OutspokenRabbit

The Contradiction of Randomness

2012-02-16T15:13:00.001Z

This is a bit of encouragement for those who want to believe in God but who really believe that to do so would be indulging in wishful thinking. That it would be giving way to a desire to believe in 'fairies in the sky' and all that, instead of being a scientific, rational, 21st century, intelligent person.

I originally posted this as a comment.

All in the name of freedom!

The Contradiction of Randomness:

If we think of time/space and all the events and matter in it as being without direction or design, ie, it all happened by chance, then there are two problems.

The first is that if it has happened that any order that exists, such as life, occurred spontaneously in randomness, then one is actually accepting that it is not order but simply another random set of events that have occurred by chance, and because we live in this fleeting breath of time, we perceive the apparent sequence of events as order. When, in fact, they are part of the pure randomness of eternity.

However. Then the second problem is encountered. Pure chance, randomness as we perceive it, tends to disperse, to dissipation.

A drop of ink in a glass of water tends to dissipate throughout the water. Never has it been known for ink dispersed in a glass of water to randomly come together as a drop of ink.

Pure randomness tends to evenness as all its parts, all of it, merges with every other part and becomes one unified existence.

In fact, pure randomness would lead to absolute nothingness as everything blends with everything else to become an even stillness in which all potential has discharged.

All that we see, experience, know touch and feel, including our perception of those happenings, is based on difference, potential, separation. All structure, whether matter, energy or events, is based on difference such as electrons and protons. Negative and positive. And all difference implies order because without order, if everything was purely random, there would be complete evenness, which would in fact be nothing.

Everything would have submerged into everything else. In fact that is not really correct because it would not have occured in the first place.

Random events tend to dispertion. And dispertion tends to stasis. Total silent nothing.

Cuba will survive :-)

2011-11-24T20:52:00.005Z

Sat with my tea, after a long days toil, I decided to watch the news and catch up on the days events. One story in particular riled me more than any other, even more than Rob Andrews refusal to quit. There was a five minute package on what a terrible place Cuba is under the Castro's. Being a man on a low income, living in the UK, I found this particular package almost laughable to the point that it was borderline propaganda. Some filthy stinking rich Tory scum International Development Minister then came on and continued the tirade against Cuba calling the Castro's "tyrants". The question I wanted to pose to this revolting tory was "are the Cuban people liberated from most of the misery that afflicts most of the people of the third world?" The answer to that would be yes, people in Havana live longer than people in Washington DC and they receive free education from primary school to PhD. But all this particular minister cared about was the fact that the people of Cuba couldn't vote. But we all know that Tories and capitalists in general don't recognise health, longevity and free education as basic human rights. All they care about is that we turn up every four years and endorse their antiquated political system. Elections in the UK are more like the Oscars.
I firmly believe that if it were not for the 50 years of siege, assassination attempts and invasions, from the United States, then democracy could have been achieved in Cuba. The United States has done everything it could to destroy the Cuban Revolution, the CIA has made 600 known attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. America have done this precisely because Cuba is an inspiration to the poor of the world. So Washington is to blame to the absence of democracy in Cuba. Because sadly when a nation like Cuba is under constant threat, like Britain was during WW2, democracy has to be suspended in favour of a stable government. There were no elections in Britain between 1935 and 1945, British political parties did not fight each other throughout the course of WW2. Cuba, like Britain during WW2, has a rather powerfull and aggressive country that has a proven track record of kicking the shit out smaller countries, right on its door step. The United States is a mere 75 miles from Cuba and has been trying to destroy the Cuban and the Revolution for over 50 years and thus universal suffrage has been suspended. Also if one analyses the current political climate of Latin America it would appear that the only way to get elected is to profess admiration of Fidel Castro and opposition to capitalism and US foreign policy (see Hugo Chavez, the worlds most popular politician).
However, despite the fact that Fidel is no longer President, I firmly believe that Socialism will survive, the free health service will survive, free education will survive and the Cuban Revolution will survive. In spite of pro-capitalist propaganda Cuba will continue to be an inspiration to the poor of the world, and Fidel will always be an icon to people who want liberation from bone the grinding poverty and back breaking toil which has been inflicted upon them by a brutal and opressive capitalist system. Anyway, until next time comrades. Peace and Love!

Libertarian Left or Right?

2011-11-03T08:55:00.003Z

Libertarianism, if it be the promotion of individual liberty and individual responsibility, is neither left nor right. In the British context it is neither Conservative nor Labour. It is not, essentially, about a political form at all but rather the removal of 'politics', of controlling power and coercion, in the life of the individual. (If only the directors of the now almost deceased Libertarian Party had embraced that!)

Insofar as the Conservative Party has its roots, and demonstrates its adherence to those roots, in the old aristocracy that ruled and controlled day to day life, it is anti libertarian. However in the 21st Century, and in much of the 20th, it has been Labour that has been the party of centralised control and intervention in the daily lives of the people.

In fact the Conservatives of Thatcher would probably have had more in common with the Whigs of old, and the Labour control-freaks and micro managers more with the old control-centred Tories of two centuries ago.

For the last 50 years or so both parties have indeed been different flavour of the same stuff. Today even, Cameron is less conservative than Blair was when he came to 'power', which he did by appealing to the popularity of conservative sentiment in the voters more effectively than the 'depleted-Conservatives' did in 1997.

During the 20 or so years before Labour's return under Blair, and for some years after, freedom did regain that bit of a breathing space because individuals within the Conservative Party had seen the individualistic beliefs they held dear, as well as simple, survivable reality, being dangerously eroded under old Labour. The changes in sentiment the Conservatives introduced after being elected in 1979 were not eradicated by New Labour until the collective public memory of why the Conservatives had been voted in had been obfuscated, re-written, and had faded. To repeat, the policies did not hit the buffers, the Party did after it abandoned those policies.

And now the forces that rolled back centralised control have been largely contained and neutralised and that breathing space for freedom is closing up very, very fast. The spirit of centralised controlled as exemplified previously by the USSR rides again with a whole new dimension on totalitarian terror from a different quarter; out of the Middle East and Middle Ages.

Politics is a shifting game and will always be open to deception. It is inherently dishonest being as it is, about power, and the manipulation, coercion and control of others.

Further, all too often one sees political debate revelling in tricks of thought and speech rather than with substance. It's about winning rather than addressing the truth.

However it would seem there would be more hope to promote libertarian agendas within the Conservative Party than within Labour. There is a spirit that has flourished from time to time amongst some of those in the Conservative Party that is far more libertarian than could ever be expected in Labour, unless that party were to go beyond the robust addressing of reality that occurred during Blair's first few years in power, and that probably actually came from Alistair Campbell, whatever his world view, and Labour actually seriously committed itself to the truth.

Self reliance, responsibility for one's self and actions, is far more in keeping with those who have built the nation rather than those who have used it to fund themselves, their programmes and their Utopian hopes

That Friday Feeling...

2011-10-28T14:22:00.000+01:00

Grab yourself a Crunchie and all that. I'm feeling decidedly dodgy, so I'll leave you with a gem from They Might be Giants...

I'm gonna grab a nap - take care and I'll catch you soon...

In the Absence of the Born Leader, Talent Becomes Everything

2011-10-27T21:13:00.000+01:00

Man City's astonishing demolition of their city rivals at fortress Old Trafford was too significant as both result and statement not to have any lasting meaning. This bunny is by no means a United supporter, although the Eastlands spending spree has gone some way towards removing the club of its status as plucky underdog and default option on derby day. The events on Sunday, those final few minutes in particular where United simply capitulated, were astonishing listening/viewing and wholly unexpected in terms of scale, but this bunny could not enjoy the experience in the same way as might have been the case but a few years ago. Of course, it could simply not have happened back then...

This may or may not represent a changing of the guard in terms of domestic dominance. It stands to reason that one side capable of strengthening to the extent that City have in recent years is bound to win major trophies before too long, but then a nine month Premier League campaign is an awful long time for a squad of immensely wealthy personnel, some of whose egos require round-the-clock massage, to stick together and pull in the same direction. Were the current season being played out in a computer game, then City might be the only team this bunny would wish to manage minus the benefit of some 'cheat' formation if he wished to actually win something. Back to reality, where keeping all those star players happy until next May will prove awfully difficult, while the Tevez affair appears to have further potential twists.

But if we're realistic, they've gone massive favourites to win the title for the first time for nearly half a century. One of the aspects that has to be factored into an equation is the state of the competition, and what we have seen already this season would indicate that there are further uncontrollables likely to break in their favour over the coming weeks and months. Chelsea, in the midst of a Villas-Boas revolution, appear to be a less than cohesive mish-mash of ageing quality, new additions and potential stars of tomorrow. Their brand of football is a whole lot more exciting and progressive than it has been at any time in the Abramovich era, but a sense of vulnerability in defence is apparent, and it may be two seasons before 'the new Mourinho' establishes 'his team' and they are ready to challenge again.

United have two significant issues. First up, the relative austerity brought about by the Glazer era finally appears to have bitten as their level of strength in depth has dipped somewhat markedly in the last two seasons. A few players missing through injury or suspension, and the opposing team sheet simply does not look as daunting as it otherwise might - while their first eleven is capable of matching pretty much anyone bar the once in a generation team that is Barcelona, possessing a squad capable of sustaining those levels of performance over nine months is an entirely different matter. The manner in which Basel, a middling European side, created scoring opportunities at will when they visited Old Trafford for a Champions League encounter, surely goes a long way towards amplifying this point. Notoriously poor travellers at continental level, they were a matter of seconds from returning to the land of cowbells and toblerones with a famous 2-3 victory.

I'm currently listening to a 5Live piece on Pressure in Sport, and someone has just made what is essentially this bunny's point regarding United's biggest current problem. Previous success has not simply been built on the presence of talented players, but men who acted as extensions of Sir Alex and his matra out on the field of play. Roy Keane, controversial a figure as he was, epitomised this type of player and their significance more than anyone. Not only were his engine, robust tackling and will to win a package capable of substantially stiffening even the most flimsy midfield, but Keane was the type prone to dishing out more than the occasional bollocking and throttling team-mates if standards slipped below the required level (this tendency would of course lead to his eventual departure from Old Trafford).

United were blessed in the 1990s and 2000s with a series of individuals capable of raising the whole to something greater than the sum of its parts. Bryan Robson was the first to fulfil the role of eyes and ears for his boss, and Edwin Van Der Sar may well have been the last. This bunny had a hunch that United would badly miss the retiring gloveman, for reasons that went beyond the immediate - professionals of his ilk are appear to be something of a dying breed in a modern game where absolute hunger is perhaps does not drive the average player through his career like it once did.

As the likes of Keane (who would no doubt have banged a few heads together when the score was 1-3) become more few and far between, elite level football may simply come down to the game of chess between coaches and the quality of the pieces they have to play with. Should the notion of club ethos die, then this can only be United's loss and City's gain. Take care and I'll catch you soon...

Looking Rough, Feeling Worse...

2011-10-26T19:12:00.001+01:00

God bless the 'sacred cow' that is the NHS, eh? This bunny is still waiting for confirmation that his thyroid is about as much use as rocking horse shit, and just hopes they remembered to tick the appropriate box on the appropriate form this time. Given that this was the only test that was to be carried out, one would think the dice might be loaded in their favour - here's hoping that such optimism is not misplaced.

After much discussion recently of the question 'is it wrong to want to live on your own?' (and the forming of a recognised , legally protected minority for those of us who genuinely believe that it isn't), this song seemed strangely appropriate. What follows is not the single version that reached the dizzy heights of number 10 in 1987, but an unreleased demo that this bunny must say he greatly prefers.

Speaking of alternative versions, I've also attached a stripped down gem of a take on this bunny's favourite Smiths number - gotta love that Johnny Marr jangle, haven't you?

Nice to hear the inspired words of Morrissey from way back before he became a lifestyle fascist in his own, less socially acceptable way. Take care and I'll catch you soon...

Young Free and Ugly? Wish to Remain So? Join my Shiny New Minority...

2011-10-25T20:28:00.000+01:00

In Saturday's Rabbit, this bunny got onto the subject of his wish to remain his own man (although it should be added that a queue is not exactly forming to provide a stern test of my credentials). Lifestyle choices are entirely personal things, and as long as they don't involve criminality, harming others or the requirement of enforced generosity from the taxpayer to fund them, then whether or not other people approve or disapprove at least ought to be utterly irrelevant.

That's this bunny's take on the situation anyway, but I've had more 'good advice' on this subject than one might ever be able to remember. Apparently, wanting to be on your own is a sign of serious mental illness, a common behavioural trait amongst sociopaths, or just plain wrong. Everyone, and I mean everyone, should take the 'Choose Life' mantra that accompanies the start of the film 'Trainspotting', and make it a blueprint for how to negotiate their existence. More to the point they who fail to extract these things from their time on earth are life's dismal failures. I mean, what's the point in them?.

I appreciate that being brave enough to make up your own mind necessitates the possession of equal courage to take the shit that will inevitably follow - it was not ever thus, and in his younger years this bunny lacked the confidence and certainty that are evident now. This is strange in itself, as most people believe themselves to know everything in their late teens, only to discover over time that like most of us, what saw as a fountain of knowledge is really just a hosepipe - in the midst of a hosepipe ban. Having acknowledged that no man has a monopoly on wisdom (although married men will explain to you that all women do), an instinctive liberal has to be prepared to take criticism, if one assumes all things to be equal.

But then all other things are not equal, and when being questioned about your way of life is as uncomfortable as it is for most, then this fact might potentially prick the ears. Something of which this bunny is frequently reminded (as if he needs informing of something he's already aware of) is that those of us who have no intention of 'settling down', getting married and raising a couple of hell-raisers are in an undisputed minority. This has always been presented to this bunny as a means by which to demonstrate that he is merely being difficult or contrary, and until recently, I'd simply seen such analyses as further evidence that the individuals concerned had the square root of no idea how this bunny's mind worked, nor any appreciation of the concept that 'one man's meat is another's poison'.

However, a more mischievous solution to this nagging concern has now surfaced.

Membership of an officially recognised minority can be quite a cosy existence if only one knows how to play the system. With the PC doctrine now accepted as the only basis on which discussion of an individual's faith, beliefs, values or lifestyle choices can be permitted, this discourse finds itself strangled to the point where the expression of a personal view that borders on being contentious becomes potentially criminal. Laws on 'inciting hatred' are there not only to protect poor, oppressed minorities who would otherwise be bludgeoned to death by critical words, but also serve as a marker for the rest of us, to carefully watch our words since we are being watched ourselves.

Being white, nominally Protestant and heterosexual, this bunny has not yet 'benefited' from the state-sponsored policing of thought, but if we can find a way of getting the voluntarily young, free and ugly recognised as an official minority group, then the logical argument will be that such as demographic will also require some form of legal protection. Criticism of any member of such a group will then be punishable by a spell in chokey, numerous awkward encounters with Bubba in the shower and extensive 're-education' from nanny. I've already come up with a word to define such blatant bigotry - how does 'lonaphobia' sound? We could have bags of fun campaigning against 'lonaphobia', while calling for our 'minority' to be better represented in parliament.

Anyone fancy a 'Pride' march to celebrate our diversity? This bunny's always game for a laugh.

In the meantime, until the next census comes around, this bunny and others who have made similar choices will have nine more years of needle to look forward to. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

We Don't Need a Referendum to Learn that the Tories are Plastic Eurosceptics

2011-10-23T21:17:00.001+01:00

Sometimes what seems like a good idea at the time can come back and bite you rather hard on the arse. When Dave announced the launch of the e-petition site, it represented a concessionary crumb to what might loosely be termed 'people power'. In reality, the likelihood of government voting through something on request to which they would otherwise be opposed is slim to none, but there was at least the prospect of us little people getting our issues onto the political radar, breaking the monopoly previously held by the Westminster village in determining what 'counted', 'mattered' or was 'really important'. For that reason alone, this bunny sees the e-petitions initiative as an overwhelmingly good thing.

It's worth noting that 100,000 people have to sign an e-petition within an agreed time limit (usually 12 months) for the subject to qualify for debating time in the House of Commons. That's more difficult than one might believe at first, and means that only those issues on which a great many people genuinely care and are sufficiently motivated to sign up and spread the word will even come remotely close to making it. This bunny's favourite e-petition cause, that of None of the Above on ballot papers, is one that I've not encountered serious disagreement with when explaining its finer details, and enjoys plenty of support (certainly far more than the 166 people who've signed a petition for it).

The point is - it simply isn't an issue that evokes a decisive response from a large swathe of the population, which is what is ultimately required to secure those 100,000 signatures. The wish for a Referendum on EU membership is clearly in an altogether different ballpark, with polls suggesting that a clear majority want at least some renegotiation with regard to our terms of engagement with Brussels (an impractical and disingenuous third way thrown in by the Tories but more of that later). So perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the way this story has panned out is not Dave's attempts to terrify his charges into voting against their instincts, but this collective insistence on the part of the political class that "people don't really care about Europe". Weren't e-petitions meant to enable you and I to get across to politicians which issues we do and do not consider to be relevant? After all, it passed the threshold required to be taken seriously, so 'enough' people clearly do regard EU membership as a legitimate area of debate - deal with it.

Then there's the second curveball thrown in by the pro-EU parties in their attempt to muddy the waters. Apparently, with the Eurozone collapsing, Greece needing yet another bailout and the British taxpayer likely to once again be picking up a slice of the tab, this is 'not the right time' to be discussing whether or not the whole project is a gigantic waste of time and money that we should discard as a dismal failure and walk away from. The truth is that the federalist dream can go one of two ways as it stands - either the Greeks will be forced out of the single currency, re-adopt the drachma and begin to recover (potentially causing a domino effect amongst other struggling Eurozone nations), or the crisis will be used as the reasoning for the ever greater fiscal and political union that EU zealots always wanted.

In short, there is no better time to discuss whether we want in or out, for there will always be other shit happening in the world and the wait for a moment where nothing else is happening is likely to be a rather long one. So why is our political class resorting to these rather desperate stalling tactics?

That their real concern is of a referendum turning out the wrong result is hardly rocket science in itself, but it's clear that Dave has far more to lose from this than anyone. It was he who offered a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, only to renege on his word. Talk of repatriating powers back from Brussels, unworkable and dishonest as such a suggestion is, was his way of throwing a few bones to the 'Europhobic' wing of his party, but it really shows the Tories and their 'Euroscepticism' as the sham that it is. How many of their MPs are actually calling for British withdrawal from the EU as opposed to the current line of useless Tory nonsense that Dave has fed them? Remember 'in Europe, but not run by Europe?'.

One look at their record shows that the Conservative Party, whatever its rhetoric, has done more than anyone in modern hostory in sending Britain down the road of anti-democratic federalism. The Single European Act, Maastricht and the horror show of a decision to join the ERM were of course the significant moves in that direction, and when one examines the tide of 'ever closer union', the current has consistently flowed towards the same federalist endgame. Dave's biggest fear is having to stand before the masses during a referendum campaign, and for once say something that he really believes - namely that the EU and all that it does is wonderful and can expect his full, continued support.

Though he's probably wriggled out of it for now, this is a genie that he might regret ever letting out of the bottle - ach well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Be Your Own Man, Choose Your Own Goals

2011-10-22T21:15:00.001+01:00

Many people will think this bunny to be rather sad for typing what follows while listening to Radio 2. I can say this with utter certainty since I know some of them personally and work with others. The fact that I don't sufficiently intimidate to stop them from saying as much to my face is something that on balance I should probably be quite pleased about, although history is choca with instances where those possessed of 'different' tastes became targets for control freaks, bullies, manipulators and suchlike. When you start to believe that someone's life and what motivates them is somehow 'wrong', then this can of course become the premise on which the many dish out considerable pain in the direction of the few.

A few years ago, I saw a counsellor who discovered that, to use her own words "Daz, a large part of the reason for your struggles in being accepted as part of a group is the fact that you aren't motivated by 'normal' things". Touche hun, and this bunny spent many years fighting a war on two fronts, against the nastiness, intolerance and lifestyle bigotry of folk unable to recognise that they owned their life and I had an equally monopolistic claim on mine, and a lack of self-confidence on this bunny's part in the fact that there is nothing wrong with being 'different', and that were we all 'normal' then the world would be a very, very fucking dull place. Sometimes, to my great shame, I've made concessions to (usually well-meaning, it should be said) individuals who piled on the pressure, and this bunny's moves towards appeasing them invariably failed, often ending in misery and a sense of regret.

Given that my heart was never fully committed to what I was doing, this is not exactly a surprise.

I don't want to 'settle down' into a relationship, marry someone, anyone and have a couple of kids, and nor do I believe that feeling this way represents some kind of hanging offence. It took me nearly three decades to say as much out loud, although with the benefit of hindsight it's probably balls-on accurate to suggest that such fears about a 'loss of sovereignty' were inherent in this bunny's DNA. I can remember three instances where I was possessed of 'feelings' towards members of the opposite sex and 'meant it' (ie, it went some way beyond 'I'd rattle the fuck out of that'). However, the sense of paralysis that automatically followed was something I've come over time to regard as a blanket, the coscious digesting the fact that these people represented a serious threat to this bunny's independence and sending out appropriate panic alarms.

Now I understand what was going on, my money is on 'feelings' of this nature never entering this bunny's heart or head at any point in the future. Good - they were never welcome in the first instance and I sincerely hope they fuck off, never to darken my door again. I sometimes wonder how many people, deep down, feel exactly the same way that I do, but fall into starting relationships and families that they never really wanted, pressured by well-meaning friends or relatives, intent on having their big day, living their own lives through their kids or simply seeking an excuse to buy a new pair of shoes? They had their whole lives to look forward to and all that - these people are victims of societal/peer pressure and those who regard one way of life as 'normal' and others, by definition, as 'wrong' or 'invalid'.

Another aspect of this is the way in which some choices define and drive others. I appreciate that for most people, the life of wife/husband, dog, lawnmower and 2.4 children represents at least part of what they want from life, and the best of luck to them since seeing people get what they want from their time here is always a rather uplifting experience for all who wish them well and are there to witness it. With this comes a different attitude towards aspects of career, earning money and suchlike, at least amongst those parents who give a flying fuck about their offspring - the role of provider often necessitates the taking of shit that one might not otherwise put up with.

In short, this choice (and I appreciate some are just unlucky in this regard) is a simple trade-off, between a potentially fulfilling relationship and the joys of raising a family, and the ability to travel at one's own pace, act in strict accordance with personal goals and say 'fuck you' from time to time. Of course, we don't all dream the same dream, or want the same thing, and while there may be an answer to this riddle that is most 'normal' by virtue of majority decision, the notion of right or wrong does not enter the equation. By such thinking, trailer trash raising seven kids on a hefty welfare cheque would be 'doing the right thing', while this bunny and others who pay tax positive and subsidise these choices are the black sheep or dregs of society. Statism and authoritarianism produce inevitable, perverse and unintended consequences, and this is equally applicable to the area of lifestyle choices as it is anywhere else.

This bunny very much doubts that some change of heart will take place anytime soon, and as a result his 'normal' or 'real world' will vary wildly from those of many, probably most people. Then again, someone raised in leafy splendour having been born into privilege will experience an altogether different 'real world' of their own, and probably encounter various forms of prejudice and inverted snobbery as they come into contact with people whose 'normal' cannot relate to theirs (the same could be said of travellers, gay people, whatever). Perhaps the only two questions that really matter are - does their way of life involve criminality or causing harm to others, and are they asking you or me to pay for it? If the response to both is negative, then it's really none of anyone else's business which choices of lifestyle suit them.

The only person we're any good at being is ourselves, and it's usually a smart move in the long run to follow our own path. This bunny is by no means a massive Beatles fan but the video attached somehow seems relevant to this post. Take care and I'll catch you tomorrow.

Something for the Weekend

2011-10-21T19:55:00.001+01:00

Of course, two bits of massive news in the world of music this week - first up, the break-up of Westlife, possibly the greatest boy band of all time (snigger).

This bunny was most amused by the announcement that the split was 'amicable', having hoped to hear that 'artistic differences' had been claimed to exist within an act who specialised in glorified karaoke and would no doubt have done well in, and been well suited to, the holiday camp/cabaret circuit. Hearing one of them say, "you sold out man - it used to be about the music" would have been utterly priceless, but then again, after more than a decade together, aren't they just a tad past the age for selling records to kids?

Having a sister who is eleven and a half years younger than myself enabled them to provide me with a moment that was truly cringeworthy. Being tasked with buying her their 'best of' for Christmas, followed by this bunny's rather unwise decision to walk into his 'regular' record shop to pick it up prompted much ridicule from the seriously hip fella behind the counter who'd played a significant cameo in my collection of New Order's back catalogue. Mind you, when talking about the festive period, many get around their indifference by saying "ach well, as long as the kids enjoy it eh?"...

The announcement of a Stone Roses reunion and tour leaves this bunny with rather mixed feelings. They were a truly pioneering band in what was probably the last era where innovation and authenticity were able to break into the mainstream. The Brown/Squire combination was pretty much the equal of that between Morrissey and Johnny Marr, leaving the group headed by the latter pair as perhaps the last one yet to reform that we would actually like to do so (when Spandau Ballet can get back together in the meantime, you can't help but think that the man upstairs has a rather cruel sense of humour).

My worry is that after the understandable joy of those who remember them for the great songs, Brown's natural talent as a frontman and the indie/dance fusion that accompanied his mystic delivery, the gigs themselves will serve as a reminder that sometimes it's better to remember what you had than attempt to recapture past glories. It may be possible to pretend that it's 1989 all over again, but then you'll always know that we're two decades on and popular music has turned to ratshit in the time that has passed. For the sake of those who are making their way to Manchester for what should be an emotional gig, this bunny sincerely hopes that such concerns are unfounded.

I'll leave you with one of the Roses' finest works 'I Wanna be Adored' and Neil Hannan's inspiration for the title of this post. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

No I Won't Celebrate Gadaffi's Death - Bring on Armed Neutrality

2011-10-20T20:38:00.000+01:00

It is of course possible that the star of videos that are readily available online is a double, that Colonel Gadaffi is alive and well having fled Libya several weeks ago and everyone involved has essentially got what they wanted. However, for the sake of conversation, we'll make the (often unwise) decision to take this 'breaking news' at face value.

The natural comparison is with the hanging of Saddam Hussein in December 2006. As with today's developments, there were three notable and striking aspects - first up, this is one of those few occasions on which people are permitted, in fact they're positively encouraged, to celebrate the death of another human being. Regardless of the evil that has been perpetrated by someone, anyone, this bunny has never found that particularly easy - with sympathy not exactly on the radar, a sort of emptiness takes over on occasions like this. Joining the ranks of the lynch mob is a function carried out with much greater enthusiasm by some than others and having members of the government egging people on in this regard appears to be in desperately poor taste.

Like Saddam, Colonel Gadaffi reigned by terror, oppressed and brutalised his enemies (whether real or imagined) and in short, was a horrible, wicked bastard. Some like to reel off the crime-sheet as their principle means of implementing regime change, as if 1) we didn't already know about the police state, censorship and casual disregard for the rights of individuals, 2) their case is somehow unique or at least worse than any other such abuse taking place at the time and 3) we have never done a deal with this particular devil, remaining ethically consistent in our opposition to this regime over a prolonged period of time.

None of these were true of Hussein, a tired old tyrant on his last legs, no longer a man of menace or ambition (that's why we went after him, right?) and such an analysis would fall down in equal measure were it applied to Gadaffi. Meanwhile, the Americans should have known how well armed (or otherwise) the Iraqi regime was since they supplied most of the weapons - as for our 'business' in Libya, this video says pretty much anything. Perhaps this really is the most shameful moment of the Blair years, a subject this bunny will gladly put to some sort of poll.

Considering his hot and cold relationship with the truth, love of the super-rich but slightly dodgy, and famously supercilious grin, the 'pretty straight kinda guy' no doubt felt seriously comfortable in such company. A penny for his thoughts right now may represent money seriously well spent.

The second observation worth making is how news of the man's death has immediately been siezed upon as an opportunity for Libya to 'move forward', whatever that means. Apparently, the death of a deposed dictator will result in a peaceful, prosperous democracy spontaneously flowering up, people will hold hands and dance in meadows amid scenes of blossoming flowers and rabbits hurtling around in freedom - please, please do me a favour. One of the more interesting elements of the recent civil war was how the tide was partially turned by the return of Jihadist guerillas from Afghanistan - this bunny did wonder how and why the pendulum swung overnight after the rebels looked set to be counted out earlier in the year. Having helped to remove the old regime, they're going to be looking for a slice of the pie themselves, and are already making noises to that effect after seizing weapons from the old regime. Last time I checked, the spirit of liberal democracy did not run freely through the veins of such people.

Without an obvious figure to replace the deposed, a vacuum emerges in which the most well-organised, ruthless and usually the most extreme can thrive. Should a full-scale civil war kick off at some point in the near future and the 'wrong' side emerge victorious, then we will come to see British and American meddling abroad in an altogether less positive light. Will anyone learn? Well, if Iraq didn't serve as a shock to the system, to at least sit out the next potential foreign adventure, then this bunny is not holding out much hope. Even the reality of spending cuts at the MoD does not appear to have jolted our political class and their inbuilt tendency to poke their noses in other people's business.

This brings us neatly onto the third and final point. Displaying an admittedly evil man (mind you he was our evil man when it suited) fighting for his life and reporting his failure to do so serves as an advertisement of this 'pro-active' foreign policy. To the doubters at home, the death of someone you could not defend serves as the 'one useful thing' that came out of the conflict - in their attempt to re-write history, Blair and his dossier-doctors did this with Saddam and now seek to repeat the trick with Gaddafi. For the wider world, and those who might be on the wrong side of the 'special relationship' as it stands, there is a clear message not to mess with people who will always, eventually, get their man.

Armed neutrality can never be an absolute position, for the logical conclusion of such a move would have been to cut a deal with the likes of Hitler, but as a starting point, it's a damn sight better than the war-mongering chaos we have. Rather than attempting to police the world, it would surely be wise to understand that freedom is not something that another can give to you, but the precious result of struggle and sacrifice - no revolution in history has been without the cost of human lives. This bunny supports all those who are fighting tyranny and oppression across the globe in their pursuit of freedom, but the struggle to rebuild their nations in a more desirable image for themselves is theirs, not ours, and the passing of a despot dinosaur does not alter that fact. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Blood, Sweat and Thyroids - the NHS Experience

2011-10-19T21:34:00.001+01:00

One of the frequent criticisms levelled at this bunny and Libertarians as a whole is that we tend to see life rigidly through the lens of State = Bad and Private = Good. Of course the killer issue is whether your experiences drive your beliefs or the possession of certain prejudices alters the way in which one interprets the events of their everyday existence. This bunny has occupied environments where welfare has taken people's sense of independence away from them while providing a sort of cotton-walled prison, seen the way in which Statism as a way of life causes all manner of problems for others and can link every aspect of instinctive liberalism (the notion that you own your life and everyone else owns theirs) to a personal narrative which I've shared snippets of with you. and may elaborate on further at a later date.

