|
Reflecting on the recently over, but still poisonous legacy of the New Labour Tyranny (NLT).
It appears to me that left-wingers desire power, and right wingers desire autonomy. New Labour were obsessed with surveillance and fines. Tories before them were perhaps over-eager to obtain lobby funding. I guess both share a degree of authoritarianism that was not present under Thatcher - except when required by genuine national emergencies. New Labour's constant terror alerts seemed in contrast, contrived, and convenient. They allowed them to architect the police state we currently don't enjoy.
Politics and engineering do not mix but engineering is the main answer to economic recovery, so it is a crucial matter. The HS2 project is doomed, and will be a massive waste of public resources, I can almost guarantee it.
The mere fact that HS2 exists, is proof positive that the coalition might be Tory-led, but it is certainly not right-wing, and saddest of all, it retains very little of liberal Thatcherism. What else is HS2 except vote-buying in the North?
If the HS2 works effectively, against the odds, and delivers value for money. What result? The most likely effect of a working system is that more Northerners find their way into London to get a job, to pay taxes into central government.
Taxed pounds have a strange property, they are very heavy. So heavy, that they rarely carry outside the limited permitter in which they are collected. But what if some of these Westminster taxed pounds could be used to enlarge the future pool from which they can be gathered....?
Excuse the cynicism, but the point of this letter is to discuss how politics and engineering just don't belong in the same forum and executive.
Thatcher is not given enough credit for demonstrating unambiguously how Hayekian economics could work in Britain to increase general national prosperity. All of the alternative ideologies appear to be ways to manage decline, all other ways than liberty and encouragement of personal liberty and responsibility encourage minuscule land-holding, bond-holding and gold-holding contingents, and few others. Unless that is the real point.
--
jojo
|
