The presumptuous state

It's all in the language. Always. Whenever the state comes up with a new
initiative, or proposed law, look at the language. If what's going on is
fishy, the words will smell very, very bad.

Our current government, like all socialist governments, is, in addition
to being no respecter of persons, no respecter of people. To the
socialist, the state is it; the be all, the end all, the Alpha, the
Omega. In the beginning was the word, the word was with The State, the
word was The State. The socialist cannot imagine a world before the
state or without the state, and when any reasonable person can see that
more state involvement in human affairs has caused more problems, the
socialist cannot conceive that the solution might be less involvement.
Instead, they see the solution as more involvement, only perhaps
slightly different, or more coercive.

And so we have the notion of "presumed consent" in the area of organ
donation. A close examination exposes the contradictions inherent in this
melange of words. First, consent is something explicit. One cannot
presume consent, by definition. The deception is in the juxtaposition of
these two contradictory words; to endeavour to force something on a society,
but make it sound like something voluntary.

Then there is the term "organ donor". A donation is a gift, an act of
choice, a wilful gesture. All donated organs are organs explicitly given. So,
one cannot call organs taken from others without their consent
"donated". Therefore the expression "Presumed consent for organ
donation" is one contradiction contradicting another.

The prospect of the cannibal state raises some alarming questions. What
is an organ? According to Wikipedia an organ (Latin: organum,
"instrument, tool") is a "group of tissues that perform a specific
function or group of functions". In other words, absolutely any part of
a person may be considered an organ. Will there be anything left to bury when
they've finished? If one dies and has forgotten to write to the
state explicitly stating what they can and can't take, or simply don't
want to, will one's family be presented with a loose carcass with a few
things hanging off it to bury?

And what is organ donation anyway? Does it have to be to a specific
person at a specific point in time? Or can the state store bits of me
until such a time as they become useful? If they aren't, will the state
do what it currently does with discarded embryos in IVF, and, reasoning
that they have no other purpose, use them for experiments? Could one's brain
end up wired up to an old hi-fi, prodded or electrified until it makes a
noise?

If people don't want to give their organs, then that's their
prerogative. It's not for them to have to tell the state that they don't
want them harvested, any more than it's for them to have to tell the
state that they don't want anything else to happen to them.

Every organ is a gift. Receiving an organ is a privilege, not a right.
So when the state says there are "not enough organ donors" this is a
preposterous and presumptuous statement, a bullying and arrogant
statement. Every donor is one more than can ever be expected. The state
is treating current donors, and the gift they give in a derogatory way
by relegating their gift to the level of common taxation.

The claim made by the state is that such a move would save human lives.
I suspect that, in light of the evidence, this is more about improving
NHS statistics.

Rights and wrong

Rejoice, rejoice. This week, Lothian and Borders police have been awarded a prize for their sterling work on gay rights. This gave me a warm glow - knowing that an ostensibly politically neutral arm of the civil service were taking a partisan position in the greater cultural debate on sexual politics.

Meanwhile, at Six O'Clock this evening, I watched as a group of youths, already acting in an intimidating way, casually dropped their trousers and urinated in the middle of a busy high street in the centre of Edinburgh. Just like that. They then threw large quantities of litter on the ground.

The idea that there might be a policeman around, let alone a citizen with courage, was patently very far from their minds. Far from running away in fear of being caught, they hung around for another five minutes, shouting and screaming. I would have confronted them, but I had my son with me. Instead, I waited for a police car to pass. I waited, and waited. It seems the youths were right; there were no police around.

I would bet my life that to a person, all those youths were the product of that heady mixture of sexual anarchy and socialism that has created the underclass. Conceived to unmarried women, subsidised and rewarded by the state for doing so, and growing up with no father or worse still, a series of anomic older males, they are now who they are.

So it is good to know that the Police are firm supporters of that sexual anarchy of which those youths are the product; conspirators in the attack on personal morality, self restraint, marriage, and the family which has left our streets unpleasant and anarchic. And why wouldn't they be? It's not like they're around to deal with the consequences.

The horrors of Zimbabwe

Freedom of the press is generally considered one of the prerequisites of a democratic society. The government stays out of the workings of the press, and one hopes, the press stay out of the workings of government.

Of course, in Britain at least, the new political class would appear to be too close to comfort to the media class. But it's not a situation that has come about by design. Or has it? When we talk about, say, the pro-multicultural and liberal bias of the BBC, are we witnessing something organic and inherent to the BBC's incidental cultural make-up, or something imposed?

I stumbled across this document on a government website recently. Until now, I had no idea that the state presumed to involve itself in the work of journalists. Of course, there are laws on libel and incitement to murder, but these are matters for the courts, ex post facto.

Reading through the document, a number of things strike the reader. First of all, its very existence. The very fact that someone in government would sit down and draft such a document, and, equally surprisingly, that their superior didn't pull them to one side and say "we don't involve ourselves in the work of the press". The second thing is its tone.