Taxpayer-funded organisations have what could be charitably described as a very mixed record. Some state schools and hospitals perform well, while too many turn out illiterate teenagers or subject patients to MRSA-infested wards, leaving them in worse health upon leaving hospital than when they went in. The full spectrum of success and failure can be easily experienced by a lifetime of 'shopping' in the State sector. Some of this bunny's teachers possessed stratospheres more competence than others, the same could be said of doctors, with the helpful and diligent, in it for the right reasons, doing their utmost while a significant minority clearly regard the patient as nothing more than a statistic. The medical professionals' side of the negotiation on GP's salaries clearly played a much more aggressive form of hardball than the government - one of the inherent weaknesses of the State is its chronic inability to drive a firm bargain with regard to the spending of taxpayers' money.

Of course it may turn out that this bunny suffers from nothing more serious than acute hypochondria and some serious lifestyle issues, but I'm convinced that my thyroid is, to use a technical term, fucked. The ongoing bouts of tiredness regardless of whether I get six or ten hours of sleep, fluctuations in weight, mood swings, habitual melancholia, and one of the telltale signs of Hypothyroidism, a yellowing of the skin round the fingertips. This bunny was in the curious position of hoping a blood test would confirm the hunch, since seven years of aches, pains, bloating and fatigue regardless of choices on diet/drinking/smoking etc. take their toll both physically and mentally while causing something of a 'couldn't care less' attitude towards looking after oneself. The fact that I had to work this out alone after years on pump inhibitors to deal with the acid reflux that caused one in every three meals to come straight back up is something we can forget for now - that said I'm stunned that in all this time none of the several medical professionals I'd spoken to considered a thyroid issue amongst the possibles.

Last week this bunny took a morning off work to undergo a 'fasting blood test' - that means no food or liquids besides tap water from midnight the previous day and is more uncomfortable than one might think at first. Following up the results in the last few days, I was delighted to hear that I'd come up negative for diabetes, anaemia, liver poisoning (I should admit this was actually a surprise), hepatitis, the plague and a multitude of other disorders that might explain some of the aforementioned symptoms. The thyroid test, that which I'd originally asked for, was pending, and remained so until this morning. Ultimately, I discovered that the laboratory had never tested my blood sample for Hypothyroidism, since somewhere in the chain, the appropriate box on an appropriate form had gone unticked. This is hardly a hanging offence and is the kind of shit that happens.

One Saturday morning many years ago, I heard my father ranting on the telephone to a clothes shop after they had made a simple mistake of supplying something in the wrong size. Hearing his hysterical, insane demands for the poor girl behind the counter to be not simply sacked, but tied to a chair and tortured over several weeks (on reflection I may be exaggerating) made this bunny resolve not to 'lose it' with people in the same fashion. Not for the first or last time, his instinctively Statist attempts to be 'the boss' had instead made him look like a first class arsehole, and rather than stick around to endure the seven hour monologue about how right he was that would inevitably follow, I took a diplomatic decision to retire to a quiet watering hole. Alcohol and its unique gift for erasing painful memories is a close friend of this bunny - if I'm honest we're probably far more intimate than is healthy or sensible.

Anyway, the point is:- we will all screw up while doing our best at work and would only hope that the demonstrable honesty of those endeavours would buy us a bit of latitude in terms of the way the situation is judged and dealt with. As someone who has made my share of mistakes and probably yours in addition, this bunny tries to put himself in the position of the individual making an honest error and act accordingly - so I'm not mad at anyone on a personal level and once the initial frustration had died down, what's done is done. To their credit, they sorted out a second blood test within a matter of two hours, my (top notch, it should be said) line manager understood the situation, permitted a short-term disappearing act, and my sample was on its way to the microscope squad by mid-afternoon.

They've even labelled the blood 'urgent', which at least means it won't be shunted to the back of any would-be queue, and we may know the result for certain by Friday. Ok, the whole process has taken longer than it should ever have done, but in isolation that is not what gets this bunny's goat. The real issue was that of powerlessness, that should the same chain of events unfold next time then there will be the square root of sod all that can be done about it. Apparently, medication for Hypothyroidism is free on the NHS, for which I should presumably be grateful - however, if this creates a culture in which the patient is taught to accept sub-standard service and swiftly run along, then I'd rather pay something, anything, and in the meantime I'll donate the value of a prescription charge to charity.

The ultimate form of accountability comes not with raising complaints, filling in forms or playing postal pinball with one quango or another, but by taking one's hard-earned elsewhere. This is why ultimately, despite the many experiences, both good and bad, in the State sector, this bunny will always approach its monoliths and bureaucracies with an instinctive sense of suspicion. Many thanks to all the caring and capable people who've helped this bunny out in the last week or so - I genuinely appreciate their efforts, it's just the 'sacred cow' for whom they work that represents the problem. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Ten Years On and it's the Game I Keep Coming Back To - Championship Manager 01/02

2011-10-18T20:35:00.001+01:00

Some of our contributors and readers are not overly keen on football and hey, there's no accounting for personal taste. Many are put off by the faceless corporatism of the Premier League, as the cult movement of fans returning to grass roots football demonstrates. Too many top players, who are supposed to be athletes at their peak, roll round on the floor and pass off the general demeanour of having been shot when an opponent makes but the slightest contact with them. This bunny can appreciate the thought process of anyone who concludes that the modern game is one of tarts and prima donnas. while of course the game itself will always leave more than a few people distinctly sub-zero.

Of course, I like and follow football, although in recent years it has come a close second to boxing in terms of this bunny's favourite sport. Covering domestic and European fights from ringside, attending weigh-ins and coming face to face with fighters and pugilistic culture provided both a rush and the sense of having really learned something. Boxers do not have things all their own way, have to live something of a spartan life simply to compete and beneath the glamour and high stakes of world title fights that the casual fan sees on television, taking punches is a means of surviving and making money for the the majority of those who turn professional. This bunny admires and respects those who climb through the ropes, giving everything and putting their long-term health on the line, sometimes just to get by.

Without boxing's journeymen, future stars would not have those 'learning fights' on the way up, where mistakes could be made in an environment where the consequences were less than fatal, then rapidly learned from. Guys like Peter Buckley and Matt Scriven are respected by other fighters for a very good reason - when your way of life depends upon being able to fight regularly, a stoppage and some sort of enforced time-out on medical grounds becomes wholly undesirable. Therefore, the development of survival instincts, sound defence and a particularly cagey sort of ringcraft is a fundamental aspect of taking vastly superior, perhaps well-touted opposition to the scorecards and remaining as active as possible. 'Professor' Buckley may have been several leagues below the man who shared his moniker, Azumah Nelson, but was every bit as worthy of the name in his own unique way.

Anyway, back to football - while this bunny can take or leave the FIFA/ISS type simulations that have accounted for countless cases of RSI and child obesity, the team management game of tactics, buying and selling players, training, that sort of thing, has always attracted my attention. Some are fun while they last but ultimately lose their appeal, others are deeply unrealistic and like any other type of simulation, there will always be dug-out gaming experiences that make you resent ever installing the bloody thing. Many believe the Championship/Football Manager series of games to be the most consistent series within the genre, making use of a simple format that has developed over the years into the more complex Football Manager simulations, challenges of their own in an altogether different way (I'll come back to these games later).

I was playing Championship Manager 1994 a few weeks ago, and what struck me was how unambitious it was from a graphics and gameplay point of view even for its time. Matches contained no 'action' as such, merely a text box that appeared at various points over the 90 seconds (less if you hold the space bar) to describe a shot at goal, injury, substitution, booking or sending off. Winning was simple once you got your head round certain things, like appointing quality scouts and having them find future Premier League players at rock bottom prices. 'Influence', which is ChampMan speak for leadership qualities, was a must-have commodity for about half your team. A few old-stagers with this penchant for taking charge on the field can facilitate a fairly uncomplicated promotion, then transfer listing and insuring the player come the end of the season would mean instant retirement, a free space in the (maximum 26 players) squad, while recouping the original (and pretty modest) sum paid for the player - simply repeat to fade.

Even in 2011, it remains compelling - the familiar routine of taking an unfashionable side from fourth tier to Premier league in successive seasons, then into Europe may appear to be a tiring one, but I suppose this is what marks out a good management simulation from much of the trash that has gone by the name. When you rate the game itself, being good at it becomes that bit more important, and any sense of achievement brought about by 'unrealistic' success that bit more real. Having given them a good go, one of the issues this bunny has with the Football Manager series - if playing an entire season in a couple of hours is too instant, then a game that feels like realtime is nowhere near instant enough, and if the unrealistic was somewhat too easy on those early versions of ChampMan (particularly with brilliant no-wingers formations), then keeping the art of the possible within very narrow confines just takes the fun out of it. I appreciate that I couldn't actually manage a professional soccer team, but the last thing I want is a gaming experience that constantly reminds me of this fact!!

There has to be a happy medium somewhere, and two legendary ChampMan incarnations come closest to it. 1997/98 saw the expansion of the game, with several new European Leagues available to try one's luck and at first fail dismally in. It is more than possible to screw your team up and make their fortunes a whole lot worse if you really don't know what you're doing. Midfield balance is a whole lot more important than on any simulation that had pre-dated it - too many attacking, creative players can leave your team something of a soft touch without the ball, while the tempting option of overloading the centre of the park with grafters can bring something of a goal famine. Over-achievement is possible, but takes times and tends to be of the modest variety to start with. There is of course a lower-league team of free transfers who will always get you to a certain level, but beyond that an eye for a bargain (and a regen or two) becomes a necessity. Cm9798 was also the first management simulation to immortalise players who were pretty average in real life - sign Tommy Svindel Larsen, for instance, and you're in business.

This bunny has lost days that could have been spent doing altogether more useful things, long after 97/98 had even a tenuous connection to the football taking place at the time. However, good as it undeniably was and remains, the work of utter genius that is Championship Manager 01/02 knocks it narrowly but clearly enough into second place in the rankings of greatest ever management simulation. The detail of tactical analysis here is spot on - sufficient enough to weed out those who simply cannot cut it, while not complicating things to the extent that even a qualified coach would struggle (as I suspect is the case with Football Manager). Hiring and firing your backroom team - coaches, scouts and physios. Unearthing rough diamonds for nothing from Scandinavia, overseeing the development of players into saleable assets or key components in a machine that storms through the divisions.

As with Cm9798, the unthinkable becomes likely only for the seriously good player who understands the nuances of the game. I appreciate that simulations rely on a match engine that can be worked out if one studies it closely. Having a team that is compact (high defensive line and deep centre forwards), narrow and finds players frequently 'between the lines' can consistently outperform the AI of the computer opponent if sufficient cohesion amongst players knowing their roles exists. Managing Shelbourne to victory in the UEFA Cup or taking Rochdale to Premier League glory in four seasons may be highly unrealistic and probably owed a great deal to luck, but then I've visited a few Cm0102 tribute sites in the last week or so and achievements of this nature in a rapid timescale are quite rare. 'Sussing' something to such an extent may not make you a bona fide football manager, but contrary to what some might believe, the greatest management game of all time was not necessarily a simple one. The distinct possibility of abject failure was a large part of its attraction.

My Scarborough side has just won the Conference in the first season, and this bunny is looking forward to 2002/03, as we take on the powerhouses of the English Third Division. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Protests Against Something - Answers on a Postcard

2011-10-16T17:55:00.000+01:00

This bunny would defend to the death the right of individuals to peacefully protest in the name of a cause that he profoundly disagreed with. The line from the authorities that such mass gatherings automatically represent a 'breach of the peace' stinks to high heaven, even from some distance away, and appear to serve as an excuse for the police to apply heavy-handed tactics, antagonise the crowd and in fact spark the kind of violence that they had warned against in the first instance. No apologist for the rozzers or their dubious methods here.

Sparked by the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement and a group referred to as 'the Indignants' in Spain, something falling under the umbrella of 'anti-capitalist demonstration' went worldwide over the weekend, attracting support in London, across mainland Europe and on the other side of the world in places like Hong Kong and Sydney. Placards and slogans, talk of the 'many and not the few', Che Guevara T-shirts and one or two guys and dolls fancying themselves as the new Bob Dylan - not exactly this bunny's idea of a day out, but then most of those involved appeared to enjoy themselves while causing no harm to others. Of course, there will always be a level of disorder at a gig like this, much of it the product of dickheads seeing any protest as an excuse to turn reckless or violent. Not all of this is a direct response to 'kettling' and the Simon Harwood's of this world, and it would be naive in the extreme to suggest otherwise.

More than anything, I found this demonstration to be a confused one, and highly confusing as a result. What exactly are these people protesting against? Is it capitalism per se, or just the corporatist greed of a fortunate few whom governments have actively protected from the consequences of failure? Were they focussed solely on the latter, then while the movement would lose some of its political edge, a wider level of public sympathy, agreement and even participation would probably emerge. Without speaking to a large number of those involved one can never be certain, but the appearance one gets is that the failings of gangster capitalism, cronyism and corporatism have been capitalised upon (sorry!!) to launch a Soviet/Castro style ideological war on the very notion of capitalism itself.

Apparently, the mess we are in at the moment 'is where free markets invariably get you'. The fact that our economy does not run on such a model and is in fact ten parts Statist, ten parts gangster capitalist either goes over the heads of Trots and pseudo-Marxists or is rendered an intellectual inconvenience to be swept under the carpet. Yes, the bank bailout was a disgrace and individuals chasing the rewards of success should be susceptible to the risks that come with failure - that's how capitalism in its purest form actually works. Using taxpayers' hard-earned the confiscated to bail out corporations who got greedy is about as far away from pure capitalist thinking as one can get - were this explained to some of those who turned up yesterday then it might provoke an epic bout of head-scratching from some of them.

Two of their slogans really stood out for this bunny. The first appeared in Stockholm (hardly the home of capitalism as it is, but there you go) and read 'I am one of the 99%', presumably a reference to the remaining 1% in possession of 'a disproportionate share of the wealth'. As placards go, it's quite powerful stuff, likely to take in many who do not question exactly what it means. Far from wealthy people who wake at some anti-social hour to sell fruit and veg on a market stall, and those remaining milkmen and publicans are of course a part of that 99% as well. Most people starting a small business do serious shifts for an hourly rate that ultimately comes in at less than the minimum wage. They're hammered by taxes and regulation by the State that renders market entry increasingly difficult, and strengthens the hold of large corporate entities who can absorb the blow or creatively account their way out of any problems.

Capitalism has been attacked and interfered with by successive governments as it is, and this has caused far more harm to the 99% than it ever will to the privileged few. The changing character of our high streets, with what used to be independent shops boarded up as the multinationals bulldoze them, is testament to this fact.

Perhaps even more baffling is the call for 'real democracy', as if the creation of a socialist utopia is the only means by which the rights of 'little people' can be protected. Anyone who studies history for more than about five seconds understands that in those countries where private enterprise was marginalised or squashed, keeping it down was only enabled by the State very deliberately encroaching into personal freedom. The pursuit of higher living standards for an individual and those he cares for becomes strictly forbidden in any environment where such thinking is automatically dismissed as 'greed' - and once one establishes that certain thoughts are 'bad', then the policing of that thought by the State is entirely justified.

You never heard of pro-capitalist demonstrations in the former Soviet Union or Castro's Cuba, precisely because the policing of 'greed' appears to necessitate tyranny, oppression and the imprisonment of those who disagree with the party line (of course the celebrations that followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall dispelled the myth that those under Communist rule lived in a permanent state of bliss). Yes, these protesters want 'democracy', but only for themselves and those who broadly agree with them - were their vision of the perfect society ever to be implemented, this bunny suspects that most of this site's contributors would be censored, then classed as dissidents and slung in jail or some kind of forced labour camp. Those who spoke out in public would no doubt have to come in for the 'Tiananmen Square' treatment - it's an inevitable consequence of Marxism and authoritarian, collective thinking. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

None of the Above e-petition

2011-10-14T16:37:00.002+01:00

As I mentioned this issue in Thursday's Rabbit, here is an existing e-petition calling for the 'None of the Above' option to be added to ballot papers. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Cutie Cast a Shadow

2011-10-14T16:07:00.000+01:00

There's people I have known
I'd easily have thrown
I didn't, they were simple to forget
While others in my life
were so distantly liked
this Capricorn wished we had never met

Cutie cast a shadow
and not before time now I know
that it doesn't pay to get down off that fence
Cutie cast a shadow
and not before time now I know
that those stupid Greeks, it seems, were talkin' sense

Your ridicule has roots
my god awful shellsuits
but please forgive these choices of attire
You ought not be taught
the lines you've already bought
It just massacres you, destroys your desire

Cutie cast a shadow
and not before time now I know
that it doesn't pay to get down off that fence
Cutie cast a shadow
and not before time now I know
that those stupid Greeks, it seems, were talkin' sense

You're told to assert
just make sure you don't get hurt
then jump the queue and find you're asked to wait
Life with the other sex
leaves you feelin' hexed
It tears your trust up, freeloads on your faith

Cutie cast a shadow
and not before time now I know
that it doesn't pay to get down off that fence
Cutie cast a shadow
and not before time now I know
that those stupid Greeks, it seems, were talkin' sense

Guess these days I know the score
can't be bothered anymore
Ciao, sayonara
Ciao, sayonara

Doubt I'll feel this way again
bite my hand and count to ten
Stroke my tiara
Stroke my tiara

16 Year Olds Should Have the Right to Vote - and Just as Importantly, the Right Not To

2011-10-13T21:17:00.006+01:00

The subject of lowering the voting age occasionally comes up under the conversational umbrella of "how do we get the general public engaged with the political process again?". As a stream of thought this is fairly simple to shoot down, largely on the basis that it rather resembles a parent suggesting that they should forget their first-born and focus on his younger siblings - oh if only we could start over with a blank piece of paper, then there's no way that we'd make those mistakes again. How the political class define those mistakes is one of those things that either amuses or irritates this bunny, depending on his general mood.

To the Westminster set, low electoral turnout is at best a result of their 'letting us slip away from them', as if a significant swathe of the Uk's general populace has completely forgotten that a 'democratic' system exists, thinking an election is something a man might get while reading a filthy magazine. The alternative explanation, one that Statists are especially fond of, is that those who fail to participate do so out of their own stupidity. They are too dumb to understand its significance, while appreciating the efforts of the political class and therefore expressing their gratitude at the ballot box is just 'beyond them'.

In reality, the old maxim that 'whoever wins, the government gets in' might never have applied more in our history than it does now. 21st century Britain is very much a one-party dictatorship in all but name, where the candidates capable of winning wear different coloured rosettes, but the principles (if any) that guide them can be separated by a cigarette paper. The Statist sentiment of steal and squander reigns supreme, transcends supposed 'political divides' and in reality is the only option. With the closed shop of First Past the Post rendering market entry for outsiders virtually impossible, the battle has long ceased to be one of ideas and become a nationwide version of 'the Apprentice', where three teams of 'managers' compete to be the least worst.

Hardly inspiring stuff, and falling voter turnout owes more to this dishwater, faceless corporation politics than it ever will to some perceived collective fault on the part of the electorate. In 2005, a mere 59% of those registered to vote bothered to turn up (and some of us, this bunny included, try to avoid registering ourselves if we can). That this increased to 65% last time out owed something to the mainstream media's constant message that 'this time, there really is a difference between the two main parties'. The walking disaster that was Gordon Brown, a charlatan to the core, helped to create that impression by announcing pre-election giveaways that he knew could not be afforded. Dave did not pledge a clean swing of the axe to the taxpayer gravy train and has kept his word, despite the attempts of some to convince us otherwise.

In terms of the course that the government would follow after May 2010, there was no real difference. Supposed ideological distinctions were simply wild exaggerations of minute details, and our rotten political class have a great deal to thank a subservient media for in terms of prolonging their existence. While more than a third of us saw this 'contest' for the sham it was, the prospect of a close result (and a hung parliament as it turned out) at least galvanised sufficient numbers amongst 'core supporters' to boost the turnout.

Given the way in which political parties invariably betray these loyal people, I'm amazed that such groups still exist. How can anyone be so convinced of one team's innate superiority when they are demonstrably the same as both of the others? Perhaps habitual Labour and Tory voters await the day that their party starts believing in something again? You might be there a while, mate!! Not voting does not disqualify one from having an interest in politics (this bunny did not bother in 2005 and 'forgot' to register in 2010, but votes UKIP in Euro elections) - that's another little Statist lie, designed to manipulate some form of validation out of the apolitical, apathetic and legitimately hacked off.

All of this is relevant to the Vote16 conversation, since one of the rather silly arguments against extending the franchise is the low turnout in the 18-24 category (as few as 37% bothered to vote in that nadir of 2005). This of course is working on a deeply flawed and dangerous premise, namely that voting is good and therefore failing to do so is somehow bad. That black X next to a candidate's name is a stamp of approval to both the 'democratic' process itself and whoever that individual has chosen to vote for. If they feel that no candidate is worthy of such approval, are genuinely apolitical or would rather have an open dictatorship than a tacit one, then the political class can lump it - or alternatively, stop lying, stealing, fiddling their expenses and actually give someone, somewhere a reason to place that faith in them.

The right not to vote is a crucial one in any democracy - that's why this bunny supports 'None of the Above' boxes on ballot papers (who fancies an e-petition by the way?) and would campaign hard against any attempt to introduce compulsory voting. Validating the process and one of its candidates is a choice, an act which the individual should be free to abstain from if they so wish. Once you take that freedom away and potentially imprison those who refuse to play ball, then no choice exists in reality - the power no longer resides with the ordinary citizen (even for that one day every five years) and any pretence of a truly representative system is dead.

In short, there is nothing wrong whatsoever with making a conscious decision not to vote.

One of the few enjoyable experiences this bunny can recall from his days at school was reading Harper Lee's 'to Kill a Mockingbird'. A key theme of this book is the way in which young people are less inclined to be blinded by prejudice or tribal loyalty than adults. They are not as likely to buy into received conventional wisdom, most have a naturally inquisitive temperament and have not yet had their spirits crushed by a life that teaches one to 'accept things as they are'. Not all aspects of what some would refer to as 'growing up' are overwhelmingly positive.

If a smaller proportion of 18-24 year olds vote than is the case with any other age group, then it stands to reason that even fewer at age sixteen will do the same. Like the children of Atticus Finch, most have not been taken in by membership of a faction or group, and see only what they regard as truth in front of them. If three-quarters of those aged 16-17 choose not to cast (or, god willing, go NOTA) then many will do so having concluded that none of the candidates were worth voting for. Let's face it, these people would be wise and sensible to reach such a conclusion, far more than many who actually vote out of loyalty to one tribe or an inbuilt hatred of another. This might drag the overall turnout down towards 50%, which would be something of a disaster for the political class - far from being a reason not to extend the franchise, surely this is a central plank of any serious case to do just that?

Of course, there are four very simple words with which anyone can win this argument - No Taxation Without Representation, since there is another word that accurately describes a situation where the former exists but the latter is absent - that word is Slavery. If one is old enough to work and contribute to the upkeep of older citizens who choose not to, then this bunny fails to see a single reason why the kept man should have a say in the makeup of the next government, while the taxpayer funding his idleness is deprived that right. At sixteen, an individual can join the army and be sent into an overseas engagement which they do not support. (in the last decade, this scenario could hardly be dismissed as a hypothetical, yeah?).

A warmongering government can regard this young man as cannon fodder and sentence him to death, but he remains constitutionally powerless to elect an alternative who might withdraw him from that danger. 'Fairness' is a word to which the dud mainstream parties all attempt to lay claim, yet this manifestly unfair situation would appear to be off the radar for all of them. In something of a vicious circle, the fact that sixteen and seventeen year olds cannot vote means that they are simply not taken seriously by politicians - this of course feeds the wishes of the dud parties to keep them disenfranchised despite obvious reasons why such a situation is unjust. This bunny cares neither whether they vote nor how 'well-informed' that vote is, merely for the rights of people old enough to contibute to, and die for our society. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Food For Thought

2011-10-13T13:52:00.003+01:00

Now this particular inhabitant of the burrow is not usually one to bang on about politics (namely because my interest equals my knowledge), however as an enthusiastic sinophile this particular subject really irks me. How many times have you been sitting there watching the news or listening to radio 4 and you have to endure some moronic cabinet minister witter on about the under representation of women, people educated at state schools, Muslims, Afro-Caribbeans, etc in parliament. I know, its boring and its patronising. But arguably it is a fair point, the argument that the composition of a parliament should mirror the make up of the nation which it represents. However never once have I heard Cameron or anyone in British politics mention just how under represented Britain's Chinese community is in the UK Parliament. With almost half a million people of Chinese origin living here, abiding by our laws, working here and paying taxes here, surely, if one were pursuing Cameron's A-list logic, they are entitled to some parliamentary representation too. Or maybe that's the problem, the fact that Britain's Chinese community is perhaps the most law abiding ethnic group in the UK and embodies the very concept of the 'protestant work ethic'. They make no complaints of racism, have no chip on their shoulder regarding slavery or European imperialism and are quite happy to just live here, work hard and make money. So there is no need for Cameron to have to be seen 'reaching out to them', as he likes to be seen doing with so many other minority groups in the UK.

So the next time you hear some unelectable Communities Cohesion Minister or brain dead Minister for Diversity harp on about under representation of one group or another in parliament, just ask yourself, are uneducated people represented in parliament? Or if parliaments composition were to mirror the electoates composition as accurately as Cameron wants it to, shouldn't there be a larger amount of 'unintelligent' people in parliament? Its just a thought...........

I Thought Fox-Hunting was Illegal?

2011-10-12T21:37:00.001+01:00

When the Liam Fox-Adam Werritty story first broke, this bunny was of the view that it was highly surreal and undeniably warranted Fox's departure, but would ultimately amount to little more than childish tittle-tattle. As for the numerous and various rumours about the Secretary of State's sex life, who cares?

Then further details began to emerge and this opinion was slowly revised - is it about sex, money or both? Has Werritty got something on Fox and why did the minister claim to be alone when his house got turned over last year? (this is now acknowledged to have been an untruth as a male friend was staying with him at the time). Why has the nature of Werritty's business interests conveniently overlapped Dr Fox's changing ministerial portfolio, from shadow health secretary to the defence brief? What the hell was he doing following a a former landlord and member of the government to Sri Lanka, handing out business cards as a supposed 'advisor' and staying in general decadence? (no, that isn't a euphemism by the way).

We could go on, but something, somewhere, is clearly less than kosher.

Anyway, probably the best thing someone in Fox's position can say (besides the words 'I resign') is nothing - I dunno if it was Dave's idea to wheel out notorious half-wit Chris Grayling for a televised defence of the beleaguered Defence Secretary, but given the lack of love lost between the PM and Foxy, it would make an awful lot of sense. That Grayling gets an absolute pasting from a BBC journalist and a Labour junior minister serves to illustrate painful limitations that should already have become clear to anyone who's seen him on television before.

A Libertarian government would of course make the utterly pointless department of Work and Pensions one of the first to be abolished. What you've just seen is a ringing endorsement of such a policy, and Fox, who could simply have gone quietly and at least managed the damage done to his career, must be wishing that the gormless Grayling hadn't driven a further nail into his coffin on live television, whether the attempt to help was sincere or otherwise. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Will keep this brief - the Football's on...

2011-10-11T19:27:00.005+01:00

Someone has kindly pointed me in the direction of a certain Panorama programme regarding the BNP. The subject of the European Union must be a difficult one for Griffin and his gang of thugs to ponder, since while the (accidentally correct) party line of withdrawing from the EU panders nicely to their innate xenophobia, being a part of the club sure enhances the scope for corruption. This bunny rarely plugs something from Stasi television, but there you go - an apparent hatred of all things Brussels and Strasbourg has not stopped Nazi Nick from dipping his greasy little mitts into the till and boarding the gravy train himself.

The accepted conventional wisdom of course is that not everyone who votes BNP is racist - a great many are, but then this bunny has no problem acknowledging that some might simply be morons, or individuals possessing a peculiar and misguided notion of what constitutes a protest vote. The New Labour era (which of course is still ongoing in all but name) created a roll of shame for itself that was akin to 'War and Peace', but one that slips under the radar is this:- the constant demonization of Griffin and his party by the political mainstream raised their profile like no amount of their own hateful literature could ever have done.

Telling a pissed off electorate "whatever you do, don't vote for the BNP" has the natural ring of Peter Rabbit and Mr McGregor's garden to it - and it was on their watch that these toytown fascists, marginalised and isolated for a generation, achieved their best ever election result. Griffin, the NF shithead with an uncanny resemblance to a cross-dressing Miss Piggy somehow contrived to be seen in some quarters as a victim of the establishment - having spent years telling anyone who would listen that the holocaust was the myth of a Jewish conspiracy, he could probably not believe his own luck and has an awful lot to thank Blair and the PC class for. Along with his fellow scumbag Andrew Brons, Griffin's place in the record books is secure, regardless of what happens in 2014 - and attempting re-write or erase bits of history can be extremely difficult, as he should know.

On a brighter note, here's hoping Scotland can pull off an unthinkable victory in Spain - the match kicks off in less than an hour's time, and though the likelihood of such a result before the first whistle blows are slim to none, international football can throw up some quirky and anomalous results, particularly when one team has a great deal more to play for than the other. Whatever result a distinctly average Czech side manage away to Lithuania in Kaunas, the Scots must equal it in order to reach the playoff round for Euro 2012 - that the Spanish are already home and hosed as group winners may help them, particularly if it becomes apparent during the game that a draw will suffice. Lithuania shocked the Czechs in the return fixture in Olomouc, so it is just possible that Scotland could lose tonight's game and still progress.

This bunny's niggle is that a highly dubious penalty awarded to the Czechs at Hampden could ultimately prove fatal. I hope I'm wrong - take care and come on Scotland...

Books - a Change of Plan (Part 1)

2011-10-10T20:20:00.002+01:00

Apologies in advance to anyone who feels that tonight's Rabbit is even worse than usual. A 'businessman' on the subcontinent has apparently placed a bet that at some time during October this bunny will write something that goes beyond bad and could be classed as literary torture. If I hadn't already earned my retainer several times over this month then perhaps what follows will seal the deal?

I've mentioned on previous occasions a book called 'a Failure's Guide to Winning the Rat Race' on which I had commenced work. Individuals close to (and respected by) this bunny pointed out that although it was a valid and potentially useful piece of literature, producing it at a time when I was still reliant on the aforementioned race and its filthy proceeds to get by may have, shall we say, unintended and adverse consequences. Five years ago I could not have been shaken on the subject, but then maturity either makes you wiser or renders you little more than a coward - I'll let you make your own mind which applies in this case.

