Last night’s Any Questions? was a disgrace so far as lowering the voting age was concerned. Michael Ancram sat on the fence, and all the other panellists played to the gallery of some schools debating competition held at Eton, the participants in which provided most of the audience and all of the questioners. It is one thing for Any Questions? to come from a school, but there is absolutely no excuse for it to have an audience predominantly made up of children, never mind for children to ask all the questions.
Asked what she thought, the questioner recited an extract from an AS Politics textbook, or The Bumper Book of Schools Debating Cases, or something. The crowd went wild. But what the hell do they know?
Saturday, 7 July 2007
Friday, 6 July 2007
"The Labourer Is Worthy Of His Hire"
Gordon Brown will recognise this quotation. It is, in turn, the basis for the excellent trade union principle of “the rate for the job”. Yet we now have fully ten Ministers without salaries. Is it just that they do not need the money, as is certainly the case with some of them, and which sets the extremely dangerous precedent of favouring those in that fortunate position? Or is each of the poor dears having to make do on an MP’s fifty-nine thousand pounds per annum plus generous expenses?
Will You Wake Up Now?
The “Socialist” EU (ha! ha!) is once again threatening our zero VAT rating on food and on children’s clothes. Good luck to My Right Honourable Kinsman, Alistair Darling, is holding the line against this proposed 17.5% increase in the food and clothing bills of hard-working families (and of everyone else as well, where food is concerned). I am sure that he will. But if not this, then what on earth will finally cause those who claim to be on the Left while supporting this nasty neoliberal project, an integral part of globalisation and American hegemony, to snap out of their delusions?
"Her Price Is Far Above Rubies"
My heart goes out to the parents of the toddler unlawfully killed by negligent staff at her day nursery. She was but another victim of our greedy consumer-capitalism’s conscription of the mothers even of very small children into the workforce, to the immense distress of mothers and children alike. Instead of nationalising childcare, the State should pay mothers to do it. No, it might not be as much as they were making before the babies came along. But how do they imagine that they would find the time to spend the extra cash with a small child, anyway. There is more to life than money, you know. That’s why there is money at all. As we would all do very well to re-learn.
Learning and Skills
The Government’s preposterous, admittedly inherited commitment to fifty per cent university admission (though note, please note, completion) is contrary to the whole purpose of universities, entrenches the view that education is really only something for the very young (on whom, in fact, it is largely wasted), and depends on the assumption that a life without a degree (or, rather, without a “university experience”) is not worth living.
Of course, if we can afford the Iraq War or the “renewal” of Trident, then we could instead afford free undergraduate tuition (at least). And of course, if the Scottish Parliament can abolish tuition fees without using its revenue-raining powers, then its block grant should simply be cut by the cost of extending that restoration throughout the United Kingdom.
But, just as there should be generous maintenance grants, wholly regardless of parental income, for academically the most able students going to universities, so should there be for the most promising entrants to vocational courses and apprenticeships. The latter would be produced in sufficient numbers if we had proper technical schools. And the former would be produced in sufficient numbers (nowhere near fifty per cent of the total) if we brought back grammar schools.
Furthermore, all manner of economic, social, cultural (not least, academic) and political good would be done if, between the secondary and the tertiary stages, there were universal non-military, but nevertheless uniformed, ranked and barracked National Service, doing good works while travelling around the country and beyond, and while meeting significantly broadening the range of one’s friends and acquaintances.
Of course, if we can afford the Iraq War or the “renewal” of Trident, then we could instead afford free undergraduate tuition (at least). And of course, if the Scottish Parliament can abolish tuition fees without using its revenue-raining powers, then its block grant should simply be cut by the cost of extending that restoration throughout the United Kingdom.
But, just as there should be generous maintenance grants, wholly regardless of parental income, for academically the most able students going to universities, so should there be for the most promising entrants to vocational courses and apprenticeships. The latter would be produced in sufficient numbers if we had proper technical schools. And the former would be produced in sufficient numbers (nowhere near fifty per cent of the total) if we brought back grammar schools.
