Fraser Nelson, in a Daily Telegraph (£) column entitled “The Tories didn’t defend liberty in office. But it’s never too late to start.”
This is good analysis, if horrible in what it says about the UK public and where things are in terms of public opinion:
More bans and restrictions will be on their way. Starmer’s logic is clear enough: if sickness and illness cost the NHS money, then your diet becomes his business. Obesity, of course, costs the NHS far more than smoking. So there’s not much to stop restrictions on alcohol, fizzy drinks, bacon and life’s other guilty pleasures. If you let go of the principle of freedom, including the freedom to make bad health choices, it is hard to see where it all stops.
Indeed. A few years ago, people who went on about second-hand or “passive smoking” denied they wanted to ban smoking as such. That was a lie then, and now the mask is well and truly off.
Crucially, this is being driven by not by the nanny-statism of meddling politicians, but by public opinion. Over decades, there has been a shift towards wanting the government to ban more, to regulate more. The Sunak/Starmer smoking ban is backed by six in 10 people. Polling by the Health Foundation found a majority saying alcohol should not be promoted at sporting events, that salty and sugary foods should be taxed more. Another poll shows a third of the public wants smoking banned everywhere, immediately. When covid struck, there was a mass panic and huge demand for Wuhan-style lockdown.
Exactly so. Having said which, people in their actual behaviour – what economists and sociologists called “revealed preferences” – can act in ways that are rather more liberal than suggested by their answers to a pollster about banning X or Y.
For years, the jurist Jonathan Sumption has been pointing out how the empire of law is fast expanding, because the public seem to seek the state’s protection from a greater list of life’s everyday perils. And are prepared to accept ever greater curtailments of their liberty in order to do so.
Indeed. It adds to the costs and irritations of daily life.
It appears that there is some anger, even from the Labour side, about the Starmer proposal to ban smoking in pubs’ “beer gardens”, etc. So I hope that at least on that topic, the relentless urge to micro-manage life is meeting with resistance. But Starmer will not give up easily. Authoritarianism is his “thing”. Remember, the Prime Minister, when leader of the official opposition in the previous Parliament, wanted lockdowns to continue for longer than they did. His nickname, “Capt Hindsight”, was partly born out of that episode.
It absolutely is too late.
Why in Cthulhu’s name would anyone believe a damn word a Tory Party MP, Grandee or functionary says about their sudden conversion to importance checks & balances & civil liberties? After doing 14 years of jack shit in rolling back what Blair did to the UK, how credulous would someone have to be to believe a single word they say?
The Tory Party serves no discernible purpose other than distracting people from seeking actual solutions that don’t involve either Labour or the ‘Conservatives’.
I have a friend who can explain everything. They are the natural party of government, you see. However, you must realise that Boris only imposed lockdowns against his ‘libertarian instincts’ and if you vote for them again, it will all be different and Carrie won’t set the agenda. And Dominic will reform the Civil Service ’till it is a purring Rolls-Royce. And Theresa will dance like MC Hammer, and Tobias Ellwood will turn into Javier Milei, and once socialism is done right, it WILL work, and my goodness this ‘baccy smells funny.
“And Theresa will dance like MC Hamner”.
Best comment I’ve read for years.
Perhaps, if this theory of bad lifestyle choices impacting the cost of the NHS is to be applied, I have a suggestion. Each year at your mandatory annual physical they take your weight and height and calculate your BMI. This is submitted to the government and they adjust your income tax rate accordingly. Overweight you pay an extra 5p on the pound to compensate for the risk you pose to the NHS. An extra 2p if you smoke.
That is what the government likes to call a “market incentive”.
But perhaps I shouldn’t joke. The problem with Reductio ad absurdum is that one man’s utterly absurd is another man’s jolly good idea. “If we keep down this path they’ll be putting tampons in the men’s bathroom!!” “Wait! That’s a bloody good idea!”. “Next thing you know they’ll be sending drag queens to your kindergarten class!!” “OMG, that’s a GREAT idea!”. “The way the left is thinking they will tax you on money before you even have it!” “Genius! Kamala says to put it in her policy manual.”
There is nothing so absurd today that you can be sure it’ll won’t appear on the news tonight.
What I want to know is, since a substantial part of British government revenues go to fund the NHS, if smokers are denied access to health care, will the British government exempt smokers from tobacco taxes? It seems only fair.
From my observations of the NHS there should perhaps be a refinement to this.
