The Last Ditch

Giving an unattractive nation a makeover

Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser - Telegraph.
This story proves the Labour Party knows no ethical boundaries to state power. A government should serve the people, not seek to manipulate them. Social re-engineering of the people in the interests of the governing party is no part of a government's remit. Labour cannot even deny this particular exercise was against the peoples' will. Why else did it manipulate the data? If it had thought there was popular support for re-engineering the nation to make it "more attractive and cosmopolitan", it would have campaigned for election on that basis.

Let's face it however; what nation would elect a government that despised it as unattractive and parochial? In deliberately flooding our islands with millions of unnecessary immigrants, Labour concealed its "driving political purpose" and "concentrated instead on the economic benefits". Those benefits have proved illusory, but they were never what mattered to Labour.

I feel sorry for the immigrants concerned. They have been used as political weapons to attack the people they came to live among and can hardly expect to be loved for it. Yet this was not their fault. They sought, as sane humans do, to improve the lives of their families. They disrupted their lives; removed themselves from their communities; made huge efforts in many cases to come to a place they hoped would offer more life chances. Many with strong religious and cultural beliefs came because they were encouraged to believe they need not adapt in order to live in Britain. Now we know why. They were being deliberately imported in order to modify Britain; to adapt it to them. They have been cruelly used in a campaign not of their making. It is impossible to imagine any party but Labour being so cynical and arrogant.

This was about importing Labour voters, dramatically changing the country Labour has long despised and taking a mischievous chance to "rub the Right's nose in diversity." It was, in short, a betrayal of the nation. Labour has today been exposed as not merely unfit to govern, but unfit to live among the people it so hates. All involved in this exercise should emigrate to a country sufficiently "diverse" to be "attractive" to them. Perhaps Cuba?

Pay it back, Ms Smith. It's not yours.

Jacqui Smith Request for Payback.

The Sunlight Centre for Open Politics has written a very fair letter to Jacqui Smith. Ms Smith has cheated the taxpayer and an apology will not suffice. If you or I cheated our employer of £4,000, let alone £42,000, an apology would not absolve us. Perhaps if we paid it back, with interest, a kind employer might drop the charges after dismissing us. More likely he would call the police anyway. If he realised that our whole family had become so accustomed to living at his expense that they were carelessly including bills for their porn movies in our claims, I am pretty sure he would.

Ms Smith should pay the money back. Then her employers can decide what to do with her. As various MPs are showing, including the God-bothering Ann Widdecombe, they still don't get it. Not yet, at least. With an election looming, the party leaders are "getting it" though. They are digging into their own pockets to pay back their own unjustified claims.

It was only a proper expense, ladies and gentlemen of Parliament, if it was wholly and necessarily incurred in the performance of your duties. Lying about your main residence to score tens of thousands towards mortgage payments and/or household expenses you would have had whether an MP or not, was not. "Flipping" your homes so as to claim expenses on each in turn, was not. Flipping, claiming expenses to refurbish and then selling for a profit was property development at the taxpayers' cost, not a legitimate expense.

Your every protest now just condemns you more in the public eye. So, "get it" finally. Shut up. Pay up. All of you. Now. And never let us hear a slimy, hypocritical word about your vocation for "public service" again.

I'll only be happy if banning is banned

I'll only be happy if smoking is banned | Duncan Bannatyne | Comment is free | The Observer.

You need read no more of this appalling article than this;

"Smoking should be banned in cars, and particularly any vehicle with children in it. On a school visit I met a 12-year-boy who wanted to be an athlete who told me that every morning his mother lit up when she was driving to school, even though he'd begged her to stop. He should be able to report her to the police (my emphasis).

If he could report her to the police, he ought to be ashamed of himself if he chose to do so.

I have never smoked cigarettes, but I have long had my life made intolerable by authoritarians like Duncan Bannatyne. His craving to order the lives of others is a filthy, addictive habit which should not be tolerated in a civilised society.

Is Tim Worstall weird?

I realise that I’m weird about this.

