was?] intended by strategists at the highest level as a complete population management system and revolution in the nature of government, rather than being one by accident. That it is the emanation of a philosophy of government. It is it is not always good to have one’s analysis confirmed. In this case I would prefer not to have been vindicated.
Remember Philip Gould? He’s one of those high-level strategists.
This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords’ views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.
The philosophy is probably best summed up by a word from Foucault: governmentalism. Christopher Booker to the contrary, it is not a ‘mental’ creed of “The Mad Officals” but a pervasive pragmatism – using the natural history of humanity the better to shepherd it. The better shepherd is a member of the new innominate politico-bureaucratic class: maybe a civil ‘servant’, maybe a politician, maybe officially neither.
And just today a new example of the sage. A strategy memo has leaked to the Daily Mirror’s sharp political editor Kevin Maguire. Lord Gould allegedly writes:
No-one in Britain should have any doubt about what you stand for, what you want to achieve. You should position yourself as a powerful, muscular modernisation politician with the power and the determination to change Britain. You should aim to be a great reforming PM.
You have to meet this mood for change. You have to exemplify renewal and a fresh start.
Your Premiership has to have a dynamism and an energy that pulls people along in its slipstream. You must become the change that Britain needs.
There is a name for this, too. It is one of the most widely used populist techniques in world politics: Strong Man government, tribal leadership, caudillismo. A national security state, presided over by a Big Man – has “a nation of freemen, a polite and commercial people” (Blackstone), really come to that? When exactly did liberty become such a minority taste in Britain that it were possible?
[Just a footnote on the BBC below the fold.] And the BBC? Well. it remains independent, but since 1st January 2007, it too has fundamentally changed, though fundamental changes work slowly through large flabby organisations.
It is now defined by its duties (where have I heard that before? – oh yes…): They are headed by: “sustaining citizenship and civil society,” and include, “representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities”. Its previous objects were to provide broadcasting as a public service, as it saw fit, subject to certain restrictions, impartiality being the most prominent requirement. “Impartiality” is not to be found in the new charter. It is relegated to the supplementary “Agreement” between the BBC Trust and Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for
Culture, Media and Sport.
I have no doubt the BBC will retain its capacity to irritate me. (Some other recent Files on 4 have been predicated on some classic lefty axioms.) The question is, will “sustaining citizenship and civil society,” and “representing the UK,” allow it to continue to irritate the Government of the day?
It was Joseph Goebbels who said:
It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.
Looks like NuLab are of the same opinion.
Just google Philip Gould & Bilderberg and you know where this self appointed would be ruler comes from.
Am I the only one who thinks ‘a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.’ is seriously disturbing in it’s implications?
STB.
The BBC never has been loyal to the State any further than is necessary to secure the license fee. It’s bias is towards the “libertarian socialism” of the Islington chattering classes. As such they often agree with the kinds of people who write for/read Samizdata on issues of civil liberties, but almost always disagree on economic matters and sometimes on foreign policy. This doesn’t seem to be changing and, really, if funding news media via tax is justifiable at all, we can’t accept the BBC accepting any position, even our own, at the expense of others.
Am I the only one who thinks ‘a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.’ is seriously disturbing in it’s implications?
It sounds like something that an ideologue in the Soviet Union would have said. The trouble is that there is nothing new about any of this. Or, perhaps, “Freedom is Slavery” is just a better way of putting it. (Orwell certainly would have understood New Labour).
Similarly, Labour’s constant refrain about how we have to “modernise” everything, when they were led by a PM who couldn’t send an e-mail, and who have no understanding of the modern whatsoever. Of course, the fact that they have no understanding of the truly modern is the reason we might still win, but it is none the less extraordinary.
But that, dear chum, means everything as it is the central fact around which the BBC orbits. The whole wealth and power of the BBC comes not from the programming it makes and sells but from the fact it has a secure non-commercial tax funded source of income. It is like saying a shark is only a predator to the extent it needs to secure things to eat.
Ah yes, “libertarian” socialism. Rather like meat-eating vegetarianism.
Guy,
You mention Foucault. Was that the fellow with the pendulum or the chutney ferret who wrote about torture?