Taking the sound advice of good people who I trust, I'll leave it to a later date and get cracking on Plan B - 'Second is Nowhere'. Sports cheats have always fascinated this bunny, since watching elite competition always gave the impression from a distance that the top sportsmen were those capable of regarding wealth, fame and acclaim as no more than pleasant by-products of something greater - namely that sense of achievement, the mark on mortality left by winning a trophy or medal through hard work, meticulous preparation and no little skill. In that sense, one can probably understand why fringe world level athletes like Ben Johnson or Michelle Smith dabbled with drugs to achieve otherwise unthinkable results - without the aid of needles and pills the medals would simply not have been won, and if you happen to go undetected then the history books cannot take it away from you, even if your conscience can.

But then there are truly elite level operators who still felt the need to break the rules - men and women to whom the essence of sport should surely have meant more. Boris Onishchenko was an outstanding fencer as it was without the aid of his 'magic button' When British captain Jim Fox drew attention to the fact that Onishchenko was contriving to score points after hitting fresh air, the officials replaced the modified sword and asked for the bout to continue - Boris still ran out a convincing winner, illustrating that his cheating was not merely dishonest, but stupid and utterly pointless. As it was, instead of making up some much-needed ground on their opponents (ultimately successful in their absence) in the race for gold, the Russian team was disqualified from that 1976 modern pentathlon, with Onishchenko labelled 'Disonishchenko' and becoming something of a black sheep in his homeland.

This in itself is interesting, because although one would seek to avoid resorting to crude generalisations about an Eastern European desire to win at all costs, this bunny can't help but think that Boris brought shame on his country only by being caught. The former Soviet bloc produced a generation of athletes who may have been astonished to discover the presence of blood in their steroid stream, and nowhere was this more apparent than East Germany. When a nation of their size and relatively small population begins to dominate power events and swimming on a massive scale, the logical next step is to ask "what's their secret?". In the case of the GDR, it was drugs, growth hormones and a whole host of banned 'supplements', often given to teenage athletes as part of their 'training' for some future Olympiad.

When governments claim sport as a means by which to illustrate their superiority (Hitler of course attempted this with the Berlin Olympics of 1936, only to see the aryan challenge obliterated by Jesse Owens), forays into rule-breaking appear to become more likely. There is of course some cruel humour in poking fun at a female weightlifter or shot putter possessing more facial hair than this bunny (who is sporting a beard these days), but the price of Communist glory became all too apparent after the collapse of the wall in 1989. Former athletes began to explain how the State had doped their young bodies to the point where they no longer recognised themselves. Some returned their medals, while others became long-suffering victims of the dreadful side effects brought about by prolonged steroid and hormone abuse - cases of clinical depression, gender confusion (see Heidi/Andreas Krieger) and at least one suicide attempt can all be attributed to the East German medal-winning programme.

Sport would of course be nothing without its supporters, and there are essentially two aspects to the deal between game and fan that act as conditions for ongoing confidence. The first is that all paricipants are giving of their best at all times in a genuine attempt to beat their opponents (apologies to anyone who expected a piece on spot-fixing yesterday - this is a key part of something I will write on the subject in the week). Secondly, it has to be believed that the rules regarding prohibited substances mean what they say, with no competitor being allowed to gain an outside advantage. One of the great challenges for athletics and cycling in particular is of convincing the viewer that the perceived free for all on supplements is something of an urban myth - lifetime bans for those caught cheating is the only way to truly instil faith in supporters that the game is clean.

This bunny is aware that he's not even scratched the surface here, so has nominally referred to this as Part 1 should the need arise to return to the topic in the future. Many thanks to ManNotNumber amongst others for their sound advice - the rat race can wait for now. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

The Tory Party began dying a long time ago. It cannot be saved.

2011-10-10T09:22:00.004+01:00

In early 2009, when I had my interview with my local Conservative group to become one of their council candidates, the news broke that Ken Clarke was invited to take a job in the Shadow Cabinet. The topical question of my interview, the one my interviewers threw right at the end as a "curve ball", was what did I think of Ken Clarke? I tried to give the the interviewers the answer that they wanted to hear and the result was stuttering non-committal to an opinion. This is one of those events I look back at with some regret about my cowardice.

Ken Clarke is the personification of everything I loathe about the Conservative Party. He is a liberal imposter; pro-Europe and limp about crime and punishment. A few weeks ago, Radio 4 interviewed Liberal Democrat voters about which of their coalition partners do they like. I seem to remember that Lib Dem voters approved of Ken Clarke most of all. I think one voter even gave Clarke the epithet "good" or "normal", or some similar positive attribute.

Ken Clarke is a liberal democrat if not a Liberal Democrat.

And so is David Cameron. I think David Cameron sometimes uses Clarke as a foil for his own liberalism, or as a weather vane to test the direction of the prevailing wind. When the storm brewed over halving sentences for criminals including rapists, Cameron performed a U-turn to fit in with public opinion. He came out against Clarke's proposals to give soft - actually softer - sentences to criminals. It is Cameron's wont to, at critical times, suppress his liberalism to offer a sop to Tory voters. Tory voters who are too deluded or tribalised to see Cameron for what he is.

Take a look at "Catgate". When Ken Clarke wagered that, contrary to Thereasa May's claim, that a pet cat did not feature in a judge's decision not to deport a Bolivian immigrant, Cameron appeared to slap down Ken Clarke. Not because Cameron disagreed with Clarke's softness on immigration, but because the Tory conference was one of those critical moments - much like election times - when the media is concentrated intensely on Cameron's Tories and he needs to be seen to do the populist thing. Knowing that the public is worried about high levels of immigration (levels that Cameron will do nothing to reduce) he seized the opportunity to side with May.

Remember Cameron's U-turn over his "cast iron" guarantee on a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. The Lisbon Treaty is undemocratic and Soviet. The Lisbon Treaty was a treaty that was allowed to "amend" itself. As such, any changes to the Treaty can be made within the Treaty itself, without having to publish a new Treaty. Because changes to the constitution can be made without publishing a new treaty, the EU Commission can acquire more power from member states without the inconvenience of member states holding referenda over their ceding of power to the EU.

It is anti-democratic and harmful to sovereignty. A Conservative Party - that is, a conservative and patriotic party - would have used the Lisbon Treaty as a good excuse to withdraw from the European Union. But David Cameron reneged on his cast-iron guarantee of a referendum on the European Union because his anti-EU posturing had ceased to be profitable. When he dropped his guarantee of a referendum he had a lead of double-figures over Gordon Brown and probably believed that he was more popular than he actually was and could jettison that burdensome referendum.

He always knew that the Czechs would ratify the Treaty so he could use this as a justification of his reneging on his "cast iron" guarantee. Deluded Tories see Cameron's reneging as proof that the Tories are the party of pragmatics. They do what they can do. They are not idealist or utopian. On the contrary, no Conservative leader has surrendered more to left-wing idealism than David Cameron.

Look at Cameron's meddling in his Party's own candidate selection procedures prior to the 2010 electoral contest. Look how he manipulated the South West Norfolk selection committee into choosing the young, female Elizabeth Truss as its candidate. For someone who ought to dislike powerful central executives, Cameron acts very much like a powerful central executive. It wasn't only Elizabeth Truss, but other female and ethnic minority candidates were "parachuted" into good constituencies in a way Cameron's mentor Tony Blair would have been proud of.

If Cameron's Tories cannot leave his Party's candidate selection procedure to meritocracy, what chance does our dreadful education system have? A truly Conservative Party would restore the tripartite education system; having grammar schools around the country would improve educational standards and give bright but poor students a chance to go to the top of society. But they won't restore grammar schools because they are ideologically wed to comprehensive egalitarianism - a system that places political correctness and equality of outcome above academia.

I know a lot of Tories who are cynical about David Cameron look fondly upon Margaret Thatcher, as if she was the apogee of conservatism. The truth is she was not. Her fixation with markets restored our economy to a position of greatness in the world but it did nothing for conservative values. If you look at the Conservative prime-ministers since the Second World War, none have been conservative.

It is not a new thing that the Tory Party has lost its identity and betrayed its conservative supporters. David Cameron's Tories are simply the most painfully blatant example of a party that has ceased to be useful and ceased to serve its purpose. This is why those Tories who cling to the Party in the hope that the next leader will hold conservative values will be disappointed: The Tory Party's dying isn't a recent phenomena. It has been dying for over half a century.

It cannot be saved.

James Garry is editor of Politics On Toast

Is the Uk Libertarian Party Serious?

2011-10-09T19:32:00.004+01:00

Something this bunny keeps an eye on is the directions from which our inbound traffic arrives. Much like the well-known game show 'Jeopardy', it's a case of 'if Outspoken Rabbit was the answer, then what was the question?'. The friend who pointed me in the direction of Benedict Le Gauche and his contrarian approach towards finding gainful employment deserves full credit for delivering our most visited post of all time. Pieces on the fortunes of the Uk Libertarian Party have also attracted traffic, and yesterday I saw that someone who wound up here had done so after originally asking "is the LPUK serious?".

Good question - there are probably two angles from which to answer it, and one has already been done to death on these pages several times over. I'm sure that the saga has not yet concluded and there will be further developments worth commenting on at a later date (I'll draw your attention to the write-up of a meeting on Thursday that was attended by none other than Nic Coome - http://libertarianhome.co.uk/2011/10/meeting-with-nic-coome/. Many thanks to Simon and co for keeping us informed). If the noises now coming out of the Withers cabal suggest that an answer to the sixty-four million dollar question (ie - where's the money gone?) is forthcoming, then one can only muse as to why this was not an option around April/May time.

Having seen this same group stubbornly refuse to even countenance disclosure of the accounts amid widespread calls to do just that, this bunny (as an ex-LPUK member who was sick of the threats, bullshit and stalling and walked away) remains deeply sceptical with regard to the motives for this apparent change of heart. How many paid-up members does the AP Withers benevolent fund have at the moment, and who are this gentleman's club referring to as the leader in the eyes of the Electoral Commission? With their online appeal for new funds torpedoed by Anna Raccoon and this site - http://outspokenrabbit.blogspot.com/2011/07/cult-of-andrew-withers-deserve-what.html, would it be unreasonable to conclude that money is at the heart of this move, as it has been central to so many of LPUK's very public traumas?

The guys set out some reasonable expectations with regard to what they want from Withers in particular, but this bunny would advise extreme caution in their dealings with someone with a penchant for the underhanded. While the promise of disclosure and transparency is indeed something that many might regard as a chink of light, it also represents a tool with which to bargain and negotiate. Having dealt extensively with what might politely be referred to as 'the scheming type' in a previous life, this bunny recognises a certain modus operandi - dangle a carrot, but insist upon something in return, and before delivery (in this case, for dissidents to come back on board and, more importantly, start handing over their hard-earned again).

When you're dealing with the devil, hardball is the only game worth playing and this bunny just hopes that anyone intent on such a showdown is pig-headed and obstinate enough to give nothing away.

A back catalogue of pieces detailing the extent of LPUK's problems appears here:-

http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/libertarian-liberties/
http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/minority-report-libertarian-party/
http://outspokenrabbit.blogspot.com/2011/07/coongate-cover-up.html
http://outspokenrabbit.blogspot.com/2011/07/cult-of-andrew-withers-deserve-what.html

So if we're talking about the current incarnation of the party, then there are a multitude of reasons why an individual who is 'committed to the cause' might take them less than seriously. But then there's a second question - is the notion of a Libertarian Party itself a large part of the problem? Instinctive liberals are often uncomfortable with either being ordered around or adopting this 'seargant major' approach with others. Most of us understand how organisations based on a rigidly hierarchical structure, with a great deal of power concentrated in its higher echelons, increases the scope for corruption, theft and abuse of that authority - after all, such positions are naturally inclined to attract the predictable assortment of bullies, parasites and sycophants that make the mainstream parties so loathsome.

There are clear advantages to having a political party that fights for a Libertarian cause. That is not to say that without one the fight against Statism would die, but while campaigns, pressure groups and even the blogosphere have their function, actual participation in elections and the recognised political sphere is the most likely way in which our ideas can be communicated beyond the converted. Of course, LPUK's presence in contested elections bordered on non-existent, since some of its top brass disowned the party name to stand as 'independents' (on one occasion at the financial expense of its members).

There are probably three lessons that can be learned from the mess that was LPUK - first up, the mere presence of any phoenix needs to be communicated properly so it does not stagnate as an internet movement. This means embracing and participating in campaigns on issues that matter and getting prominent members into print and on the airwaves. Secondly, the structure and constitution of the party have to reflect an organisation that is itself instinctively liberal - disagreement with 'the party line' ought not be a hanging offence or cause for expulsion. The top-down principle of 'the fuhrer is always right' is that on which the Statists base their own model of cult/drone parties - surely as good a reason as any for us to reject it even if we write off the previous instance of 'skimming off the top' as 'one of those things'?

Something I heard from several directions while a member was the suggestion that we needed to become a slick, professional machine (which to this bunny sounds like code for - base our working methods on those of the parties we can't stand). I struggle to see how anyone could look to the LibLabCon as positive inspiration on any level - it is precisely because they are slick and professional that nobody trusts a word that they say. The thought of party organs being subject to Stasi-esque censorship left this bunny positively sub-zero, since what is considered outside the mainstream and highly controversial today might be proved to be accurate far sooner than one might think. Far from prohibiting comment and debate that might be deemed slightly crazy, this bunny would positively encourage it.

Remember, our opponents are always going to suggest that we're insane anyway - so talk, in fact shout from the rooftops about guns, drugs, prostitution, pornography and all the other 'fun' topics that appeared to be off-limits as LPUK became an 'economics party'. We shouldn't be afraid of having a sense of humour, ripping the piss out of our opponents or taking stances that will be deeply unpopular (such as:- mass immigration has been necessary over the years to cover the idleness of others who were born here, or:- it's none of the state's business to promote marriage or 'stable family life' - what goes on in the bedrooms of consenting adults is entirely their business. Nanny as voyeur is something of a passion killer, surely?).

For those seeking to retrieve something from the wreckage, this bunny tentatively wishes them well. However, if a phoenix eventually emerges from the flames, I hope our understanding of what went on in the past is not merely confined to the epic swindling of one man. As a group who believe in the sovereignty of the individual, it would perhaps be a more rewarding experience for all concerned if we kept this principle in mind at all times? We would of course need to co-operate voluntarily, but in this bunny's experience the only person we're any good at being is ourselves. If that means being perceived in some quarters as slightly mad, then hey it beats the hell out of total anonymity. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Saturday Session

2011-10-08T17:46:00.003+01:00

Two slices of Sunday Rabbit coming up - in the meantime, here are a couple of musical blasts from the past.

I've always liked REM and their work, particularly the early stuff that pre-dated their arrival as an international phenomenon in the 1990s. On that note, two gems from Stipe, Buck and Mills that this bunny is particularly fond of - the quintessentially jangly 'Can't Get There from Here', released way back in 1985 and 1994's 'Bang and Blame' (love the vibrato effect Peter's got going on that guitar by the way - nicely done).

I'll leave you with an obscure 80s epic. 'Brilliant Mind' was Furniture's only hit single, and what a mark on mortality it is. Only a set of brilliant minds could themselves craft song that is strangely hypnotic while crossing into the spheres of angst-ridden melancholia, loneliness and the feeling of being manipulated.

We'll be talking spot-fixing amongst other things tomorrow - take care and I'll catch you then.

Unsung Heroes

2011-10-07T22:00:00.003+01:00

The advent of email, twitter, youtube and facebook has resulted in a serious decline in traditional, some would say more romantic, forms of communication. One form of communication which has all but ceased is the 'message in a bottle'. Or so I thought until I saw this clip on the bbc webite. It appears one truely inspirational individual in Canada, who goes by the name of Harold Hackett, is still practicing the worlds oldest form of social networking. Watching this short clip got me thinking. Sometimes in life we are all too ready to lavish admiration upon politicans, businesspeople, athletes, artists, scientists and and so forth. However, equally amazing (in my opinion) people like Harold get overlooked or dismissed as 'ordinary guys'. I meet wonderful, interesting people like Harold every day when I'm walking my dog or down the job centre, they make life into a rich tapestry. Sure,their not doing anything for world peace, but you know what, their a darn site more interesting and they have far more impact on my life than Morgan Tsvangirai or Bono. Here's to ya Harold! I'll keep an eye for your bottles mate.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14859116

Absence

2011-10-07T21:38:00.002+01:00

When I am done
and this old heart stops beating
and this well warn frame has had enough of fleeting time
and my spirit flys free
with smoke upon the air

Do not feel bereft
for I am there
that shadow on the edge of the wood is I
watching in the field
the wild cavarting hair
and when the dog barks distant in the wind
its only me, walking tasting the silver moon
watching changing stars
and listening to owls talking in the trees
when you hear small stones rattling high in the ghyll
its by my misty feet dancing on the rock
be still

I love this land too much to leave it
yet greater men taste the cosmic glory
leaving me here to join the wind
to watch the never ending story
and fly with clouds across the autumn hill
and chase the dancing leaves down the hazel'd lanes

Never Comes Along

2011-10-07T18:47:00.001+01:00

Searching hard for some affirmation
from the ones who you think you love
Dropping hints in the conversation
will what you do ever be enough?
Now the truth appears in your eyeline
it's not that you've done something wrong
You realise you're wasting your time
chasing the approval that....never comes along

It never comes along
oh no, it never comes along

Trying too hard for the validation
of the one that you're yearning for
Instinctive fear of humiliation
leaves you gun-shy, you know the score
The harsh truth sits under your nose
and deep down you knew it all along
You're nothing, and that's how it goes
dreaming of an angel who...never comes along

She never comes along
oh no, she never comes along

Life teaches you to
disbelieve in fairytales
drop your childlike view
of the world and prepare to fail
Cos like everyone else
your existence offers bits of plaster
as you stagger unelped
from desolation to disaster

And a resolution...never comes along
it never comes along
oh no, it never comes along
you hope and pray - it never comes along

I don't dream anymore
life's more fun when you don't bother
I don't dream anymore
life's more fun when you don't bother

Mickey Thomas for Chancellor!!

2011-10-06T22:33:00.002+01:00

I wasn't around to see the football of the late 1970s and was unable to gather a full understanding of what took place for most of the next decade. Watching old matches on television often leaves this bunny with the impression that the whole experience of the game back then was different, with more fun being had by players and supporters alike (several people who were around at the time have confirmed the validity of such perceptions). One could imagine the response of a coach in the modern era if his wide player, upon beating the full back chose not to play the ball into the box, but retreats ten yards while retaining possession, to pit his wits a second time against the same opposing number.

This of course is the thinking of a type of individual who could only be deemed a luxury in 21st century football, where of course every player is required to be an attacker, defender and more than anything a wholehearted team player. Mickey Thomas was one such individual, a wideman gifted with a penchant for the unpredictable, but equally prone to long spells of inactivity and anonymity. However, while the game of football has (for better or worse) moved on in a direction that has rendered performers of his ilk obsolete, the former Man United and Everton star was very much ahead of his time with regard to his later, er...career.

Anyone who believes quantitative easing to be a relatively new phenomenon should do some digging into how Thomas understood its value the best part of two decades ago. In his many appearances as an after-dinner speaker, one of his favourite jokes was to namedrop a United player who'd just signed a lucrative contract (for example, Rio Ferdinand's £100,000 a week deal) and play it down, "people go on about Rio being on a hundred grand a week - hey, so was I until the police found my machine". Brilliant stuff, only the powers that be did not see the funny side at the time, sentencing 'the Welsh Tenner' to 18 months hard labour for his personal endeavours towards providing an 'economic stimulus'.

At some point since 1993, there has clearly been a change of heart, since Mickey's unique take on control of the money supply has clearly provided the inspiration for Uk governments of both persuasions to do the same (ok, it was either him or Robert Mugabe, take your pick). Statists of course have a nice word or phrase for everything - the policing of thought comes under the umbrella of 'fighting discrimination', large-scale swindling of property is all in the name of 'helping the most vulnerable' and now State-sponsored counterfeiting and theft from the general population is 'quantitative easing'.

The idea, apparently, is for the Bank of England to buy £75 billion worth of government bonds or assets (I'm amazed they actually exist, but there you go) in the hope that banks will lend the money to businesses and stimulate some much-needed growth. With the economy flatlining at a dismal 0.1% it does have the look of a batsman waiting for legendary umpire Steve Bucknor to raise the finger, millimetre at a time and slowly give him out - something along the lines of lingering death. The never-ending string of Statist measures to prop up their failing economic model is of course nothing more than their attempt to delay the inevitable, thereby increasing the size of the crater when the day of reckoning finally comes.

QE is just the latest of a long line, and like most of the others it is ultimately doomed to failure. Even its apologists acknowledge that if the volume of money supplied into the economy is insufficient, or the banks choose not to lend it, then the whole exercise will be ineffective, while travelling too far in the opposite direction can potentially lead to a Zimbabwe-style meltdown. Somewhere on this 'laffer curve of risk' is believed to be a point where the economy is kick-started into signs of life, without the adverse inflationary effects that would logically go with it - the credibility of such a thesis is itself dubious, but what is beyond doubt is that previous attempts to find 'the growth spot' have been wide of the target.

Then there is the principle of the whole thing - Mickey Thomas wound up in chokey for a very good reason, namely because 'quantitative easing' as the State likes to label it, is nothing other than theft. Many of us (this bunny included) have been reckless and saw debt as 'a good idea at the time', but what about those who took a more responsible and prudent path? It is the fruits of their labours, endeavours and wise choices that are set to rapidly diminish in value as a direct consequence of a deliberately orchestrated government policy. Some five minutes after camera-chasing politicians queued up to condemn the assortment of chavs who took to looting, they seem determined to cash in on a piece of the action themselves. Snaffling something nice from JD Sports is clearly beneath their ambitions.

One wonders if the architects of State-sponsored counterfeiting gave a moment's thoughts to existing pensioners, stuck as they are on fixed incomes, or future ones who look set to suffer from reduced bond yields. Low-earners, about whom successive governments have claimed to care so, so much will feel the pinch even harder until whenever their next pay rise comes along - Statists of course care nothing for ordinary people when the preservation of their rotten edifice is at stake. The big winners, as is often the case, are the banks - beneficiaries already from vast quantities of taxpayers money and a government determined to protect them from the deserved consequences of failure.

If they're absolutely determined to persist with this QE madness, then why not go the whole hog and divide the £75 billion amongst every adult in the Uk? Imagine the chaos in town centres on a day when the general population benefited from a slice of 'free money' - shops, cafes, bars and football grounds would be packed as we all pretended to be a whole lot more affluent than we actually were. Sure, this ultimately adds to the size of the heap, but it would be an altogether more joyous experience than watching bigshots in the city do the same thing - it would also be one of the few moves made by government that could be guaranteed to win them an election.

I'll leave you with highlights of a memorable FA Cup tie between Wrexham and Arsenal in 1992 - this of course was 37-year old Mickey Thomas's last famous on-field contribution, as he scores a superb free kick to level the scores at 1-1 en route to a shock victory for the Welsh side (based on the previous season's placings, this match pitted bottom of Division Four against reigning League champions). The odds on Thomas to score in a Wrexham victory prior to the game would have certainly been spectacular - it's also a safe bet when one has the capacity to instantly replace any money they lose. Of course, he was not to know that this sideline would eventually become government policy, and unlike this 'growth strategy', his shot that January afternoon at the Racecourse was bang on the money. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Group Thinking - Stupidity in Solidarity

2011-10-05T20:43:00.004+01:00

One of the key components of instinctive liberalism is a firm belief that we are all individuals, that I own my life and that everyone else owns theirs. People are but a walking, talking collection of their strengths, weaknesses and differences - I don't go in for that PC nonsense of 'everyone is special' but it is indeed true to say that we are all unique and indeed individual.

In this regard, two famous quotes from Albert Einstein stand out immediately, "The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling". Of course it is the individual capable of thinking entirely for him or herself who is usually remembered while the herd tied to conventional wisdom are born, exist and then die with barely a soul noticing. As he was on many subjects, Einstein is right on the question of individual vs collective. It is those possessed of the skill and boldness to 'think outside the box' who invariably leave the greatest mark on mortality, acknowledged by this second, shorter and simpler quote, "Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom". Individual greatness and 'going with the flow' are hardly compatible when one thinks about it, are they?

Unfortunately, the civilised world does not produce maverick geniuses like Einstein in anything like the volume that it once did. This bunny is convinced that much of this owes itself to the way in which Statism, a sense that we are mere belongings of a collective and 'greater good' has become the dominant way of life throughout Europe and is now slowly winning in America. The fundamental premises on which Statism is based are either attempts to deny fundamental aspects of human nature, tools of manipulation or direct lies. Pursuing self-interest and seeking to put one's own house in order first is 'selfish' and goes against 'the greater good'. Eccentricity or the possession of opinions that do not owe themselves to received conventional wisdom are derided and countered with scorn, spite and ridicule. When society is perceived as a team that 'has to work together', any notion that co-operation should be voluntary and for mutual benefit goes out of the window.

Group thinking or 'solidarity' has a number of unpleasant side effects. Individuals are not encouraged to blossom, thrive and make the most of themselves (and by definition, society as a whole), but pointed in the direction of a box with their name on it and told to stay there. In the end, we all lose out as those who make discoveries, breakthroughs and develop pioneering ideas, theories or inventions become fewer in number. A world without slightly mad geniuses may suit the bully, manipulator and control freak, but represents that loudest of sirens to anyone who values liberty, individuality and a society that challenges the conventional wisdom that might bind it at the time. Fewer traffic wardens and more Einsteins would surely make sense on a multitude of levels? Statists clearly see the world differently.

Of course, when one sees (or is encouraged to see) themselves primarily as a member of the masses and not as an individual, the results can be dangerous and indeed tragic. In reality, all of us are driven at least to some extent by what is a perfectly healthy self-interest and the wish to improve our own lives. The model of the fuhrer and his cult of devoted drones of course has an appalling and highly consistent track record of murder, oppression, theft and horrific abuse, be it in the political sphere, organised religion or anywhere else. This self-perception of 'cog in the machine', whose sole reason for existence is to 'fit in' is a wide open goal to the manipulative, vindictive, destructive and psychotic - a conscious decision on the part of the individual to become a voluntary victim of tyrrany. Of course, the same people can then, rather perversely but simultaneously become participants in it.

Talent or obedience? Skill or sycophancy? Creativity or manipulation? Contrary to what Statists would have us believe, the choice really is ours. A world in which the individual is both aware of and confident in the ability to think for themselves, free from state or societal interference into their lawful choices and to co-operate voluntarily, in the self-interest of all involved, is one worth talking, campaigning and (in a strictly non-violent way) fighting for. I'll leave you with this video, which I've shown you already but illustrates these battle lines of politics and everyday life brilliantly - thanks to ManNotNumber for drawing this bunny's attention to it. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

A Truly Free Market can be Good for Football

2011-10-04T23:59:00.000+01:00

The European Union and its various arms of interference get something of a kicking on these pages, and usually with good reason. The Tories' current appeal to populism regarding the European Convention on Human Rights may be utterly vacuous and bound to end in failure, but there is considerable merit in the view that it the ECHR produces a disproportionate number of perverse outcomes in cases that should be fairly clear-cut. While this bunny would never wish for the Uk to lose its status as a haven and place of refuge for the genuinely oppressed, those who come to these shores on such terms clearly have their own side of the bargain to fulfil - namely to keep their noses clean and not engage in criminal behaviour.

Being born in a country that tortures and kills its citizens should not buy one a free pass in Britain on a no-strings-attached basis, so the frustration felt by many when this is cited by the ECHR as a reason for our continued 'protection' of individuals convicted of serious offences is understandable. Occasionally, we hear of instances where the person concerned has married someone born here, therefore meaning that deportation to their homeland would infringe their 'right to a family life' - of course, it is only these truly wacky cases that are reported in the mainstream media, as opposed to the majority in which the convention works well. However, the inability of any Uk government to opt out while remaining within the EU means that the law cannot be amended as anomalies occur to ensure they do not happen again.

It is this general sense of powerlessness that rests at the heart of most anti-Euro sentiment in Britain. A Uk Bill of Rights, based loosely on the model of the US Constitution, would no doubt be popular with many (this bunny and several of our contributors included) - whether any of our dud parties really want to apply negative freedoms that legally protect individuals from State tyrrany is of course another issue entirely.

The latest brainwave from Brussels last week involved something that could best be referred to as 'free movement of welfare'. Were this proposal to become law, new entrants into EU States would be entitled to claim precisely the same amounts in welfare as an individual who was born and has worked in that country. Dave insists he will fight this, and this bunny will leave you to make up your own mind whether or not you believe him. Of course, every action by government has an unintended consequence and there might eventually be a positive fallout from all of this. State generosity with other people's money is bound to attract unintended levels of 'tourism', so the smartest counter to such a move is - less welfare, and get only those immigrants who are entering the Uk for the right reasons.

Wonder how long it will take for one of the Statist duds to figure that one out? Here's hoping...and waiting...

Anyway, back to business. Just occasionally, an outcome arises from a European arbiter that could be described as overwhelmingly positive. This bunny has long held the view that the Uk's situation with regard to the screening of live football was at best a cartel and in all likelihood a gangster capitalist monopoly, practising a form of extortion on the general population. Karen Murphy, a Portsmouth publican who has paid £8,000 in fines and charges for screening Greek TV coverage of Premier League matches on licensed premises, took a test case to the European Court of Justice, claiming that refusal to allow such broadcasts amounted to a restriction of free trade. Though it is not yet over, with the judgement still to be ratified by the High Court, the fact that the score after today stands at Gangster Capitalism 0, Free Trade 1 offers hope to those of us who hate monopolies and seek a genuinely consumer-driven society.

The Premier League is a massively feared organisation in England, with most of us understanding quite clearly that they, and not the Football Association, hold the levers of power over the domestic game. Since its launch in 1992, the essential rule has been - what the Premier League says, goes. With the wealth accumulated through bargaining for collective (and highly lucrative) television rights came the ability to make 'the greatest league in the world' the primary focus of any discussion about football's future. Even those of our readers (and I suspect there are many) who care not for football will know that the Premier League has become big, corporate, multi-billion pound business, made ever more remarkable by the clubs' penchant for actually losing money despite the windfalls at their disposal. Now it's finally been 'discovered' that the television deal on which these billions were made may really have been a cartel or monopoly - go figure...

There remains an issue around copyright - not so much regarding the match being shown at the time, but of the Premier League brand, preservation of which appears to have been paramount to them since the outset. The displaying of their logo on-screen during a public broadcast would appear to be the bone of contention, and from the outside it smacks of a desperate attempt to clutch at straws against a turning tide.

The smart broadcasters will simply begin from 30 seconds before kick-off, perhaps resulting in Premier League secret agents hanging out in bars, hoping for their trademark to appear on-screen so they can pounce in Elliott Ness stylee and close the 'soccer speakeasie' down? Meanwhile, watching an EPL fixture on a foreign television decoder from the comfort of one's own home would now appear to be completely kosher - the genie is well and truly out of the bottle and this represents something of an anomaly in itself. If 'domestic consumption' is ok but 'public broadcasts' forbidden, how many people does one have to invite round to their house before the former becomes the latter?