If the person taking your measurements has a higher BMI than you, the government should give you 5p on the pound. There’s a market incentive.
The public hold two contradictory beliefs – at the same time.
The NHS does not work well – this they know from their personal experience of waiting for a doctor’s appointment (during Covid even cancer screening was considered “non essential” – but abortion was considered “essential health care”, an interesting choice of priorities – killing being considered far more important than saving lives), or to get any treatment – wait-wait-wait as your health problem gets worse.
But, at the same time, the public are taught to believe that the NHS is sacred “the first in the world” (in reality it was a copy the Soviet free government health care service that was sent up 20 years before), “the envy of the world” – and-so-on.
How to reconcile these contradictory beliefs? Or rather the gap between belief and reality?
There are two ways in which this is done…..
The first is to talk endlessly of “the cuts” or “the Tory spending cuts” – NHS spending has exploded every year for the last 45 years, but talk of “cutting spending” or “cuts” (by the BBC and every other institution) is endless – the public are lied to constantly.
But there is also the “people are sinners” approach.
The NHS would work (we are told), it really would, if people were not sinners – if they did not drink, did not smoke, did not eat fatty foods, if they exercised correctly and eat only what they were told to eat and in the amounts they were told to eat it.
If the people did what they were told to do (we are told), and did not do anything they were not told to do, then the NHS, and the state generally, would work!
It is the fault of the people that statism does not work (we are told), the people are sinners! They do not obey the state in every aspect of their lives – as they should!
Thomas Cromwell and Jeremy Bentham would nod in agreement – it is the fault of the people, the state is correct about everything.
Perry de H: The Tory Party serves no discernible purpose other than distracting people from seeking actual solutions that don’t involve either Labour or the ‘Conservatives’.
Which is why I think getting overly vexed about whoever is in power at the moment is largely a waste of time, and that it is trying to change the culture, and philosophy, etc, that operates, is more valuable in terms of return on the investment of time and energy. I applaud those MPs who are men or women of principle, and it is easy to throw rotten fruit from the sidelines, but still.
I still think it is worth chiding the Tories and others into supporting liberty, and resisting bad ideas. Such efforts might be exhausting, but what alternatives do we have in a liberal democracy?
I also think that those who pin hopes on Reform need to be careful. Mr Farage seems, along with Richard Tice, to be running that outfit as a company, rather than a party drawing on ideas of its members. If it is to break through the lower 20%s sort of levels to start winning significant numbers of seats, that has to change and fast. Farage is no spring chicken, and he likes the media gigs and travelling alongside Trump and all that. Tice I don’t know much about. Reform’s most positive contribution has been to hammer the Tories and try and keep some of the better Tories honest, but in many cases, it was the better Tories, such as Steven Baker, who lost their seats, and not the One Nation types.
I am also conscious of what happened with the SDP back in the 80s. It came close to breaking through and destroying Labour, but never quite wielded the killer blow.
The dentist and the vet seem to function perfectly well.
When passive smoking was used to justify smoking bans, the result of the only research study on passive smoking, indicated no harm to associates of smokers. A slight reduction in lung cancer of the children of heavy smokers, may have been real.
If the law makers did not know this, they were negligent, if they did know, they were duplicitous.
Following the Covid mask debacle, I would now, give no credence to any research contradicting the previous findings.
JP says: “It is trying to change the culture, and philosophy, etc, that operates, is more valuable in terms of return on the investment of time and energy.”
And I say when are you going to come to grips with the fact that almost all those you hope to reach out to are already on your side, while the rest don’t give a shit, like things the way they are, or have been cowed by TPTB.
The latter three groups are by far the majority and they aren’t budging. Words, ideas, philosophy just won’t cut it anymore. Something radical, even revolutionary is required.
@Ben
If you watch reality TV a lot of the accidents and emergency patients include people who fail at riding horses or riding motorcycles. Perhaps they should pay a premium on their taxes to offset their A&E use? I’d claim this was satire… except the Government seem to be keen to exercise control over people. To them horse-riders must be rich and motorcycle riders must belong to the Far Right. And that is sarcasm.
What “actual solutions”?
As a leftist (in a rare moment of frankness) pointed out to Lee Anderson (one of the five Reform Party M.P.s) last night on Lee Anderson’s own television programme – you were Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, other people like you were senior ministers, and you could do nothing – about mass immigration or anything else.
What difference would it make if Lee Anderson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and-so-on were in government as “Reform Party” ministers rather than “Conservative Party” ministers?
