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fpbThe United Kinkdom, in which the English element has always predominated, is not a monarchy, nor a republic, nor yet a constitutional state of any sort. All the visible signs of power, rule and organization are to a considerable extent masks. The real political power resides in an amorphous mass of a few hundred People Who Matter, who move and talk and act and decide behind the scenes. This loosely organized conspiracy reproduces itself by co-option and to some extent by inheritance, although the inherited aristocratic element is greatly overrated. It reaches decisions by a process of agglutination around a certain set of views and proceedings; and though it hates public scrutiny or public control like a plague - despising the common herd as a mass of uninstructed, sentimental fools - it is quite impervious to criticism, revolt or division.
At some points in history, this amorphous mass of PWM has been seriously challenged by rising forces or division in its ranks. The famous English party system is a fossil - and no more than a fossil - of some of these breaks. These revolts achieved genuine results: the expansion of the franchise to the whole population, for instance, or the institution of the Welfare State. But each time, the PWM reacted by the same process of co-option which I described as their favourite way to reproduce. The leaders of each party in turn - Tories, Whigs, Radicals, Liberals, Labour - were drawn into the Network; became part of the same circle of friendships, clubs, boards; bought more and more into the common viewpoint. This was only partly a deliberate process; but there can be no doubt that when a peer of the realm invited a trades unions leader or a rising and pushy manufacturer or a brilliant young writer of rising reputation to spend the week-end at "his place" with a few friends, the purpose was always to "civilize" the dangerous outsider.
Already by 1900, after fighting democracy for centuries, the Network had discovered that there was little to be feared from it. All that needed to be done was to offer the electorate only two or three possible alternatives, all belonging to political parties whose members agreed on practically everything and were all to some extent members or aspiring members of the Network. The electorate could have any kind of representatives so long as it was selected from the PWM or candidates thereto.
The strange death of democracy in Britain was delayed for some time by the rise of the Labour Party, whose roots were further away from the Network than that of any previous challenger: in a set of genuinely popular groupings, the Trades Unions, which had arisen from the bottom, and in two correspondingly proletarian and self-organized religious groups, the Methodist Church and the English Catholic Church. Free Churches are not as common a phenomenon in Britain as in the USA, and these are the only two to have achieved mass membership and political influence. But in the last forty years, the Network has finally completed its long absorption even of these.
The defining moment was 1997, when the British electorate joined together in one huge and genuinely rebellious motion to get rid of the Tory government once and for all. The result was, as people slowly and unwillingly realized, that they had got rid of one Tory government only to get another. This meant that in subsequent elections the percentage of voters dropped catastrophically; millions of people had (rightly) lost confidence in the electoral process.
There still was a possible alternative - thin, shaky, two-faced, but still an alternative of sorts. Britain had exchanged a government that was Politically Correct on social and family issues but pro-business and privatizing in economics, with one that was pro-business and privatizing in economics, but Politically Correct on social and family issues; but there was still the ancient, enfeebled shadow of the old Whigs, the Liberal Democrats. In a few years, profiting by the seething discontent of the British public with Labour and Tories, this nearly unnoticeable rump passed from half a dozen Members of Parliament to over sixty, and seemed likely to become a genuine opposition to the flaccid pseudo-centre occupied by Tories and Labour both.
The threat was met and disposed of. The Liberal Democrats' comic but not servile leader, Charles Kennedy, was exposed as a secret drinker and destroyed in the eyes of the public; and the man who had leaked the information which destroyed him, Menzies "Ming the Merciless" Campbell, inherited his place. Practically his first act was to convert his party to support for the umpteenth privatization - that of the Post Office - and away from the slight tax increases they had advocated. Now the lucky citizens of the United Kingdom have three identical parties to vote for.
In the last several decades, the Network has acquired a decidedly Thatcherite mentality, with a detestation for public services and an ideological worship of the supposed efficiency of the private sector. It goes without saying that the private companies whose efficiency is favoured are owned by members of the Network, or at least are very ready to employ them, especially by giving them places on the board.