Tim Worstall articulates my concern about this case very well. That doctors should let a depressed woman die for fear of being struck off if they contradicted her "living will" is appalling. A physically healthy 26 year old who chooses to die is, by definition, unfit to make a rational decision to do so.

If Tim is weird about this, so am I. This young woman was perfectly able to administer the fatal poison herself. She summoned an ambulance and put others in this horrible moral dilemma only because "she did not want to die alone and in pain."

So which is it? Was she was mentally-ill and legally-incapable of making her choices or was she a selfish coward?

A proper sense of priorities

American Thinker: Community service is not what made America great.

Reading the Institute of Directors' journal over lunch today my heart began to sink. Almost every story seemed to reference "social enterprise," companies' "green credentials" or "corporate social responsibility." Our "educators," the media and the luvvies of the art world have long preached that what is done for love is better than what is done for money. That this is now unchallenged even by the IOD makes it no less wrong.

I was considering how to articulate this controversial idea to my tender-hearted readers when a post by Washington Rebel saved me the trouble. It led me to this perfect statement by American Thinker. I have added that site to my daily reading list on the basis of three splendid paragraphs:

All we have is our time and our talents. We trade those for either money, pleasure or for service to others. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with trading a lot of your time and talent for money. In fact, until you have met all of your financial obligations to your family and your creditors, that is exactly how you should spend the majority of your time and talents. That is not greed. That is maturity.

Then and only then are you in a position to spend more of your time and talents in pleasurable or charitable pursuits. That's not to say you can't coach little league or go fishing until your mortgage is paid off -- it is to say that if you are living off the fruits of others while volunteering or agitating "for free," you are really not a volunteer at all. You are a mooch.

You are running up society's credit card but making yourself feel more virtuous than those actually paying for your habit because you are "not in it for the money."

Of course, those who choose to "give back" or "make a social contribution" are the moral superiors of those who spend their free time in idle pleasure. However, the key phrase is "free time." Time is only morally "free" after duties have been fulfilled and our first duty is to support ourselves and our dependents. If we are deploying the capital of others in our business life, then safeguarding it and delivering the highest legal return is (or should be) also a top priority. If the shareholders want to give their money to charity, they have the right to do so. The custodians of that money have no such right.

A corporate leader crowing about "corporate social responsibility" is on a moral par with a politician boasting of his "generosity" with taxpayers' cash. It is hypocrisy at best and fraud at worst.

If it's the right thing, why don' t they tell the families?

One in four relatives 'not told when doctors place patient on controversial death pathway' - Telegraph.

My title seems a fair question to me. Concealing an action suggests (but I agree does not prove) that one feels it's wrong. More scarily;

The audit also found that more than one in three patients, 37 per cent, were given sedatives while on the pathway, although in most cases these were in low doses

Or to put it another way, 63% of patients being starved and/or dehydrated to death (in NHS Newspeak "put on a care pathway") by their NHS doctors are not given sedatives. Let's hope they get some pain relief at least while being humanely put down.

Bra story

Bra story | Prachatai English.

I have recently subscribed to Global Voices a feed of blog posts from around the world, translated into English. The linked article is a good example of the sort of thing to be found there; a gentle, informative, thought-provoking piece about factory workers in Thailand. Sentimental readers will no doubt feel like boycotting the brands mentioned, forgetting the even harder lives these women would have if they did not have these highly-prized jobs. Still, it illustrates the realities of globalisation.

A degraded nation

Baby P's father to sue Haringey Council - Telegraph.

The natural father of Peter Connelly, "Baby P", with no apparent sense of irony, is suing Haringey Council for negligence in the discharge of its duties. The council's social workers, he says, failed to protect his son. For shame.

Relationships end, of course. Fathers often have to leave their children in the care of their ex-partners. Indeed, due to what Harriet Harman might (if she were at least consistent in her foolishness) call "institutional sexism" on the part of the family courts, men can seldom obtain custody. Yet if ever a father could have done so, it was this man. If there exists a mother less fitted to the care of her child than Tracey Connelly, I hope never to meet her. His father must have known the true character of Peter's mother. Knowing it, how could he leave his son in her care?

