The estimable David McGrogan has done much for bringing an understanding of law to the pages of the Daily Sceptic. In an era in which everyone talks about science, it is very important that there will be some of us who keep talking about law — and literature — and politics.
McGrogan’s latest essay argued — it was a complicated piece and worth summarising — that Lord Diplock, a renowned old horse-rider of a lawyer, told the House of Lords in 1985 that he could see no reason why the lawyers shouldn’t be able to subject prerogative powers to judicial review. (McGrogan is very funny on the trickiness of the bland phrase, “I see no reason”.) This was part of the thing Jonathan Sumption has written about in his recent non-historical books: the tendency of lawyers to turn political convention into legal regulation: that is, more simply, the tendency of law lords to go after power. But the broader point is about the civil service. McGrogan argues that Government should be able to do what it wants with the civil service, free of any constraint: where constraint might come from judicial review, or from trade unionisation. Anyhow, one way or another, it is necessary to have a bonfire of the bureaucrats.
This is a useful suggestion. Some of us have tended to exaggerate the political causes, or, at a deeper level, the cultural and theoretical causes, of what has gone on since 2020, ignoring bureaucratic and legal causes. And it is quite possible that at some dim and clotted level the reality is that the Circumlocution Office (as depicted in Dickens’s Little Dorrit) has been in control all along, and that it is not, as it was in the 19th century, a hindrance to justice, progress and care, but is, in the 21st century, a hindrance to common sense and good order. For those of you who have not read Little Dorrit, the point of the Circumlocution Office — see chapter X, ‘Containing the whole science of Government’ — is how not to do it: how not to do Brexit, how not to do Covid, how not to do Immigration, how not to do Education, how not to do Civilisation.
In order to add to McGrogan’s vision of what is wrong, let me say something about two things, coup d’état and the universal class.
Firstly, the universal class. In his Philosophy of Right Hegel used this phrase, in German of course — der allgemeine Stand — to refer to the civil service. In every society, he suggested, we have classes or estates and we have individuals, all of whom are pursuing their own interests. But there is one class that is not serving its own interest, because it is serving the public interest. This is the universal class. For Hegel, this meant bureaucrats.
There are two things to say about this. The first is that Marx, in the course of inverting Hegel, decided that the universal class was not the bureaucracy but the proletariat. Clever. And, indeed, this is still a favoured alternative. (Consider Graeber, Occupy, Momentum, UKIP etc.) Even McGrogan has to fall back on it, saying that if we think that the Government has been unfair to the civil servants then we can always appeal to the electorate for justice. Perhaps the only other serious candidate for a universal class is the academic-fantastical one of the intellectuals and experts: the people who know how to do it. You know, the COVID-19, Net Zero, Diversity brigade.
The second thing to say is that any member of the universal class, whatever it is, is likely to be extremely conceited. “You are serving your interest, but I am serving the public interest.” Lofty expression; grave voice; large pension. And the problem with our entire education system at the moment, from school upwards, is that it seems to encourage people to opine and emote and genuflect in ways which involve ostentatious and positively Pecksniffian displays of concern for the greater good, the common weal, the public interest: though expressed not in Shakespearian or High Victorian manner but in the friendly and caring style of the CBeebies.
Of our three great candidates for a universal class it has to be said that the proletariat is out of favour. It is derided by academics and journalists — and sometimes both (Cas Mudde and Jan-Werner Müller keep popping up in the Guardian) — as ‘populist’. A dread word, ‘populist’: it brings to the mind of the average onion-emoting and lemon-opining educated liberal citizen a horrific Bosch vision of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, Victor Orban and massed AFD types, indeed, everyone on the ‘far Right’ or ‘hard Right’, all making a merry hell of the world. So this leaves the other two candidates for a universal class: the intellectuals on the one hand, and the bureaucrats on the other. Those of us who get easily bored focus on the bright intellectuals; but McGrogan says that we should overcome our scruples, turn on the night vision goggles and focus on the dim bureaucrats instead: since it is their inertia and sense that they are right and their absolute inability to justify how they are right that forms the ‘immovable obstacle’ that is fatberging the sewer of the modern state. They make the intellectuals look like leaves in a windy autumn, easily dissipated.