The potential ramifications are massive for other televised sports, films and other popular programmes - with the consumer now free to walk away from Sky or ESPN and seek their soccer elsewhere, does their massive investment in the EPL commodity represent the decent value that it did to at least someone when the 'exclusive' deals were first struck? One would think not, and this surely has the potential to ripple through to other sports. The 'protected list', those events guaranteed to terrestrial providers, would certainly constitute a monopoly of its own and in all likelihood not be worth the paper it's written on. Meanwhile, if one applies this quite correct 'internal market' and 'free trade' thinking to the letter, State broadcasters such as the BBC must be prime targets to be broken up and/or privatised? If they're attacking monopolistic trading models, then one would hope that any such crusade did not stop at the villainous, low-hanging fruit of Murdoch and Sky.

Some are deeply worried about the potential end-game of clubs taking the initiative and selling their own TV rights, perhaps led to this sense of angst by negative instances in Italy and the Netherlands. This bunny fails to see the validity of such an analogy, since we have a much broader base of football support in England outside the top division. The lure of multi-millions for finishing last in the 'promised land' of the Premier League, backed by parachute payments upon instant relegation, has brought about a culture of recklessness and irresponsibility from chairmen and owners 'chasing the dream'. Some have fallen short and subsequently paid the price (Preston North End are a good example of this), while others (such as Bradford City) made it, spent the money, then found themselves back in the second tier faced with long-term contracts and a Premier League wage bill - administration and two further relegations followed.

Take the Sky bounty out of the equation, and this modus operandi of 'speculate to crash and burn' is cut off at a stroke. Yes, the likes of Manchester United will always have most to gain from going it alone, but then there may be a sting in the tail when matches are moved to 2am for the benefit of the Far East market - how long will their army of London-based fans tolerate it for? Getting into or dropping out of the top flight will matter more in sporting terms than anything else - in fact, gates can often be higher when the team is winning, occupying top spot in a lower division and there is no reason why television subscriptions cannot follow the same trend.

Half of the clubs currently in the Premier League could be described as its undoubted winners - naturally, many would by no means be 'too big' to play in the Championship, but their status at the elite level means ensures an inflated position of financial privilege. For example, could Leeds United and Nottingham Forest not sell just as many TV subscriptions as Blackburn Rovers and Wigan Athletic, and possibly more? What if relegation was not the end of the world - would we see less short-termism, fewer average players on obscene salaries and less trigger-happy, panicking chairmen, desperate to preserve the status quo? Naturally, the calibre of opposition on show would enable top-flight clubs to charge their supporters more to watch their games on television, just as they do at the turnstile, but the reduced effect in relative terms would mean the Premier League was no longer 'the promised land', nor would demotion from it equate to instant ruin.

This can be no bad thing and neither is another potential fallout - the new winners, outside of the established 'rich list', would be those who engaged with and valued their supporters. The size of football's financial pie would in all likelihood be smaller, but the general distribution of it may well turn out to be more even in the long run. One of the natural fears is that the ability to watch all of a team's games on television would drive supporters away from stadia. However, below a certain threshold this would simply not be possible, and while those clubs unable to make pay-per-view television work could always bargain collectively with a regional or national broadcaster, the need to attract paying fans through the gate would remain as pressing as ever. More than anything, a football match without an enthusiastic crowd does not make for good television.

However, there are ways in which a creative approach could indeed generate revenue - for example, why not broadcast only away matches on Club TV and sell this in conjunction with a season ticket at a discounted rate? How about the occasional free admission game for TV subscribers? There is of course nothing to stop clubs in Leagues One, Two and the Conference from endeavouring to attract overseas support and increase their revenue streams (before you laugh that off, East Stirling, whipping boys of Scottish football at the time, gained a cult following in Norway, essentially off the back of being useless and having a Norwegian midfielder - this bunny suspects Shire TV would do surprisingly well if marketed properly).

In short, clubs that maximised and then looked after their supporter base would thrive, while those who continued to neglect them ran the risk of oblivion or extinction - they would very much be in control of their own destiny, and what's wrong with that?

Some people see the mess that is the Premier League and over-rewarded footballers as a stain against the name of the free market. In reality, it is another of gangster capitalism's dubious triumphs, sitting neatly beside the energy extortion racket and 'privatised' railways. Undeserving rich and distorted remuneration are of course the inevitable side-effects when monopolies and cartels run the show, and a dose of free market realism is the antidote to such ills - in that sense, Karen Murphy may have opened a rather welcome can of worms. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

UNITEd swoop for Striker

2011-10-03T18:22:00.001+01:00

Breaking news – UNITEd have issued a press release confirming that they have just completed the signing of an internationally-renowned striker.

The player (who has obtained a superinjunction that means we cannot name him for legal reasons) issued a statement through his representative for northern Europe and Scandinavia, “ever since the stories I heard about Che Guevara when I was growing up, I always dreamed of turning out for UNITEd, just as I did about playing for Real Manchester and the East End Turbohammers. Up the Reds!!”

A spokesman on behalf of UNITEd told a gathering of journalists, “we made no secret of the fact that a proven striker was our top priority and we’re absolutely delighted to have captured one with real pedigree, as he proved in the last round of Champions League fixtures”.

UNITEd of course have a six-pointer coming up against their arch-rivals the Bullingdon Cavaliers, and the statement from the club alluded to the significance of such a signing in this context, “when you face tough opposition like the Bullingdon Cavaliers, the ability of a player to lead the line, strike out on his own and generally cause absolute mayhem is a big plus. In that sense, it’s important that the focal point of your strategy is kept free of injuries – apparently, he used to play a bit of football and we’ve told him to stop doing that”.

Take care and I’ll catch you soon

Andrew Tyrie is Right, but Who's Gonna Tell the Truth?

2011-10-02T20:53:00.001+01:00

This probably wasn't what Dave wanted to hear ahead of the Tories' annual parade, which of course is being held this year in the distinctly unconservative city of Manchester. With the predictable assortment of trots, reds and those seeking to defend their 'entitlements' marching against spending cuts, it would perhaps have been politically favourable for his charges to stay on message and toe the party line, at least in public. As a general rule, the Conservative Party have historically been the most internally 'disciplined' amongst the trio of duds that make up mainstream Uk politics.

One of the reasons why their disintegration into full-on civil war during the 1990s is so well remembered is precisely because it was hardly a common occurrence - meanwhile, the New Labour high command, determined to win at all costs in 1997, had instructed their MPs not to so much as breathe without checking their pagers first. This bunny has always believed that the broad church of a political party should seek to encourage debate from within, but there is a line beyond which having particularly heated fall-outs, especially in public, does nothing but harm in the long run. When one considers the disproportionate level of influence that the Social Democrats have managed to exert over coalition policy, such expressions of disquiet from within the Tory ranks have been fewer than must surely be held in private?

As chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie's opinion on the state of the economy and the coalition's plan to get it back on track counts for something, at least nominally. It becomes more significant when he turns out to be balls-on accurate in his analysis - "inconsistent and incoherent" is a polite enough way of getting across the message that the current course of action is merely leading us down a cul-de-sac of drawn out austerity and economic stagnation. Tyrie appears to be agreeing with the results of this poll of Conservative members - http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2011/10/over-half-of-tory-members-say-osborne-should-cut-faster-and-deeper.html, that either the scale or pace of the cuts should be increased to facilitate lower, more competitive taxe rates.

This of course is precisely the opposite of what the fantasists are marching for today, but still enough to generate noises in uber-Statist country about divisions and splits within the Conservative Party. This may be politically undesirable and less than brilliant timing, but needs saying nonetheless. Cameron's obsession with climate change, increasing the international aid budget, taking on another costly foreign intervention and the utterly vacuous 'Big Society' (something along the lines of 'let's all join the scouts') amount to nothing more than the frittering away of money that should be returned to those who earned it. The issue with these 'vicious and wicked' cuts (if only) is not only do they fall short of the mark required to significantly reduce the tax burden, most of them are still some way from being implemented, and therefore become vulnerable to political expediency.

With talk of 'infrastructure' spending and a 'buy now, pay later' housing scheme, the Brownite notion that governments can somehow conjure up jobs themselves appears to still dominate our political discourse. When this bunny saw 'Tory Boy' Osborne on television earlier, explaining how the coalition would be creating 200,000 jobs, it served to illustrate precisely how Statist thinking and vocabulary has seeped into the fabric of all three of the dud parties. Meanwhile, tax cuts, at least of the personal (as opposed to corporate) variety are dismissed as unaffordable and off the radar for the time being. In reality, increasing the purchasing power of ordinary wage earners should be the number one priority for any government serious about creating the conditions for sustained economic growth - this is the only 'stimulus' that has a proven track record of working.

Deregulation would be a great boost to business were the scale of the Tories' stated ambition actually possible. The Labour years saw SMEs strangled by red tape that increased the costs of employing people and offering a service at a fair price to the consumer. Their gangster capitalist friends of course had sufficient resources to cushion the blow, or the necessary hired help to navigate their way around the rules. It was the one-man band looking to strike out on his own who really suffered, as the mountain to market entry grew and startup costs soared - it would make so much sense to re-visit regulations regarding health and safety, equal opportunities and rights on maternity/paternity, simplifying or modifying some while scrapping other aspects altogether.

The great difficulty of course rests in the fact that like three quarters of all our laws, most of the rules that govern economic activity in the Uk originate from and are forced upon us by the European Union. The logical (and correct) conclusion to draw from this is that only leaving the EU will enable any British government to deregulate the economy sufficiently to kick-start a spurt of growth, based on the creation of real wealth and jobs as opposed to the old Statist trick of 'investing' taxpayers' money and including resultant activity in the growth forecast. The Tories' recent noises on Europe, a subject that has clearly haunted them over the years, have been either disingenuous or delusional - take your pick.

They are clearly hamstrung by the presence in coalition of the fervently pro-Federalist Social Democrats, whose sycophancy towards all things EU borders on nauseating. While the grassroots and new intake of MPs appear to be as Eurosceptic as ever, Conservative top brass makes the occasional noise about 'repatriating powers', something which history tells us will not be allowed to happen. All of the significant developments in the narrative of the EEC/EU (think Single European Act, Maastricht, Lisbon) have been in entirely the opposite direction. Recent events confirm what we already suspected, namely that as far as its advocates are concerned, mass unemployment and malfunctioning economies across the Eurozone are, to coin a phrase, 'a price worth paying' for the greater good of the Federalist dream.

With the pro-Euro wing in the Tories smaller and less vocal than it has been for a generation, the party might never get a better opportunity to confront their demons on the issue and acknowledge that the terms of the conversation have shifted to a rather black and white 'in or out'. At least opening up the possibility of withdrawing from the EU would give their plans for the economy a whole host of other areas the sort of credibility they badly lack right now, but then given the Statist dishwater politics we have right now. this bunny would not bank on it happening. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Nationalised services in all but name

2011-10-02T13:15:00.000+01:00

Privatisation was introduced as a policy in the late 1970s by politicians who saw the benefit to the consumer that would result from competition between the suppliers of goods and services. The naturally regulated ebb and flow of those who seek their own interest in the process of supplying such goods and services to others for personal gain.

Earlier, one of the first movers to challenge nationalised industries was Freddie Laker who took on the national flag-carrier airlines much to their abiding horror. They managed to substantially defeat him personally, but not the move that he had started as can be seen in the proliferation of budget airlines today.

It did not take long for some of those suppliers of the nationalised functions to see that the huge captive market they benefitted from as a nationalised goods or service provider was something to be retained if possible.

And of course, anything is possible more or less, if one puts one's mind to it.

As they saw the great cash cows slipping away perhaps they simply set up "private" corporations to supply the goods or services that had been supplied by the nationalised industries?

This revised privatisation mantra indeed spread around the world during the 1980s and 90s and in some situations the instigators did not even bother to conceal their identity with the state. They simply formed private companies wholly or majority owned by the state. Such as Telkom, in South Africa.

In Britain it seems to have been more subtle in its outworking, but the monoplised or cartellised situation of supply would seem to have been achieved none the less.

So much that has tried to pass itself off as privatisation since its earlier days of more honest implementation circa 1979 looks basically like a con game.

It's not the banker's bonuses one needs to be looking at so much as the people, who may be bankers or have interests in banks, or in large corporations, companies or global service providers, who may also be in state employment or rather, simply influencial in the state structure.

Privatisation as now practised would clearly seem to have been transformed from a policy of throwing open nationalised industries to free enterprise competition, into that of throwing open the nationalised sector to monopolistic cartels.

Effectively, back to business as it was, with the market controlled by suppliers rather than consumers, and in hallmark style of the enemies of freedom, giving freedom a bad name in the process as they have allowed standards to erode.

It was tragic that the Herald of Free Enterprise was sunk.

The Wellfair State? Not Exactly

2011-10-01T19:09:00.002+01:00

In one of his best interviews, Ali G once famously asked Statist dinosaur Tony Benn if the welfare state was named as such because it is 'well fair'. Many miss what this bunny saw as one of the more subtle elements of Sacha Baron Cohen's technique, presenting himself as moron with no grasp of the subject and lulling the person answering his seemingly juvenile questions into a false sense of security. For all his faults, Benn was too sharp to fall for it, and would not be drawn when asked about "the right not to work", but this trap was successful on at least one occasion - when pro-hunting campaigners were presenting its case strictly as a form of pest control, Cohen managed to coax one bloodsports enthusiast into admitting that killing animals "makes you feel big". He was very much of a time that has now gone, but there was more to his routine than he is often given credit for.

Of course, some Libertarians would like to do away with welfare pretty much in its entirety. In principle, this bunny supports a safety net as opposed to the hammock that our current system has become, but understands that while leaving a role for the State as a minimalist backstop (when self-reliance and then private charity both fail) makes a lot of sense, the availability of such help at the expense of the taxpayer will always attract the interest of the idle, much as bees are to honey. Once you've established that certain entitlements are there, what reasonable measures can be taken to limit the uptake? In all honesty, not much.

So is our welfare system 'well fair' as Ali G suggested? The notion of 'fairness' has of course become one of those useless phrases in mainstream politics, in much the same way as the dud Statist parties fight this argument of lexis over who is more 'progressive' than their opponent. Nobody expects to make political capital out of claiming to be 'regressive' or 'unfair', it's just their concept of exactly what words mean and entail in policy terms may be somewhat different than yours or mine.

One of the great problems that anti-Statists have is that much of what we oppose can be backed up by something resembling a rational trail of thought and a doomsday scenario, presented as the inevitable consequence of withdrawing taxpayer-funded provision. I'm sure you've heard all this before - universal healthcare means that being born into a poor household does not equate to a death sentence, just as comprehensive education stops the disadvantaged from going through life unable to read or write. Jobseekers Allowance acts as personal insurance against the cyclical nature of economics. Anyone could get crash their car and become disabled, so let's cover that particular risk with 'collective resources' too. Kids are the future, aren't they? So anyone who has children should be in possession of enough money to keep them, with the state making up any shortfall - all makes (a kind of) logical sense, doesn't it?

I don't doubt for a second that the intentions of at least some who either support the welfare system, or played some role in its expansion, were benign - "a land fit for heroes" and all that. However, while one can always find a social issue to which only the mythical 'they' can provide a solution, the welfare mammoth grows in scope, becoming more complicated, nuanced and expensive as a result. There are two unintended consequences of spawning such a monster - first up, the question becomes not so much one of personal need and more about who can best navigate and negotiate their way around the system, something that surely undermines the principle for which welfare was intended in the first place?

More dangerously, a safety net that has grown into a hammock can very rapidly escalate into a a way of life. High welfare requires high taxes to pay for it, and this money of course has to be taken from those who are creating wealth and jobs in the real economy. Something that Statists are often loathe to acknowledge is the existence of human nature and all the subtleties that it brings with it. Individuals do not go into business out of the goodness of their hearts, but to earn a living for themselves - the jobs that are created, enabling others to do the same, are pleasant side effects in reality. Slash the potential rewards of such activity and the inevitable result is fewer opportunities for the general population. Young people are usually the biggest losers in such a climate as we are discovering at the moment, and with employment prospects notable by their absence, but welfare everywhere you look, the latter becomes a more credible and stable option - not necessarily a well-rewarded one, but a talent for playing and milking the system can go a long way towards altering that equation.

So being out of work and unable to find any (in fairness that is quite possible at the moment) or feigning a disability starts to make a lot of sense, while having kids can, tragically, become a relatively lucrative money-spinner. The scale on which teenage girls deliberately 'get knocked up for a council house' is debatable, but this is perhaps the biggest area in which the presence of a 'safety net' has been seriously counter-productive. Occasionally, you'll read tales regarding those who possess the 'full house' of welfare dependency - namely out-of-work benefits, handouts relating to the multiple products of their intensive breeding and an ongoing claim for some kind of disability. Part of this bunny of course feels a natural and instinctive rage towards anyone who has made a conscious choice to become a taxpayer vampire - bloody scroungers, eh?

However, there is another way of looking at all this - sometimes, individuals who are not predisposed towards idleness or selfishness merely allow their noses to follow the money and the incentives (see ManNotNumber's excellent piece on that subject - http://outspokenrabbit.blogspot.com/2011/07/incentives.html). When I hear someone explain that their last great hope is to win the lottery I sigh and can't help but feel sorry for them - welfare dependency operates on much the same level but has probably crept into the individual's consciousness at an early age (perhaps neither mum or dad ever worked, leaving them desensitised to any notion that the rest of society is paying for their upkeep?). For a life with kids that you only had for all the wrong reasons, spent rotting away in a tower block watching daytime TV to sound like an attractive option, or as some sort of way out, then the alternatives must be grim indeed.

Some people simply have no intention of working, of that there is no doubt whatsoever, and how we deal with such cases in the long run is a tricky business while the Uk has a tradition of not allowing its citizens to rot in the street, but Statism and the welfare culture that is an inevitable by-product of it has many victims, including some of the poorest in our society. Two popular phrases come to mind when explaining the nature of welfare and how it alters the dynamics and thought processes of individual behaviour. The first, one that ManNotNumber has referred to previously on these pages, goes, "as long as government promises to rob Peter to pay Paul, it will always have the support of Paul". Tragically, such thinking also cultivates an army of willing Pauls - ie "whenever you increase state intervention in the name of poor people, the end result is - more poor people".

Until the hammock is slashed in such a way so that a life in gainful employment always pays, and the incentives are taken away from the idle, phoney sick and breeding machines, we have no chance of creating the sort of opportunities economy where individuals possess the belief that they can better themselves, with the social mobility that we all want to thrive being able to do so. Statism drains the lake of hope, says 'no you can't', tells the less fortunate to stay in their box and stick to what they know.

Ultimately, the 'friend of the poor' does them nothing but harm, and that does not sound 'well fair' from where this bunny is stood. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Freedom and Piracy

2011-10-01T11:50:00.001+01:00

After the non-aggression axiom, the right to own property has always been high on the list of fixations of those of a libertarian instinct. How property is defined, however, has been a matter of much debate, particularly with regard to “intellectual property”.

On the one hand, Ayn Rand wrote that “patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man’s right to the product of his mind” whilst, on the other, Roderick Long considers that “prohibiting people from using, reproducing, and trading copyrighted material is an infringement of freedom”.

So who is right?

Well, there are two strands to the debate and the first is to question whether intellectual property rights help or hinder progress. And I would argue they usually hinder.

Supposing, for example, someone discovers that cold fusion occurs when Dettol is mixed with HP sauce (original recipe).

Would the world be better served if he patented the formula and spent the next twenty years trying to develop it himself or would progress be quicker if he made the information available to all manufacturers to compete in developing the best DHPS generator?

And would it then help or hinder progress if the company who devised a working generator patented the design and prevented their competitors from building similar machines?

There is a real historical example of this happening when James Watt took out patents on the basic design of the steam engine and found they didn’t help much.

“Ironically, not only did Watt use the patent system as a legal cudgel with which to smash competition, but his own efforts at developing a superior steam engine were hindered by the very same patent system he used to keep competitors at bay.

An important limitation of the original Newcomen engine was its inability to deliver a steady rotary motion. The most convenient solution, involving the combined use of the crank and a flywheel, relied on a method patented in 1780 by James Pickard, which prevented Watt from using it. Ironically, Watt also made various attempts at efficiently transforming reciprocating into rotary motion, reaching, apparently, the same solution as Pickard.

But the existence of a patent forced him to contrive an alternative less efficient mechanical device, the “sun and planet” gear. It was only in 1794, after the expiration of Pickard’s patent that Boulton and Watt adopted the economically and technically superior crank.“

http://www.dklevine.com/papers/ip.ch.1.m1004.pdf

And thus the 18th century technological revolution was significantly delayed.

But the second strand of the debate is to ask whether a lack of IP protection is equitable – to companies who have invested in research and to individuals who have had their work copied.

Let’s take music as an example because, in music, there has been no effective protection of copyright since recording it became possible and, in the internet age, it is ludicrous to try to pretend that IP rights can be enforced.

Yet, even without any real protection, good musicians can still earn an excellent living and it is the big corporations that have lost out. Indeed, we have arguably never had a more interesting and vibrant music scene since the advent of file sharing- low barriers to entry for new artists and established bands producing live music, rather than relying on revenue from recordings.

Do we really want to go back to the days when record company executives devised and manufactured the “next big thing”?

But what about the lack of incentive for companies to develop new products if the profits cannot be protected? Would the new wonder drug that cures cancer be discovered at all if the results of research could not be patented and the company concerned reap the rewards?

On the other hand, is it ever reasonable that the patent holder of a new drug allows millions to die whilst they price it for the treatment of the very few that can afford it?

Not easy questions and it may be that, in a world without IP protection, there would be less total money spent on medical research (though I also think that the drugs market is skewed because of state involvement in healthcare provision and the regulation of medicines).

Anyway, perhaps inspired by the relative anarchy of the internet and the perceived need to defend it, it seems that anti protectionist views are gaining currency and, in Germany, the Pirate Party recently won 9% of the vote and 15 seats in the Berlin state parliament.

Absolutely astonishing for a party only founded in 2006.

Their platform is the preservation of rights in telephony and on the internet. In particular they oppose the European retention policies and Germany’s new internet censorship law. They also oppose artificial monopolies and various measures of surveillance of citizens.

I think I could vote for that.

Look at Your Life

2011-09-30T17:05:00.001+01:00

You Look at Your Life
and you wonder why
it didn't turn out as you had planned
It seems mother nature
must really, really hate ya
since she dealt you such a rotten hand

You say the problem
is that no-one understands you
Well maybe the thing is that they do?

You blow the fuse
make a new excuse
but the sentiment still seems the same
You screamed and cried
the fifth goal was offside
and that's why you lost the game

You say the issue
is you're always misconstrued
and it's just a case of how you're viewed

You look at your life
through puppy dog eyes
cos you know it's all gone wrong again
You neglect the fact
that the way you act
has inflicted so much hurt and pain

You rant and rave at me
then say that I don't know you
Well you've gotta believe me - I do

You rant and rave at me
then say that I don't know you
Well I wish that I didn't - but I do

I wish that I didn't - but I do

Southwark Drinks - Libertarian meetup

2011-09-29T19:26:00.000+01:00

Evenin all - a quick notice on behalf of our friends at Libertarian Home - http://libertarianhome.co.uk/ for anyone based in the South East who might be interested in exploring Libertarian politics. Simon and the boys are keen to develop something which can generate real activity and eventually become a credible political force after the demise of what was LPUK. Newcomers and anyone who simply wishes to turn up and disagree are especially welcome. The post confirming the time and precise location appear here - http://libertarianhome.co.uk/.

There's football on TV in half an hour, so that's this bunny done until tomorrow - see you then.

Tevez and Galactico Culture

2011-09-28T21:36:00.004+01:00

That Carlos Tevez has become the first high-profile English League footballer to go on strike Nottingham Forest's since Pierre Van Hooijdonk in the late 1990s comes as a bit of a surprise to this bunny, more than anything because he half-expected fellow Manchester City star and all-round soccer diva Mario Balotelli to beat him to it.

However, in some respects this might just be the next move in the game of chess that has been played out between the Argentinian forward and his employers. Twice he has handed in transfer requests, and on both occasions the player appeared to have been welcomed back into the fold - firstly when offered the rather generous olive branch of captaincy, and again when a proposed transfer to Corinthians for 40 million euros fell through in the summer (then again it is highly doubtful as to whether or not the Brazilian club ever had that kind of currency available to them in the first place).

Some are calling for City to use their wealth to punish Tevez, freezing the player out in the reserves, refusing to sell or release him, thereby depriving the 27-year old of what would constitute a large chunk of his footballing prime. Such a strategy might well have some sort of exemplary effect and be good for the game itself, but is bound to be counter-productive when the individual involved remains around the squad and becomes nothing more than a cancerous influence on it. Roberto Mancini has insisted "if I get my way he's out - he's finished with me" and it might be that a clean break, with contract ripped up, would be the best move for all concerned. Tevez can go play in Argentina/Brazil/Italy (depending on which bit of breaking news you read), while City will be rid of someone who was only going to be bad news for them from now on.

The player himself is something of a paradox and a complicated figure to work out. On the one hand, he is demonstrably high maintenence and in need of much in the way of TLC, even by the standards of a modern top-level footballer. Baggage also appears to have followed Tevez since he arrived at West Ham in August 2006. Though he undeniably made the difference between survival and relegation for his team (scoring the winner against Manchester United on the last day proved decisive), the involvement of a third party of investors, Media Sports Investments with agent Kia Joorabchian suggested that his appearances for the Hammers were against the FA's rules on player eligibility. Sheffield United, who were demoted on that fateful final day as they lost to Wigan Athletic, ultimately won a legal claim for compensation before settling for a sum believed to be in excess of £10 million.

A two-year loan stint at United followed, where having scored 34 goals in 97 appearances and been widely perceived as one of their best performers, it became apparent towards the end of the 2008-09 season that a £25 million permanent deal was not necessarily a formality. Old Trafford supporters who had valued the player's contribution, often linking with Wayne Rooney to produce match-winning performances, clearly saw any failure to take up such an option as a grave error and noticeably increased the volume of their acclaim for Tevez during the tail end of his United career. Signing for rivals City was seen by some as an act of revenge, and the club famously put up a 'Welcome to Manchester' sign in his honour - this of course is a reference to the claim of many City fans that they are the 'real Manc' club, as opposed to United who are most popular with Southerners and overseas, In the context of all this, it might perhaps be expected that further controversy and slices of soap opera would follow Tevez and his career.

However, despite all the complications he may bring off the field, a mentally and physically prepared Carlos Tevez is the sort of proven performer a coach or manager would want in his team, not just for his vision and ability to both make and score goals, but for his energy, drive, teamplay and ability to lift the tempo of his side's attacks. Tevez is a man with the flair and penchant for creating something out of nothing, allied to a constant willingness to endeavour in this fashion when the chips are down. 53 goals in 91 appearances for City over two seasons is a record that confirms his value to the team, along with the many more that he has created for team-mates in the same timeframe. In a starting line-up that often played overly-patient, predictable football, he was perhaps the main reason that City were merely workmanlike as opposed to positively dull.

With Sergio Aguero and Samir Nasri entering the Eastlands fold over the summer and Edin Dzeko looking leaner and sharper than he did upon his arrival, one might have thought that a team framework built around more positive, high-tempo approach play would suit Tevez and provide the player with an environment in which he could express and enjoy himself. City have indeed looked more threatening in the final third during the opening weeks of the season, with their defence now something of a weak link, exposed as it is by a line-up looking to attack at every opportunity. This might be the sort of football that represents a creative forward's vision of heaven, but it is not without its share of problems.

City's approach towards acquiring new personnel in the last three seasons has had something of a 'fill the trolley' feel to it. While I appreciate that for supporters it can be exciting to see talented and high-profile players joining your club, there are issues that inevitably arise from both bringing them on board and then fitting these individuals into the established shape. Team sports can be difficult for Libertarians to take in (indeed a disproportionate number of us have little time for football, cricket, rugby, whatever), since what follows in them perhaps runs contrary to our philosophy on everyday life. Though great individuals can of course turn an average team into a very good one, the sense of the collective in making a squad of players stronger than the sum of their component parts (ie the essence of team spirit) is everything.

This is one of the many reasons why Manchester United have had so much success under the guidance of Sir Alex, and it is possible that his decision not to part with £25 million for Tevez was based on the knowledge of something he did not see as compatible with the United ethos - the benefit of hindsight enables us to conclude that his final matches at Old Trafford saw a footballer playing the club's supporters off against its manager. This bunny is by no means a lover of Sir Alex or his team, but refusing to acknowledge their achievements would be somewhat churlish - the presence of several (not necessarily 'star') players who have been at Old Trafford for several years and become part of the club's fabric has certainly contributed heavily towards this success, and its impact cannot be underestimated.

Of course, none of this is possible when too many 'big names' require more TLC between them than it is possible to give, or some of them only joined the club in the first instance for a salary that could not be matched elsewhere. I once upset some City supporters online by suggesting that there was something soulless about this galactico approach, but this bunny stands by that analysis even now. In my teens, I remember them as a club with fantastic supporters, the Maine Road ground that was invariably full, blessed as it was with an incredible atmosphere, and a team that could only be described as pisspoor, even spending an awkward season in the third tier before scrambling out via an epic play-off. Players like Goater, Dickov, Tiatto, Horlock and Morrison were not a patch in terms of raw ability on what they have now, but to a man they were honest, committed and did not possess a day on strike between them.

Manchester derbies invariably found this bunny willing City to find some means by which they could upset the applecart - in that sense I appreciate that their supporters will sacrifice the goodwill of a few neutrals for what they have now, but I very much doubt I'm alone in having had a great deal more fondness for them back then. When a team largely consists of star names and mercenaries who are more interested in remuneration than achievement, perhaps instances such as the 'Tevez on Strike' saga are an inevitable consequence?

I'll leave you with highlights of that memorable game between City and Gillingham, back when they were pants but neutrals still loved them (of course May 1999 was a solid month for Mancunian comebacks). Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Sycophantitis

2011-09-27T19:59:00.005+01:00

Sycophantitis is a debilitating virus that has been known to drain the life and soul of thousands of individuals across various social demographics in the Uk. If untreated, it can have widespread effects on the environments of both its sufferers and those around them. The gullible or intellectually challenged are amongst its most likely victims, as are a group who might be referred to as 'the young and stupid', along with those whose personal ambition can be demonstrably shown to exceed any levels of natural ability. All are more likely than average to catch some form of Sycophantitis at some point in their lives.

The most common symptom of Sycophantitis is what would appear to be a voluntary decision on the part of the sufferer to desist from either thinking or speaking for oneself. Communication is reduced to simple nods, or the parroting of/agreement with the last words spoken by an authority figure in the group. These traits, potential signs of Sycophantitis which should be detected early, may be referred to amongst non-sufferers as 'arse-licking', 'brown-nosing' or 'industrial-scale lackeying'. If you hear these terms in an environment with which you are familiar, then there is a strong possibility that one or more of its inhabitants has indeed fallen victim to Sycophantitis.

