Oppressive and undemocratic states generate defence mechanisms in the populations they oppress. One of the worst aspects of the New Labour regime, which ceased to be democratically legitimate when Blair was ousted by the Brown faction and unelected leadership imposed, has been the seeking of safe havens for earnings and wealth and for means to hide financial and economic transactions and status.
Disagreement on the state's claims are the stuff of politics, and these are from-time-immemorial activities. But it was the post-War Labour governments that energised the determination to disengage from state surveillance of wealth and activity. The demands embodied in the Brownian notion of the proper role of the state have encouraged and consolidated a complete alternative culture. Tax havens provide cover and protection from the ever more aggressive, and ever more permanent authoritarian state.
In the United Kingdom we have reached the point where the very concept of ownership and property rights is being called into question for much of the population. Our incomes are not so much taxed as destroyed at source. And every necessity of life carries a further burden. The levels of state intrusion into our private lives have become intolerable as regime employees try to consolidate their living standards and future pension incomes and, in the case of the more unpleasant of them, further their ideological aims.
The rest of us, from corporations to private individuals, are building our alternative worlds. And probably one of the worst effects has been to strengthen the growth of means for giant companies and corporations to avoid paying their fair share to some of the poorest countries on earth. Many of us would willingly make a fair contribution to a small state run by democratic governance, but as a result of the awful bullying people had to put up with from Labour in the sixties and seventies and New Labour for the last decade, we have opted out.
That opt out has extended into many aspects of civic life and attitudes, much to the detriment of the civility of our society. Many have left all together; many, many more expend most of their social energies not in co-operating with others, but in protecting their own.
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3 comments:
Quite right.
A very British revolt has been going on. The exodus of our brightest and most able.
To be able to emmigrate somewhere worthwile and to be bright and able are axiomatic.
The exchange for third world immigrants is neither a fair nor honest one.
But E-K, if it is the brightest and the best who make up emigrant poulations then those arriving in the UK are that too. Mr HG was an immigrant into England years ago, as were my great grandparents and as I am now an immigrant into my husband's country.
The problem is recruitment to the client state, whether of incomers or people already here.
I don't care where people come from as long as they work for their living and subscribe to the cultural core values of our host society. There are countries to which I would never go and have refused to go on most advantageous terms because I could never accept their morals. Not their politics but specifically their morals. Examples are obvious: South Africa under apartheid, Greece under the colonels, Spain under Franco, any state practising the subjugation and mutilation of women (and men, for that matter), any nazi/fascist/corporatist state. I don't mind strange (well, not much - hollow laughter from Mr HG) but if I can help it, I'm not putting up with bad.
ps not that all those states fall in my time span, but they illustrate what is a bad state. hg
I agree with your sentiments but we have no points system.
Immigration is uncontrolled and a very large proportion add nothing to our economy and many take from it.
And I disagree that a replacement doctor trained in Africa is as good as the one he replaces, trained at St Bartholomews and lost to Australia.
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