gordon brown

When Gordon Brown came to power last year he promised a "government of all the talents". A year or so on and with what, 45,000,000 adults to choose from (most of whom of course would not touch his government, probably any government, with a very long barge-pole), one has to wonder just what talents he had in mind to bring this motley crew together:

Come to think of it, there's probably not one talent between them. These three, and this choice by the "dear leader" to bring them into government, just highlights for me how hopeless the very idea of state government is. There is no way that these people are somehow uniquely capable, any more than anyone else in the country, to make the momentous decisions we stupidly cede to the state to take on our behalf.

Apparently Gordon Brown's plan to micromanage British sport for the next four years is hitting trouble...

...but I can't see what all the fuss is about personally. After all, the British Lions combined rugby team does not jeopardise the competitiveness of the various home nations' independent rugby international teams does it?

Mind you, if they do keep on tinkering with the sporting bodies themselves don't they stand a chance under IOC rules of getting the entire team GB banned from the next Olympics. Wouldn't that be somewhat embarrassing. On the other hand, if they ban us now, perhaps we can stop spending all that money on a hole in the ground in East London... :-)

...to think that, in a few short weeks , it looks possible that party activists of all political colours will be expected to trudge the streets once again asking people to believe a lot of spin, unachievable promises and heartfelt apologies and vote for for a "change", or maybe that should just be "vote, for a change".

Actually, I tell a lie, it doesn't completely overwhelm me. Sometimes there is a little frisson of excitement at the possibility that the people of Britain might just once collectively call time on this comfy carousel of political clap-trap. Just say no! as the song went...

No, Gordon! No, Dave! No, Jack, Hillary, Harriet or whoever! No, not even you Nick!

We've had quite enough for these past decades, nay centuries, of being shunted up the gary glitter by folk who think they know better than us but whose ambitions so clearly exceed their abilities.

What would happen if we all got up one "Good Morning" Polling Day and simply voted "no"? At what point would the Westminster clique conclude they had completely lost our confidence and call a halt to their corruption and crookery? Or at what point can we refuse, with impunity, to submit to their authority?

And then, how do we create a new, bottom up, rather than up its own arse, democracy? This has much to commend it.

I've often thought how extraordinary a person must be to be able to feel competent to "run" a country of tens of millions of people. Of course, personally, I don't believe anyone can. The cult of leadership is unhealthy for society. The notion that one person is somehow supremely capable above all the rest of us to make decisions affecting us all as comprehensively as the tentacles of government reach into our lives is repugnant to me.

But clearly blogging John Prescott buys in to this cult of leadership:

So, wait a second; we have a former postie in charge of a £100bn plus budget, including, ultimately, decisions of life and death importance and he's still lacking a certain "je ne sais quois". We have a trained lawyer who's held more of the great offices of state, and cabinet posts traditionally associated with the senior minister - Lord Chancellor, Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House of Commons, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Secretary of State for the Home Department - and still hasn't the "skills and experience"?

Of course we can all see that the incumbent whom Prescott holds in such esteem has been promoted beyond the level of his competence anyway. But the idea that there is some step change in skills and experience between Prime Minister and other ministers is just bonkers. Don't get me wrong, I hate the man with a passion, and this is a backhanded complement at best, but at least Tony Blair had the skills and helpers to spin his way through, to sound convincing and to persuade people, but he had no practical ministerial experience at all.

Of course, nobody has such skills, and perhaps especially those who have surrounded themselves in the political system for most of their adult lives. As the concentration of power into the hands of the Prime Minister in the UK has continued apace ever since Walpole was first in office so the world has become immeasurably more complex and fast moving, making it all the more ridiculous to expect one person to be an adequate representative for so many of us in so many aspects of governance and diplomacy. I daresay that, when the House of Lords in 1741 decried the idea that any minister should have primacy over others' departments, the daily work of those departments probably could have been handled by one person. Now, it is completely impossible and we should ditch the whole edifice.

I just listened to a BBC report on the launch of the Labour party's local elections campaign. It majored heavily on the police's Neighbourhood Action Groups where every neighbourhood is supposed to have police on the beat and everyone has instant access to them by email, mobile phone, even perhaps telepathy.

Sounds nice? Yeah, but, dare we point out the minor flaw - nobody voting on May 1st will be voting for anyone who can do remotely anything about this policy since it is controlled by the unelected Police Authorities. Their budgets are unaccountable to local people, uncappable by the communities secretary and, as the "Hapless Band of Staff and Regulars" noticed last week, can impose a huge cost on helpless local tax payers.

But I suppose it is at last a belated admission that ASBOs are not the answer so much as eyes on the street. Such as most of us had been saying since the Crime and Disorder Act of Labour's first year in power. Ten years to achieve something - hardly what I would major my local elections campaign on.

Tory cartoonists seem to think so too:

ConservativeHome's Mr Bean posters:

There are more where that came from .

Maybe it's just the ethos of the new era in Britain under the Son of the Manse, and the Tories running hard to keep up with what is being seen as a neo-puritanism stalking the country, but there's been a lot of talk of new or increased restrictions on things like drugs and drink. Most recently of course we've had the outbursts by Chief Constable Peter Fahy of the Cheshire Constabulary wanting to  prevent "lesser adults", prospective alcohoodies, whose misfortune is merely to be older than we allow them to vote, to fight for Queen and country (or at least Tony Blair and George Bush), to serve in most elected offices, and to stand trial as adults, but less than the arbitrary age of twenty one from consuming the demon drink for fear that they all turn into murderous fiends.

I am a Libertarian and a Christian, and I want to share with you a favourite little passage from the good book that I believe sums up the libertarian response to such nonsense, and shows that it is inconsistent to see "things", substances and the like, as the culprits such that we should not be allowed to touch them. Temperance once meant not abstinence, forced or otherwise, but self-restraint, personal responsibility, and it's just plain wrong to blame the inanimate for what state people get into by abusing them.

From the Gospel of Mark, chapter 7:

18 And [Jesus] saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; 19 Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats? 20 And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22 Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: 23 All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.

Christianity is not a po-faced, prohibitionary puritanism, but a way of life that emphasizes the virtue of true Temperance. I wish I could find it now, but I once read one of the works of the Cictercian monk and philosopher Thomas Merton in which in one passage he explains that things like alcohol and tobacco (he might feel differently today about the latter of course but let's suggest he might choose cannabis today) are both gifts and temptations. As a gift, alcohol can be enjoyed in moderation for its ability to lubricate social interactions, but as a temptation can be used to blot out one's other problems or to remove the inhibitions that prevent us doing harm to others or ourselves.

It's up to us all to learn, if we want to use such things, how to do so responsibly, to use them as gifts, and without endangering others or making complete fools of ourselves, abusing them as temptations. We cannot achieve that by banning them, or keeping them from young enquiring minds.

...their