This myth that elected politicians are “in charge”, that they “control the government” seems to be as stubborn as the myth that the NHS was “the first in the world” (ignoring the Soviet system of decades before, upon which it was based) or the “envy of the world”.
Even Disraeli, more than one and half centuries ago, understood where the British system was going – the rule of officials and unelected “experts”, this process has gone much further in modern times.
Elected politicians may indeed still have have some influence – but it is limited influence.
You know what? I half believe that. There was that couple of days when Johnson came out on the BBC and said something to the effect ‘yes people will die, and yes it’s going to be difficult, but were going to get through this together …’ – obviously not a verbatim quote, but it was a pale imitation of the Churchillian, we’re going to fight them on the beaches.
But in the next couple of days, somebody took him aside and threatened to take him out to the woodshed unless he toed the line. Next thing we knew, the lockdown was imposed.
It’s still my suspicion, that Johnson had a nervous breakdown under the stress – that time he was supposedly suffering from COVID. Basically he is a weak boastful individual who couldn’t stand the pressure.
Indeed. I used to think the rarest quality in people was wisdom. But after 2020-2022, I now realise the rarest quality is courage.
“It is the fault of the people that statism does not work (we are told), the people are sinners! They do not obey the state in every aspect of their lives – as they should!”
Die Lösung
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni
Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands
In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen
Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk
Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
Und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit
zurückerobern könne. Wäre es da
Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung
Löste das Volk auf und
Wählte ein anderes?
– Bertolt Brecht
(“After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Which stated that the people
Had squandered the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By redoubled work [quotas]. Would it not in that case
Be simpler for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?”)
“Each year at your mandatory annual physical they take your weight and height and calculate your BMI. This is submitted to the government and they adjust your income tax rate accordingly. Overweight you pay an extra 5p on the pound to compensate for the risk you pose to the NHS. An extra 2p if you smoke.”
I see nothing wrong with this. One of the fundamental issues with the NHS (apart from all the production problems inherent in a Soviet style command economy) is that there are no incentives for the healthcare consumer to look after their own health. You’d have thought that maybe ‘not dying so soon’ or ‘not living a sh*tty life because of health issues’ would be incentive enough, but obviously not, the inability of large swathes of the population to defer gratification is apparent whenever you walk down the average high street. All the above is suggesting is a bastardised version of what would happen in a free market insurance based system – individual premiums would be different based on lifestyle. The only problem would be that many (most?) of those who fail the BMI test would not be paying income tax anyway, as they’d be on benefits. So how you would make them pay extra without cutting their benefits (politically impossible one would have thought) I have no idea. But the principle is a good one IMO.
“What difference would it make if Lee Anderson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and-so-on were in government as “Reform Party” ministers rather than “Conservative Party” ministers?
This myth that elected politicians are “in charge”, that they “control the government” seems to be as stubborn as the myth that the NHS was “the first in the world” (ignoring the Soviet system of decades before, upon which it was based) or the “envy of the world”.”
This why I say nothing will change until the country runs out of money and the whole edifice comes crashing down. When the state employees stop getting paid, and the benefits payments don’t drop, or are paid in currency that won’t buy a single loaf of bread then the carousel stops, suddenly and violently. Until then voting will make no difference, even if the ‘right’ people are voted in. They can pull levers of power all they like, they won’t be connected to anything.
Then you deserve everything you get from Two Tier Kier and his chums over the coming five years.
For an extra 5p on income tax you could get that by dropping the threshold about £110. So, drop the personal threashold to about £10,000 and hand out assessed health allowances to increase it.
I totally agree.
Now if office, I think Starmer’s enduring nickname will turn out to be Two-Tier Kier.
I’ve noticed that quite few nurses, angels all of course, carry a lot of excess weight. I assume that they too will have a mandatory annual physical?
DJ,
Not wrong there. For quite a few their angelic wings must be made by Lockheed-Martin.
Perry – it is more than “two tier Keir” – it is the entire system that is “two tier”.
Judges send drunks to prison for years for threatening Ed Miliband – and do NOT send people to prison for threatening (indeed attacking – with a cup full of CEMENT) Nigel Farage.
Why? Because Ed Miliband is a Progressive and Nigel Farage is a Reactionary – that is why it is O.K. to threaten Mr Farage, but not O.K. to threaten Mr Miliband.