Peter's parents lived together for the first three months of his tragic life. After their relationship ended, and the monsters who killed Peter moved in, the father had continued access to his son. Given what we know now, it is hard to conceive that a loving parent could have failed to notice his distress. A loving father with occasional sole charge of the boy had more opportunity to clean off the chocolate smeared on Peter's injuries than a social worker. We are told that Peter reached out to him, screaming "Daddy, Daddy!" when handed back to his tormentors shortly before he died. The best that can be said for this hopeful litigant is that Peter thought him a better carer than his mum. It's hard to think him more than slightly better.

So, the more true his accusations against Haringey's social services, the greater his own guilt. If he is innocent because he was deceived by Ms Connelly (who would have to be considerably more cunning than she looks), so much more so (given their lesser knowledge of her and access to the child) are the social workers.

If I were him, I would be too tormented with guilt to function, let alone to calculate the monetary value of my loss. But this product of the Welfare State is made of sterner stuff than me. He confidently denies all suggestions that he might be to blame. He believed his ex's explanation for Peter's injuries; that the child was "clumsy," though he had opportunities to observe Peter himself. Are we to believe he didn't know his son was on the child protection register? Are we to believe he could not discern the true nature of the brutes who lived with Peter and his mother?

I am sure he is as sincere in his claim as in his desire for £400,000 in damages. It makes sense in the warped logic of underclass Britain. How could he think himself to blame when the Welfare State denies the very notion of  personal responsibility? The "caring" apparatus of the "progressive" British state deplores the concept, as witness the agonising over the cruel fate, not of the dead child, but of his killers. After all, they are not responsible either. They are the products of their social environment; mere automata to be successfully reprogrammed if only the taxpayers would not be so mean about employing enough social workers. Haringey Social Services may not like being sued on this occasion, but they share Peter's father's underlying objective; to supplant the responsibility of the parent with that of the state. If he wins his claim, they will soon realise they have been given a stick with which to beat the ungenerous taxpayers.

Not only the jobs, but the ideological integrity of its employees depends upon the notion that the citizen is a passive product of his environment; that he can't take care of himself, can't educate his children, can't look after his family without their benevolent intervention. By their own logic, as they are the only truly responsible people, this man's claim should succeed. But by the same logic, since in truth the health and welfare of every human depends on self-reliance and the loving support of family and friends, we are all damned to some (let's hope lesser) variant of Peter's fate.

More categories of lawful killing?

Commentary: The Case Against Physician-Assisted Suicide: For the Right to End-of-Life Care - Psychiatric Times

My post last Thursday on the emotive issue of "assisted suicide" predictably attracted many comments. One of my readers forwarded me a piece by Gerald Warner from the Daily Telegraph "blog" section. One of the comments to that, rather intemperate, post referred to a 2004 article from The Psychiatric Times about the Netherlands' experience with euthanasia/assisted suicide. It highlighted an aspect I had not previously considered;

"Euthanasia, intended originally for the exceptional case, became an accepted way of dealing with serious or terminal illness in the Netherlands. In the process, palliative care became one of the casualties, while hospice care has lagged behind that of other countries. In testimony given before the British House of Lords, Zbigniew Zylicz, one of the few palliative care experts in the Netherlands, attributed Dutch deficiencies in palliative care to the easier alternative of euthanasia."

It is the unspoken, because unpalatable, truth that in a socialised medical system the authorities have no choice but to prioritise patient groups. If the market doesn't allocate resources, they must be rationed. There is no "third way". The law of unintended consequences has, it seems, reduced the availability of palliative care. If Dr Zylicz's evidence is true, the medical authorities have, to be blunt, found euthanasia/assisted suicide a cheaper, more efficient alternative

And Guardianistas tell us that markets are harsh and cruel?