The PWM were always inclined to loot. The rape of the Church under Henry VIII was practically their founding ritual. The next centuries saw the continuing legal theft of common land through the so-called enclosure movement, which created the immense private estates of the English PWM. When that resource had finally ran out and after the brief interlude of the Empire (which was something that happened almost while they were not looking, but which they did use as much as they could), the crisis of the seventies gave them the excuse for the mass occupation and exploitation of the State.
Their love of Thatcherism and privatization is only the latest manifestation of their ongoing belief that assets owned by the community or by public entities - monastic and Church assets, common land, State property - would look so much better in their pocket, a belief that has united and directed their political activity for nearly 500 years. It is no wonder that Karl Marx worked out his economic and political theories in England; a number of his theories, while fallacious in general terms, are true here. In particular, here ideology has really historically been purely a "superstructure" manipulated in the service of property interests. As Newman observed, the English Protestant view of the Catholic Church was the result of a pack of lies, pushed from above and fanatically believed by the populace against all evidence. And as Chesterton observed, the reasons to find Rome wrong and criminal changed with each generation, and with each excuse removed. What mattered was to find Rome guilty - of something. And the obvious reason for that is that the founding act of the Network of People Who Matter was the frightful, ferociously violent, atrociously destructive (the amount of manuscripts and works of art destroyed is beyond reckoning) looting of the Church, disguised as a religious "reformation" that did not even have an ideology until Baxter, half a century after the looting was over, contrived to give it one. First came the theft; then came the excuse; then came the drive to believe any excuse at all.
In the same way, the PWM believe against all evidence - if they believe it at all; I believe myself that the percentage of cynical and consciously corrupt individuals must be quite high - in the Thatcherite nostrum, public service bad, private sector good. The reason is obvious; by outsourcing as many functions of the State as they can, they insure that as much public expenditure as possible reaches their pocket. Years of experience have made it clear to anyone who is outside the magic circle that contracting out state functions is simply inefficient. In particular - and here we are coming to the central issue - functions of the National Health Service which are contracted out under the so-called Private Finance Initiative tend to produce only two hospital beds for every three hospital beds made available by direct public funding, and load the State with a long burden of debt on top of it. This is a brief summary of a long and manifold account of what is wrong with the Private Finance Initiative, which all levels of government are fanatically pushing on a dubious or unwilling Health Service; but, take it from me, it is accurate enough for all that.
Tony Blair was elected with a promise to straighten out the National Health Service, and indeed the amount of money being paid to it has risen hugely. However, PFI and other forms of inefficient, parasitical pseudo-privatization have been sucking up finance even faster than the Government was able to make it available. As a result, the crisis in the NHS, far from easing, has been growing worse. It goes without saying that this is not the only State sector in which this vicious process of looting in the name of private sector efficiency has dug huge holes; but the NHS is one of the two largest State employers and spenders - the other is social security - and by far its most prestigious. The British used to be prouder of the NHS than of any other institution in their country; even now, the medical and paramedial professions have immense respect in the country, and nobody is readily willing to believe any harm of a doctor, nurse, ambulanceman or other paramedic. They have built-in moral authority because they are believed to save lives, and to work hard doing so.
The NHS, in other words, is at the centre of public scrutiny, and the fact that the government has totally failed to improve it is an enormous item in the debit column of public opinion. Of course, if the public sector ceased to make its "contribution", things would improve dramatically and within a measurable space of time; but that is inconceivable - apart from the hurt done to the unselfish souls of the People Who Matter, the City and international financial markets would go apeshit if existing financial obligations were denounced just because they were inefficient, unfair and corrupt. The required savings must be found elsewhere.