People get sent to prison, for years, for putting up little “racist” stickers that in no way advocated violence, but put up big Revolutionary Communist Party posters (which do advocate violence – Communist Revolution) and you will not go to prison for one day.
The, disgusting, recent riots in some towns killed no one – but people are to be sent prison for “observing” the riots (not taking part), and even for spreading film that showed that the violence did NOT all come from the English population the official narrative said it did.
Yet the Notting Hill “Carnival”, which killed several people, is celebrated as “peaceful” – and no one will be sent to prison just for “observing” it.
Even pass on the “coming to a town near you” meme (which warns of the dangers of mass immigration and natural increase) and you risk being sent to prison.
At this point what is the difference between our “justice” system and that of Russia or Brazil?
“Trial by jury Paul – trial by jury” – fair enough. I suppose that is something we still have left – till our juries turn into the indoctrinated zombies that make up juries in New York City and other American urban centres.
The education system and the mainstream media are working hard to create juries like that.
In the United States a jury sent a “racist cop” to prison for murdering Mr George Floyd.
Everyone on that jury knew that Mr Floyd died of the drugs he willingly consumed (he had, tragically, turned back to drugs when he lost his job due to Governor Waltz’s Covid lockdown in Minnesota) – they also knew that the “racist cop” was not a racist at all (married to an Asian, no evidence of racism in his background) – they believed, or rather pretended to believe, rigged camera angles, because this “racist cop” (who was not a racist) must be sent to prison for “murder” (even though the jury knew that no murder had taken place) – to be cut up with knives.
Other police officers were sent to prison as well – for….. well no one knows why, other than the judge was deeply angry that they (including an Asian officer) were Christians, and the judge hates Christians (they offend his Marxist “Critical Race Theory” beliefs) – and the jury did as they were told (“Minnesota nice” turns out to mean “Minnesota submissive”).
NOT an isolated case – for example a man was dragged to New York City (hundreds of miles from where he lives) to be sent to prison by a New York City jury.
Sent to prison for what? For the “vote by text” joke meme that was invented by Hillary Clinton supporters (one of the few memes they did invent).
The true “crime” of this man was to oppose Progressives.
Even the prison guards have admitted that to him.
There are many other cases – produced by indoctrinated juries.
The recent kangaroo courts antics against President Trump have just made obvious what has been happening for years.
Many American juries, especially in urban areas, are rotten – rotten to the core.
Rig elections, such as the Presidential election of 2020, and you will not go to prison.
Protest against obviously rigged elections – and you will go to prison.
The United States is becoming like Brazil.
I recently visited Ohio and got into a conversation with a stranger about the role of the state. This does not happen in the UK.
In the USA, people ask: should the government do this?
In the UK the question is always: what should the government do about this?
Jim.
The government will not “run out of money” – but the money will become worthless, due to them (the government and the banks – there is no real distinction between the two) creating endless “money” from nothing (nothing at all) – the money is not gold, it is not silver, it is not anything, it is nothing – and they produce this nothing in endless amounts (rigging prices indices to try and hide the inflation).
This is the policy of the United States, the United Kingdom and other Western nations.
It is not just politics, the fear that their Dollar assets will be stolen – as those of Russia were, that is leading the People’s Republic of China to convert their Dollar assets into physical gold and silver – which it securely stores in China (NOT with the New York Federal Reserve). China produces manufactured goods – Britain and America import these goods.
Dollar inflation (disguised by rigged price indices) means that that gold and silver are a far less risky bet than Dollar debt (government debt or corporate debt) – and even though the Communist Party regime supports Harris/Waltz (it wants these people to win the election), it will still EVENTUALLY start demanding payment for its goods in gold and silver.
Not in worthless “Dollars”.
The same for the United Kingdom – no more payment in worthless “Pounds”.
In the late 1700s the East India Company managed to switch from payment in silver to payment in opium.
But the PRC will not tolerate payment in opium now – indeed they sell drugs to us (rather than the other way round), vast numbers of Americans die every year from Chinese drugs, and it is starting in Britain to (the PRC considers it revenge for the Opium Wars).
They will demand payment for their manufactured goods in gold and silver – not our worthless fiat currencies.
“But we do not have the gold and silver” – I know, I know that only too well.
Rob Fisher – good point.
Perhaps (perhaps) there is still a little hope left for the United States (unlike here).
We shall see in November – if the election rigging (and the corrupt courts) can be overcome.