"Just because some of the practices of minority faiths seem more exotic than morning service at St Saviour’s, don’t simply reach for clichés like vibrant, rich and colourful as if what you are witnessing has no more significance than that."

Of course, the article is not complete without the mandatory case study as a guide. Take the case of the Birmingham Evening Mail.

"At my first meeting with members of the black community I was told: The Mail has lots of black faces... they are all on the Crimestoppers page"

Roger Borrell, after becoming editor, Evening Mail, Birmingham

Mr Borrell's response?

"He scrapped the page and instead introduced features such as School of the Week targeted on multi-ethnic communities. "

Great news of you're a criminal, bad news if you're not.

Next, the mindset of the authors is betrayed in phrases such as the following:

"being accurate is not just a matter of being politically correct."

The idea that accuracy and political correctness bear any relation to one another at all is unorthodox, that a government apparatchik should unconsciously betray the fact they think they do is alarming.

Most ominously, however, are the tacit threats and directions. Ofcom, we are told, "has a duty to foster plurality and [] promote cultural diversity". And there was little me thinking that it was the media regulator. And, we are reminded,

"Ofcom is a statutory body, so its code has the backing of the law. It can require broadcasters to carry its adjudication and can also impose fines. Its ultimate sanction is withdrawal of the licence to broadcast."

This represents a threat: you either toe the line on our partisan political and cultural agenda or we punish you.

The government's degree of presumption in our lives, be it in the case of "presumed consent" with our organs, crimes criminalising free speech, or interference in the press is getting worrying. The state needs to get out of our lives, and our politicians and civil servants need to get back to serving us rather than commanding us.

... great benefits

Every few years, I'm fortunate enough to visit the USA.

And each time I do, I get the distinct feeling that I'm visiting the place Britain should be and used to be, but is fast not becoming. For America is a free, conservative, liberal, Christian, English speaking country. People are generally civil to one another. The state keeps out of people's lives, except when they commit criminal offences, which is the exact opposite of Britain. Americans have children, and when they do, they get married before having them. In so many ways, America is the last European country left with a future.

But I digress. Whilst there, I went to a coffee shop. Serving me was a young lady with a strong East European accent.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Estonia" she replied.

"Are there many Estonians in this part of the US?" I asked.

"No. Most Estonians go to England." she said.

"Why do they go to England?" I replied. "Why not France, or Spain, or Germany?"

"England is much closer..."

At which point a look of bemusement crossed my face, followed by a look of realisation crossing hers: realisation that I'm not as stupid as I look.

"...great benefits." She hastily added.

The criminalisation of life

In Britain on a Friday or Saturday night, there are hordes of young men and women who hit the town with two objectives: to get drunk, then to get laid. It's been going on for years, and as long as the sex-rev continues apace, it's not likely to stop.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Law Commission, concerned about the perceived low conviction rate for rape, have proposed changes to the law, that include...

2.59 We recommend that:

5. There should be a non-exhaustive statutory list of factual situations which define when a person has not consented to sexual activity. The situations should include the following:

(a) where the person had taken or been given alcohol or other substances and as a result lacked the capacity to consent at the time of expressing or indicating consent unless consent had earlier been given to engaging in the activity in that condition;

Back to those young men and women on their mission to get drunk and get laid. By this definition, those who are successful in that endeavour end up in a situation in which one person is the victim of a very serious crime, and the other, the perpetrator.

The law isn't going to stop young people going out, getting drunk and getting laid. So inevitably what will happen is that the rape laws will become a joke; when a significant proportion of consensual sexual liaisons become criminal offences, and nobody prosecutes or wants to prosecute, and a proportion of victims willingly return to their rapists and possibly even go to marry them, the meaning of rape will become completely cheapened. When most men are legally criminals, and most women are willing victims, what does that say about the chances of successfully prosecuting real rape cases?

This is a counter-productive move on so many levels. The low level of rape convictions is primarily down to jury acquittal, in other words, juries, made up of men and women, see the evidence and then acquit or convict on the basis of that evidence. If all sexual liaisons that proceed without a written contract are considered rape, then everyone is or has been a rapist, or has a husband who is a rapist, and that includes men and women on juries. And who would convict themselves?

When activists get to decide law, and those laws go before juries, those laws often fall over, failing genuine victims. A precedent here is "hate crime" law. The absurd definition of a "hate crime" is

Any incident which is perceived to be [motivated by hatred] by the victim or any other person.1

The problem with this statement is that its absurdity is transparent to juries, and consequently there have been very few convictions for "hate crimes". Because a person sitting on a jury understands that, by this definition, if they put their washing out on a Sunday, or scratch their nuts in the bath, or go birdwatching, and somebody takes offence at that, they could end up in the dock.

In these examples, more laws have resulted in less law, in the sense that the law has become discredited as a mechanism for executing justice. Fewer laws please. More law please.

Murder by socialist dogma

You work hard. You pay your taxes and your national insurance all your life. You're also judicious; you save money in case of a rainy day or in case of an emergency. You wouldn't think the state would hold that against you, blackmail you with it, or consciously deprive you of access to the resources you have spent your life contributing to. Think again.