Given that those "progressive" enthusiasts of euthanasia/assisted suicide are fond of selecting horrific cases to support their case, let me cite some horror stories from the same article;

An illustration of a case presented to me as requiring euthanasia without consent involved a Dutch nun who was dying painfully of cancer. Her physician felt her religion prevented her from agreeing to euthanasia so he felt both justified and compassionate in ending her life without telling her he was doing so. Practising assisted suicide and euthanasia appears to encourage physicians to think they know best who should live and who should die

This god in a white coat knew that euthanasia was a sin, in this woman's eyes. So he murdered her to spare her conscience. Where does that leave his?

a patient with disseminated breast cancer who had rejected the possibility of euthanasia had her life ended because, in the physician's words: "It could have taken another week before she died. I just needed this bed."

Another "compassionate" and "progressive" professional in pursuit of "dignity" for his patients? No. A murderer, even under Netherlands law.

A wife, who no longer wished to care for her sick, elderly husband, gave him a choice between euthanasia and admission to a home for the chronically ill. The man, afraid of being left to the mercy of strangers in an unfamiliar place, chose to have his life ended; the doctor although aware of the coercion, ended the man's life.

I believe in freedom to choose, but choice under duress is not real choice. Correctly analysed, this poor man was murdered for his loving wife's convenience.

A healthy 50-year-old woman, who lost her son recently to cancer, refused treatment for her depression and said she would accept only help in dying. Her psychiatrist assisted in her suicide within four months of her son's death. He told me he had seen her for a number of sessions when she told him that if he did not help her she would kill herself without him. At that point, he did. He seemed on the one hand to be succumbing to emotional blackmail and on the other to be ignoring the fact that even without treatment, experience has shown that time alone was likely to have affected her wish to die.

How many of us would feel suicidal if we lost a child? The only thing more natural is, through grieving and the support of family and friends, to come back to life treasuring fond memories of the loved one lost. The psychiatrist could have turned her ultimatum back on her and said "no euthanasia unless you try therapy first", but perhaps it was easier to submit. This poor, sad woman could have lived a rich life for 30-40 years, but he executed her. Is that what people go into medicine to do? Can no-one else see the difference between her killing herself and that?

None of these killers will be brought to justice because the Netherlands government, to investigate the matter properly after complaints, offered immunity to all who spoke frankly. I am glad it did, because in exposing the consequences of the Netherlands' "progressive" law, these murderers may save lives elsewhere.

I have been accused of taking a non-libertarian position on this issue. I don't agree, but if I am wrong, so be it. I don't adopt a political position as an ideological game. I am not trying to belong to a tribe. I support libertarian policies because I believe they would lead to a better, richer, happier, more fulfilling society with greater opportunity for a greater number of people than the present statist shambles. If I were required to approve of such horrors to be a "pure" libertarian, then I would say to hell with it.

The right to die? Or the right to kill?

BBC NEWS | Health | Result due in right-to-die case.

I follow the discussions on euthanasia with interest, but I am puzzled by the terminology favoured by the media. This lady's "right to die" is not in question, although the religious may say it's morally wrong. Suicide was legalised long since - and rightly so.

I have nothing but compassion for anyone who chooses to end a life they consider unbearable. It's that person's life and choice. But this is not about the "right to die". It's about the right to kill, or to be an accessory to a killing. It's about introducing a new defence to the crime of murder. The debate might be conducted more rationally, if more honest words were used.

The euthanasia laws in the Netherlands have resulted (that law of intended consequences again) in sick people refusing to go to hospital. They fear the convenience of euthanasia to medical staff who prefer to work on potentially positive cases rather than palliative care for those nearing the exit. In socialised healthcare systems, they fear being pressured to stop "bed-blocking;" consuming rationed resources that could be used by others. They may also fear the convenience of euthanasia to impatient heirs.

It's bad enough to be terminally-ill, without being pressured to get it over with for the good of others. Can it ever truly be selfish to want another moment of life? On the other hand, is it not enormously selfish of a dying person to blight the life of a surviving loved one by asking them to live with the memory of having killed?

The fundamental tenet of all libertarianism is that it is wrong to initiate violence. Much though I sympathise with the families of people in this terrible position, I do not believe it's right to legitimise pre-meditated, active involvement in another's death.