Paul:
I like to watch the old cinema newsreels on nostalgia TV. Mostly made in the 1960s, they depict a Britain which was overwhelmingly white, whatever the BBC would want us to believe now. They also obsess about the “export drive”, because without exports the country could not afford imports. This was when Britain still had many industries, and was also when foreign trade was conducted in gold backed dollars. $2.80 to £1, before Wilson devalued the pound (but not the pound in your pocket or purse, perish the thought).
Nowadays no-one cares about the export drive or the balance of payments. Debts are paid in electronic blips created from nothing. Which is great for the people creating blips masquerading as money. The moment that the people who create actual physical goods ask to be paid in actual physical money, gold or silver, is the day the whole edifice crumbles. I think net zero should do it, Ed Miliband is going to destroy any pretence that Britain is a modern industrial state. Why would anyone accept payment in its bankrupt electronic blips?
To those who vilified Jim for this line, i say: get real.
Would you complain if private health insurance required an annual check-up to adjust your fees?
Having said that, i hasten to add:
You can legitimately complain about the NHS near-monopoly on medical insurance.
AND you can legitimately say that smokers pay for the burden that they impose on the NHS with the sin tax on tobacco.
AND you can legitimately complain that government advice on health is often counter-productive.
But you can hardly argue about this:
OTOH one can, and i do, argue against this:
Aside from smoking, and maybe booze, the main problem is not that people do not care about their health long-term, but that government advice is, to a large extent, bad advice.
JohnK.
In the 1960s, as you know, there were many terrible problems – but people still understood that money should be linked to something real, the Pound was linked to the Dollar and the Dollar was, officially, linked to gold till 1971. Of course it was a fraud, even then, as they did not have the gold – but at least they paid lip service to sanity. Now everything is insane – utterly insane.
And in the 1960s people still understood that a nation has to produce stuff and export it – in order to import other stuff.
That is what Adam Smith and the great economists meant by Free Trade.
They did NOT mean produce endless money, from nothing, and use it to “pay for” endless imports of both raw materials and finished goods.
Yes the People’s Republic of China is backing Harris/Walz – but even if the candidates they support are “elected” (in some farcical rigged election – like that of 2020), the PRC will still pull the rug out from under Credit Bubble America and Credit Bubble Britain.
This sick farce ends in 2025.
Control freaks know where their bread is buttered.At the height of the AIDS epidemic they never called for a government enforced clampdown on gay sex.
Jim writes:
“One of the fundamental issues with the NHS (apart from all the production problems inherent in a Soviet style command economy) is that there are no incentives for the healthcare consumer to look after their own health. You’d have thought that maybe ‘not dying so soon’ or ‘not living a sh*tty life because of health issues’ would be incentive enough, but obviously not, the inability of large swathes of the population to defer gratification is apparent whenever you walk down the average high street. All the above is suggesting is a bastardised version of what would happen in a free market insurance based system – individual premiums would be different based on lifestyle. The only problem would be that many (most?) of those who fail the BMI test would not be paying income tax anyway, as they’d be on benefits. So how you would make them pay extra without cutting their benefits (politically impossible one would have thought) I have no idea. But the principle is a good one IMO.”
Fair comment overall. I would add that Body Mass Index is not a very reliable indicator, but it does have some use. For example, a super-fit weightlifter carrying a lot of muscle and with very dense strong bones could be classed as overweight on a simple BMI calculation, and if BMI is going, for example, to be used as a way to work out if X or Y are unfit, this needs to be understood. Body mass composition (how much fat relative to the rest of you) is key.
I don’t have an issue with adults getting regular blood tests or being encouraged to do so, although this ought not to be the state’s job. In fact, under the sort of non-state healthcare system I favour, getting regularly tested (for cholesterol, liver and kidney function, uric acid levels, cancer markers, testosterone) would be part of the deal. People should be more proactive about their health: get tested, eat a clean diet, go easy on the booze, lift weights, do conditioning exercises, sleep properly, etc. This ought to be as much a part of how a person goes about life as getting a car MOT done or regularly cleaning the house. There is nothing remotely “nannying” about this, if it comes from a desire by people to make the most of their lives and be healthy.
The key is “healthspan”, not lifespan. I don’t want to live to 100 if the last decades are miserable, and if I am vegetating in a home and unable to even get up off a chair to visit the loo.
Johnathan Pearce – interesting comment Sir.