For obvious reasons, outbreaks of mass Sycophantitis are most common in environments where the inhabitants operate on a rigidly hierarchical structure. This is partly because the presence of another harmful virus, Egotitis, creates the conditions in which Sycophantitis is able to rapidly spread. Egotitis usually occurs in large, jumped up, overblown organisms that are especially fond of hearing the word 'yes' (like a reverse man from Del Monte, if you will). Sycophantitis and Egotitis, are chemically renowned for reacting perfectly with each other, and have been known to produce a mutant strain called Malignus Lexis Extremis, which you might hear being more commonly referred to as Political/Management Speak or Bollocks.

Malignus Lexis Extremis is of course highly dangerous, and is capable of spreading with sufficient speed to infect the entirety of a large environment overnight, thereby rendering its inhabitants and their interactions with each other utterly useless. Political Parties, State Departments and Corporate Organisations have all been decimated by serious outbreaks of Sycophantitis and Egotitis, with the potentially fatal Malignus Lexis Extremis often the inevitable result (the British Royal Family have been known to simultaneously unleash widespread Sycophantitis on the general population and Malignus Lexis Extremis on broadcasters). Many are still feeling its devastating effects now, in some cases decades after the original outbreak - this is partly a result of these strains developing in such a way so their sufferers have no idea that they are afflicted by them.

None of Sycophantitis, Egotitis or (god forbid) Malignus Lexis Extremis can be cured as such, although a 'charity' (which actually receives around half of its funding from the taxpayer) is by all accounts working diligently to find one. When faced with an environment that has fallen to either Sycophantitis or Egotitis, the best course of action is to isolate all traces of either virus, making sure to dispose of them safely so they do not come into contact with non-sufferers - a small island, where Malignus Lexis Extremis could develop in total isolation, would be most preferable as long as it did not become popular with tourists. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Feminists are to Men what the Ku Klux Klan are to Black People

2011-09-26T21:25:00.007+01:00

Before dealing with the main focus of this piece, this bunny should make it clear that he has very little and possibly no interest in pornography or other 'adult' material. The very few such films that I've watched have tended to evoke laughter more than anything else, crystal clear as it is that none of the parties involved are enjoying themselves quite as much as they would like the viewer to believe - all part of the job I suppose. The 'storylines' of these cinematic epics are of course dire in their lack of imagination and perhaps that's why this bunny has never really got into it. I like well-written, creative and challenging television, and porn doesn't really qualify.

However, we are all individuals possessed of our own unique tastes. I've met countless people who, regardless of gender, have some sort of X-rated reference library from which they can withdraw material that will scratch their particular itch (as opposed to this rather boring bunny, who possesses precisely none). This might be violent porn, dominatrix, old people, dwarves, etc - none of my business, so watch whatever floats your boat and just don't get me involved. Unfortunately, not everyone is capable of keeping their big, intrusive noses out of other people's bedrooms, especially when a political agenda is at stake.

The inaugural XBIZ conference in London was met by angry protests from feminists who had dressed up as butchers and smeared themselves with fake blood (predictably, the Grauniad ran a sympathetic piece on the story - http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/sep/23/pornography-conference-meat-market-protesters?newsfeed=true.) Their complaints were the predictable ones that pornography 'degrades' women and renders them little more than pieces of meat. Maybe so, but then what about the dominatrix stuff where some mangina is beaten half to death, while walked round madam's dungeon on a lead with a snooker ball in his mouth? By their standard, presumably this 'degrades' men and should also be made illegal (of course this would turn the adult entertainment industry, like the drugs trade, over to criminal gangs operating underground and unregulated, but that's for another night), yet I didn't hear the sensible shoes squad becoming all enraged about these 'works of art'.

There is a very clear reason for this - feminists (who should not be confused with women in general by the way) have never been and never will be interested in any notion of genuine equality. They have always fought for increasing female privilege on the basis of a battle between the sexes, and will continue to do so until the dice is loaded firmly in favour of what I've previously referred to as 'the Princess Principle' - namely equality, but only when it suits - the right to be regarded as a princess, backed by a myth that sex is this awful thing men do to women, remains in place. Porn films in which a man gets rough with a woman are 'degrading', but mangina-slave being whipped and lashed until he bleeds is fair game. Lapdancing clubs are pits of debauchery sponsored by Satan himself, but hiring a male stripper for a hen party is absolutely fine.

In short, it's objectifying women that is the issue - these people have no problem whatsoever with objectifying men, something which most women (and a few men) do with at least some sort of regularity. Mind you, what else should one expect from female chauvinists and supremacists? I appreciate that many readers will have found the title of this piece rather 'near the knuckle', but that is exactly the phenomenon that we're facing here:- militant feminism is nothing more than vicious anti-male sexism, intent on genuinely degrading men to the level of second class citizens while entrenching female privilege. If they really want to promote strong, independent women then having a little faith in their ability to make an informed decsion, even one they might feel 'degrades' them, would be a start.

Some adults of course like to be 'degraded' sexually, or view material in which others are, be they male or female, but so what? If we all stopped poking our noses where they weren't wanted, namely into the bedrooms and viewing habits of other people, then as a society we might develop a more grown-up attitude towards questions of sex and sexuality. Moreover, man-hating sexist pigs might find themselves marginalised in the discussions that followed, and let's face it that would be no bad thing. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

More Dumb Politicians - Meanwhile, Ed Talks Balls Again...

2011-09-25T23:57:00.000+01:00

Most Statist politicians make me laugh with their sheer ineptitude, since this bunny has seen enough of it to have become thoroughly desensitised to the whole thing. Enduring the latest careerist slugfest on TV or the radio is not easy, much akin as it is to following a mind-numbing grapple between two clinically obese and woefully limited heavyweights. These boys and girls may be names by virtue of the parties they belong to, but their grasp of issues is as shallow as ever, and a truly authentic thought on any subject clearly beyond most of them.

I regularly watch Question Time to see the direction in which mainstream debate is moving - most weeks I'm deeply disappointed, and the latest show reminded me again that the levels of basic competence amongst our Parliamentarians has somehow dipped again, below what felt like the nadir of the Blair years. Remember when New Labour's pager specialists dominated and contaminated our political discourse, while the Tory front bench resembled something out of Deep Space Nine? These were utterly demoralising times, especially as I was a lukewarm supporter of the Conservatives back then (something along the lines of 'small c conservative and small l liberal', for shame). Things can only get better, surely?

It would seem this is not the case - anyone who saw 'rising star' of the Conservative Party, Priti 'EQUOP' Patel on Thursday will know what I'm talking about. Not only did she contrive to make Hattie Harperson look moderately intelligent, her attempted defence of capital punishment was one of the most appalling displays of stupidity that I have heard from a public representative in fifteen years of having at least some grasp of politico-speak and what it actually means. Ian Hislop, a seriously bright fella who this bunny would still profoundly disagree with on many issues, tore Priti apart in much the same way as Joe Calzaghe did to Jeff Lacy, while she appeared disturbingly unperturbed at the prospect of killing innocent people. This was just the highlight of what was a woefully pedestrian and uninspired performance - maybe QT should have a substitute panelist who can come on at half time in such cases?

Apparently, this walking, waffling triumph for all-women shortlists is 'the future' of the Tories, which sounds about right. It was not the position she took on what is a contentious issue that bothered me most - after all, the e-petition on the subject has proved immensely popular while this bunny's debate of the subject with James Garry on the Anna Raccoon site was both compelling and well-received. The possession of a view contrary to one's own of course does not disqualify them from being able to push their case in a manner that might convince the undecided - it's just that if you're going to argue for the State having the right to kill its citizens, then be prepared to unload with something that cuts a bit deeper than 'won't somebody please think of the children?'.

Perhaps singling her out is unfair (I can hear the allegations of racism already), since she is just the latest in an endless line of MPs who are supposed to be seriously sharp cookies and tipped for big things as a result. Some actually make it to ministerial or shadow level, but this is more a reflection on the intellectually bankrupt nature of our politics than their personal aptitude. I don't hate these people, or get genuinely angry when taking in their 'insight' on television or radio, since our political system is rigged in such a way that attracts tribes of loyal thickos and careerists. As long as there are well-paid positions of power, sycophancy will remain a career path with guaranteed opportunities for progression, while stupidity is no barrier to advancement for those who are 'on message'. This is the case in any walk of life, be it politics, the civil service, banking, retail, whatever.

However, there is a special breed of politician who indeed renders this bunny capable of doing serious damage if only the baseball bat were nearby. These are the guys and girls who think they're a damn sight more talented than they are, fail to recognise their obvious limitations and actually believe that the rest of us have something to learn from them. Until she thankfully left us all alone in 2010, 'Doctor' Patricia Hewitt was the undisputed prima donna of a type of MP that had this bunny looking up the Dignitas clinic online. Her smug, patronising tone and ability to address the general public as if it were a group of kids caught smoking behind the bike sheds told you in no uncertain terms that it was your own lack of intelligence that made you unable to grasp just how wonderful she and her government was.

The Labour Party is what it is, naturally possessed of the unpleasant instinct that they know how to run your life a damn sight better than you ever will. As a result, they are always likely to attract a disproportionate number of politicians who bring this modus operandi to the table with them (although the Tories are having a damn good go at bringing through several of their own). It is this sense of misplaced paternalism, allied to all-round uselessness and an apparent lack of anything resembling understanding of any issue that pushes an MP beyond the 'ignore' category and into one where the principal question is 'who do I want to shoot more right now:- the moron on the TV/radio, or myself?'. Harperson gets a dishonourable mention in this regard, but she still comes a close second to Ed 'talking' Balls.

The man who made his name as the toad of the Son of the Manse has seen the build-up to Labour's annual get-together as a great opportunity to offer some advice on how they can regain economic credibility - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/23/cant-rely-tory-failure-labour. Once you stop laughing and the scale of Balls' delusion hits home, a solution to the question that he attempts to resolve becomes equally obvious - namely that men like Balls, tainted as they are a previous record of ineptitude and disaster, cannot be part of any solution. The Labour Party will always be wrong on pretty much everything, but what people most remember is the names and faces that were around at a given moment in time when events took a turn for the worse. New Labour, which was nothing new in reality, is a poison brand, and if Red Ed is in possession of a functioning brain (debatable), he'll ditch the Blair-Brown hangers on and decontaminate it once he gets the opportunity to appoint his own people.

Anybody who regards Gordon Brown as their hero is of course worthy of at least a shred of sympathy, regardless of other innate flaws that they might possess. That Balls looked up to and positively arse-licked the man who single-handedly destroyed what was a half-decent economy also goes a long way towards explaining more than a few things. Some Libertarians regard Thatch as essentially 'one of us' and this bunny is not amongst that contingent, but one of the areas in which she was immensely successful was a cultural shift within the Uk economy that remained for several years after her departure from office. Starting and running one's own business, becoming independently wealthy and self-reliant, became something that was perceived as a normal thing to do - moreover, the conditions had been created so that the taxman was not going to be a significant reason for failure.

Reversing this cultural shift would of course take several years of taxing and regulating until the pips squeaked, but this is exactly what Brown managed. With public spending increasing by an average of 4.4% per year in real terms prior to the crash and State snatch of GDP rising from 37% in 1997 to a frightening 46% by the time he was kicked out of office - http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart_ukgs.php?year=1900_2010&state=UK&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=2011&chart=F0-total&bar=0&stack=1&size=1024_587&color=c&title=UK%20Public%20Spending%20As%20Percent%20Of%20GDP&show=, retrograde steps such as these were the inevitable consequence. Nobody has had greater control over the Uk economy in peacetime than Dr Clunkingfist himself, and though apologists like Balls will no doubt attempt to re-write events as a means of selling self-serving memoirs, Brown will probably go on to be regarded by wiser owls as the most disastrous chancellor of the modern era and one of the worst in our history.

Dumb Ed (as opposed to Red Ed) is right about one thing, albeit for the wrong reasons. The coalition are destined to fail - in fact the moment in which they stood most chance of success has already passed. Some may see comparisons between the Uk circa 2010 and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall as extreme, but the lesson of history is a valid one. In the immediate post-Communism period, those liberated economies struggled desperately before finally showing signs of life, many on the polar opposite free market model. Now, if you look at certain parts of the Uk that have received the greatest levels of 'help' from the taxpayer (think the North East, Wales), we're talking about public spending that equates to 60% of regional GDP. This is positively Bulgarian territory, and the only chance we have of making some headway is for this whole sorry Statist project to be undone.

The time to announce one clean swing of the axe across all areas of expenditure was immediately after the election - at least 25%, across the board, with no special cases and therefore nobody being picked on. I appreciate the short-term fallout of this is increased unemployment and considerable pain that one would not wish on real people, but the unfortunate truth is that this 'rock bottom' is an inevitability anyway until such action takes place. In the meantime, debt, delusion and denial reign supreme, with the Statist parties arguing amongst themselves about exactly how long we can delay the day of reckoning for. Of course this is semantics, fag-paper differences presented as some deep ideological battle in the name of tribalism.

If the Tories were as mean and ruthless as the Statist media would have you believe, then real cuts would already have taken place by now. As it is, those which are threatened down the line may well give way to political expediency, with a once in a generation opportunity to reverse decades of taxation and interference from nanny set to be squandered. The cultural shift enabled by Balls' hero is complete and has utterly contaminated the three dud political parties who all continue to deny the existence of any alternative. He may be a bully, liar, control freak and nannyist troll of the highest order, but probably the biggest gripe this bunny has with Balls is that he has nothing whatsoever to worry or complain about. Even though New Labour are out of office, their thinking remains as deeply in power as it ever was when his mentor occupied Downing Street. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Conservative Conservatives - can it ever happen again?

2011-09-25T13:44:00.000+01:00

The Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher swept to power with a public, absolutely fed up and disillusioned with collectivism, firmly with the new harder line Conservatives and secure in a knowledge of the truth and reality of their cause. It was a time when it seemed that the Soviet Union was set to take over the world and the popular perception was that: Russia's gonna beat us (and perhaps they should).

This conservative knowledge and certainty survived the batterings of collectivist orientated thinking for (just) 18 years.

The Thatcher Government promoted individual liberty, the values of good house keeping (she is a grocer's daughter) and degrees of sound free market economics. It worked because it undid the bonds of state interference, to the extent that it did, and allowed in a profoundly liberating breath of fresh air. It did not achieve its full potential and it was thwarted and hobbled by enemies of freedom within the Conservative Party itself. However there was a spirit of freedom at work, a genuine desire and intent to liberate people from the three day week, the winter of discontent, bullying tactics of unions (led by figures who are now at the top of the Labour Party), a mindset of dependency, and other attempts at, and results of, stupidity.

The battle lines for freedom were indeed manned and commanded by conservative Conservatives. One of the first front lines was the Grunwick strike, an attempt to close down a film processing laboratory because the management and workers refused to be dominated by the totalitarian collectivist unions. Surrounded by violent pickets who refused to allow goods in or out, and a hostile postal workers union that refused to deliver the processed photographs from the laboratory to the public, the company faced bankruptcy and most folk from all political sides, in the collectivist mindset of the time, simply waited for it to happen. A group of "right-wing conservative libertarians" led by the late John Gouriet, smuggled the backlog of processed film out of the laboratory and distributed it into the postal system all around the country so that it became too dispersed to be identified.

The siege of Grunwick was broken.

Many battles were subsequently fought and won against collectivist, centrally controlled and manipulated labour unions acting simply for political power such as in the mines and ship building industries.

However any movement can be subverted with patience and cleverness.

A movement for freedom was subverted into other somewhat similar but secondary aims first by association and then after 18 years of collectivist attack by complete revision, and the Conservatives were voted out by a bored and complacent public that had come to take the advantages of relative freedom for granted. Again.

Subsequently, over a period of years, the whole movement for liberty was re-written by collectivist hacks as a failure that those who loved freedom should have jumped off before it hit the buffers.

But it was not the drive for freedom that hit the buffers. It was the Conservative Party that had been subverted from within and had simply abandoned the principles of freedom. Once the Great British Public became aware, at that level where all people recognise the truth, they abandoned the Conservative Party that had been deceived back into collectivist policies and voted Labour which had by then re-invented itself and was, in spirit, sounding more conservative that the Conservatives.

Friday Fun and Games

2011-09-23T18:28:00.002+01:00

This bunny's thoughts on the collapse of the LibDem vote and their impending wipeout in 2015 appear on Politics on Toast - http://politicsontoast.com/2011/09/23/libdem-dynamics-an-alternative-take-on-their-collapsing-vote/. This week's conference has been a bit like watching a young person who has been given six months to live planning a non-stop sequence of nights out before they croak - ach well, we're in deep shit now, but let's enjoy it while it lasts. Highly weird, even by their own impressive standards.

Many thanks to the guys over there for running it, and it may be the first of several - who knows...

Like most of you, I like to chill out on a Friday night and regular readers will have noticed something of a trend in regard to when material does or does not go up. All I can say is thanks to JohnB, Malpoet, ManNotNumber and the rest for their own contributions on days when either nothing has interested this bunny, there have been other commitments, or the will to sit at my desk until stupid o'clock at night has simply been lacking. As is the case with nearly all Libertarians, my political activity is very much part-time (although some generously award themselves a full-time salary without the knowledge of those who are paying it). This of course is one of the many ways in which Statists have the dice loaded in their favour.

On a brighter note, here's one of my favourite artists of all time, Lloyd Cole, giving a great performance of one of his strongest numbers, the heartfelt 'Jennifer She Said'. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Strictly Redemption for Audley

2011-09-22T22:49:00.009+01:00

Many years ago, I read an interview with Gary Numan in a music magazine where amongst other things, he took the time to thank his fans for sticking by him throughout a career that had seen its share of dizzy highs and prolonged wilderness periods. The one-time synthpop god turned rocker observed that "it's not always been easy being a Gary Numan fan" - as he was somewhat before my time, I never truly got the opportunity to be a committed fan of his work or otherwise, but Numan was very much a new man 'of his time' and this bunny imagines that in subsequent years, as fashion and music moved on, clinging to what was very much a phenomenon of the early 1980s might have become deeply uncool. Anyway, here's my favourite Numan/Tubeway Army number by several miles, 'We Are Glass'.

I thought of this because after hearing that Olympic Gold Medalist and under-achieving pro Audley Harrison had become the latest sportsman to take the Strictly plunge, it struck this bunny that a penny for the thoughts of A-Force on whether or not 'it has always been easy being an Audley Harrison fan' might represent very good value for money. For all his faults - apparent arrogance, bravado and more undelivered promises than Tony Blair, I still find an ability to like the man that defies anything that vaguely resembles logic. That gold medal he won by boxing superbly in Sydney at the 2000 Olympics has of course been the sole reason that he had so many opportunities to revive what could be politely described as a stop-start pro career and retain at least some of the celebrity status he enjoyed when he was very much 'the man' a decade ago. It has also been a weight round his neck, causing every move in that career to be placed under the microscope, judged against elite-level standards.

Of course, some of this is self-inflicted. Nobody forced Harrison, promoting himself under the A-Force moniker, to declare that he would become British champion in just five fights or continue such boasts despite ample evidence that he was not developing as a professional. Moreover, the Beeb themselves should know all about Audley and his tendency to disappoint, since they shelled out a cool million to broadcast his early bouts on terrestrial television. The fights themselves fell into two categories - hopelessly lop-sided mismatches where an over-matched relative midget was squashed in rapid time, and tedious contests that went the distance with Harrison pushed far too close for comfort. The names of Derek McCafferty Mark Krence and Dominic Negus will not be familiar to anyone other than genuine fans of the noble art, but that is entirely the point. All heard the final bell, clearly taking rounds off Audley in the process - hardly the stuff one would expect from the natural heir to Lennox Lewis.

Probably the best fight of the Harrison/BBC partnership did not take place in the ring, but followed A-Force's one-sided win over Matthew Ellis. This was the infamous occasion where talk of a bout between Harrison and a 42-year old Frank Bruno was gathering pace, shortly before the former WBC champion was sectioned under the mental health act. Fellow British heavyweight and all-round loose cannon Herbie Hide clearly feels left out as Audley and Frank pose for the cameras, deciding to take it out on the furniture. These scenes were indeed 'disgraceful' as commentator Jim Neilly put it, but as compelling television were stratospheres above the non-fight that preceded it.

Harrison was 28 when he won Olympic gold and unwisely spent the best part of a year being a 'somebody' before turning professional. In the first (it should be added, unbeaten) chapter of his efforts in the paid ranks, it was quite clear to the viewer that for a fighter looking to win world title fights that may go the distance, Audley possessed a serious issue with stamina and conditioning, fading badly in the latter stages of six or eight-rounders and allowing inferior opponents back into contests they should never have been in. As the calibre of opposition increased, the defeats came - long before the night he shared a ring with David Haye, A-Force had been firmly nailed to the canvas once, and found himself on the wrong end of three decisions by the judges.

The first of these was without doubt the worst 'fight' I have ever seen on television - when a crowd feels the need to chant 'fight, fight, fight' halfway through a contest, they probably deserve to be refunded in full. The 'winner' of this 'contest' was Danny Williams, former slayer of an ancient Mike Tyson and generally well-regarded amongst most boxing fans for his bravery and courage (he once won a fight against Mark Potter by knockout with the use of only one arm). After taking a split decision and the Commonwealth title with it, Williams later claimed that he had 'trained himself', opting not to bother with the services of long-time mentor Jim McDonnell, then prepared for A-Force with a regime that consisted of Pizza, films and Mr Kiplings cakes.

Apparently, he knew that Harrison 'didn't fancy the job' - when one boxer accuses another of essentially lacking the intestinal fortitude to fight, this is a serious business. This bunny has been in boxing gyms, weigh-ins and covered fights from ringside, so knows that as a general rule, fighters are a breed who extend respect to each other. For someone within the fraternity to apply the label of coward to anyone who climbs through the ropes implies that they have no right to be there, that they are cheating both the paying public and themselves. This questioning of fighting heart has, rightly or wrongly, dogged Audley every time a move in his professional career has not gone to plan, although he exacted brutal revenge on Williams nearly a year to the day of their first fight, at the same venue, the Excel Arena - without doubt is the most complete performance Harrison ever put together in the paid ranks.

This is the conventional media wisdom on the man, and it is worth exploring exactly how true this is. What becomes apparent when re-watching some of his amateur fights is that Harrison clearly fell into the category of boxers who were far more proficient in one version of the sport than they could ever be at the other. The sanitised world of the amateur ranks of course offers the protection of headgear, and is pretty much an examination solely of the technical attributes of boxing. It also operates on a computer scoring system that enables a tall southpaw like Audley to 'pick-pocket' points from the outside then escape from danger. This still takes considerable pugilistic skill, and there is no doubt that he excelled at it. In the professional ranks, with long and gruelling bouts calling on a man's character, fighting resolve and ability to 'hang in there', there is no point pretending that Harrison fell short in these areas, at least on occasion. A-Force is certainly more boxer than fighter.

In that sense, the smart thing to do if all other aspects were equal would have been to stay amateur and leave boxing historians to ponder "how would Audley Harrison have fared as a pro?" in much the same way as the sport's scribes do about Teofilo Stevenson. However, money talks and £1 million before taking a punch in anger will scream at absolutely anyone. Of course he had a choice, but the other was one that next to none of us would have made in the circumstances - ultimately, Audley was limited as a professional fighter, but stuck at it, launching several comebacks for considerably reduced purses (including the shoot-out of Prizefighter which is certainly no place for gutless wonders) and trying to make the most of what he had. For years, this bunny has viewed his brash pre-fight talk as an attempt to convince not us mere plebs but himself that he could do it. His nervous in-ring performances would appear to back this thesis up.

Can we talk about Harrison without mentioning that 'fight' against David Haye? I honestly do not know what to make of it - was it a betting sting, a one-sided mauling or an occasion that A-Force simply could not cope with and left him caught in the headlights? What I wanted to know at the time and a part of me still does is - if Audley lands flush on Haye with something resembling his best shot, what happens next? This was the million dollar question that led many (this bunny included - and it's online if you wish to look it up) that Harrison had a serious chance of springing an upset, if he could just park his demons for one night and regard it as a no-lose situation. When you saw him approaching the ring with eyes like saucers, it was natural to fear the worst - and it would be fair to suggest that the worst is what we got.

However, go to anyone lacing up a pair of gloves for the first time and tell them, "you'll be a Commonwealth and Olympic gold medalist, win your first nineteen fights as a pro, avenge two of your losses, claiming the WBF and European titles in the process - oh and by the way, you'll freeze on the biggest night of your life and get tanked in a world title bout" and an overwhelming majority, probably 90 per cent or more, would bite your hand off. Judged by normal standards, Harrison has had a pretty successful career in boxing despite falling well short of his ultimate goal.

Of course the boasts and bravado have done him no favours, but he has also turned his life around since a mis-spent youth lost to gang culture wound up with a spell in a young offender's institute. Reflecting on his life and working towards a degree in sports studies was one half of his redemption, boxing the other. That ability to acknowledge that a portion of one's life has been screwed up and say 'no more' takes great courage and deserves genuine respect.

So if appearing on Strictly serves as some form of character rehabilitation with the British public, then it is one that he deserves - the scorn that has often been heaped on a boxer who undeniably fell short of our initial hopes has often been more akin to that aimed at a mass-murderer, and some of it has been vindictive and far from humourous stuff. This bunny won't be watching, but sincerely hopes he progresses in the competition - more than anything, it might buy Audley a few months away from the hostility that has followed him for most of the last decade. Perhaps it would be for the best if this were his last performance as a 'somebody' and he retired from boxing immediately afterwards?

I'll leave you with that winning performance in Sydney - take care and I'll catch you soon.

If we want schools to be safe places for our children, we need the cane

2011-09-21T21:29:00.002+01:00

The maxim goes that every generation thinks of its own childhood as being more innocent than the childhoods of the current lot. It is suspected that this is the succour of memory. There may be some truth behind this suspicion, up to a point. But, in my experience, opponents of corporal punishment in schools (especially those on the Left) use this maxim as a weapon against corporal punishment, the logic of which effectively runs like this: Your wistful imagination tells you that young people were better in the past. As they are really no worse than you were, then there is no need to lash them with the birch.

As I said, there may be some truth in this up to a point. That point was probably somewhere in the 1980s. Looking back twenty years ago to the time I was at secondary school (the early '90s) and comparing it with today, I can't assert that my generation was better. It wasn't. I assume that a moral pit was reached in the 1980s because a whole generation had intervened since the 1960s Cultural Revolution and, in that time, Britain's moral foundation had fell away.

Schools - particularly comprehensives - today are as bad as they were twenty years ago: The lack of academic competition between pupils has been replaced by competition for physical dominance. Physical aggression has gone far beyond a bit of fraternal rough-and-tumble. Cannabis is carried in, and sold from, rucksacks. When rucksacks aren't used for porting illegal substances, they are used for smuggling guns and knives. School lavatories are places where precocious teens unburden themselves of their virginities. Playgrounds are incubators of gang culture. Unruly children are as disruptive in class as they please. Unless a teacher has a specially forceful personality, unruly students find it easy to intimidate him. Academically-minded pupils suffer in silence, or give in and join in the chaos.

There is some public clamour for corporal punishment to be reintroduced into schools to combat the terrible decline of standards. I am all in favour of birching. However, the absence of the cane is only part of the explanation why discipline in schools has worsened. To improve discipline in schools there must be a complete remoralisation of society; grammar schools need to be reintroduced; the only type of family that ought to be promoted is the one consisting of a married couple; comprehensive education must be abandoned along with all the concessions made to "pupil centred" learning; teachers should be competent and not a rag-bag of semi-literates, thickos, diffident types and insipid sorts who are just doing the job for the "Golden Hello" and the generous holidays.

Above all we need to withdraw from the European Union because its doctrine of Human Rights makes birching pupils impossible.

If teachers could administer a lash of the birch without fear of reprisals, it would restore the balance of power in favour of the teacher. The concept of behavioural conditioning is not hard to understand: If you do something which is wrong you get beaten. No one likes being beaten so all but the most insensible would elect to stop behaving wrongly, some of the time.

I don't believe that other forms of punishment in schools work. The alternative to corporal punishment is detention. As multiple children are detained at the same time, detention is far from boring. It is treated as a bit of extra time to do some more of the things that got you detained in the first place.

I know in the debate about corporal punishment the character of the sadistic house-master is raised. I don't doubt that a tiny minority teachers would derive wicked pleasure from beating children. But it is not as if removal of corporal punishment also removes perverted teachers from the school. They are still there, free to enact their fantasies in different ways. Why else are their so many teachers in caught cavorting with underaged children or engaging in acts of child abuse?

People who call for the reintroduction of corporal punishment are sometimes accused of being "authoritarian". Well, I believe that teachers should have authority over children. Only the naive could disagree with this. But the word authoritarian has more sinister tones than that. It plumbs the depths of Orwellian darkness. That is why it is used as a smear. The reason I want corporal punishment reintroduced into school is because my concern lies with studious children who want to learn, who don't want to spend their day surrounded by unruly bullies and general disorder. I imagine how traumatic it is for them.

Isn't it better to make the bad suffer than make the innocent suffer? Sociological thinking has been with us for fifty years now. Nasty pupils have often been seen as victims; we are told that they (conveniently) lack some unspecified quantity of mythical self-esteem. They don't. There is no such thing as self-esteem. Or, if there is, they have it in abundance. Bad pupils do bad things because they enjoy it and because weak, indisciplined schools allow them to get away with it.

In the case of corporal punishment as with capital punishment, we must make a choice between the freedom and happiness of the good and the freedom and lust of the bad. The only person who benefits from the absence of corporal punishment is the misbehaving child. This cannot be doubted. Reintroducing birching would create more studious, academic learning environments. Good students would be happier and calmer. They would be more likely to fulfil their academic potential. Bad students would be less bad; some would even learn the errors of their ways. I am sure that some hitherto bad students would carry their conditioned fear of school rules into society at large and refrain from violating the laws of the land.

If your concern is solely for the bad pupils, corporal punishment must be hard to accept. If your concern is to free bad pupils from feeling transitory pain, then you have had what you want for a few decades now. Go into any inner-city comprehensive and see the effects of your concern. It's not pretty. The reintroduction of the cane, among other things, would help to correct the indiscipline of these schools.

Corporal Punishment got a Dishonourable Discharge - and not Without Good Reason

2011-09-20T23:44:00.003+01:00

An interesting and perhaps surprising statistic emerged in a poll that was conducted last week regarding discipline in our education system. By a majority of 49% to 45%, those who answered expressed support for some form of corporal punishment to be restored as an option for teachers in Uk schools (presumably the other 6% were undecided). As this throws the issue under a spotlight of sorts, I'm here to argue the case against the restoration of canes, birches and other weapons as forms of discipline. James Garry of Politics on Toast fame - http://politicsontoast.com/ has kindly agreed to put forward the opposing case on these pages in the near future.