Secondly, I wanted to talk about coup d’état. Everyone thinks they know what a coup d’état is. Surely it is an insurrection, an attempt to snatch power away from those who hold it? Surely it is the October Revolution of 1917? Surely it is January 6th? Well, it can be these. But it is actually something much more interesting than mere insurrection. For, as originally defined by the remarkable French writer of the early 17th century, Gabriel Naudé, it is not something which is done to a state, but something done by a state. A coup d’état, he wrote, is a coup inflicted by the state on the people. He said it was like the act of a god, a thunderbolt, a raining down of disaster, an Old Testament plague, a sudden blow.
I submit that COVID-19 was a coup d’état.
So was accession to the EEC.
Modern politics could be considered death by a thousand coups.
Since I am littering this essay with capitalised concepts, let me reflect on two more. Thirdly, let us mention conspiracy theories again. If we suppose that Plato is right, and the state is founded on a ‘noble lie’; if we suppose Machiavelli is right, and politicians need to employ all the arts of force and fraud — lion and fox — in order to maintain their own state; and if we suppose that Naudé is right, and the state acts most decisively and mysteriously when it acts like a capricious god: then conspiracy theories are not the works of madmen but what Anthony Fauci would call “just common sense”. The modern academic and journalistic habit of deriding conspiracy theories is just one more way of concealing the arcana imperii by which our order is alchemised, cabalised and witch-doctored by our overlords.
Fourthly, it is perhaps worth saying something about Michael Gove’s recent redefinition of extremism. ‘Extremes’ are feared by those who think they are in the middle. The ones who think most pompously that they are in the middle — serving the public interest and not their own miscellaneous interests — are the members of the universal class. Any definition of extremism is an attempt to shore up a sandbank in a rising tide. Gove, whose speeches sound as if they come from someone whose onions and lemons have been helped down with great quantities of roast pork, madeira wine and linen napkin, tells us that Britain is stronger through diversity. That is a lie, obviously. The universal class is petrified, not only by the off-message ruminations of the many immigrants who have come in, but also by the off-message ruminations of the ‘populists’ who think that Britain’s natural and easy diversity of the last century or more is being displaced by an ironclad Orwellian discourse of diversity which is, in fact, anything but diverse.
The ‘deep state’, the ‘blob’, the ‘universal class’, whatever you want to call it, is trying to define something arbitrarily in the hope that it can hold the leaking sides of the ship of state together. But definitions are for schools, not for politicians. Gove’s redefinition is yet another gesture towards defending ‘British values’ which no one has ever believed in. Churchill didn’t believe in them; nor did Gladstone; nor Pitt; nor Walpole; nor Clarendon; nor Cromwell; nor Burghley; nor Warwick the Kingmaker; nor Montfort; nor Becket; nor Bede. British values are bogus. ‘Extremism’ is just an admission that the British state let the cats out of the bag in the last few generations, and is trying to find a few stray cats to rebag and drown in order to suggest that all is well in the world. It is yet one more coup d’état, even if only a relatively titchy one, by the universal class.
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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Not really a surprise, they didn’t spend all that money for nothing. However I resigned myself to them being used at some point a while ago and I know which side I am on. And I am fully prepared for the consequences.
It never ceases to amaze me how few people seem to understand the idea of the thin end of the wedge and how much impact it has on their lives.
With you 100%.
IT IS a dangerous mistake for leaders to make laws on the basis of received wisdom.Tin Men, try to find your hearts
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The EU has been planning for vaccine passports since 2016, with a delivery date of 2022.
The British Establishment was obviously fully on board with this programme since it pre-dates Brexit. We are still significantly aligned to the EU so it’s hardly surprising to find that the British Government will be complying with the EU’s policy.
They will have to create an alternative to an APP, since not everyone owns a smart phone and the very people who need to access the NHS most frequently are the ones least likely to be computer-literate and own one.
They are champing at the bit, especially those who would profit from it all. With any luck, a large majority would declare themselves exempt, or take their trade elsewhere.
Vaccine / health passports – who really benefits?
https://www.dr-rath-foundation.org/2021/04/european-plans-for-vaccine-passports-were-in-place-20-months-prior-to-the-pandemic-coincidence/
They are carrying on with their plans, regardless…
People should start joining the dots, the majority leading the push for this agenda have talked openly about population reduction and are eugenicists.