“There comes a time when every man feels the urge to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats” – HL Mencken
Michael Jennings:
Or, perhaps, “Freedom is Slavery” is just a better way of putting it.
I think that actually we are seeing something more insidious.
Orwell’s line above is the state trying to dissuade citizens from looking for freedom when they have already been locked up. One could argue that the state is simply trying to preserve the status quo.
What Gould is doing here is perhaps more accurately phrased as “Slavery is Freedom”: we are being asked to collude in locking ourselves up in the first place. The agenda is much much more sinister in that it represents a naked power grab.
This is Former New Labour,when did the get anything right,this will bethe usual bull in a china shop lash up,they will break things but are utterly incapable of getting things done.
There are vast sectors of the population who simply do not give a damn about the bletherings of politicians.
The underclass will carry one subverting the system as usual,the Muslims will not co-operate,only wittering PC classes will sign on until the next wonderful wheeze.
Cleanthes,
The agenda is much much more sinister in that it represents a naked power grab.
You couldn’t be more wrong, there. It represents (which is the right word) a power-grab as performing the will of the people for liberation. Which is an ancient cloak for power under the colour of modernity. Be not fooled: the means (bureaucratisation of everyday life, electronic media) are what’s modern; the ends and the conceptual practice are old, deep, magic.
Nick M,
This one.
bureaucratisation of everyday life
Again, I will point out that this looks like something out of the Soviet Union (or perhaps even more out of East Germany. The East Germans managed it quite effectively with filing cabinents rather than computers. Once again, I am not sure there is anything very new here.
Since democratic leaders are elected by the will of the people, they epitomize that will and can do nothing which is not an expression of that will. So to oppose their new identity and new freedom is to favor oppression and elitist tyranny. Have I got something wrong there?
“But that, dear chum, means everything as it is the central fact around which the BBC orbits. The whole wealth and power of the BBC comes not from the programming it makes and sells but from the fact it has a secure non-commercial tax funded source of income. It is like saying a shark is only a predator to the extent it needs to secure things to eat.”
You overestimate the Government’s power in this regard. Removing the license fee would be a catastrophically unpopular move (rightly or wrongly) and if it was seen to have been done because the BBC wasnt siding with the government sufficiently it would probably bring the government down. Provided the BBC is extremely blatantly biased against the Government, to the extent that it is starting to cost them a lot of marginal constituencies, there’s little chance the Government would risk actually revoking the license fee and the BBC knows it.
“It’s bias is towards the “libertarian socialism” of the Islington chattering classes.
Ah yes, “libertarian” socialism. Rather like meat-eating vegetarianism.”
Hence the quotation marks. I didnt say their philosophy was coherent, I just said that is what it is, and that it usually leads them to take an individualist stance on “political” liberties but a collectivist stance on “economic” liberties.
I suggest you try and leave comments on the Labour Party website discussion forum.
Go on.
See how far you get.
I feel sure that Bliar wasn’t really so gay that he couldn’t send an e-mail, I think instead that he was sly enough to realise that he should never leave a paper trial. He reminded me of Big Paulie in GoodFellas, not committing anything to paper, having quiet meetings one on one on his sofa, giving orders but never having anything minuted. It works too. The CPS effectively said that because there was no actual paperwork laying down a list of fees to be paid for peerages, there was no case for Lord Levy to answer. Bliar himself was never in the frame, because he never put anything in writing. No-one has ever found a written order from Hitler authorising the Holocaust. Why? He didn’t need to write it down for it to be done.
Whenever anyone starts talking about “a new kind of” anything as fundamental and immutable as freedom or identity, start counting the spoons.
Yes, the first bit, “the will of the people”:
“Would you like to be kicked in the teeth or the arse, sir?”
“Umm… well…”
“Everyone else says ‘arse’, so…”
“Hey!”
“You voted for it.”
As people have pointed out above, someone who comes out with “arguments” such as such and such is “the future” and is a “new identity” and a “new freedom” might as well dress in a shirt that has “I am evil” written upon it.
“New indentity” – i.e. fraternity via the state (and progressive activist organizations). Nothing “new” about this (even in the days of the Jacobins of the French Revolution it was very old idea).