Paul:
I am not sure the sick farce will end in 2025. At the moment, it is in the interests of China to accept payment for its physical goods in dollars, which are backed by nothing. These dollars can be exchanged for gold, currently at about $2500 per ounce, the highest price ever, and ten times what Gordon Brown sold our gold reserves for.
The Chinese mine quite a lot of gold, which they do not export. They also buy a lot on the open market, and as long as people accept worthless electronic blips in return for gold, it surely suits the Chinese to go along with the fiction. It certainly helps the dollar illusion. Obviously, the dollar is dying. In 1971 $35 bought an ounce of gold. However, it is not in China’s interests to pull the plug on the dollar, just yet. But it is surely significant that Saudi Arabia has declined to renew their fifty year old agreement to accept payment for oil only in dollars. That fuelled demand for dollars, which will surely now decline.
So the dollar, as a fiat currency, is doomed. All fiat currencies are. They always have been. Its demise is inexorable, but when that happens is anyone’s guess. It has lost 98% of its value since 1913, so not far to go now.
Johnathan:
This is an important point, which i did not make in my previous comment because i had other points to make. I felt that i had to stay focused. I usually do.
JohnK.
As you know the PRC Communist Party regime could pull the rug on the United States now, tomorrow morning they could destroy the Wall Street – Washington D.C. axis.
However, I suspect they will wait till 2025 – till either Harris/Walz is in Office or Trump/Vance is in office.
True the PRC regime could just carry on accepting Dollars and using these Dollars to buy gold and silver – to physically store in China (after all only a foolish person would store gold or silver in the United States – where the Washington D.C. – Wall Street Corporate State can steal it), but I very strongly suspect they will not.
They are giving very strong signs of being bored with this relationship with the United States – even if they, the Communist Party People’s Republic of China Communist Party regime, get their puppets Harris/Walz installed.
Also why bother? The amount of “Dollars” they need to buy a given amount of gold in 2025 is going to explode, so why not just demand payment in gold or silver.
Let the Americans work out how they are going to get enough gold or silver for the manufactured imports (even such things as medical drugs) they now depend on.
Paul:
I do not think it is in the interests of the CCP to pull the rug from under the dollar just yet. They have built up massive industries supplying just about everything to the west, and they do not want social unrest at home caused by the collapse of this trade. I think as long as they can still buy gold with their “dollars”, they will. It will all end at some time, but I don’t think it will imminently. Of course, if Xi makes a monumental mistake such as invading Taiwan, who knows what will happen?
JohnK:
This was when Britain still had many industries, and was also when foreign trade was conducted in gold backed dollars. $2.80 to £1, before Wilson devalued the pound (but not the pound in your pocket or purse, perish the thought).
The Bretton Woods system, to which the £ was attached, was viable for as long as large imbalances on the capital and trade account did not persist. Several forces broke it. Even before Harold Wilson’s 1967 devaluation debacle, the stresses were clear: the US budget was exploding because of Vietnam and LBJ’s Great Society spending splurge; the UK, benefiting from cheap oil and a certain rebound from the war, was however hobbled by out-of-control unions, crushing taxes on entrepreneurs, and a level of defeatism about things getting much better. There was a “brain drain” – not a sign of a healthy country, even if it was “mostly white” (for whatever that is worth, since it is culture that counts for me, not skin tone).
Back closer to the topic of my original post, under Harold Wilson, while his economic views were very bad, it was a relatively liberal and tolerant administration (easing of rules on divorce, ending of capital punishment, easing of censorship, decriminalisation of homosexuality, etc). One can nitpick on some of this (capital punishment) but at least then the Left was more or less for free speech, and consensual relations – on social issues, if not on economics. The problem today is that the Left is anti-freedom on everything today.
The worst form of authoritarianism is the one that wants the best for you.
It will never stop, there will always be something to control, manage, etc.
“The government will not “run out of money” – but the money will become worthless”
Hence why I said in my comment ‘When the state employees stop getting paid, and the benefits payments don’t drop, or are paid in currency that won’t buy a single loaf of bread’. Yes the State can always print money (physically or electronically, what they can’t do is give what they print value. Only those using the currency do that, so its out of the printer’s hands.