The story is long, but the conclusion is simple. If you cannot remove the bloodsuckers from the NHS, you have to remove those who cause the most expense for the least gain - those who require long-term care without any prospect of being cured and taking again a productive and tax-paying role in the world; the old and the chronically sick. If they cannot pay any more tax, if they cannot contribute to that public purse from which the PWM steal through the organized robbery of privatization, what good are they to society at large? Stop sponging on others! That is why the need to die with dignity and cease to be a burden on others has suddenly become an issue in the minds of the PWM. Rather than stopping the looting of the public purse by inefficient, often incompetent, nearly always corrupt private contractors, it is better to start killing off the old and the sick.
At some points in history, this amorphous mass of PWM has been seriously challenged by rising forces or division in its ranks. The famous English party system is a fossil - and no more than a fossil - of some of these breaks. These revolts achieved genuine results: the expansion of the franchise to the whole population, for instance, or the institution of the Welfare State. But each time, the PWM reacted by the same process of co-option which I described as their favourite way to reproduce. The leaders of each party in turn - Tories, Whigs, Radicals, Liberals, Labour - were drawn into the Network; became part of the same circle of friendships, clubs, boards; bought more and more into the common viewpoint. This was only partly a deliberate process; but there can be no doubt that when a peer of the realm invited a trades unions leader or a rising and pushy manufacturer or a brilliant young writer of rising reputation to spend the week-end at "his place" with a few friends, the purpose was always to "civilize" the dangerous outsider.
Already by 1900, after fighting democracy for centuries, the Network had discovered that there was little to be feared from it. All that needed to be done was to offer the electorate only two or three possible alternatives, all belonging to political parties whose members agreed on practically everything and were all to some extent members or aspiring members of the Network. The electorate could have any kind of representatives so long as it was selected from the PWM or candidates thereto.
The strange death of democracy in Britain was delayed for some time by the rise of the Labour Party, whose roots were further away from the Network than that of any previous challenger: in a set of genuinely popular groupings, the Trades Unions, which had arisen from the bottom, and in two correspondingly proletarian and self-organized religious groups, the Methodist Church and the English Catholic Church. Free Churches are not as common a phenomenon in Britain as in the USA, and these are the only two to have achieved mass membership and political influence. But in the last forty years, the Network has finally completed its long absorption even of these.
The defining moment was 1997, when the British electorate joined together in one huge and genuinely rebellious motion to get rid of the Tory government once and for all. The result was, as people slowly and unwillingly realized, that they had got rid of one Tory government only to get another. This meant that in subsequent elections the percentage of voters dropped catastrophically; millions of people had (rightly) lost confidence in the electoral process.
There still was a possible alternative - thin, shaky, two-faced, but still an alternative of sorts. Britain had exchanged a government that was Politically Correct on social and family issues but pro-business and privatizing in economics, with one that was pro-business and privatizing in economics, but Politically Correct on social and family issues; but there was still the ancient, enfeebled shadow of the old Whigs, the Liberal Democrats. In a few years, profiting by the seething discontent of the British public with Labour and Tories, this nearly unnoticeable rump passed from half a dozen Members of Parliament to over sixty, and seemed likely to become a genuine opposition to the flaccid pseudo-centre occupied by Tories and Labour both.
The threat was met and disposed of. The Liberal Democrats' comic but not servile leader, Charles Kennedy, was exposed as a secret drinker and destroyed in the eyes of the public; and the man who had leaked the information which destroyed him, Menzies "Ming the Merciless" Campbell, inherited his place. Practically his first act was to convert his party to support for the umpteenth privatization - that of the Post Office - and away from the slight tax increases they had advocated. Now the lucky citizens of the United Kingdom have three identical parties to vote for.
In the last several decades, the Network has acquired a decidedly Thatcherite mentality, with a detestation for public services and an ideological worship of the supposed efficiency of the private sector. It goes without saying that the private companies whose efficiency is favoured are owned by members of the Network, or at least are very ready to employ them, especially by giving them places on the board.
The PWM were always inclined to loot. The rape of the Church under Henry VIII was practically their founding ritual. The next centuries saw the continuing legal theft of common land through the so-called enclosure movement, which created the immense private estates of the English PWM. When that resource had finally ran out and after the brief interlude of the Empire (which was something that happened almost while they were not looking, but which they did use as much as they could), the crisis of the seventies gave them the excuse for the mass occupation and exploitation of the State.