Furthermore, all manner of economic, social, cultural (not least, academic) and political good would be done if, between the secondary and the tertiary stages, there were universal non-military, but nevertheless uniformed, ranked and barracked National Service, doing good works while travelling around the country and beyond, and while meeting significantly broadening the range of one’s friends and acquaintances.
The Act of Settlement
Gordon Brown has apparently annoyed Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Edinburgh by not including the repeal of the Act of Settlement among his proposed constitutional chnages.
Well, I question the viability of a Catholic community which devotes any great energy to the question of ascending the throne while the born sleep in cardboard boxes on the streets and the pre-born are ripped from their mothers’ wombs to be discarded as surgical waste. Far from being a term of abuse, the word “Papist” is in fact the name under which the English Martyrs gave their lives, and expresses the cause for which they did so, making it a badge of honour, to be worn with pride.
And yet, and yet, and yet...
The Established status of the Church of England was already a century and a half old at the time of the Act of Settlement, and is wholly unconnected to it. Anyway, in the 1990s, the Courts ruled that that status entailed what everyone had always known to be the case: that the doctrine of the Church of England – “the reformed Protestant religion as by law established in the Realm of England” – is whatever Parliament says it is at any given time, be that the ordination of women (as was the matter in question), or reincarnation, or the infallibility of Papal definitions ex cathedra, or anything else at all. All that it is necessary for a monarch to do in order to uphold this “religion” is to grant Royal Assent to Ecclesiastical Measures just as if they were any other Bills passed by Parliament.
Those who would most resist any change to the Act of Settlement are those who insist that the Church of England is confessionally Calvinistic as a first principle rather than, as is in fact the case, only until such time as Parliament sees fit to repeal or replace the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, and not a moment longer. Such people are mostly not in England (where they are mostly not members of the Church of England), but in Scotland (where the monarch is required, in ecclesiastical terms, to do nothing more than preserve a Presbyterian pattern of polity) and in Northern Ireland (where, as in Wales, the monarch has no formal ecclesiastical function whatever).
However, it is in Northern Ireland that a large Catholic community, by far the single largest religious body (as the Catholic Church also is, narrowly or otherwise, in each of England, Scotland and Wales), is crying out to be bound more closely to the British State, with which certainly a very large proportion of its members, and possibly the majority, identifies very strongly. In view of what the Coronation Oath actually means, then let the Act of Settlement be repealed if that would help that binding, long complete and unthought about everywhere else in the United Kingdom (even, it seems, on Merseyside and in the West of Scotland).
What was established in 1688, with strong Papal support, was in fact the Catholic principle previously given practical effect in 1399 in England, and even more ingrained in Scotland, as against both Gallican princely absolutism and its metamorphosis into the theory whereby the new gentry-cum-mercantile republic was sovereign even over the Prince.
English Jacobitism, in particular, was what would now be called an Anglican, rather than a Catholic, phenomenon, when it was not just a ragbag of everyone (Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, smugglers, the lot) opposed to the Whig hegemony. Catholics hardly featured, since they simply did not share the underlying philosophical and theological assumptions; rather, they fully accepted Parliament’s right to determine the succession to the throne, even when it was inconvenient to themselves.
Each of the Commonwealth Realms is a linear inheritor of that age-old tradition, which is the peaceable alternative both to the bloodletting anti-republican pseudo-monarchism coming down from Buridan through the French Counter-Revolution, and to the bloodletting anti-monarchist pseudo-republicanism against which it came to react, historical aberrations both.
The Parliament of each Commonwealth Realm therefore has the absolute right to determine the succession to its own throne; but they mercifully choose to exercise this right in unison, and may that ever remain the case. (It is perfectly illiterate to suggest that the repeal of the Act of Settlement would revive any Stuart claim to the throne.) So, again, if the repeal of the Act of Settlement helped to keep even one country in this family, then, in view of the above, by all means let it be repealed, though only by unanimous consent among all the Commonwealth Realms, since its continuation would also be a price well worth paying in order to preserve the unity of that family.
Well, I question the viability of a Catholic community which devotes any great energy to the question of ascending the throne while the born sleep in cardboard boxes on the streets and the pre-born are ripped from their mothers’ wombs to be discarded as surgical waste. Far from being a term of abuse, the word “Papist” is in fact the name under which the English Martyrs gave their lives, and expresses the cause for which they did so, making it a badge of honour, to be worn with pride.