“New freedom” that was old even when President W. Wilson came out with it (perhaps inspired by his “other self” E.M. House and his colllectivist novel “Philip Dru: Administrator”).
Sir William Petty back in the 1600’s would have been happy with the ideas of the “modern Macchiavel” (as he would with planning, the metric system, decimal money – and all the other “modern” ideas that he supported).
Then we have our old friend (no apology for the sarcasm) Francis Bacon who inspired Sir William Petty and Thomas Hobbes.
Of course a decendant of Sir William Petty (the 3rd Earl of Shelburne) founded the “Bowood Circle” – but I do not want to bore people with the doings of these folk so I will not go on about them.
Suffice it say that most of their desires have come to pass (lots of vast government departments covering just about everything – in the name of “being modern” and “rational scientific administration”, which Jeremy Bentham favoured as much as Sir William Petty and Francis “New Atlantis” Bacon had done more than a century before).
Most likely they will get their I.D. cards. First there will be a vast “I.T.” mess up (costing vast amounts of money), but the system will “work” eventually.
So suicide bombers will get cards to carry (which such people have already carried in attacks in Spain and other places), whilst Mrs Smith or Mrs Jones get arrested and punished for forgetting to carry their I.D. card when they pop down the shops.
“But we have thought of that Mr Marks, you see we can implant……”
I do not want to know. Hopefully we will all die soon (and thus avoid seeing the final touches of the “modern world”).
“But the Tory party will…..”
There is no Tory party anymore (and in the old “October Ale” sense there has not been for a very long time), and there are no conservative Whigs like Edmund Burke either.
Please no one bring up Comrade Dave. That great lover of “modernization” and the “centre ground”.
Before anyone says “Sir William Petty did not support the metric system, it was thought up after the French Revolution” – it was based on ten, and it had not evolved over time (that would have been enough for him).
Such things are not really “scientific” of course – base ten is not a very useful base according to those who actually know some mathematics, and the metric system was based on false measuements.
But then Thomas Hobbes (going back to the 17th century) was in the wrong in the disputes he had about geometry and (a rather more extreme case) Francis Bacon wanted to ban such ideas as the Earth going round the Sun.
Such folk do not care for science – they like “science” which is a very different thing.
One can find it in Plato. A love of everything planned out on “rational principles” with a desire to ban any real use of reason (I.D. cards would have found favour in the system described in “The Laws” after all people are not allowed to leave Magnesia unless it is to spy on other lands).
Scientistic not science. Rationalistic not rational.
They will “plan” us back to living in mud huts. Those of us unfortunate enough to still be around.
There are two kinds of identity and freedom. Individualism with freedom to think and make choices, and collectivism with freedom from thought and doubt.
These are militant collectivists who style themselves to be the brain cells of the new collective identity. Their first step is always to assimilate (co-opt) as much as they can and to eradicate the rest.
As Paul points out, these people have existed in various forms as long as civilization. It is time for another uprising of militant individualism and I hope we here are laying the foundation of that uprising.
Of course. It’ll help us meet “our” carbon footprint targets.
Its”Machiavelli” not “Macchiavel!”
5 July 1948, when the NHS was founded. Once the State can control your life “from cradle to grave”, there are no limits as to what it can do.
Now it seems it is the turn of the Americans; unless they do something about it…
“Its”Machiavelli” not “Macchiavel!””
Brown is a Scot,
I liked the “Macchiaviel” spelling. Its spelled the same way in The Wealth of Nations.
In some ways it would probably be better if the British government took a few tips from Machiavelli, for one thing he was a big fan of citizens’ militias.
Guy,
” It represents (which is the right word) a power-grab as performing the will of the people for liberation. “
I’m struggling to see how that is different from my description of this as not only a naked power grab, but one in which we are being asked to collude.
No point in arguing about it as we are on the same side – the bastards need to be strung from lampposts sharpish – but don’t quite understand your response.
C
ron brick,
I can add colours to the chameleon,< /br>
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,< /br>
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.< /br>
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?< /br>
Tut, were it farther off, I’ll pluck it down.< /br>
Cleanthes,
Not naked. Clothed in many colours.
Ah, yes but I think the reference is to Shakespeare. Guy spells is incorrectly methinks (it should be “murderous Machiavel”) but is a quote from Henry VI, III, ii .