Other results from this poll told me that things were a whole lot worse in the British education system than I first thought. Having left what was a pretty miserable experience behind, my insight into the subject, like that of many, has been through a combination of anecdotes from teachers I have known and reports of classroom episodes that have made their way into the printed, spoken or broadcast media. When tales of students fighting or hurling chairs at their teachers become too frequent to be discarded as a freak occurrence or one-off, the general perception grows that things have undeniably taken a turn for the worse.

However, this bunny always tempered this with a gentle reminder to himself that 'most kids aren't like that - it's just that the vast majority who are generally well-behaved and pass through education in an uneventful fashion are never going to make the newspapers or television'. I still believe this analysis to be fundamentally correct, but there is a statistic from a separate poll on the same subject which suggests that even kids who are possessed of natural mischief without being 'bad' as such have drawn the line.

While 93 per cent of teachers seeking greater powers to impose classroom discipline is an unsurprising figure, the fact that 68 per cent of pupils are calling for exactly the same thing certainly is. My immediate thought was a rather juvenile one - an episode of the Simpsons, where Principal Skinner is sacked from his job at the Elementary school and replaced by cute, cuddly, do-gooding Ned Flanders. The school rapidly disintegrates into mayhem, with Ned explaining to Homer and Marge that his 'kid gloves' approach was a response to the unwelcome 'tough love' of his father. This flashback to the 'harsh discipline' imposed on young Flanders is utterly priceless:-

The serious point is:- Springfield Elementary descends into such unchallenged chaos that even Bart recognises the fun has gone out of it, so he instigates a plan to have Flanders sacked and Skinner re-instated. This bunny can just about recall enough of his childhood to remember that as a general rule, kids are loathe to giving adults greater authority over their lives - so for more than two thirds of them to come out in favour of more power for teachers to impose discipline in schools, something must be dreadfully wrong. A slice of this 68 per cent will of course be those mischief-free students who simply wish to bury their heads in books and get something resembling an education from the whole thing - and good luck to them.

What of the rest? Has it gone too far and become too easy, as Bart ultimately realised? I never thought I'd be referring to the Simpsons in a serious piece of writing, so either a) this bunny is finally going mad or b) our schools really have degenerated into something resembling a cartoon. Or possibly both.

So we're in a mess, the dynamics of which we should probably explore in a separate discussion. It's a quite frequent occurrence that when presented with what might be a complicated set of problems, people are tempted by the presentation of what appears to be a swift and simple solution - in this case, dragging 'the big stick' out of retirement and inflicting it on misbehaving children (I'm not lumping James into this category by the way as I'm sure he would regard this as only one part of any answer). However, there are three main angles from which I seek to explain why support for corporal punishment is deeply misguided - the humane element, assumptions that it makes about 'virtuous' figures of authority and the not insignificant question of whether or not it would have the desired effect in the 21st century.

The banning of corporal punishment in Uk schools was instigated by that most dubious of institutions, the European Court of Human Rights, in 1984. I'm no fan of the ECHR, seeing it as one of several very good reasons in favour of this country withdrawing from the European Union. Of course it would have been a far more satisfactory outcome had this, as with many other changes to our law, been dealt with solely on these shores. As it is, we're left with the view of the ECHR that corporal punishment has no place in schools on the basis that it is 'inhumane' and 'degrading'. My opponents may not have much issue with these words, seeing as the whole thing is supposed to be humiliating/degrading and bloody hurt - hey, it might make the little shit think again next time he's presented with an opportunity to fight, steal or vandalise?

There are, however, several holes in this line of argument. First up, many of us are uncomfortable at the prospect of 'degrading' other people and somewhat squeamish about the thought of canes or birches being used to inflict serious short to mid term pain on them. I'm sure that this bunny is far from alone in not wishing to hear or see anything of the sort, and you're going to come across senior teachers who share that sense of discomfort about the use of force. We're then faced with a choice between either compelling adults to use canes/birches on children against their will, or operating a two-tier system, where corporal punishment operates in some schools but not others. The first scenario sounds nothing less than horrific, while the second would no doubt cause great resentment amongst those kids who 'drew the short straw'.

There are other significant questions, such as - what does corporal punishment teach children on the issue of conflict resolution? Throughout our lives, we are all going to encounter 'difficult' individuals, be they at work, in our day-to-day dealings with people, even on the blogosphere. Most of us understand that resorting to violence is neither a smart move nor an acceptable one, and that anger, frustration or disappointment are not valid excuses for that initiation of force. Wielding a cane or birch and causing physical injury to resolve classroom conflict flies directly in the face of this lesson that we would wish to teach young people, and we need to be very careful about the signals that we are sending as a society.

While corporal punishment has been demonstrated to have some success with 'good kids', several studies have concluded that it can also have a counter-productive effect on those at risk of 'going off the rails' - ie the children that it would in reality be most seeking to 'correct'. When an individual is lacking direction, attempts to physically discipline them may unwittingly sow the seed of 'violence as a solution' in troubled minds. The dreaded law of unintended consequences knows no bounds - after all, it can't be easy for a headteacher to birch seven shades out of a teenager for fighting, then explain to him why violence is so terribly wrong...

The existence of corporal punishment also devalues other, more subtle techniques that could present more lasting consequences to those who misbehave. Belt buckle against flesh was a quite dreadful feeling with which I became familiar when growing up (and deeply resent to this day - does that count as an 'emotional stake' in the issue? I'm genuinely unsure), but the deprivation of privileges such as my allowance and being 'grounded' for a period of time undeniably had a more profound effect on this bunny than any thwacking did as soon as the pain disappeared and/or bruising healed. One of the many problems that comes with the use of force as discipline is that to stand any chance at all of working within a large institution, it must be applied consistently, yet human nature tells us that some individuals respond far better to it than others.

To suggest that 'big adults hitting small children' constitutes a form of bullying might be going too far, but it certainly re-enforces the notion that the bigger, meaner, more intimidating individual is always right, and just with the 'lessons' regarding violence, this is not a sensible message to be sending out to young people. In truth, teachers are just a cross-section of society, and as a breed are no more or less likely to abuse any power given to them, or pursue a personal vendetta against someone they don't like than anyone else. Not every caning in the past was fair, and this bunny is naturally suspicious about granting powers to cause physical harm that work on the assumption that authority is automatically virtuous.

In short, it isn't - in fact like all authority, it attracts some of the worst and most inept people one could imagine. Some teachers, in case one has not already noticed, positively despise children, and should really have not been allowed into the profession. These are precisely the types who would actually quite enjoy the prospect of caning or birching a misguided youth (as many used to, unfortunate as that is), and by definition are the last people one should entrust with the power to do so. Something I noticed during my own time at high school in the 1990s and appears to have continued since is an alarming decline in teaching standards across the board. Without for a second denying that the Uk possesses more than its share of hell-raisers, why when the conversation turns to school discipline does 100% of the focus invariably fall on pupils?

The apparent death of a certain type of guiding hand, who could command a classroom without ranting or becoming hysterical, surely has far more to do with the current state of affairs than has previously been acknowledged? If schools were private companies, paid solely on results, how many teachers would actually keep their jobs? Sometimes it's easy to blame children for everything, but this bunny honestly believes it not to be as simple as that - the presence of too many crap teachers has contributed much to the problems that our schools face, and every time we focus solely on the unruly kids who don't take them seriously, the inept and half-hearted get a free pass. Until we find the stomach to really challenge one of our 'sacred' professions, we will only stand a chance of tackling half of the problem.

Something that supporters of canes/birches may also have neglected to think about is the ripple effect that it would have throughout education and wider society. I remember one teacher at my school who clearly failed to understand that the heyday of brutality against kids was over - one of his favourite tricks was (quite skillfully) spotting a pupil 'illegally' running through a corridor then, as he approached, grabbing the miscreant by the collar and pinning him against the wall - quite how he kept his job is beyond me, but keep it he did. The thought of this kind of 'open house' on physical assaults against pupils is deeply unsettling, yet once you break the taboo that says 'teacher violence is wrong', is allowing this sort of thing not the next logical step?

Schools could become very sombre and intimidating places rather quickly once this taboo is broken, and as somebody who seeks a happy medium between the do-gooder anarchy that dominates at the moment and the opposite extreme, the prospect of 'boot camps that also educate' is one that worries this bunny immensely. Presumably, those favouring the use of corporal punishment as discipline in schools would grant the same privilege to the legal guardians of the child? I ask because, while I wouldn't wish to criminalise the application of a light smack to a child who fails to (for example) look before crossing the road, granting bad parents who take out personal frustrations on their kids the legal use of a weapon like a birch is no more than state-sponsored child abuse.

Would corporal punishment have sufficient deterrent value to make it work? Perhaps were it applied consistently across every school in the Uk it would have a fighting chance of making some kids think twice before misbehaving. However, many senior teachers would simply refuse to operate it as a punishment, which seriously undermines its effect - and that's before we get to the ground I covered earlier regarding the price paid for these dubious benefits. Moreover, never underestimate the creative ability of a hell-raiser to turn a punishment into a badge of honour. Remember how ASBOs became status symbols that served as an indicator that a misguided youth had 'made it?'. What is often forgotten is that the shame and stigma of being caned was probably more important in its previous role as a (fairly successful) punishment in schools than the physical pain itself - you've heard the line that went 'you didn't tell your dad you'd been caned in case he hit you again'.

With the punishment regarded as a badge of honour or rite of passage by those on the receiving end, and neither parent working or generally giving a shit about much, could that shame and stigma be re-created in 21st century Britain? I very much doubt it.

There's so much we can do to get the ineptitude out of our teaching profession, make the curriculum more relevant to pupils and apply punishments to their misdemeanours, then actually follow them through. Assault on a teacher or anyone for that matter is a criminal offence, and kids need to understand that when they pick fights with adults, they run the risk of adult consequences. This bunny firmly believes in the right to defend oneself when presented with a physical threat, be that through retaliation or redress from the courts (if this means changes in the law then no argument from here). The initiation of violence against another human being is always wrong, and teaching this lesson clearly and unequivocally to our young people can only help us as a society - so put that big stick down, it has no business here. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Wanna Cut Tax Evasion? Cut Taxes

2011-09-18T22:08:00.000+01:00

By definition, the cost of tax evasion in terms of lost revenue to the Uk Treasury is a figure which can only be the subject of an estimated guess. What appears to be almost certain is that it runs into tens of billions of pounds, and as a result, dwarfs the relatively small-scale issue of benefit fraud, which has historically attracted a much more widespread level of stigma. Statist commentators of course have been making this point for some time, applying a sort of immoral equivalence to the two - coming at the question from a starting position of 'compulsory tax is theft', this bunny is still able to make a distinction between taking something to which one was never entitled and refusing to hand over that which they were forced to by the state.

In short, they are not issues of the same principle, and although the law of the land is what it is, I invariably find a tad more sympathy for those who bob and weave the taxman than will ever be the case for the phoney disabled and what have you. Moreover, if your activities lead you to wind up with that dreary shower of smugness Danny Alexander sermonising from the opposing corner, they would probably have to involve mass-murder for this bunny not to take your side.

The latest brainwave from Sandals and Muesli HQ is for a crack squad of 2,000 tax inspectors to seek out those who have failed to hand over a 'fair share' of their ill-gotten gains in the past, "The impetus on this was not strong enough from the previous government so we've taken a whole lot of additional measures. We'll be taking additional prosecutions against tax evasion where we identify that illegal activity; we'll be investigating when measures are set up that are designed to avoid tax and close loopholes if that is necessary." Some might playfully conjure up images of 'Elliott Ness times two thousand' in their heads. quite valid given their likelihood of success. A 'crackdown' on some of the most intelligent and creative (not to mention, most mobile) in our society will always be infinitely more difficult than catching some scrote pretending to be disabled - and the half-arsed job they've made of that hardly inspires much in the way of confidence.

The occasional Orange Booker aside, 'Liberal' Democrats have always possessed the Statist instinct that economic activity is primarily a means of raising revenue for the government. One of the many slimy characteristics of the New Labour years was the manner in which they egged on the recklessness of the financial sector, thinking first and foremost of the tax windfalls that came from it. Any suggestion that the generation of wealth and jobs are just inherently good things does not enter their vocabulary. On that note, how many jobs in the Uk are facilitated by individuals who manage to slip away from the taxman relatively unscathed, be it through creative accountancy, offshore holdings or whatever else? What are the economic side effects of these people upping sticks and moving elsewhere? And, like the 50p tax band, could this 'crackdown' simply end up being a piece of symbolic gesture politics that actually costs money?

This selective amnesia regarding how incentives drive human behaviour is thoroughly baffling. Statists place bucketloads of blind faith in the ability of green taxes in particular to bring the rest of us into line with the needs of their megalomania, while any suggestion that punitive taxation increases the scope and incentives for evasion or black economic activity simply does not compute. There is of course a very simple way to reduce tax evasion while creating an altogether fairer system - take the least well-off out of tax altogether (that rarest of things, a sound LibDem policy) with a single flat rate above the increased threshold. Naturally, we'd have to find savings to pay for all this in the short term, but laying off half of HMRC would be a start - it might also prove to be the most popular cut of all time. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Economic woes - zero sum game thinking seems to be taking over again

2011-09-18T11:10:00.006+01:00

The thinking of theft is profoundly destructive. It tends to corporatism, mercantilism, socialism, all the systems that lead ultimately to poverty and destruction.

It is thinking based on: Any benefit for me has to be at the expense of you, so toughies to you. Or if its the other way around – you rich swine, you have obviously ripped off the poor and now I must steal your wealth away from you and give it back to those from whom you stole.

The cake is finite and for some to have more they must have deprived or must deprive others to get it.

That thinking is terribly sad, because not only is it untrue in all but the very short term, it leads to much of the misery, despair and death with which we live and die.

The libertarian approach is a blessing in that it recognises our ability to achieve and allows the freedom to pursue every course that is not based on the destruction of others.

Unfortunately, because the zero-sum-game mentality has become so embedded in our psyches, it is but a slip of the mind away from taking over, yet again, and depriving all of us of opportunity and achievement.

The businesses that succeed tend to employ the approach of promoting the interests of everyone involved. Those that tend towards failure are more concerned with taking the creativity from and ensuring the minimum return for its employees.

It seems that the fashion is to regard colonialism as an evil curse. This, after all, was the process by which the wealth of say, Africa was ripped from the ground and transported to Europe.

However.

Whether one sees the western, Europe-originated, way of life as a curse or a blessing is an opinion, but certainly, the establishment of the colonies brought massive infrastructure in the lands they colonised and enabled all the western advantages such as roads, telephones, technology, medicine, agricultural cash crops, air transport, the whole modern way of life that continues to exist despite prevalent zero-sum-game attitudes and consequent breakdowns.

Life does not have to be a zero sum game, and is not, when creative people have the freedom to seek their own benefit.

Certainly, what has come from the alternative approach has only ended in death and failure.

I can imagine the response: But what about those who start from a background of deprivation and disadvantage?

I am afraid that is the zero sum game speaking, as it is when an entrepreneur seeks to build any business based on taking wealth from others rather than wealth generation.

It is an approach that is untrue and unhelpful and just needs to get left behind.

The way out of deprivation is through achievement and for there to be achievement there first has to be the freedom to think and to express. And then to do and create without the hinderence of some trying to make sure you do not deprive others by your efforts, and slapping all sorts of regulatory requirements on you.

You cannot legislate creativity.

Last Entry on Total Politics Awards - and I'll Sign That in Something you can Frame!!

2011-09-17T14:09:00.002+01:00

During the week, I brought you the news that this site had finished a credible 27th in the Libertarian section of the Total Politics Blog Awards. Yesterday came the Libertarian bloggers results, and this bunny is delighted to have come in at a quite astonishing equal 12th place - http://www.totalpolitics.com/blog/258467/top-50-libertarian-bloggers-2011.thtml. To be considered on roughly equal terms to the author of the Devil's Kitchen and above a few writers who I've actually heard of is indeed an honour. Many thanks to anyone who voted for this bunny - believe me it is very much appreciated.

Also well worthy of a mention is that Malpoet - http://malpoet.wordpress.com/ appears in the top Libertarian bloggers list in 25th place, while his Weblog missed the top 40 by no more than a coat of paint. One of the issues that comes out of these results is the presence of several high-profile blogs in multiple categories. Well-written independents like Malpoet's site are the biggest casualties of this, and if I were to offer a suggestion to the Total Politics guys for next time, it would be:- one category per blog or contributor, so all votes for that site or writer are pooled into the one in which most votes were accrued. This is not a dig at people who have taken the time to bring new material to the attention of others - it's just clear as a bell to me that if OutspokenRabbit belongs in the top 40 (and this bunny believes that it does) then so do Malpoet's Weblog. Trooper Thompson and a few other bona fide Libertarians.

All in all, these are results with which we can be very pleased, so thanks again to all those who made them possible. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Things People Do in the Name of God

2011-09-17T13:23:00.008+01:00

I've always thought 'love God, hate organised religion' is a pretty good umbrella under which this bunny and others can define our faith in the man upstairs. I'm fortunate in having met an a multitude of people whose faith played a significant part in their lives, and it would be fair to say that this firm belief in 'something higher' was an overwhelmingly positive influence on the character and outlook of those I have come across.

Of course I'm well aware that this is not always the case - history is littered with individuals whose 'organised religion' was little more than a militia, masquerading under the guise of one set of beliefs or another. Faith has also taken some strange and wholly transparent forms, most notably those cults whose leaders steal the time, money and in some cases the innocence of their (it should be said, rather weak-willed) followers. They say that when someone else has said something better than you ever could, it might be unwise making a futile attempt to out-articulate them, so here's Malpoet on that subject - http://malpoet.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/warren-jeffs-mormon-child-rapist/

The issue of the effect that a misplaced or misinterpreted faith has on their actions resurfaced again this week, after Ulster Unionist leader Tom Elliott and colleague Danny Kennedy found themselves in hot water after a complaint was made by the Sandy Row lodge of the Orange Order (of whom they are members) against them. The Northern Irish assembly MPs face disciplinary proceedings, with expulsion from the Order presumably an option on the table.

Serious stuff - so what was their crime?

PC Ronan Kerr was killed by a car bomb planted outside his home in Omagh in April. As much as the murder itself was a disturbing throwback to troubled times, the manner in which all sides of the political discussion clearly condemned these actions (for which the Real IRA took credit) at least suggested that if the hatred and bigotry that defined a generation had not completely gone away (and if we're being honest, it probably never will dissipate entirely) such prejudicial sentiments were being distinctly marginalised by those in the public arena. Kerr's funeral saw a unique arrangement where the police and Gaelic Athletic Association gave a joint guard of honour.

Kerr was a Catholic, but the passing of a man who served his community attracted many who wished to pay their respects, regardless of faith or denomination. Elliott and Kennedy, both Protestants and public servants themselves, were among them. Now, according to some half-wit in South Belfast, this constitutes two men who have "sold their principles for political expediency" - and no, I'm not making that up. Contrast that with Elliott's explanation of events that attending the funeral of a policeman who had been murdered was "right for the entire society of Northern Ireland and, maybe more importantly, right for the Kerr family. We did what we believed was the honourable thing and certainly I, and I know Danny, has no regrets over that. Danny Kennedy and I are leaders in society, what we want to do is ensure we move Northern Ireland forward. I do not believe it was any sin or crime to go to the funeral of a murdered police officer."

I know who is displaying more sense, decency and compassion from where this bunny is sat, but hey, some of you may think differently. To his great credit, Reverend Brian Kennaway expressed unequivocal disappointment at attempts by the lodge to expel the pair, "Multitudes of Orangemen through Ireland either attend marriage ceremonies or funerals. They see it as paying their respects and as their duty. The vast majority of people, including the leadership are embarrassed by this."

In which case, perhaps the smart thing for the Orange Order to do would be to find the individuals who made the complaint and expel them? Just a thought - at least it would put an end to the macabre spectacle of Sinn Fein's assortment of slimeballs and gangsters claiming the moral high ground.

On that note, anyone who watched 'Question Time' on Thursday night would have taken in the er...unique theory of Martina Anderson, a Sinn Fein MP. She agreed with former Bishop of Londonderry, Edward Daly, who suggested that the ban on priests marrying should be lifted - "One of the things that broke my heart most as bishop was some priests came to me and said they could no longer live a life of celibacy, that they had fallen in love with somebody and they decided to get married. Some of them were really good men and I felt it was a dreadful loss to the Church, to the diocese, to the priesthood, and indeed to themselves in many ways". I'm (nominally) a Protestant and not a Catholic, so it's really none of my business, but Daly's analysis would appear difficult to argue with - more than anything, it would surely be beneficial for both priests and their flock if the advice they were giving was based on more substantial real-life experience?

Martina's reasons for agreement are, however, somewhat different. Her suggestion is that had priests been allowed to marry in the past, then the Catholic church may not have experienced the scale of issues with the sexual abuse of children that took place over many decades (further tragic tales from the victims of paedophile priests are coming to light even now), “I think this is one element of it. Getting married would address that, if you allow for access in an institution for people who are, unfortunately, these kind of men. And if you have then the option of being married you could address some of that.”

This is of course a cocktail of terrifying stupidity and revisionist history. First up, the notion that enforced celibacy in a person's activity with adults somehow drives them to interfere with children is, to put it mildly, absurd. A paedophile is sexually inclined towards children, at least as their 'first preference' above adults either male or female - it is their 'orientation' so to speak.

In reality, there are two reasons why any organisation might have the endemic problems which the Catholic church has both endured itself in terms of collateral damage, and inflicted upon a multitude of undeserving victims. First up, the position of authority and blind trust enjoyed by a priest over altar boys and the like create perfect conditions in which child molestation could thrive. Then, instead of hearing the cries of the abused and calling in the authorities to investigate them. the church conspired on a widespread scale to cover up the activities of paedophile priests, moving them away from the noise to strike again somewhere else, while silencing the victims in many cases. Trails of stolen innocence could be drawn across Ireland and the United States, and most worryingly, the current Pope was an active participant in the conspiracy.

Believe me, this bunny completely understands why so many people are devoutly atheist. Organised religion does itself no favours whatsoever when it preaches hatred against others, carrying with it a rulebook that forbids the extension of decency and compassion to non-believers. When churches become mini-states of their own, they contrive a 'greater good' just as any Statist entity does. Allowing the molestation of kids to continue in the name of something sacred is of course obscene, but that's exactly what happened amongst the hierarchy of the Catholic church. They had decades to 'address' this scandal, and, helped by a borderline above-the-law status with the authorities, made a conscious decision not to.

I know many good people of differing faiths and indeed none at all - one does not have to be a member of any church to possess admirable qualities and (to quote the song) 'If God was One of us', I very much doubt he'd want to join any of them. This bunny will leave you on that musical note - take care and I'll catch you soon.

Caption Competition

2011-09-16T16:20:00.003+01:00

Ok - a virtual coconut to the reader who can come up with the smartest caption for this video. It concerns what turned out to be an epic domestic scrap (while it lasted) between two big-punching middleweights, Cello Renda and Paul Samuels. Incredibly, after being decked in the first and clearly the more shaken man by this exchange in the second, Samuels stopped his opponent after 37 seconds of the third session beofore winning an altogether less dramatic rematch on points (then again it had quite a bit to live up to).

Certainly the first time I've seen this happen having watched hundreds of fights on TV and a few from ringside - take care and I'll catch you soon.

You Wanted to Change the World

2011-09-16T16:02:00.001+01:00

I despair as I see that face
talking at me from the TV
Soul-destroyed, he knows his place
as he stresses the need for unity
This pompous, pretentious palace
doesn't know why we dislike it so much
Its folk mean neither harm nor malice
It's just their totally out of touch

You wanted to change the world
but instead it went and changed you
These days, gourmet, geld and girls
seem to dictate what you do
You wanted to make things right
correct the wrongs you'd seen
but since status skewed your sight
now you're part of the machine

Have you got something to say?
C'mon baby, get down off those fences
And if there is a price you have to pay
you can always claim it on expenses
This profligate public payroll
displays that greed has become the new lust
But you just can't see that this own-goal
has totally terminated everyone's trust

You wanted to change the world
but instead it went and changed you
These days, gourmet, geld and girls
seem to dictate what you do
You wanted to make things right
correct the wrongs you'd seen
but since status skewed your sight
now you're part of the machine

C'mon through and join the queue
to get five seconds on the news
Just say the word of the day
no - you don't have to mean it
Soundbites, media hype
gutter press trot it out in type
No need to fuckin read since
I've already seen it

Then you talk about trying to reconnect
with the disenfranchised populace
while your own bloated and warped sect
keep your noses in the trough and take the piss
The poisonous, poll-driven pigs
say they're all competing for your love
But in that poll the party that wins it big
is the one that calls itself 'None of the Above'

You wanted to change the world
but instead it went and changed you
These days, gourmet, geld and girls
seem to dictate what you do
You wanted to make things right
correct the wrongs you'd seen
but since status skewed your sight
now you're part of the machine

You wanted to change the world
so why didn't you?
You wanted to change the world
so why didn't you?
Why didn't you?

Public Sector Pensions and the Shadow of Fred Goodwin

2011-09-15T21:26:00.002+01:00

First up before I start, I'd like to thank anyone who voted for OutspokenRabbit in the Total Politics Blog Awards - http://www.totalpolitics.com/blog/258217/top-40-libertarian-blogs.thtml. A final placing of 27th in the Libertarian section in an annual poll is something with which we as a site can be proud, given that we've only been in business for some four months. I'm very grateful to anyone who took the time to acknowledge our existence - muchos kudos.

Anyway - Oscar acceptance speech over, back to business. The decision of various trade unions across the Uk to take the gloves off and wage war against the planned reform to public sector pensions of course prompts comparisons with the Winter of Discontent in 1979 and even the 1926 General Strike, probably the most widespread nationwide withdrawal of labour in Britain's history. Dave Prentis (Unison) has told his members to prepare for "the fight of our lives", round one of which would appear to be a "day of action" that has been pencilled in for 30th November. Judging a book by its cover is rarely a wise thing to do, but the thought of Prentis entering the picket line to the theme tune from 'Rocky' made this bunny smile nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the magnificently moronic Mark Serwotka (Public and Commercial Services Union) offered an insight into the situation that is certainly unique "there is no case whatsoever to make any changes to public sector pension schemes". The fact that the privately-employed are paying more into the public sector pot than those actually on the state payroll, with the net result of a £1trillion black hole, clearly do not represent 'a case' as far as Serwotka (£82k salary and £25k pension contribution) is concerned.

I don't blame union members for attempting to look after what they have. Faced as many are with the prospect of paying slightly more for slightly less, then retiring five years later, most of us would put up whatever resistance we could (it should be added that in the largely non-unionised world of the private sector, the box of potential weapons would be comparatively light). Self-interest is a perfectly rational drive and so the action in itself does not antagonise this bunny nearly as much as the likes of Serwotka, whose attempts to dress this up as a 'modern day class war' or 'all about protecting public services' are painfully transparent.

The real question is - does a case exist for those in the private sector subidising the superior pensions of state employees, especially when one considers that the gap in basic salary between the two was wiped out by a decade of New Labour's generosity with other people's money? Then consider that the deal on the table would still leave the public sector with a superior pension scheme across the piece and there is really only one answer - this change, albeit a modest one, cannot come soon enough.

However, this is also a massive challenge for Dave and his government on a number of levels. Firstly, he may come under real pressure from large swathes of the general public to cut some sort of deal - either because they sympathise with the strikers, or due to the visible absence of some frontline services (most worryingly, gravediggers are said to be on the list of potential dissidents). After flip-flopping over NHS reform that were not all that radical to start with, another backward step to a vested interest group is likely to do irreparable damage to ConDem credibility (not that this would necessarily be a bad thing in isolation).

Politically, this could become very difficult. Having allowed and practically encouraged a wide-spread demonisation of public sector employees, then done nothing to counter it, he might be bitten on the proverbial to some extent in opinion polls and the like, though there is some truth in the suggestion that most of those effected were never likely to vote Tory anyway. Many went LibDem last time out though, and the prospect of Nick Clegg turning windsock to prop up their flatlining share of the vote, ratting on his mate and collapsing the ConDems' majority is a more realistic one than some imagine - failing that, around 30 of his MPs following that course of their own accord would have a similar (though less symbolic effect).

Then there is a real problem that is almost certain to resurface - remeber Fred Goodwin and his £703,000 per annum pension (total pot would require £28million of contributions from you or I)? The former RBS bigshot was among the 20 directors of banks bailed out by the taxpayer who pocketed yearly payouts totalling over £6million. All of this was before Dave's time, but one gets the impression that his disgust at this situation was half-hearted and less than completely sincere - like Prentis, Serwotka and co, the fatcat class symbolised by Goodwin sought taxpayers' money that was clearly unmerited. Unlike them, they got it and were ultimately rewarded for clear and demonstrable failure.

This might be the caviar communists' best weapon in terms of winning hearts and minds, so Dave had better have a credible answer - if he's going to attack the undeserving rich, he'd do well to at least sound like he means it this time. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Total Politics Blog Awards - Early Results

2011-09-14T18:46:00.000+01:00

The first sets of results for the Total Politics 2011 Blog Awards are in - http://www.totalpolitics.com/articles/257687/blog-awards-2011-the-results.thtml.

Many congratulations to two sites friendly with this one who have performed rather well.

First up, the guys and girls who make up what could affectionately be termed 'the Raccoon Squad' - http://www.annaraccoon.com/ appear at number 19 in the 'Media' section of the awards, while Politics on Toast - http://politicsontoast.com/ polled enough votes to finish 22nd in the 'Right of Centre' roll of honour. This is mightily impressive given that James and the gang have only been in business for a few months.

Bloody well done to both and it will be interesting to see how the 'Libertarian' rankings turn out. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Benedict Le Gauche and his Contrarian CV

2011-09-13T21:51:00.006+01:00

Many thanks to the friend who pointed me in the direction of this story - http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/875232-worlds-worst-cv-admits-to-stealing-laziness-and-skiving. The pitching of a CV to attract a favourable response from prospective employers is a difficult business - I've met people who possess a multitude of them, crafted specifically to meet the requirements of the role for which they have applied. Most of us, this bunny included, restrict our take on the hard sell to a single document that masks our obvious weaknesses while wildly exaggerating the scale of anything that might, at a stretch, constitute some sort of achievement.

All part of the game, yeah?

28 year-old Mancunian Benedict Le Gauche's attempt to make himself an attractive proposition to life's movers, shakers and go-getters could only be described as authentic, original, and in its own more than slightly unstable way, quite brilliant - http://curriculumvitiate.wordpress.com/the-cv/. Perpetual lethargy, petty theft, habitual lateness and an overwhelming sense of utter boredom regarding the "boring, drudgerous and disheartening" world of earning a living all make an appearance in a CV that could only have been crafted by an individual in possession of a genuine flair for the written word. Conversely, this document can also be interpreted as a full-on expression of disdain for the very notion of work itself, as well as a sentiment that 'whatever role I am likely to get, I will always feel it is that bit beneath my talents'. Like most who are individualistic and eccentric, De Gauche is far from simple to figure out - as a result, this bunny remains somewhat non-committal in regard to whether or not he likes the man.