And yet, and yet, and yet...
The Established status of the Church of England was already a century and a half old at the time of the Act of Settlement, and is wholly unconnected to it. Anyway, in the 1990s, the Courts ruled that that status entailed what everyone had always known to be the case: that the doctrine of the Church of England – “the reformed Protestant religion as by law established in the Realm of England” – is whatever Parliament says it is at any given time, be that the ordination of women (as was the matter in question), or reincarnation, or the infallibility of Papal definitions ex cathedra, or anything else at all. All that it is necessary for a monarch to do in order to uphold this “religion” is to grant Royal Assent to Ecclesiastical Measures just as if they were any other Bills passed by Parliament.
Those who would most resist any change to the Act of Settlement are those who insist that the Church of England is confessionally Calvinistic as a first principle rather than, as is in fact the case, only until such time as Parliament sees fit to repeal or replace the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, and not a moment longer. Such people are mostly not in England (where they are mostly not members of the Church of England), but in Scotland (where the monarch is required, in ecclesiastical terms, to do nothing more than preserve a Presbyterian pattern of polity) and in Northern Ireland (where, as in Wales, the monarch has no formal ecclesiastical function whatever).
However, it is in Northern Ireland that a large Catholic community, by far the single largest religious body (as the Catholic Church also is, narrowly or otherwise, in each of England, Scotland and Wales), is crying out to be bound more closely to the British State, with which certainly a very large proportion of its members, and possibly the majority, identifies very strongly. In view of what the Coronation Oath actually means, then let the Act of Settlement be repealed if that would help that binding, long complete and unthought about everywhere else in the United Kingdom (even, it seems, on Merseyside and in the West of Scotland).
What was established in 1688, with strong Papal support, was in fact the Catholic principle previously given practical effect in 1399 in England, and even more ingrained in Scotland, as against both Gallican princely absolutism and its metamorphosis into the theory whereby the new gentry-cum-mercantile republic was sovereign even over the Prince.
English Jacobitism, in particular, was what would now be called an Anglican, rather than a Catholic, phenomenon, when it was not just a ragbag of everyone (Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, smugglers, the lot) opposed to the Whig hegemony. Catholics hardly featured, since they simply did not share the underlying philosophical and theological assumptions; rather, they fully accepted Parliament’s right to determine the succession to the throne, even when it was inconvenient to themselves.
Each of the Commonwealth Realms is a linear inheritor of that age-old tradition, which is the peaceable alternative both to the bloodletting anti-republican pseudo-monarchism coming down from Buridan through the French Counter-Revolution, and to the bloodletting anti-monarchist pseudo-republicanism against which it came to react, historical aberrations both.
The Parliament of each Commonwealth Realm therefore has the absolute right to determine the succession to its own throne; but they mercifully choose to exercise this right in unison, and may that ever remain the case. (It is perfectly illiterate to suggest that the repeal of the Act of Settlement would revive any Stuart claim to the throne.) So, again, if the repeal of the Act of Settlement helped to keep even one country in this family, then, in view of the above, by all means let it be repealed, though only by unanimous consent among all the Commonwealth Realms, since its continuation would also be a price well worth paying in order to preserve the unity of that family.
Interest
You needn't presume to hold or express a view about interest rates. Thanks to Gordon Brown and cheered on by pretty much everyone, the electorate, as such, actually cannot even care about interest rates, even though the public certainly does. And Brown and David Cameron both now seem determined to do the same thing to health policy, once again reversing one of Labour greatest democratising achievements.
With no say over either monetary policy or health policy, what will politicians be for? There will still be education, and transport, and policing, and social security, and foreign policy, and defence, and a host of other matters. But for how much longer? The precedent will be well and truly set. Parliament will go the way of local councils, except voluntarily.
With no say over either monetary policy or health policy, what will politicians be for? There will still be education, and transport, and policing, and social security, and foreign policy, and defence, and a host of other matters. But for how much longer? The precedent will be well and truly set. Parliament will go the way of local councils, except voluntarily.
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