The UK has pioneered the state spying on its citizens for decades. This comes as no surprise, I binned my smartphone in 2020. Haven’t looked back. There’s a company in the USA that specialises in scarves, clothing and masks that disrupt cameras. They’ll soon become a fashion accessory! Plus the old ‘chav’ uniform of hoodie and baseball cap will return.
Assuming the RPTB have yet to completely nobble the ONS etc. (see Professor Norman Fenton re this) it will be interesting to see precisely how the new “bi-variant booster vaccine” is rolled out and more importantly, the percentage of takers.
Make no mistake, the only reasons vax passports aren’t yet mandatory is, thankfully the resistance of the 19 million plus refuseniks and the simple fact that the jabs are, on any cost/benefit analysis, dangerous.
How dangerous remains to be fully seen.
I’ve never had the jab: the NHS gave up contacting me eventually. My parents had the originals and one booster and have said they won’t have any more. We’ve know of a couple of people in our wider circle of friends of family and friends of friends who have either died (one of a heart attack age 38 and another in her 50s died in agony from blood clots all over her body within days of the jab, both previously healthy) or been permanently injured by the drugs (an 18-year-old trainee nurse was severely injured by the first jab and can’t have any more ever, meaning she can no longer work in the profession.) Allegedly they’re going to come after the unjabbed in a campaign starting later this month. We’ll have to see whether it’s been postponed in the last few months…
‘If a citizen only has NATURAL immunity or negative test results, they will only be eligible for a ‘limited venues’ (voluntary) pass.’
This says it all: natural immunity is more effective and longer lasting than waning vaccinated immunity. It is all about controlling the masses and ensuring Big Pharma makes plenty of money in the process.
The purpose of continuing with the injections, which are no longer needed and even if they did work, is not protection from illness but promotion of death.
We have to stop blathering on about a cold virus which has been and gone and accept that government focus now is on killing people.
The covid virus has morphed into a deadly injection virus. That is what we need protection from.
Moderna are rolling out a six in one injection, completely untested, and why, because it will make it nearly impossible to blame the forthcoming deaths on the injections – too many variables.
Morning all…
An update from Professor Norman Fenton on the supposed ‘updates’ on the Government website in regard to vaccination of pregnant women….
https://www.normanfenton.com/post/uk-government-sneakily-updates-web-page-with-vaccine-report-yet-again
Apologies…wrong thread…! Sausage fingers!
I remember there was a job advert for a deputy lead director – covid pass – pulled in June 2022 after questions raised in parliament about it. Savage Jabber was allegedly unaware of it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220608081858/https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi?jcode=1791653
Yes, they have been carrying on regardless, determined to have a ‘covid pass’ in place by hook or by crook.
It’s just a social credits app by the back door.
“remember there was a job advert for a deputy lead director – covid pass – pulled in June 2022”
ellie, the post was subsequently filled.
I didn’t know – I didn’t follow it up, to be honest. I’m not at all surprised, they are grand masters in the dirty tricks brigade. Accomplished liars.
Dido Harding who is tasked with this, is a member of the Bilderberg Group. The list of members makes for some illuminating reading & helps one to connect a few more dots…
https://expose-news.com/2022/09/04/bilderbergers-whove-played-a-role-in-covid-event/
BB – what a bloody eye-opener.
It most certainly is.
Power, once acquired, WILL be used and will never voluntarily be given up.
The vaccine passport is the control mechanism, the civil service in most countries positively salivate at the prospect of locking ppl they disapprove of out from society.
Let’s be clear – £37,000,000,000+ wasn’t spent on phone calls, min wages and dodgy tests. But it did buy a world-class surveillance system. The Stasi-esque NHSX is sheltering – unaccountable and out of sight – in the bosom of the sacred NHS.
Its purpose is the deployment of personal digital biometric IDs.
For your own safety, of course.
In the same week that the weather turns colder the health-harms of fuel poverty will be linked into the repurposed NHS app. The NHS app will be a pathway to the issuing of ‘energy vouchers’ to those on welfare and pensions. These vouchers will be redeemable against fuel bills, including your care home, your family or neighbour – to keep us all safe (i.e.warm).