Much of what he says, albeit indirectly is completely true - the pressure on individuals to compete with each other both to get into a workplace and then progress there can trap many in a cycle of ambition and the process of whoring oneself that appears to become an inevitable part of achieving their goals. Kids are coached at school in the 'art' of job interviews and selling themselves as the perfect, flawless employee which by the very laws of humanity they, and in fact none of us are. Much of what goes on in the occupational sphere is little more than a human chess match - the choice merely lies in the degree to which we as individuals choose to take part. At one extreme end of the spectrum is the 'company minded team-player' who, when asked what his weaknesses are at interview, responds "I'm a perfectionist and I work too hard", before impressing those in the finest hats with a cocktail of arse-licking, sycophancy and maybe a spot of hard work.

Several stratospheres in the opposite direction, and determined to take any element of unwelcome surprise out of the equation is Le Gauche, a man who clearly defends his individuality and sense of self with fierce determination that belies the apathy towards other areas of life in which he clearly takes a perverse degree of pride. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes - this bunny, being honest, leans further towards Benedict's end of the spectrum than many would be comfortable with, which is why he perhaps feels a tad more warmth towards the talented idler than most (I know our contributor Tommy Atkins may go slightly further than this - http://outspokenrabbit.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-work.html).

However, there are some troubling aspects to Benedict's 'search for work' , most notably the fact that he lives off a combination of a girlfriend with two jobs and a large overdraft. 'Being your own man' is, if anything, to be encouraged, provided of course that it is not at the expense of others. In the MEN's piece on the same subject, the interviewer notes that Le Gauche feels 'guilt' about this fact. It's perhaps unfortunate that such emotions do not stretch to a willingness to park a slice of whatever self-respect/pride he is (not) working to retain and just temper things sufficiently to become a viable proposition to someone, somewhere - unless of course this exercise is little more than a means by which to render himself unemployable, a thought that has probably occurred to most of you.

It's clear as a bell that Le Gauche is a young man who is thoroughly disenchanted with at least one significant area of life, but it is difficult to feel much in the way of sympathy when "part of the problem is I don't know what I want to be". This in itself is a highly puzzling statement given that he is clearly of above average intelligence, but may be a substantial part of whatever 'solution' Benedict is looking for.

Many of us get little in the way of enjoyment or genuine satisfaction from the job we do - some cling on to whatever unlikely aspirations and hopes they had while the clock ticks by, while others accept over time that the moment in which they were going to 'make it happen' has long passed (of course, the transition from the first of those phases to the second is a fairly natural one). Either way, it's a means of rationalising, compartmentalising and dealing with an area of our lives that we may not particularly like:- as 'what we have for now' or 'all we will ever have - and hey, it's not that bad'. It may be simple and convenient to dismiss someone like Le Gauch as a 'dreamer', but from where this bunny is stood, his CV is the work of a disillusioned thinker who in fact does not dream nearly enough. After all, 28 is far too young an age at which to accept being 'ordinary'. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Less Cannon Fodder Makes for a Compelling Rugby World Cup

2011-09-12T22:00:00.004+01:00

I've always enjoyed Rugby Union World Cups, probably more so than their football counterparts. In the absence of soap operas regarding fallouts, training ground spats, and clashes of personality, the game itself is given room to take precedence with both committed and casual spectators. While the build-up to matches involving the Uk Nations in particular is covered by television, this is only done to a level that stops well short of what might be considered saturation point. "Ok - I know who's injured, which players are being brought in to counter the specific strengths and weaknesses of the opposition and who to look out for on the opposing side. Thanks for that, now let's get on with the game itself".

It's a highly welcome breath of fresh air when set against the constant, in-yer-face hype that accompanies the major tournaments in international football. The occasional flat and disappointing spectacle is that bit easier to forgive when television executives have not been plying you with the message that an encounter between two middle-ranking nations is set up to be an affair that will be talked about for decades afterwards. Nor do rugby pundits make a habit of posthumously re-writing history, by attempting to convince the viewer that a sporting powerhouse's one-sided demolition of a relative minnow, or a dull, tryless grind-fest were somehow 'epic' (as football presenters frequently attempt to with tame goalless draws). As a viewer, please let me watch the game, take in the commentary of a man who used to excel at it and then make up my own mind as to whether or not it is worth remembering.

All that said, this is not to say that the showpiece tournament of the 15-man game has not had its share of historical problems. Without doubt the biggest single issue has been that of chronically lop-sided mismatches in the pool stages of the competition. The first World Cup to feature fully-professional players in 1995 saw a widening of the gap between the top tier nations and those who lagged behind, most brutally demonstrated by the All Blacks' 145-17 annihilation of Japan (they notched a phenomenal 21 tries in a single match, converting 20 of them, with second-choice kicker Simon Mulhane bagging a world record 45 points). Every subsequent competition has seen at least one side notch a three-figure score against opposition that was clearly overwhelmed and out of its depth, with Australia's 142-0 massacre of Namibia in 2003 the highest recorded margin of victory to date.

This is bad for the sport on a number of levels. First up, mismatches of this magnitude sell rugby well short of its true potential on the one occasion when it enjoys something resembling worldwide television coverage (the equivalent competition in rugby league has suffered from this problem to an even greater degree). Moreover, nations clearly ill-equipped to at least put up a vaguely competitive effort against the game's elite do not benefit from the experience of being utterly destroyed on a massive stage, even if the privilege of playing at a tournament they worked hard to qualify for is not something you would wish to take away from the players involved.

In this sense, the decision to expand the World Cup from 16 to 20 teams for the 1999 tournament may well have been a misjudgement at the time, a well-intended effort to spread the global appeal of the sport that facilitated further one-sided beatdowns. In reality, while minor upsets have taken place in previous World Cups and unfancied teams (Argentina, Samoa) have made significant progress, they have themselves been few and far between, with the overwhelming majority of match results following a pattern that could easily have been predicted beforehand. This is clearly not a good thing for a sport looking to widen its appeal.

However, watching some of the weekend's action (albeit at distinctly nocturnal hours in some cases) has convinced this bunny that the current World Cup has the potential to be easily the best ever. It is perhaps telling that the real surprise was the failure of a genuine surprise result to emerge, with all completed matches (eventually) going to form. Scotland, victim of multiple World Cup nightmares in another sport, were 13 minutes away from total disaster against Romania, once the emerging nation of world rugby in the 1980s, but perceived prior to the tournament as a side in terminal decline (Scotland indeed hammered the same opposition 42-0 as recently as the last World Cup).

Led by mammoth forward Marius Tincu, the pack coached by former All Black Stephen McDowell clearly won an important part of the on-field battle, overturning an early Scottish lead to score two pushover tries and take the initiative themselves at 24-21. The decision to withdraw Tincu from the action seemed inexplicable at the time, and ultimately swung a match that looked set to slip away from the Scots back in their favour. The Romanian scrum in particular looked mean, menacing and physical, frequently driving their opponents back and even achieving a couple of seemingly unthinkable turnovers. Scotland's next match is against Georgia, whose forward line is said to be even more uncompromising - if they are anything other than fully-focussed, then a massive upset which nobody would have entertained prior to a ball being kicked may just be on.

By the way, I'm well aware that England had struggles of their own last weekend, so for anyone who suspects a tad of anti-Scottish bias, here's Jonah Lomu single-handedly tearing Will Carling's team a new one while quite literally running over Tony Underwood and Mike Catt in the 1995 semi-final.

I'm sure some of you will have had better things to do at 4-30am on Saturday than watch a game between Fiji and Namibia, but the events that had just taken place in Invercargill kept this bunny's curiosity sufficiently alive to take it in. The Fijians are a side capable of being brilliant on one day and utterly useless the next, blessed by individuals with a talent for carrying and moving the ball at speed, but equally prone to bouts of petulance and indiscipline. Namibia have historically been the definition of World Cup cannon fodder, yet to win a finals match in eleven attempts going in. Though they stretched that unwelcome run to twelve, this was an encounter well worth watching that hinted at genuine improvement.

In the 80 minutes, Fiji blew hot and cold in the way that might typify them as a team, while the rank outsiders gave things a real go, scoring two tries in a closely-fought second half. Indeed, only a heroic tackle to hold up a blue-shirted forward on the line prevented a try close enough to the sticks that would have pegged the score back to 39-30, with a conversion to follow and some twenty minutes still on the clock. It was apparent that the Namibians have come to this World Cup fitter, more organised and with a clearer gameplan than at any of the three previous tournaments where they have usually fulfilled the tag of whipping boys (sure, they kept Ireland down to a respectable-looking 32-17 in 2007, but most would accept this owed more to the sheer ineptitude that underpinned that Irish campaign than anything else).

At 32-15 down as they were at half time against the Fijians, they might previously have been on the receiving end of 70 points or more. In that sense, the final score of 49-25 in represents what might be considered measurable progress in reasonable time. Their game against South Africa may well follow a predictably one-sided pattern, but though Wales and Samoa should still possess too much for Namibia over 80 minutes, hopes of avoiding humiliation and posing one or two questions of their own would appear not unrealistic based on the events of Saturday morning. If the lowest-ranked side at the tournament can make such clear forward strides, then there is hope for those seeking a more even contest across the board.

As I mentioned the Fijians, here are some of the best moments of perhaps the utlimate modern player from the island - explosive and undeniably gifted, but a frustrating and wasted talent lost to lifestyle choices, Rupeni Caucaunibuca.

It has been refreshing to get through the first series of matches and see not one result that might prompt a reaction along the lines of "what exactly was the point of that?". France vs Japan and Ireland vs USA were both games from which it would not be unreasonable to fear something of a cricket score. That it took two late tries from les Bleus for them to run out convincing 47-21 winners, while the Americans performed above expectation before eventually succumbing 22-10 suggests a depth if not in quality, then at least of sides who possess sufficient fitness and organisation to compete at international level for an entire match. This may present more banana skins for the established nations than they might have expected, but that can only be a good thing for the World Cup and, by extension, rugby itself. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Truth and the Collective

2011-09-12T08:56:00.004+01:00

From what I read in the more left wing publications, libertarianism is often dismissed as selfish, self-concerned, lacking in the milk of human kindness, harsh, and a lackey philosophy of the uncaring exploitative business class. A Tory plot to dispossess and destroy the cooperative harmony of the people, perhaps?

However it seems to me that such thinking is part of a greater desire to conceal the circumstances that constitute true freedom and cooperation. What might be considered the true collective.

Trying to define reality in human relationships, with both our own capacity for self deception, especially when our egos are at stake, and the subtle but powerful deceptions being promoted by those who have vast interests involved, is difficult and is possibly set to become much harder as those interests promote more obscure and untrue divisions, straw man arguments and illusory comforts of the mind. Facts are massaged until they are able to support attitudes, actions and conclusions that bear little resemblance to reality.

In fact it seems, now, that the attacks on truth/reality are taking us back to a wasteland of mind and spirit that has not been around as the dominant political and philosophical landscape since the mid 1970s (even though the number of street cameras has been steadily growing all the while, in anticipation perhaps, of this fresh awakening of death?).

To perceive the truth and resist the intellectual temptations of deception on offer will become ever more difficult. Liberty is being made unfashionable.

In any situation the basic truth is simple.

What we spend our time, energy and effort trying to find out, to "discover" is literally, doing just that - "dis-cover". To remove the cover. To penetrate obfuscations, lies and deceptions that surround simple truth. Whether we told them to ourselves or someone else did it for us.

The truest and most honest collectivism (collective action) is the free interaction of individuals. The evil, coercive collectivism as perceived by those who cherish liberty is actually the coercion exercised by individuals promoting their interests by dominating and manipulating the collective. It is a deception. The true, benevolent, collective is the spontaneous co-operation of individuals working according to their own natural requirements and desires and in response to the requirements and desires of those around them, and thus the truest collective is the free market. The spontaneous interaction of value judgements. It becomes corrupt when one particular interest group achieves an unnatural dominance and thus promotion of its interests through trickery. Be it corporate or communist in name it is the force of an individual or some individuals, not the collective.

It would thus seem the accusation that libertarians and those who cherish the value of the individual are selfish, and only concerned with their own interests and thus lacking in that kindness that flows more naturally through the veins of coerced but caring socialists, is actually based on a string of false assumptions initiated by someone's concealed agenda to control.

Perhaps even one's own.

Faking It

2011-09-11T13:44:00.007+01:00

Two fairly dated pieces of television sprang to mind recently when discussing the thread that linked them. One was the 'Superfakes' programme concerning Alessandro Zarelli, a man who blagged his way into a series of football clubs with fake documents from the Italian FA. The story goes as follows:- Zarelli was being placed on loan at a series of clubs in the Uk under a 'collaboration' scheme that was being managed at the player's end by his agent, Matteo Colobase (naturally, the 'representative' was able to verify every word of the scam since it was actually Zarelli himself).

One of the questions that stems from this programme concerns exactly why Lisburn Distillery and Bangor City, not exactly powers of European football but reputable clubs nonetheless, welcomed the self-styled next Roberto Baggio into their fold without first checking out the fine details of the narrative that had brought him there - after all, if Zarelli was this great talent that he made himself out to be then surely this level of football was wholly unsuitable for his development? As it was, Zarelli was 'unveiled' as the star who was going to single-handedly fire Distillery into Europe and managed an appearance on local television in Northern Ireland - he was sent packing after displaying all the talent of your average man in the street during a friendly against Finn Harps. Next stop was the League of Wales, where Bangor put the player up in the city's Regency Hotel while he recovered from the broken nose he had suffered before his arrival.

After running up a £700 hotel bill and blagging a few quid from one or two supporters, manager Peter Davenport becomes the first individual in the story to take the sensible step of verifying Zarelli's story. The ex-Manchester United forward is fortunate to have a friend at Sheffield Wednesday, the club to whom the player was apparently contracted. It was confirmed that Zarelli had never been on the books with the Owls - either with the first team or the club's academy. Thus began the rumbling of a serial football hoaxer, as Davenport tipped off the coaching staff at Connah's Quay when the Italian 'star' arrived there to start the process all over again. People began to talk and this prompted Sky to first explore and explain the story, then set Zarelli up on camera, under the guise of an agent wishing to meet him and thrash out a deal.

The 'showdown scene' if you will, where the player rattles off his story (interestingly enough, he misses out Distillery and Bangor City altogether), then is confronted on camera and 'fesses up, appears here:-

I was unable to trace this programme in order to view it again in its entirety - if anyone can (legally) pull this particular rabbit out of their box of tricks then this bunny would be most grateful. However, watching 'Crime Scene Conman' once again did not prove so elusive - this was the story of phoney forensic scientist and private investigator 'Doctor' Gene Morrison, who hailed from Hyde in Greater Manchester and was well-known as something of a character in the area by his real name of Rocky. It appears that Morrison started out at the tail end of the 1970s, making himself available for hire as a private eye, then moving into the area of forensic sciences, inspired in part by television programmes on the subject, then the much later phenomenon of Crime Scene Investigation (CSI).

Like the all-singing, all-dancing experts of American television, Morrison set himself up as a one-man band qualified to carry out any given task in the multitude of specialist areas that fall under the umbrella of Forensic Investigation. His 'Criminal and Forensic Investigations Bureau' carried the moniker 'the Fifth Emergency Service' (which undeniably beats the hell out of 'Conventional Wisdom is No Wisdom'). If this one-stop shop actually existed, where facial mapping, handwriting examination, lie detector tests, and work with DNA could be carried out under one roof, then such a tag would probably be justified. In reality, Morrison started out quite legally by outsourcing what gainful employment came his way from the courts to trained professionals (then passing the work off as his own, which may be another issue entirely).

However, he then 'crossed the line', to quote one of the programme's key contributors, making himself available as an expert witness in court and single-handedly carrying out 'forensic work'. A 'poison pen letter' case proves to be the start of his undoing, as his lousy and unfounded 'evidence' was shredded in court by the qualified expert opposing him. One of the issues that comes out of this documentary is the way in which the adversarial system enables the likes of Morrison to thrive by telling their clients precisely what they wish to hear. He had concluded by comparing hate mail to a sample of handwriting from the victim's husband that the same individual had been responsible for both. There was clearly no scientific basis upon which such a conclusion could be reached, but hey, it was what one side was waiting to be told, so any 'expert' prepared to say as much in court, even a bogus and unqualified one, immediately becomes of immense value in an adversarial setting.

Eventually the net starts to close in on a man who had gone undetected in the legal system for over two decades, giving 'evidence' in over 700 cases during this period. Morrison's qualifications were either figments of his imagination or degrees downloaded from online universities of Dudsville. His knowledge of subjects in which he claimed to be an expert was no greater than that of a man in the street with a passing interest in any of them. Indeed, the attainment of sufficient expertise to master each of the detailed areas in which Morrison had offered his services would itself take more than a single lifetime. At his own trial, the 'doctor' caused great hilarity in attempting to convince the court of his 'talents' before being sent down for five years for perjury, perverting the course of justice and obtaining money by deception.

Another, altogether darker side of the 'scientist', involving a fondness for underage girls, came to light some three years later, for which he is currently serving a minimum of seven and a half years - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8407395.stm

Leaving that (albeit serious, but separate business) aside, what is one to make of Morrison and his phoney forays into the arts of forensic investigation, or Zarelli's web of deceit that played on the greed of clubs looking for the next rough diamond? Is this unrefined delusion, Walter Mitty sydrome at work to devastating effect, or something more simple and sinister? I ask these questions because like many, this bunny is fascinated by such characters, the fictitious narratives that they memorise and repeat to the point where they become plausible, and the very real stories that develop as a result of someone, somewhere falling for the scam.

Clubs for whom Zarelli signed invariably experienced the 'bounce' and feelgood factor that comes with the recruitment of a player who will massively improve the team, at least until the truth emerged. Morrison gained experience in the legal system and credibility as a witness by hiring in outside expertise, before 'going solo' so to speak. Both men played on the confidence and faith of others, misplaced or otherwise, in their pursuit of a personal dream - that of being a 'somebody', an individual worth taking seriously, with the doors that opened as a result, be they occupational, financial or social.

On one level, this is totally understandable - very few people are truly content being a nobody and yet this, at least in the everyday and occupational sense, is precisely what most us are, this bunny included. A great many of us reflect on occasion that, to coin a phrase, "I could have been a contender", that we perhaps didn't get the breaks or opportunities that our talents merited - of course such claims tend to hold wildly varying degrees of validity. Something that I can remember vividly from my younger and more stupid days was an inability to acknowledge that there were some things I just wasn't very good at. Like Zarelli, I could never play football to any serious level, although admitting to oneself that they are pretty useless at something they enjoy doing can be quite difficult.

Perhaps the gap in Alessandro's head between perception and reality was just that bit wider than that of someone who might be seen as 'a bit of a dreamer' by conventional standard?. Did he believe that once he had blagged his way into a football club somewhere that a hitherto undiscovered talent would unleash itself on defences unable to cope with his ball-playing skill and prowess in front of goal? In the same fashion, was Morrison merely seeking to illustrate that a series of qualifications achieved by years of studying were not the only basis on which someone could become an expert?

After all, as I'm sure many of you will have done, this bunny has encountered individuals who have possessed an encyclopedic knowledge, sometimes practical and in other cases by intensive reading, of a given subject without ever gaining a recognised qualification in that area - this does not necessarily make them an 'expert' in the field, but they could certainly be said to 'know their stuff' to the point where you might push your intrigue or curiosity on that subject in their direction. By all accounts, Morrison was an avid watcher of detective shows and collected CSI box sets for fun - maybe he genuinely believed that a few fake certificates and the use of genuine expertise as his own represented a means by which he could 'get his foot in the door' before going to work with his own craft?

From a 'faith in humanity' point of view, I'd love to believe it was this simple - but it clearly isn't when one looks at what actually took place. Flashing lights must have appeared that signalled the unsuitability of both men for their chosen occupation - Zarelli actually appeared for Distillery's reserve team and was painfully out of his depth, while the manner in which Morrison's evidence in the poison pen case was utterly shredded hinted at his clear ineptitude. In summing up, the judge stated that the 'expert' had "been discredited not only by the greater expertise of the witness called by the defence, but by common sense". Yet the fake footballer and the phoney scientist continued to tout themselves for work, suggesting that these were not cases of men who truly believed they could do the business, if only they were given the opportunity.

Interestingly, having read a few forum threads on Zarelli, it appears that there are many people out there quite willing to overlook the episodes of petty theft and fraud, while extending a sense of genuine admiration for a man who 'lived out his dream'. If it really was that straightforward, then one must think about those supporters in particular, whose hopes were raised by the prospect of an exciting new signing, and in some cases were tapped for money that would never be returned to them. Though the clubs themselves operate at a level where word of mouth is an accepted part of signing players, and trialists can just turn up for a training session to see how they get on, a story as far-fetched as that spun by Zarelli should of course have been thoroughly checked out before a single photograph was taken for the press, or hotel room booked in his name. One of the characteristics of such a scam is the fact that it plays on greed - so it can be difficult to feel too much sympathy for those taken in.

Morrison played on something else - the dynamics of an adversarial legal system that gives undue credibility to 'experts' who are able to deliver judgements with certainty. Such testimony is naturally more likely to sway the decision of a jury than that of a truthful and bona fide scientist who, in practising due care, may express a degree of doubt in his findings. One can imagine the fallout of a phoney who played a leading role in hundreds of cases, frequently delivering 'expert' interpretation and anlysis of evidence which the general population has been led to believe as fool-proof. £250,000 of legal aid found its way into the Criminal and Forensic Investigation Bureau over two decades, along with the monies of numerous private citizens who paid for the benefit of his dubious work.

Anyone familiar with the work of 'Professor' Roy Meadow will also understand its consequences - multiple miscarriages of justice, with lengthy jail terms for innocent people usually the end result. How many people have wound up inside for crimes they did not commit, because Morrison either presented believable testimony for the prosecution, or a discredited one while working on behalf of the defence? That he is a walking, bullshitting reason why reform of the adversarial system is needed is probably for another day, but while you may feel some form of admiration for such individuals and the 'dreams' they 'live out', this bunny finds it impossible to upon weighing up the bigger picture.

One of the optimistic strands of thinking that this bunny has not (yet) had knocked out of him is a firm belief that 'we are all good at something'. There are no young 'no-hopers' and nor is anyone utterly talentless (perhaps I continue to believe this solely for my own benefit, who knows?). Both Alessandro Zarelli and Gene Morrison are no doubt excellent in one area of life or another, although the sad fact may be that conning, blagging and deceiving people is in fact their niche or area of expertise, so to speak? I sincerely hope I'm wrong, and that the man upstairs does not bestow such 'talents' upon mankind. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Time to Lift the Stigma from Mary Jane (2 of 2)

2011-09-09T18:25:00.003+01:00

This is Part 2 of my response to James Garry's Politics on Toast article - http://politicsontoast.com/2011/09/03/cannabis-is-legal-in-britain-or-skunk-shops-in-suburbia-part-ii/. In Part 1, I explained how the current application of the laws on possession of marijuana act as a blockade to adult debate of the issue. Here I lay out a critique of the prohibition angle and my own case for legalisation.

The attitude of Libertarians towards questions of personal and lifestyle choices is one of the substantial differences that sets us apart from Conservatives. People are individuals, they are not owned by the state or a society that dictates to them that a 'greater good' should take precedence over their liberty - ergo, the personal and lifestyle choices of the individual are entirely their own, unless it can be demonstrated that this choice in itself causes harm to others.

In my opener, I referred to alcohol as the 'elephant in the room' on a multitude of levels when discussing the legal status of marijuana. I'm making no attempt to deny that the continuous smoking of cannabis (to levels that might actually constitute misuse or abuse) can have harmful effects, both immediate and cumulative - impaired physical health, including some of the effects that are inevitable consequences of smoking tobacco, along with damage to ones mental capacity and well-being. Statistically, it is true that prolonged and extensive use of the drug increases the likelihood of illness, be it physical or mental. There is also a marginal role in violent behaviour and the unfortunate phenomenon of 'drug driving' that has begun to blight our roads in recent years.

However, there are two points worth making. First up, just about every charge one might throw at marijuana is equally applicable to alcohol. Drink-driving is responsible for 17% of deaths on our roads on an annual basis and has also been linked to depression, self-harm, suicide and even episodes of psychosis. Its role in violence and disorder is as clear as a bell to anyone who visits one of our towns or cities on a Saturday night, while it is also estimated to be the cause of some 17 million days off work in the Uk in the average year. By the same standards that prohibitionists apply to marijuana, there would be a very strong case for closing those pubs that remain, tearing down wine racks in supermarkets and enforcing nationwide sobriety - yet a widespread campaign to ban alcohol in Britain does not exist. There would appear to be two main reasons why this is the case.

Firstly, the lessons of history show us that the prohibition of any 'fix' pursued by a substantial percentage of the population simply does not work. What did this experiment in 1920s America actually achieve? More than anything, it made a few villains immensely wealthy and rendered the alcohol market the subject of a turf war, where it became part of a much wider crime network that included protection rackets and extortion - death was often an occupational hazard of life in the drinks trade. The absence of a some form of legal control also led to the rise of 'moonshine' beverages that were notoriously dangerous. As the government attempts to price us all out of a beer or glass of wine, I'd expect more operations like the exploding vodka plant in Lincolnshire to emerge.

Quality control is also an important question here - as someone who has been to many gatherings where the drug was on offer (and smoked a few joints myself, though not for a few years now), I got to know several people who partook a more than occasional herbal cigarette. On one occasion, a mate of mine had a strange experience after smoking a joint which roused my attention (I was being boring, sticking simply to alcohol and 'regular' tobacco that night). When I later observed that he had not quite been himself, my friend explained that after again seeing the individual who had sold him the merchandise, he had learned that this smalltime dealer 'cut his dope with LSD'. I'm not saying that had he known in advance that the transaction would not have taken place anyway - it may well have done.

The point is, he was deliberately deprived of the opportunity to make an informed decision, and this is what happens when you surrender the entirety of a market to criminals. Drug dealers are not known for their honesty and nor do they pride themselves on the impeccable quality of the product they sell. By definition it is impossible to know the exact figure, but sensible estimates suggest that two million people in the Uk smoke marijuana with some sort of frequency, while half of those aged 16-29 have tried it at least once. Prohibition deprives these consumers of the right to understand exactly what they might be paying for and make an informed decision, while facilitating the 'souping up' of drugs by dealers that make them a whole lot more dangerous.

It is also necessary to take to task James' observation that "Many people who take cannabis do not function as the rest of us do". He partially qualifies this by stating that "Yes, not everyone who takes cannabis becomes psychotic or otherwise mentally ill. But the little impairments are just as damaging to society", but this still implies that those who smoke it immediately become incapable of compartmentalising their lives and understanding when it is or is not ok to get 'stoned'. Those I have known with whom marijuana played some sort of cameo role in their lives were perfectly capable of holding down jobs, even progressing in their careers and acting perfectly responsibly when the situation required it of them. Of course, some whose minds are somewhat altered may make a wrong decision to jump in their car - the same could be said of an people who drive while visibly plastered. Drugs can also 'take over' an individual's life, be they alcoholics, pot-heads, painkiller addicts, whatever - this owes far more to a person's addictive personality than to the drug itself.

The fundamental distinction is that when discussing the 'accepted' drug of alcohol, most people are capable of seeing the forays into criminality undeniably influenced by its use and rationalise that the majority of responsible drinkers ought not be punished for the indiscretions of those who cannot judge when getting behind the wheel is not a good idea, or that enough is simply enough. Yet, replace beer or wine with marijuana in the same conversation and some of those who would defend to the death an individual's right to partake in the former suddenly morph into holier-than-thou puritans, perhaps convinced that it serves as a 'gateway drug' to more harmful things. It is indeed the case that marijuana can be 'the first step on the narcotics ladder', but only because it introduces its users to criminals and low-lifes giving them the hard sell.

I've never bought a bottle of wine from a shop and been asked by the girl at the counter 'by the way, have you tried this?'. We need to break the chain, then when the expected collapse of society into wholesale disrepair does not happen, move on and look at legalising other drugs. Any prediction is little more than an educated guess, but there may indeed be an increase in use of marijuana immediately after legalisation, owing much to some sense of novelty factor. However, this in itself does not equate to the wrecking ball that many prohibitionists would suggest that it does. Maybe we can finally discuss as adults when it is or is not responsible to smoke marijuana, something that is simply not possible when the substance concerned is illegal (drink-driving has become deeply uncool and so can dope driving). It is not a substantive part of my argument, but the revenue that came through taxing the drug would also be more than useful and facilitate a small cut in taxation elsewhere.

An end to the hypocrisy on drugs is long overdue, as is the breakup of the criminal monopoly that can only be facilitated by prohibition. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Electro Angst Unlimited - the CCTV Generation

2011-09-08T20:38:00.003+01:00

You've got a brother
who's only looking out for you
that's the reason he must know
of every little thing you do
Just be careful on your course
and never question why
You don't know the malevolent force
behind the camera's eye

Oh they say it's a price worth paying
so you're safe and secure
Dossiers are well worth weighing
in case you're still not sure
If good things are what you are made of
what have you to hide?
So you've nothing to be afraid of
They all said that – they all lied

You've got a brother
who's keeping you out of harm's way
that's the justification for
hearing everything you say
Just don't be so bloody blasé
on being a non-believer
You can be sure that the Stasi
is wired to your receiver

Oh they say it's a price worth paying
so you're safe and secure
Dossiers are well worth weighing
in case you're still not sure
If good things are what you are made of
what have you to hide?
So you've nothing to be afraid of
They all said that – they all lied

And yet we tolerate this farce
We're all second class now aren't we?
If I want state strength shoved up my arse
I'll go live in Zimbabwe
And shake the torturous, blood-soaked hand
of that Mr Mugabe
then sing his praises through my band
could it be worse? IT CAN'T BE

You've got a brother
whose main concern is the greater good
And the enemy within
had better make this understood
Demonstrate at your convenience
by all means cause a stir
But the price of civil disobedience
is accidents occur

Oh they say it's a price worth paying
so you're safe and secure
Dossiers are well worth weighing
in case you're still not sure
If good things are what you are made of
what have you to hide?
So you've nothing to be afraid of
They all said that – they all lied

And if you like this then it calls
to take a holiday
of wires wrapped right around your balls
at Guantanemo Bay
Where they check out your pain threshold
until they hear you say
You know those bombs they swapped for gold?
I flogged them on Ebay

Time to Lift the Stigma from Mary Jane (1 of 2)

2011-09-07T19:37:00.003+01:00

This is a response to James Garry's Politics on Toast article - http://politicsontoast.com/2011/09/03/cannabis-is-legal-in-britain-or-skunk-shops-in-suburbia-part-ii/. Here, I explain why the current situation of lax law enforcement is 'bad for both sides' before laying out a detailed case in favour of legalising marijuana in Part 2.