“I would add that Body Mass Index is not a very reliable indicator, but it does have some use. For example, a super-fit weightlifter carrying a lot of muscle and with very dense strong bones could be classed as overweight on a simple BMI calculation”
This old line gets trotted out every time someone mentions BMI. Yes, it is possible to ‘fail’ the BMI test and still be as fit as a butchers dog, but its not really very common is it? If you rounded up 1000 people out of the average retail park and tested their BMIs, how many that ‘fail’ it would be a) lard arses who need to stop eating so much and exercise more, and how many would be b) super fit weight lifter/rugby player/rower types? I’d bet that (a)s outnumbered (b)s by about 100 to one. So for the broad mass of the public BMI is a very good identifier as to health status. I’m sure the uber fit BMI failures could be offered another test – a treadmill and VO2 max test for example.
“Then you deserve everything you get from Two Tier Kier and his chums over the coming five years.”
There’s absolutely no chance of TTK introducing such an NHS/taxation scheme, as it would require people to take responsibility for their own actions, require self discipline and stop them relying on others for their healthcare, all of which are anathema to socialists. Also all of which I thought were principles that people on here would agree with, but I’m obviously wrong – expecting ‘society’ to pick up the tab for your inability to stop stuffing cake into your face is now something Samizdata approves of.
You are mistaken. Is there a regular contributor to Samizdata who thinks the NHS should even exist? Doubtful.
I think there was a disconnect in there somewhere. What I think people were expressing disagreement over was that they were assuming you were supporting the NHS in some manner, but I read what you wrote more as supporting the introduction of real market pressures into pricing for it.
Bunches of people separated by a common language?
JP:
You are right that the Vietnam War and the Great Society more or less did for Bretton Woods. De Gaulle demanding payment in physical gold was the final straw. As long as the gold stayed under the Federal Reserve Bank of New York it was still under American control, not the case when de Gaulle sent a cruiser over to pick up France’s gold.
You are right that Wilson’s government seems, in retrospect, much more liberal than that of Two Tier Keir, but powerful unions, crushing taxes, a brain drain? It all sounds rather familiar.
The last entrepreneur to leave Britain won’t have to turn out the lights, Ed Miliband will have already seen to that.
” I read what you wrote more as supporting the introduction of real market pressures into pricing for it.”
Exactly that. I didn’t think it was that obtuse, so the vitriol surprised me.
If one is forced to have the NHS (I despise it) one could at least introduce a degree of self responsibility into it. And the usual suspects could hardly complain about a) raising more money for the NHS and b) stopping people ‘being a burden’ on it either. So its actually a bit of market forces that one could potentially introduce into the NHS that the Left couldn’t complain about, because they’ve done nothing but demonise drinkers and smokers et al for ‘costing the NHS £Xbn’ (they don’t but thats by the by) for decades. So extending the principle to the overweight would be hard to oppose.
@Jim
If one is forced to have the NHS (I despise it) one could at least introduce a degree of self responsibility into it.
The problem is that any such “pricing” within a government quando is by its nature measured in the political economy rather than the money economy. After all, as a general rule women have considerably higher healthcare costs than men both because of childbirth and because they tend to live longer. Old people too consume much more healthcare than young people. So should pensioners and women pay higher taxes too? We can zing smokers because there aren’t too many, they are filled with guilt and so they don’t have much political power. Fat people are ubiquitous and it is very unpolitically correct to treat them different than people with healthy weights. So even though chronic obesity is far more health destructive than smoking, we couldn’t possibly structure prices that way.
So in a private market actuaries can decide these things, but in government services like the NHS politicians decide. And the less politicians decide the better off we all are. After all, this principle would empower them to increase taxes on people without a covid shot, right?
A good point, but, again, I think it conflates two topics and arguments, one of which Jim wasn’t making or addressing.
And, BTW, older people and people with more medical risk pay higher premiums for several types of non-government insurance. It’s only when government provides that insurance through taxes that we start considering it to be “unfair” to charge according to risk. If we consider that the nudge effect of taxation has utility, taxing the enormously fat might be a worthy attempt to drive them to diet.
Jim:
If we are talking about incentives (and we should) then how common that is, is not very important.
What matters is that penalizing people for a high BMI, introduces a perverse incentive not to build up muscle — especially for overweight people, for whom weight-lifting might be most helpful.
” Old people too consume much more healthcare than young people. So should pensioners and women pay higher taxes too?”
No, because almost every young person becomes an old person eventually, its hardly a shock outcome, one can’t escape ageing. So it can be planned for. People will need to pay enough taxes/high enough premiums over their lifetimes such that it covers the highly predictable (at societal level anyway) rise in healthcare expenditures as people age. Ageing is an inevitability, being obese is not.