Their love of Thatcherism and privatization is only the latest manifestation of their ongoing belief that assets owned by the community or by public entities - monastic and Church assets, common land, State property - would look so much better in their pocket, a belief that has united and directed their political activity for nearly 500 years. It is no wonder that Karl Marx worked out his economic and political theories in England; a number of his theories, while fallacious in general terms, are true here. In particular, here ideology has really historically been purely a "superstructure" manipulated in the service of property interests. As Newman observed, the English Protestant view of the Catholic Church was the result of a pack of lies, pushed from above and fanatically believed by the populace against all evidence. And as Chesterton observed, the reasons to find Rome wrong and criminal changed with each generation, and with each excuse removed. What mattered was to find Rome guilty - of something. And the obvious reason for that is that the founding act of the Network of People Who Matter was the frightful, ferociously violent, atrociously destructive (the amount of manuscripts and works of art destroyed is beyond reckoning) looting of the Church, disguised as a religious "reformation" that did not even have an ideology until Baxter, half a century after the looting was over, contrived to give it one. First came the theft; then came the excuse; then came the drive to believe any excuse at all.
In the same way, the PWM believe against all evidence - if they believe it at all; I believe myself that the percentage of cynical and consciously corrupt individuals must be quite high - in the Thatcherite nostrum, public service bad, private sector good. The reason is obvious; by outsourcing as many functions of the State as they can, they insure that as much public expenditure as possible reaches their pocket. Years of experience have made it clear to anyone who is outside the magic circle that contracting out state functions is simply inefficient. In particular - and here we are coming to the central issue - functions of the National Health Service which are contracted out under the so-called Private Finance Initiative tend to produce only two hospital beds for every three hospital beds made available by direct public funding, and load the State with a long burden of debt on top of it. This is a brief summary of a long and manifold account of what is wrong with the Private Finance Initiative, which all levels of government are fanatically pushing on a dubious or unwilling Health Service; but, take it from me, it is accurate enough for all that.
Tony Blair was elected with a promise to straighten out the National Health Service, and indeed the amount of money being paid to it has risen hugely. However, PFI and other forms of inefficient, parasitical pseudo-privatization have been sucking up finance even faster than the Government was able to make it available. As a result, the crisis in the NHS, far from easing, has been growing worse. It goes without saying that this is not the only State sector in which this vicious process of looting in the name of private sector efficiency has dug huge holes; but the NHS is one of the two largest State employers and spenders - the other is social security - and by far its most prestigious. The British used to be prouder of the NHS than of any other institution in their country; even now, the medical and paramedial professions have immense respect in the country, and nobody is readily willing to believe any harm of a doctor, nurse, ambulanceman or other paramedic. They have built-in moral authority because they are believed to save lives, and to work hard doing so.
The NHS, in other words, is at the centre of public scrutiny, and the fact that the government has totally failed to improve it is an enormous item in the debit column of public opinion. Of course, if the public sector ceased to make its "contribution", things would improve dramatically and within a measurable space of time; but that is inconceivable - apart from the hurt done to the unselfish souls of the People Who Matter, the City and international financial markets would go apeshit if existing financial obligations were denounced just because they were inefficient, unfair and corrupt. The required savings must be found elsewhere.
The story is long, but the conclusion is simple. If you cannot remove the bloodsuckers from the NHS, you have to remove those who cause the most expense for the least gain - those who require long-term care without any prospect of being cured and taking again a productive and tax-paying role in the world; the old and the chronically sick. If they cannot pay any more tax, if they cannot contribute to that public purse from which the PWM steal through the organized robbery of privatization, what good are they to society at large? Stop sponging on others! That is why the need to die with dignity and cease to be a burden on others has suddenly become an issue in the minds of the PWM. Rather than stopping the looting of the public purse by inefficient, often incompetent, nearly always corrupt private contractors, it is better to start killing off the old and the sick.