The description that James provides of high street shops that sell 'hydroponic equipment' is an amusing one and more relevant to the conversation than it may at seem at first glance. I've heard of such shops (although I haven't, to my knowledge, ever been in one - nor is there such an outlet in my locality of which I'm aware), and it indeed appears that the existence of "grow kits, ultra violet lighting, fertilisers, seeds, vaporisers, bubble bags and much more" all under one roof may have more than a little to do with the large-scale production of marijuana, which is still an offence you occasionally see punished by the courts in an era where the attitude of law enforcement in general is more 'pragmatic' or 'relaxed'.

In that sense, it is surprising that the authorities have not at least gone in there to check the place out - more than anything they could simply confiscate the offending 'seeds' and point out that much of the remaining equipment could be used as part of a perfectly legitimate enterprise. a less lucrative one yes, and that's something I'll come back to later, but an entirely lawful means of making money nonetheless. As it is, these 'hydroponics' outlets are to 21st century Britain what speakeasies posing as pet shops were in 1920s America during the era of prohibition. This point is especially relevant because when presenting the case to legalise marijuana, alcohol is the elephant in the room on a number of levels.

When those campaigning for legalisation found a stronger collective voice in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the walking disaster that was the last government made yet another decision that owed a great deal to its innate ideological and intellectual bankruptcy. Straddling between a wish to appear 'tough on crime' by appeasing the anti-narcotics sentiment of the (for want of a better phrase) 'Daily Mail tendency' and the realisation that the war on drugs was a losing one, cannabis was reclassified to Class C status in 2004. Five years later they reversed the decision and returned the drug to Class B status, perhaps inspired to do so in part by the rise of skunk on our streets, but more than anything else by political expediency.

As in so many areas, Labour's policy on drugs was muddled and completely lacked either vision or direction. What we ended up with in practice was semi-legalised dope through stealth, a substance that was technically illegal but with a degree of poetic licence given to local law enforcement in regard to how they policed its use - a narcotics postcode lottery, if you will. This was and remains, to coin a phrase, "a miserable little compromise" that suits nobody.

It is also profoundly unconstitutional and dangerous. Something that caught my eye in one of James' posts was an observation that "I don't get Libertarians", with the (not uncommon) suggestion that Libertarians are essentially anarchists who lack either the courage, conviction or both to label themselves as such. This analysis is of course wrong so please let me explain:- the fundamental difference between Libertarianism and anarchy as I see it is a firm belief in the rule of law. This is essentially what separates us and I'll explain its relevance to this discussion.

A few months ago, during a regional Libertarian meeting, one of the guys asked how we would feel about supporting a campaign advising people not to pay the TV licence fee. I'm all for either an optional licence or privatising the BBC, but made it crystal clear that imploring others to commit a criminal offence is the wrong way to bring about change, since doing so seriously undermines the rule of law. Creating a culture in which law enforcement can see illegal activity taking place but choose to ignore it clearly falls into the same category, and so James' point about enforcing the current law is indeed correct, even if the analogy with shops selling weapons and 'robbery equipment' does not fit exactly.

There will always be cases where the punishment of a criminal offence is either unpopular or deemed by many to be an unworkable waste of police time - this will invariably lead to there being at least a strong case for reviewing the existing situation, as there is for the legalisation of marijuana. However, there are right and wrong ways to go about attempting to bring about and implement this change. Presenting the case in a fashion which takes sufficient public opinion with you to secure a majority is the only reasonable means by which such a shift can have the confidence of the general population. Not only does the current status of 'technically illegal, practically legal (depending on where you live)' undermine the rule of law, it ultimately does no favours to any honestly-presented case for legalisation.

One may suggest I should be happy with any outcome that leads to marijuana being less illegal than it previously was - as someone who seeks to engage in honest debate, the means by which it was achieved somewhat take the edge off any (questionable) sense of progress. The pro-legalisation side of the argument has never actually 'won' as such and we'd do well to remember that - nor will the opportunity to do so ever arise if we see the existing arrangement as valid. As for the halfway house solutions occasionally put forward by those on the fence, decriminalisation in reality is a cop-out that achieves nothing, as is the peculiar notion put forward by "strange people who are mentally creative enough to view cannabis consumption as acceptable but cannabis supply to be immoral".

James is right in the sense that as with many issues, there are only two stances towards the legal status of marijuana (and indeed other drugs) which can be seen as completely honest - those of blanket prohibition and outright legalisation, so I have total respect for an opponent who takes up a position based on firmly held principle. In Part 2, I'll explain precisely how and why I believe that this view is inherently flawed. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

What a riot

2011-09-07T11:25:00.004+01:00

So many serious people are pontificating on the cause of the recent riots around Britain, and what should be done about them, that I feel almost too overawed to comment.

Surely such great minds can deal with this?

It truly saddens and alarms me that so much time, effort, mind power and TV exposure can be put into evading reality.

Why have individuals gone on a rampage? Because they can? But why would they want to?

As far as I can see it is the result of, a response to, the simple old control lust that runs through all of us and that a nice preacher-psychologist that I once heard referred to as the cause of all mankind's woes: The desire to tell other people what they must think and do.

The solutions being mooted are more of the same. We should do this, or that. Harsher sentences. More remedial actions. Build better social services. Simply put - interfere even more than before. That very interference and micro-management that has caused the problems in the first place.

What should be done?

NOTHING! Back off and leave alone. Stop interfereing in the detail of people's lives.

Where a crime against someone or their property is committed, sure, prosecute and sentence. And err, if at all, on the side of hardness.

But otherwise leave people alone to run their own lives.

And before the old control lust kicks in and we start trying to teach people to be individually responsible and free - again, stop!

Sure, the information that individual freedom and individual responsibility is the key to a happy community (because the individuals are happy) can be made available.

And the example of a personally free and a personally responsible lifestyle can be presented through one's own life.

But this ghastly urge to muck other people about has got to stop.

Simply. The cause of the riots is that individuals have run out of a sense of personal responsibility. They have run out of a desire to be personally responsible because someone else is assuming this for them, and doing so, if they would admit it, to further their own lust for control.

One cannot control people into becoming more individually responsible.

They need to understand the concept because it makes sense (as have better politicians understood that smaller government is better government) not because someone tells them it is true.

But of course, to the empire builders, such ideas of individual freedom and responsibility are anathema.

The empire builder in all of us - that which would would control - is the cause.

If 'Talent Borrows' and 'Genius Steals', can Someone Please Explain Johann Hari?

2011-09-06T19:25:00.007+01:00

Ach well, people reap what they sow sometimes...

Serial copy/paste specialist of juicy quotes in 'interviews' and trasher of multiple Wikipedia entries, Hari has apparently fessed up on all counts to editor Andreas Whittam Smith, citing a serious case of depression.

Unlike some alleged journalists, we do acknowledge external sources, so muchos kudos to Guido and his crew for being the first to break the story - http://order-order.com/2011/09/05/hari-confesses-blames-depression/.

Only Johann himself honestly knows whether he is/was truly depressed or not - the timing of this revelation strikes as somewhat convenient, to put it mildly. However, something of which this bunny is pretty certain is that life may be about to get a whole lot more difficult for the (ex?) Indie scribe minus the personal column in a National newspaper that came to him at the tender age of 23, a (well-earned or otherwise) reputation as the future of leftist writing in Britain and the Orwell Prize that was awarded to him in 2008 for outstanding, er...'journalism'.

Later in the week, I'll be doing a piece that touches on instances of individuals who disappear into Walter Mitty territory, attempting to perform roles and build careers in areas of expertise where they are clearly incapable. It would perhaps be unfair to label Hari as an absolute dud in this sense, but his was a case where ambition clearly exceeded natural ability. Even taking political bias out of the equation, not once was I genuinely taken in by his writing, even if it was only to make me ponder exactly why I disagreed with it. I'd be interested in hearing if any of our readers felt differently.

Like his mate Laurie Penny, Johann was simply an average student debater who got lucky (there are even tales of him fabricating the odd 'news story' in the college paper back at Cambridge). Watching or listening to either offer their 'expert' opinion was and may remain utterly cringeworthy and it's at best ironic that in the week that Hari's House of Cards collapsed, PennyRed shot to number one in the Wikio listings after producing an inaccurate and childish justification of the riots/looting/shopping with violence, that Al Jazeera picked up on. A few foolish teenagers may still see her as something to aspire to, but I've every faith most of them will grow out of it.

The moral of the Johann Hari story? The 'years of irrelevance' at the start of a person's career are where they hone their craft in any walk of life. Better to make schoolboy errors in smaller and less hostile seas than be thrown in at the deep end minus any notion of how to conquer the waves. Hari never had his years of irrelevance, never honed his craft and was ultimately bereft of the skill to tease pertinent quotes out of his interview subject. The equation of ambition - ability = misery brings the individual to another choice:- accept your limitations or cut a few corners in order to get on. The rest, it seems, is history.

On that note, here are a couple of musical tributes in honour of a PC propagandist's fall from grace - 'Too Much, Too Young' by the Specials and 'Cemetry Gates', The Smiths' ode to the subject of plagarism. Take care and I'll catch you tomorrow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdu8VOWk3pg&ob=av2n

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z68V77LzcOQ

Binism

2011-09-06T15:31:00.001+01:00

It is strange how many subtle changes can alter an entire national perspective. The Britain I last lived in about 30 years ago was radically different from the Britain today.

Take Binism.

It seems Britain has a new religion that has been added to its cultural diversity.

Where I am now living Binists studiously prepare their offerings once a fortnight and then in a moment of magical mystery wheel out their dedications in the dead of night to be accepted by the great recycling god in the early hours of the new day.

Great precision and dedication goes into preparing the offering with no attention spared to correct presentation.

Plastic to plastic, paper to paper, glass to glass is presented in wee, tiny boxes laid out in front of one's dwelling.

Offerings from the garden such as precious grass cuttings and leaves tend not to be offered back to the soil but are wheeled out in mighty brown bins to be taken up by the Binist priests shortly after the sun has risen above the horizon.

Sometimes there is a procession of differing orders of Bin priests.

Those who take the plastic, glass and paper seriously and indifferently accept the boxes of offerings, casting the containers back before the dwellings.

However, the great excitement is in the great Bin god priest machines that stalk the streets.

Ah, such drama! Ah,what splendour, what glorious exhaltation!

The dawn is broken by the crashing roar of priest machine gods that thunder and tumble in the streets. True magnificence.

Bin priests scurry from dwelling to dwelling, receiving the offerings and presenting them to the great machine god thunderous beasts.

Any unwary traffic at that time swiftly retreats and cowers in alleys and doorways before that presence.

With swift deference the bins are presented by the priests to the great machine gods that lift and quaff them as you or I would a glass of ale.

And then they roar, belching smoke and fire into the crystal day morn and consume one's petty offering.

The bin priests run from dwelling to dwelling seeming enthralled in greater knowledge, wisdom and ecstacy than such as we, mere lay folk, can hope to know.

And then the great machine god calms, perhaps hiccups, and grandly moves ahead.

Long after the great bin gods have consumed ones' streets with power and glory, one may hear them strutting the neighbourhood challenging mere mortality.

Sometimes closer, sometimes further, until at last the mighty thunder is heard no more.

We are cleansed.

Great catharsis. Great terror and upliftment.

We wait in glorious anticipation for our next encounter with humanity's true grace and wisdom.

That Wikio Top 20

2011-09-05T20:00:00.003+01:00

Connected somewhat to the last post, here's the Wikio Top 20 in the Politics section for September 2011:-

1. PennyRed
2. Liberal Conspiracy
3. Guy Fawkes' Blog
4. ConservativeHome's YourPlatform
5. Labourlist
6. Left Foot Forward
7. Political Scrapbook
8. Politics - Politics Blog - guardian.co.uk
9. ConservativeHome's ToryDiary
10. Liberal Democrat Voice
11. Labour Uncut
12. Harry's Place
13. Archbishop Cranmer
14. The Third Estate
15. Monibot.com
16. EU Referendum
17. Lenin's Tomb
18. Dick Puddlecote
19. Jack of Kent
20. Stumbling and Mumbling

Nice to see a few independents in there slugging it out with the usual big names and those sponsored by party machines - many congratulations to those sites and their contributors in particular.

Other blog rankings of possible interest to our readers:-

23 - Anna Raccoon - http://www.annaraccoon.com/
57 - Old Holborn - http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/
62 - The Devil's Kitchen - http://devilskitchen.blogspot.com/
192 - OutspokenRabbit
216 - Malpoet's Weblog - http://malpoet.wordpress.com/
238 - Politics on Toast - http://politicsontoast.com/

Rankings as indexed by Wikio - http://www.wikio.co.uk/

OutspokenRabbit Climbs with Wikio Again

2011-09-05T19:17:00.007+01:00

Many thanks to all of our readers, friends, contributors and trolls who have enabled this site to rise by a further 50 places in the Wikio ratings. It has already been said that no blog has held the prestigious slot at number 192 in the roll of honour with a greater swagger than this one.

On a more serious note, it represents measurable progress in reasonable time, and though these things are not hugely important in isolation, they do serve as a useful indication as to whether anyone is taking you seriously or not. I very much doubt we'll ever be competing as equals with the likes of Guido - http://order-order.com/ and Liberal Conspiracy - http://liberalconspiracy.org/, but it's nice to be heading in the right direction and I'm immensely grateful to all who helped make it possible.

I'm disappointed for the guys and girls at Anna Raccoon - http://www.annaraccoon.com/, who just fell out of the top 20 after a prolonged period within it. As the queen bee of sites with Libertarian leanings, I have no doubt that they will be back - form is temporary and all that. Matt, Jon and the Raccoon herself have given this site a platform to step in and fill the void on quiet days, even the odd not-so-quiet one, but there are a multitude of much more substantial reasons why you should check them out.

James Garry and his Politics on Toast site - http://politicsontoast.com/ comes in at 238rd place (a leap of over 200) in only its second active month. You will have caught our debate on capital punishment both here and over at the Raccoon - while it is quite clear that James and this bunny certainly approach social and constitutional policy from somewhat different angles, it would be rather pathetic to deny the quality of his output. Expect a cross-post between the two sites in the near future and what is sure to be another fascinating debate, this time on the legal/illegal status of marijuana.

Last but never, ever least is the one and only Malpoet - http://malpoet.wordpress.com/ . Another steady month for the legend has seen him rise by 55 spots up to 216th, despite a spell of inactivity. If you want astute political and social commentary from an instinctively liberal perspective, interspersed by the occasional bout of thought-provoking verse, then this is without doubt the site for you. Even if your blogosphere needs are slightly less prescriptive, 'Liberty, Prosperity, Malpoetry' is still something of a hidden gem - his contributions to these pages are, and always will be, immensely welcome.

By the way, many thanks again to all those who voted for this site or any of its contributors in the Total Politics blog awards - http://www.totalpolitics.com/surveys/total-politics-blog-awards/. It appears that voting is still open for anyone who wishes to take part. Take care and I'll catch you soon.

Time for some International Football Realism

2011-09-04T21:43:00.007+01:00

The struggles of Scotland and Northern Ireland in particular in the weekend's Euro 2012 Qualifiers have followed an all-too-familiar pattern of hope and disappointment. The Scots' failure to hold a lead on two occasions against the Czech Republic at Hampden has left them needing either a string of favours from elsewhere or an unexpected three points in an away fixture against reigning European and World champions Spain. While both of these outcomes seem at best far-fetched, NI's hopes of competing in Poland and the Ukraine are, if not clinically dead, then on round-the-clock life support with a string of relatives already stood round the bed, trying to rationalise the inevitable. Outclassed for long periods by the technically superior Serbs, Northern Ireland imploded as they have on several occasions in recent history while enjoying their best spell of the match. One uncharacteristically sloppy back-pass from the usually reliable Steven Davis, cue Windsor silence - game over.

As an Englishman who wants all of the home nations to do well regardless, the sense of despair that gripped Windsor Park in particular is one that is easy to understand, particularly when a positive result from that single encounter would have completely altered the face of their qualification group. The Scots and NI would be viewing their matches with Lithuania and Estonia respectively with an altogether more positive outlook. As it is, both are now playing catchup, occupying the last chance saloon of win and hope:- namely for the Lithuanians to role over and play dead at Hampden, then take out the Czechs is Kaunas, while NI will be praying that the Faroe Islands, favourite international minnow of so many English fans for their exploits against the Scots, can yield some sort of return from their trip to Belgrade - either that or for NI themselves to win their final match in Italy, take your pick.

Scotland's last appearance at such a showpiece event was back at France 1998, while Norn Iron's green army has to look as far back as Mexico 1986 to answer the same question. While NI have frequently suffered from the perils that come with a low seeding and the requisite rocky road to qualification, the Scots at least had a record of making the finals of the Euros or World Cup that demanded respect, even if their subsequent efforts at the tournaments themselves became something of a laughing stock south of the border (1978 may well have been a year of wildly misplaced optimism and false hope for Ally McLeod's team and their supporters, but it is also worth re-iterating that Scotland qualified for Argentina whereas England's team of 'mavericks' fell short). Here are a couple of the anthems that captured the mood of the time anyway.

After losing to England in a play-off for Euro 2000, perhaps the moment that the rules of the game changed came in March 2001. Scotland have cruised into a 2-0 lead against Belgium, who have also had a man sent off and appear to be losing their cool. Just keep it simple, or at least tight and it's job done, yeah? Not quite - that the Belgians snatch the initiative and momentum of the match in the second half makes little sense, but that is precisely what happened. Marc Wilmots pulls one back, then even with a numerical advantage, the Scots can't prevent Daniel Van Buyten from stealing a dramatic equaliser in stoppage time. It was a critical passage of play for a multitude of reasons - the dynamics of the return match in Brussels had now changed so that Scotland needed a victory from an encounter in which a draw would normally constitute a good result.

That they went down 2-0 while doing so also prompted their slide down the seedings, ensuring more difficult paths to the major tournaments from that point onwards. Everyone acknowledges that their Euro 2008 campaign was the best effort from a Scottish international side since they pipped Sweden to France '98 - that they achieved home and away victories against France was of particular significance (you've gotta love that hysterical commentator, haven't you?) and kept them right in the running until Christian Panucci inserted the final nail by finishing an Italian counter-attack at Hampden. Northern Ireland had moments of their own, most notably the astonishing upset of Spain at fortress Windsor. They also took four points off Sweden and Denmark, with victories in Belfast backed up by hard-earned draws on the road.

However, there's a common denominator here. Both sides failed to make it to Austria and Switzerland because of poor results in games that should have represented bankable points for any team seriously thinking about qualification. Scotland's undoing was a dreadful 2-0 loss in Tbilisi to a truly awful Georgian team that had already run them too close for comfort in the previous fixture. It effectively cancelled out one of those victories against the French and left their showdown with the Azzurri as a must-win game. NI were ultimately sunk by two defeats to Iceland and a loss in Riga (the summer double header against Latvia and Iceland brought nothing, with own goals proving decisive in both games). The problem appears to be that of not only getting one or two results that go against the seedings, but also winning every match which you would be expected to.

Some would suggest that this is a 'chicken and egg' situation that comes with being drawn from pot four - of course the higher seeded nations get 'an easier draw' in that sense, but they still have to take four or more points from opponents ranked below them in order to progress. This is where strength in depth becomes so important during a long and drawn-out qualification campaign that is completed over a period of fourteen months. Scotland and Northern Ireland's best eleven may be able to pull off the occasional result that suggests they can compete with anyone. On that basis, the middle tier of international football is clearly far more tight and congested than it once was, with very few gimmes for all but the top table of footballing nations. The subtle differences are highlighted when a weekend-midweek double header brings the effect of injuries and suspensions into play. Very few teams complete their entire round of fixtures with a line-up completely of their coach's choosing and that is where the problem lies.

If you look at the respective squads of the other home nations, the pattern that emerges is somewhat familiar. All have a handful of Premier League players who have proven themselves at both that level and as strong performers in international football (in Gareth Bale, Wales have the one player from elsewhere in the Uk who might be an automatic pick for England). Beneath that, the roster is made up of players from the Scottish Premier Division, the Championship or League One (moves to other major European Leagues are also very rare). Welsh and Northern Irish domestic football in particular remains part-time and is of a very poor standard, hardly a breeding ground for future members of an international team. They in particular rely on the English club system to unearth and develop their players, which is why the talent pool is as small as it is.

Perhaps in that context, third place and a narrow miss on a play-off actually constitutes a good performance and should be viewed as such. Upon removing any partisan element from the conversation, two points are quite hard to argue with in reality. Even if they're prone to a spot of diving, the current (far from spectacular) Czech side is stronger than Scotland's best eleven, while the Serbs remain that bit more savvy in the art of international football than Northern Ireland. Craig Levein and Nigel Worthington are restricted somewhat by the limitations of the personnel available to them, and 'passion' will only cover so many deficiencies. Over the long haul of eight or ten matches, gulfs in class are invariably reflected in the standings, and only the emergence of greater talent in depth is likely to alter that equation (NI are badly hampered by FIFA rulings on this score, but that's probably a post all of its own).

Scotland vs Lithuania and Estonia vs Northern Ireland are both matches from which a victory for the British side is a distinct possibility - here's hoping they can both pull it off. Take care and I'll catch you tomorrow.

Save your Faith for Someone Special

2011-09-03T23:17:00.005+01:00

This bunny has been deeply suspicious of authority figures since his teens, be they parents, teachers, the workplace beak or nanny and her multitude of arms, eyes and ears. Hey, the sense that those in positions of power cannot be trusted even extended to the leadership of something that called itself the Uk Libertarian Party (more on that sect of drones in the coming days).

There's a common denominator in all this, and it's me - so maybe I'm the one with the problem? This bunny is not particularly interested in the thoughts of individuals whose predictable take on events is to mutter, "well yes, life's a bitch, but that's the way it is". Imagine if people of this ilk had held the levers of power throughout the course of history - we'd still have slavery, apartheid, absolute monarchies and brutal oppression throughout what is now (sometimes) the civilised world. Representative democracy would never have got off the ground and anyone who had not married by their 21st birthday would be seen as some sort of social pariah. I just thank the man upstairs that some of history's supermen (and women) took it upon themselves not to "accept things the way they are". By definition, few of us are cut out to lead a revolution, but sufficient numbers of people appropriately pissed off to pursue change is usually the catalyst for such great individuals to emerge and the requisite shift to take place.

What I suppose I'm pursuing an answer to, and perhaps the comments section is as good a place to start as any, is this:- my experience of the world is that power by its very definition both attracts the most unsuitable for it and brings out the worst in them - does yours concur with that?. The caveat here is that I have of course been lucky on a few occasions to find teachers who were supportive and offered encouragement, along with a solitary line manager in the occupational minefield who I still refer to, albeit playfully, as God - hopefully the man upstairs sees the funny side of that.

What did all of these shining lights amid a valley of darkness have in common? I can probably point to two standout characteristics in particular - 1) these individuals never actively sought power over the lives of others - as a result, they tended to wear whatever sword of damocles that was available to them rather lightly and 2) all appeared to acknowledge that their positions brought not just influence and authority, but responsibility and an understanding that they could change the lives of those under their wing for the better or worse. I've managed people (albeit in a brief pre-redundancy wind-down phase) before and will probably do so again in the future, so would just hope that my style might be somewhat influenced by those I saw as an overwhelmingly positive thing.

That such individuals are in a minority also means that there is a wealth of negative experience to fall back on - the parasites and vampires who took their 'authority' far too seriously, deciding to impose it in ways that benefited only themselves (naturally, such instances serve as a constant reminder of precisely what not to do). As a starter for ten, I've had my workshy father, without a trace of humour or irony, refer to me as 'his pension', along with a few megalomaniacs in the occupational sphere who, by bringing their egos into work, were intent on turning this bunny into some sort of disciple - of course refusal to comply resulted in anything from professional stagnation to choreographed 'days of disaster'. That's not a call to get the violin out, so put it down - after all, I dropped more than my share of clangers in the same timeframe. It's just worth illustrating that everything I talk about and believe in is based on events that took place in a genuine personal narrative.

However, this begs the question, is my experience typical or an exception - then again, is this bunny simply pronouncing that anyone not in possession of demonstrable liberal instincts is, by definition, some sort of authoritarian bastard? Maybe it's the humility that comes with age as you realise precisely how little you know, but the thought that I've simply seen everything through an ideological lens and neglected the practical issues that come with controlling unruly kids, or meeting a sales target, has been a new arrival on my train of thought since starting this blog. Then I remember that it's the bad parents who end up repeatedly smacking their children, pisspoor teachers that lose control of classrooms and appear on radio phone-ins appealing to nanny for back-up and truly dreadful managers who rapidly lose the respect of their underlings - rule by fear invariably becomes the default option in all of these cases.

What I can say with utter certainty is that Statism, like instinctive Liberalism, goes stratospheres beyond politics and is a full-on way of life. Statists lie, they promise you things they cannot deliver. A statist will demand greater powers over the lives of others to cover their own shortcomings then ask those individuals to 'take responsibility' and clean up the mess left by choices made by nanny on their behalf.

One of my dearest wishes is that there would be fewer people in Britain who chose a life of idleness, then joined in the predictable "immigrants have stolen my job" bullshit that sometimes serves as an anthem for working class alienation. Pass a few pubs round lunchtime on giro day and you'll see the point I'm making regarding the reality. However, that doesn't mean that this bunny fails to understand precisely why the best part of a million people consciously embark upon such an existence. Not only is it a damn sight easier than working for a living, it actually represents a more even relationship between state and individual than most of us have - in their cases, zero freedom but nil by way of responsibility to go with it. Sometimes I ponder:- who are the fools, really?

Instinctive Liberals naturally believe that these concepts are mutually inclusive, whereas Statists tend to manipulate and make the rules up as they go along. A greater good or sacred cow serves as a useful means by which to steal yet more of your money, or interfere in behaviour that does no harm to others. Perhaps the biggest reason why I remain immensely fond of the old regional LPUK crowd is precisely because their instincts and approaches to life in general resonate with mine (they are also, to a man, brilliant people). As long as you're not infringing upon the liberties of someone else, then do what the hell you like, and though I may not necessarily advocate your course of action for myself, well it's none of my business really is it? After all, you own your life, but then everybody else owns theirs.

Thanks to Pagar for that last line, which could only ever have passed the lips of an individual with liberal instincts. Perhaps the biggest single distinction is that Statism by its very nature demands, in fact compels a mammoth leap of faith in nanny as the devine provider, she who cares for the poor, dispossessed, sick and lame. Institutions are of course made up solely of individuals who are as inherently flawed as you or I. Add to this the fact that the power to infringe upon the economic and personal liberty of others is bound to a) attract precisely the wrong type of people and/or b) bring out the worst in some of the right ones and it makes no rational sense to worship and invest vast quantities of blind faith in such an entity - to illustrate the point, how many fellow humans would you trust with your worldly possessions and the capacity to decide your future? Not many, but this is what Statists require of you, something akin to signing a blank cheque while wearing cuffs and a blindfold.

Of course, in this case, the individual does not really have a choice, since at the very least a large percentage of the money they earn is stolen from them on the threat of imprisonment to pay for nanny's 'devine deeds'. I believe in God, which I know some of our readers and contributors see as irrational in itself - this bunny would of course defend to the death their right to express such an opinion. What I would add though, is that this was entirely a personal decision, perhaps influenced by others at some point but not forced or coerced in any way. In the national church of Statism, where faith is taken from the individual at gunpoint, no such free will exists, perhaps disproving the tongue-in-cheek theory that "the difference between a religion and a cult is that a religion is big and a cult is small".

Statism is big, corporate religion - and just like all the other crazed sects that sieze your possessions, while reducing you to nothing but the humble slave of another human being (freedom day continues its apparently irreversible slide - 30th May this year), it has been proved to be something of a poisonous dud. Were nanny an individual herself, most of us would be constantly looking over our shoulder, making sure she wasn't waiting by the cashpoint to carry out a quick mugging. In short, you can't trust her and so the only sensible course of action is to restrict the extent to which she can take your money and your life. It is not you or I, but nanny who needs clear boundaries, no-go areas and a quick trip back to her little box. The faith of others is something that you earn and I can think of very few causes less worthy of it.

Take care, and don't let the bastards grind you down.

How Many Times?

2011-09-02T21:38:00.003+01:00

How many times
must I be pushed away
before I stop coming back?
Will I fight
day after day
til I see I can't take a whack

Anymore
Anymore
Anymore
Anymore

You tell me
it's the fear that beats ya
and I need to take a risk
Well pardon me
but my hideous features
say maybe I've tasted fist

In my face
In my face
In my face
In my face

How many times
must rejection bite
before I stay clear of oestrogen?
At least I know
if I'm out of sight
then I won't get hurt again

Anyway
Anyway
Anyway
Anyway

You tell me
that I'm immature
and I need to grow a pair
But baby
you'd be insecure
if you knew nobody cared

About you
About you
About you
About you

How many times
must I punch that wall
before I run back to my cave?
If I took
another nasty fall
then I don't think I could be saved

Not this time
Not this time
Not this time
Not this time

You tell me
I should get out more
since I'm emotionally constipated
But I can't be
a people whore
I think people are over-rated

By a mile
By a mile
By a mile
By a mile

I'm sick of fools who've had it easy
telling me how to live my life
since you only learn the hard way
what you need to do to survive

How many times?
How many times?
How many times?
How many times?

Get the Measure

2011-09-01T19:01:00.004+01:00

Appearance
can be deceptive
if you're not very bright
and not very perceptive
I am the fool
at least in your eyes
But guess who's fooling who
and who'll get a surprise

Surely you sense that I
can see it coming?
It can't be hard to slip a shot
you spot from sixteen miles away

Oh, get the measure
It's quite apparent you're so transparent
even that glass sits
and shakes its head at you
Oh, get the measure
It's quite apparent you're so transparent
even perspex
playfully pulls a face at you

Appearance
can be confusing
if your antenna is
a tool you're just not using
I am the fool
you've marked and carded
It's clear as a bell
you think that I'm retarded

Surely you know
my nose can trace the scent?
And now that device that you sent
went to that wrong address I gave you

Oh, get the measure
It's quite apparent you're so transparent
even that glass sits
and shakes its head at you
Oh, get the measure
It's quite apparent you're so transparent
even perspex
playfully pulls a face at you

It's enough to make you wish
that you were blonde in mind
but nowhere else - hey
that way no-one would ever talk to you
It's enough to make you wish
that you were mute, blind
dumb and deaf - hey
that way nothing would ever happen around you

Appearance
can be misleading
That smiling face
will leave you cut and bleeding
I am the fool
you think that you know
But I know different, so
c'mere, meet my elbow

Surely you know
that it's no magic trick?
Since your illusion doesn't stick
and what's up your sleeve is no ace

Oh, get the measure
It's quite apparent you're so transparent
even that glass sits
and shakes its head at you
Oh, get the measure
It's quite apparent you're so transparent
even perspex
playfully pulls a face at you

It's only paranoia if it's not true
It's only paranoia if it's not true
It's only paranoia if it's not true
It's only paranoia if it's not true