The New Labour Jugend

Demos have released a new publication, Service Nation, which has (of course) found favour with the commissars of New Labour (Ministers back 'national service' from age seven).

citizenship is not just about individual rights and legal status, but about participating in communities with a view to securing the common good: we are citizens not only of a polity but of a community.

Thus civic service encapsulates the idea that there should be an expectation that citizens contribute to their communities by ‘giving something back’ at one – or several – points in their lives. It differs from volunteering, which is more commonly perceived as an add-on to citizenship: something that is morally desirable but not an integral or implied expectation in return for the benefits that citizenship confers.

So there you have it: compulsory civic service, courtesy of the state. Nothing to do with differing or more traditional views; nothing to do with individual responsibility, freedom or choice; just pure statism at its most nauseatingly self-righteous and authoritarian.

New Labour's 'citizenship' agenda is nothing more than state propaganda and indoctrination, an attempt to create a passive, compliant and uncritical populace. What that citizenry will be serving, though, is not their own country, but the state and its apparatchiks.

(The Demos publication is available on our Scribd site).

It's More Than Expenses, You Fools

The political class, by and large, and the media continue to ignore the background to the public anger over expenses. I've already linked to John Redwood's point about it but it's worth doing so again.

The anger is a reaction to the increasing arrogance and bullying authoritarianism of politicians and the state. What becomes harder to bear each day is the nauseating spectacle of politicians with their self-appointed assumption of their entitlement to preach and govern (and get paid for it).

In this clip from Channel 4's discussion you'll note that the guy from Demos partly touches on this, but the point is not effectively understood. Matthew Taylor, as UK Libertarian Party says, defends 'hard working' MPs. But it's not enough:

I'm really tired of listening to all these political apologists who keep trying to defend MPs.

People like Matthew Taylor who on Channel 4 last night spouted a load of hot air about hard working politicians, pay cuts and system reform.

Excuses about hard work, etc don't cut mustard. But worst of all is blaming it on the 'system'. It is just plain nonsense.

It's a bit like Stalin blaming the famine on the ideology.

I can accept that many MPs do indeed work hard, but this plea about work is flawed.

Firstly, hard work is no guarantee of anything positive or useful. Plenty of people work hard, with nothing to show for it. The idea underlying this belief is a moral one - that hard work is of itself a virtue - something the idiot Brown keeps mouthing. It's not a virtue. Brown is an example. He works very hard indeed, but morally, he's a mephitic swamp.

Secondly, if we accept these MPs have been working very hard, then what we have we got to show for it? Well, among other things, a knackered economy and banking system, undemocratic government from the EU, a mess of an education system, chaotic health care, masses of form-filling, increasing prohibitions on this, that and the other, the transforming of the country into a huge state panopticon in which every detail of our lives is to be recorded, etc, etc.

It is only gradually dawning among some of the politicos that it is not the country that is 'broken' but the political class itself.

I'm Boozing For Britain!

Much merriment in the press about Liam Byrne's Demos pamphlet, A More United Kingdom, produced at the behest of Gordon Brown to come up with jolly wheezes to make us proud to be British.

What's causing the merriment is no 13 of the 'Twenty-seven ways to celebrate a national day': namely, 'through drinking'.

Presumably not through binge drinking, or underage drinking.

A lot of suggestions centre around organising public events and festivities (street parties, carnivals, etc) without taking into account the nightmare of regulation confronting anyone wanting to do anything in public these days - (health and safety, banning terrorists, paedophiles, people wanting to take photos, etc, etc).

I had to dig around on the internet to find the original text of the pamphlet, since our wonderful professional journalists rarely provide details of their sources. You can read it as a free pdf here (I certainly wouldn't waste £10 for a hard copy).

It's a patronising load of guff, as you'd expect.

Give me the booze, Liam, and fuck off.