And where have we heard that before?
Non-welfare people will be able buy these vouchers a heavy discount – as long as they get that digital NHSX ID and submit to its controls on how you then ‘spend’ your voucher on energy ONLY.
And following this ‘brilliantly effective and successful Govt vouchering scheme’ expect similar schemes for food and fossil fuels.
In this way – linking the distribution and spending of personal vouchers – the money we call CASH will be replaced by a programmable digital currency.
The people will willingly sacrifice the freedom of cash and choice to just keep warm ands fed in mild, abundant Britain. The new fudalism.
Beware vouchers!
Beware personal digital IDs.
“Let’s be clear – £37,000,000,000+ wasn’t spent on phone calls, min wages and dodgy tests.”
Well I had worked that out early doors. And I remain convinced that a large portion of the money was spent on road / traffic measures which will allow for vehicle tracking. Some of the money has been used on ‘track and trace’ but not in the ways we have been led to believe.
But people on pensions are the people least likely to have a smart phone. My mother, my elderly neighbours….none of them have internet or phones.
If they do this, there will be chaos. It’s too mad, surely, even for our government? we don’t even have mobile phone coverage in our village so goodness knows how they think it would work.
The vast majority of people without smart phones will be older people who are unlikely to be a threat to TPTB so they will be ignored – literally. If they fall ill, tough. If they die they help towards government targets.
To be blunt – the unconnected will be disconnected and permanently.
My feeling is that it’s the infrastructure (and the funding to implement it) that was desired, and that this relates to the imminent introduction of CBDCs. Once the system is in place, and the public is primed to accept conditional entry to venues and constant surveillance it will be much easier to install this new type of economy.
However the ‘Covid-19’ enterprise fraud cover story was so unbelievably weak and stupid that the wheels fell off, and it began to look absurd. They’ll be some scratching of heads about how to proceed now. They had one chance to gain the initiative, and ended up looking ridiculous and back at the drawing board. My guess is they’ll go for ‘cyber attack’ next.
Yes of course they kept the vaccine pass. I must have been fooling myself big time. For a brief moment in the summer it seemed like all their plans were going to be ripped to shreds, stuffed down the pants of Javid, Johnson, Patel et al and set on fire but unfortunately that never happened. So despite all thousands of reams of evidence, all the weight of knowledge and understanding about the true dangers or, rather, non-dangers of Covid and the very real dangers of the vaccine itself over two and a bit long exhausting years, despite all the science that actually shows a completely different picture, all the eminent scientists and doctors speaking out, all the evidence of vaccine harms, nothing has persuaded them that anything is amiss with the vaccines. No doubt at all. The good ship Lollipop – or Vaxalot – sails on, on calm steady seas with nary a hint of a breeze to ruffle the waters of absolute certainty. Meanwhile all the shock troops, the Covid Marshalls in Waiting, the mask manufacturers, BIg Pharma, all the cohorts of believers and cheerleaders will fall into lockstep again come the next vari-airy-ant this autumn or winter. Well, carry on if you must, but I’ve got a train to catch – it’s called the Reality Express and it’s not stopping at any stations on your line…
medical apartheid dompas
Bureaucratic opportunism. That’s what it looks like in the DHSC paper published above. In various departments, fashions come and go. E.g. a few years ago, there was a push to develop car engines that would churn out less than 100g/km of carbon dioxide, which resulted in zero road tax. I bought one of those in 2013 – I still had to “pay” tax every year, except that it was zero; I’m not joking!
Farage hit the nail on the head. All governments are into short termism(vote winning). No long term strategic planning, hence the energy crisis. So I wouldn’t worry.. Everytime the public push back, the government about- face.
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I think there can be no doubt that covid passes will return this winter. When they do, the propaganda will be ‘anyone can get it, even if you’ve had it before, and anyone can spread it, even if not unwell’. People in general will support the covid pass’s return.
The facts, meanwhile, will remain (1) that at most 20% of the population has been susceptible to any variant, (2) no one has been at mortal risk from covid unless age-frail or already seriously ill, and (3) no evidence or rationale whatever exists for saying covid can be transmitted by people not coughing, sneezing and running a temperature.
Now its been fully established that the vaccines do not prevent spread of Covid, Why is our government wasting money on this?