In praise of choice

Phillip Hammond recently said of the Brexit vote; ‘People didn’t vote to be poorer’. Well, of course not because that wasn’t what the referendum was about. I thought we, narrowly, voted to leave the EU for richer or for poorer and to take our chances in the wider world. It should be cause for excitement and opportunity. Instead, those wanting to remain are still rending their garments and pointing at poverty indicators, both real and imaginary.

But what is poor, anyway? There seems scant evidence that – despite all the politicised weaponising of foodbanks – people are actually starving, save through the neglect of those directly charged with their care. For the price of a packet of cigarettes you can feed a family; choose. Through choice people continue to thrive despite all attempts by governments of all hues to ‘improve their lives’. The best thing a government can do is provide basic infrastructure and then keep out of the way.

The second coming at Glastonbury demonstrated the friable nature of popularity; for months JC was derided as unelectable then suddenly, as if by command from on high, they chose to worship him. And lo, he came among them and foretold that all would be well, that one day we will all be given good jobs and good pay and we shalt live off the fat of the land. The people’s choice, for a few hours at least, was to bask in the glow of his glory and imagine he spake true.

But the entire economy – economics itself – is driven by choices.  In the allocation of scarce resources it is the daily decisions we make that determines how the pie is divided. A vote for socialism is to take much of this choice off the menu. In the planned economy, in state provision of every essential need, it is the state that decides what we buy, what we pay for it, what we eat, where and how we live and what work we do. And this always leads to rationing and shortages because the government cannot possibly make those decisions in a timely enough fashion to satisfy your needs.

Choosing to take away choice leads to a lack of competition which leads to a reduction in productivity - the real engine of wealth. And what about the coming of the robots? If many low-end jobs are automated, which they will be to counter the lost productivity of human labour, how and on whom will taxes be levied to pay for the expanded welfare bill? Or would the government then have to actually seize everything just to make ends meet? Some left-field thinkers even believe we should abolish money and let the state decide who needs what and when.

Here’s the thing; people are fallible. In fact, we’re known for it. If anything, we are possibly more fallible in a group than when we act alone, in our own self-interest. Crowd-sourced group-think can cause people to actually act against instincts and urges evolved over millennia to keep us alive. In the echo chamber it is discordant to sing against the choir. Some speak of fear of letting anybody know they voted for the Tories, or for Brexit and students, who live in a world of peer-group conformity, are particularly driven to compliance. Rebellion, they cry... in perfect harmony... in perfect irony.

Meet the new boss!

Today Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour are dangling carrots they can’t afford to pay for as the Queen’s Speech is challenged. Seriously, who do you think most capable of protecting you, feeding you, educating you and seeing Brexit through: the overgrown hippy with a gleam in his eye and an adherence to a kindly-sounding doctrine which has failed over and over again, or the rheumy–eyed ancients who promise you nothing except to steer this ship as many before through the stormy seas ahead? Your choice.

Let he who is without sin...

Forgive me, Blogger, for I have sinned. It is five days since my last blogfession. I don’t even offer any excuse, although plenty spring to mind. In fact, excuses seem to be very much the thing right now. Excuses for inaction, excuses for past actions, excuses for possible future actions; the hardest bit of politics seems to me to be getting your excuses in early, ideally before any blame has been apportioned. Meanwhile the show must go on. The show today being, of course, the subdued state opening of Parliament.

It’s like the worst kind of scripted reality show; mindless fodder for the lumpen masses, where wooden characters act out pre-ordained plots as onlookers agitate from the side-lines. Did I say agitate? Of course I meant – John McDonnell meant – peacefully demonstrate their kinder, gentler opposition; not in any way engage in a Day of Rage to bring down the government; oh no, that would be inflammatory, nobody meant that, did they, John? Hedging his bets McDonnell first called for insurrection then yesterday pretended he really meant ‘a bit of a march’ with a few mild placards.

And over on the other channel everybody is watching the Grenfell Game, wondering who is going to scoop the big prize. The various cheerleaders are whipping up the audience into a frenzy in an effort to ensure that as many as possible leave the game with more than they owned when they arrived. Compensation has gone from being the provision of relief from loss to a system of reward for giving the best depiction of entitlement. Playing the helpless victim of greater powers has become a new career for some and facilitating that victimhood is a full-time occupation for others.

To assist in upping the entertainment value, a bevy of modern-age virtues are brought to the front line: selective outrage, moral equivalence, the race card, the muslim card... along with a whole entourage of faux facts, from mangled statistics to downright lies. He said, she said, they did, we didn’t; the war of words is rapidly becoming a well-rehearsed soap opera in which everybody knows the format. Shit happens, everybody mucks in, politicians on all sides try to spin it as a triumph for themselves and a ‘sad indictment’ of the supposed motives of all the other competing sides. We’re all sinners now; casting the first stone is nothing to do with conscience, it’s merely a matter of timing.

Meanwhile, the world still turns. Those who pay for everything will still pay for everything. Those who have only ever taken will continue to take. And the poor sods in the middle scrabble for the safety and promise of salvation of the few scraps of flotsam from the wreckage. The ideologues’ multicultural, rainbow-nation dream has been a disaster and the disparate forces of malcontent, jostling to put their special interest centre stage at the expense of others threatens to tear it still further asunder. In pursuit of a world in which everybody wins, against nature itself, we are instead in a place where, with few exceptions, everybody loses.

Ask not what your country can do for you...

Whatever happens today, peaceful or otherwise, it has to be hoped that common sense and common decency prevail and the process of governing the country is allowed to begin again. Instead of demanding from society yet another slice of a finite pie of money, police, emergency services, ‘justice’ and so on, look to the other side of the Grenfell disaster. Follow the example of those who freely gave of their time and resources to help each other out. Margaret Thatcher said there was no such thing as society – and she was right. People conveniently forget that she went on to say: “There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours." Why, she was practically Jeremy Corbyn!