Thanks, Perry.
Well, I was originally thinking of John Webster, but couldn’t summon up the quotation I was groping for. Machiavel – yes, one C – was a stock political reference in late Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, despite there being no English translation till 1640. The French still spell him that way.
Well said. Or to quote R.Reagan, a state that is powerful to give you everything you desire is powerful enough to take it away from you as well.
Paul,
Great post.
Hobbes made a complete ass of himself by claiming he’d squared the circle. He hadn’t.
Plato was forever bigging up mathematics but there is actually zero evidence that he was actually any good at it.
On the subject of complete tossers who favour authoritarian rule I note without actually giving a monkey’s that Kafeel Ahmed has shuffled off his (somewhat singed) mortal coil. He will not be missed. Bloody hell, he had a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering! How odd that his last act on Earth was not exactly that of a rocket scientist.
Some people with a good knowledge of science have been statists, and some of these people have done good work in advancing knowldege in the science they were most interested in.
However, I agree that in their capacity as statists they did not show the critical thinking they showed in their scientific work.
Of course the “great names” of collectivism did not show critical thinking in any subject (as far as I know – I am open to correction on this).
As for Dr Ahmed:
He was an evil man.
Thankfully he was also a foolish man – to judge by his attack.
It would have been nice if he had applied his mind to the problem of how a good God can command the murder of the innocent (to which the “voluntarist” solution that anything that God commands is good because the definition of “good” is what God commands, is simply a silly dodge).
However, it would not have been nice if Dr Ahmed had applied his mind to how best to carry out his evil intentions.
Paul:
to which the “voluntarist” solution that anything that God commands is good because the definition of “good” is what God commands, is simply a silly dodge
It may be a silly dodge, but I believe it is good Islamic theology.
Any religion which posits Allah recreating the universe at each instant of recorded time in order that he not be constrained by such mundane things as cause and effect has no problem with this sort of idea.
canker is right.
The Koran was dictated over a period of 23 years and is the absolute word of God (who apparently speaks a C7th dialect of Arabic – I always thought he’d sound like James Mason).
And this is a problem because God’s mind changed over those 23 years. Later passage’s had to abrogate earlier ones and over the years Islamic scholars have involved themselves in dramatic mental gymnastics to make the whole thing coherent.
But basically it comes down to this. Allah is King of the Universe and he rules by decree. And, yes, he does change his mind. There is nothing of the Christian concept (St Augustine?) that God exists outside of time. And finally everything that happens is at the will of Allah. You know that pot of yoghurt you bought that went off before it’s expiry date? Allah did that. You know you reject the teachings of the Koran. That’s because Allah doesn’t want you. Islam is unbelievably fatalistic.
I suspect the reason we have had some “comedy” terrorists over the last few years is because of this fatalism. We are dealing here with people who will not rigourously test their engines of destruction (well, they are not strictly speaking theirs because everything belongs to Allah – you know that collection of small change down the back of your, sorry, Allah’s sofa, that’s Allah’s 24p*). Because if it works it is because Allah willed it. And if it doesn’t that’s because Allah willed that. No point double checking the detonator because it ain’t obeying Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism it is following the fiat of Allah.
Check out Wikipedia for it’s list of Jewish winners of the Nobel prize. Then check it’s list of Muslim winners. It’s truly pathetic. I have stood in awe in the great mosque of Cordoba. It is gorgeous and it’s many columns stood during the Lisbon earthquake because they had lead shock absorbers. That is what the Muslims could do but they have since retreated into fatalism and have for the last umpty hundred years brought the world nothing much beyond fostering global tyranny and chaos.
*Over the years I have grown weary of Bono’s shrill grandstanding but he once had a good line about certain Televangelists – I suspect the farcical Oral Roberts was implied – “The God I believe in isn’t short of cash”.
Not that I really want to get into this again, but if you’re going to look at terms like ‘libertarian socialism’, Peter Hain probably isn’t the person you’d best read. Try Proudhon, whose assertions that ‘property is freedom’ and that the state should own nothing would probably make more sense to readers of this site than half-baked nonsense from the Welsh Secretary.