Take the case of Colette Mills. Like many women of her age, Mrs Mills has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Her doctor told her that the drug Avastin, on top of her existing treatment, would improve her health and her chances.

When she approached the NHS for access to this drug, she was told that it was too expensive, and she couldn't have it. Fair enough, the NHS has limited resources, and rationing decisions have to be made.

Mrs Mills didn't have a problem with that. So she went away, and, having done her sums, decided that if she liquidated some of her assets, she could pay for the drug herself.

At which point she was told that if she wanted to pay for this additional drug, she would have to forfeit all her other NHS treatment. A policy wonk from the Teeside NHS Trust rocked up on Radio 4 to defend the position. "This isn't in the spirit of the NHS" he said.

Well, he might have a point. As an arm of the welfare state, fostering the dependency culture and overarching statism, the NHS has its part to play. The NHS isn't there to help people to get better, it's there to enforce an ideology.

Perhaps, if the NHS is unwilling to help Mrs Mills to help herself, then perhaps it will give her back the money it's been more than happy to take out of her pocket all her life, so that she can spend it on medical care that doesn't penalise her for her personal responsibility, for her thriftiness and her self reliance.

If Mrs Mills is forced to choose between these treatments, and subsequently dies as a result, then you can be sure that she has been killed by the anachronistic socialist dogma that has led to an infantilised Britain, a country which is the waning shadow of what it once was.

Incidentally, notice how the BBC spins it. The article claims...

The mother-of-two believes her chances would be improved with Avastin, which is not available on the NHS.

...as if Mrs Mills whimsically self-prescribed this drug. In fact, it was the professional opinion of her doctor that this drug would help her.

William and the underclass

(With apologies to Richmal Crompton, whose work did, and still does, give me great pleasure)

William Brown's mother, Sherene Jones, and her partner, Garry Edwards, were watching Big Brother one evening when there was a knock on the door.

The door, once unbolted, swung open, and there stood a little boy. "Is William in? I've got some ganj. It's good shit, it'll blow your head off".

"Who the fuck is that?" shouted Garry.

"It's Henry", replied Ms Jones, "looking for William. He's got some ganj".

"Tell him I want some. Tell the little fucker to get in here and give it to me or I'll kick his head in".

Suddenly there was a clattering noise and something tumbled down the stairs. It was a small boy with a spiked crest of a haircut, wearing a multicoloured tracksuit and a hooded jacket. A stud glistened in his right ear. Although it was the afternoon, his skin was a pallid grey and his eyes were bloodshot.

"Cripes", ejaculated Henry. "Looks like I've got here too late! You look completely caned!".

"Not Ganj", muttered William. "I was up all night taking speed, playing the PS2 and watching porn".

A voice came from the next room. It was Garry. "You little cunt! I wondered where my porn had gone. Come here..."

At this point, the pair of companions decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and set off over the paving slabs covering the front lawn, quickly untethering Jungle, the psychotic pitbull, en route.

Inane boredom set in rapidly. The silence was quickly broken, however, by the sound of a sawn-off exhaust. Around the corner in a crudely modified Vauxhall Corsa came Ginger, the latest urban sounds blasting from the open windows. The lyrics instantly recognisable. "I wanna stick my dick into your face... bitch."

Henry, William and Jungle, bursting with anticipation at a joy ride terrorising the elderly residents of the neighbourhood, leapt into the vehicle, and it sped off down the street.

"'Ullo Ginger," said William as he clambered into the obnoxious vehicle. "Got any pills?".

"No" replied Ginger. "Just took Violet Elizabeth down to the hospital for an abortion. 'S'all sorted now. I've got herpes though."

"She got pregnant again!" ejaculated Henry. "Why doesn't she just claim on the social and get a council house?"

"Because I said I'd kick her fucking head in if she didn't get rid of it. I don't want the CSA knocking down my door."

Their conversation was interrupted by a sight at the side of the road.

"Hullo" said Ginger. "Is that Douglas? What's he doing?"

A youth stood at the entrance to a doorway. In the doorway was slumped a woman, visibly ill and distressed. The youth was urinating on her, and spraying her with shaving foam and shouting abuse at her. Around him a crowd had gathered, they were laughing and pointing. Some were filming the event on their mobile phones.

"It IS Douglas", exclaimed William. "How exciting. Let's go and piss on that dying woman".

The outlaws, united once again, embarked on a savage and brutal episode of violence, depravity and sadism. As they emitted their urine, they exclaimed joyful acclamations of their youthful liberty.

"This one's from Alfred Kinsey!" shouted William.

"And that's from Roy Jenkins!" exclaimed Ginger.

"This is from all the folks at the BBC!" laughed Henry.

"The liberal intelligentsia and the members of the NUT would like you to drink THIS!" roared Douglas.

The woman, drenched in urine and humiliated beyond all comprehension, finally expired. A look of joy and satisfaction crept over the outlaws' faces. How far Britain had come in seventy years, they thought. How far.