Britain

If the other children told you to jump out of the window …

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All of us who can recall our childhood and have had to deal with children ourselves know the scenario. Child whines because everybody has something or other, does something or other, is going somewhere or other. Eventually, the parent, irritated beyond rationality says: “And if all those others told you to jump out of the window would you do it?”. Or words to that effect.

I thought of that again when I read Lex’s links to Megan McArdle and her extremely sensible comment about not wanting the state acquiring a bigger role in healthcare. “Nay, not even if all the other countries . . . well, all the cool countries, anyway . . . are doing it.” Clearly, I cannot intervene in the heated debate about American healthcare and the changes proposed by what seems to be known more and more widely as Obamacare. I do not live in the United States and, therefore, my knowledge is second hand, therefore, inadequate. (Though, I notice that a similar handicap with regards to Britain does not stop various people from commenting with … ahem … varying degrees of accuracy.)

However, I do know something about that argument of all the other countries … well, all the cool countries having something and, therefore, we must as well. In Britain we have had to put up with that inane argument over and over again as step by step we surrendered all that made the British legal, political and constitutional system not only different (not unique because other Anglospheric countries have developed along very similar lines) but much better.

Adversarial parliamentary democracy where debates are out in the open and subjects are, indeed, kicked about? No, no, no, must not turn health/education/name-your-subject into a political football. Look how they do it on the Continent. Well, how they do it is to make decisions behind closed doors and call it a consensus.

Adversarial legal system? Not what they have in other countries. Well, not in the cool other countries where we like going on holidays. We should have a procuratorial system, too. Don’t want to be left out of the game.

And so on, and so on. Yet the answer is so simple: our system is different from those other cool countries’ because it has grown differently over many centuries; it also happens to be considerably better. That’s it.

The Economist on Britain’s Electricity Situation

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The Economist recently wrote an editorial called “How Long Till the Lights Go Out?” describing the electricity situation in Britain. The byline was

Thanks to its posturing politicians, Britain will soon start to run out of electricity. What should it do?

As a long time writer on electricity and energy, I was pleased that The Economist at least hit on the core of the issue:

In 2009 Britain’s electricity demand peaked at 59 GW. Just over 45% of that came from power plants fuelled by gas from the North Sea. A further 35% or so came from coal, less than 15% from nuclear power and the rest from a hotch-potch of other sources. By 2015, assuming that modest economic growth resumes, a reasonable guess is that Britain will need around 64 GW… where will that come from?

This is the HEART of the issue. Electricity has to be generated from somewhere, and traditional sources of generation are 1) Coal 2) Gas 3) Nuclear 4) Hydroelectric 5) everything else (generally insignificant).

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“…their total inability to admit the possibility of a social order which is not made by political design”

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In Britain and among the English-speaking peoples … Locke’s ideas were simply combined with the old English tradition of limited government. Rather than a project for a new society and a new morality, the English revolution of 1688 and, to a lesser extent, the American revolution of 1776 were basically, though not only, a reassertion of the rights of free Englishman to live their lives as they used to live them before—under the common protection of the laws of the land. In other words, what we now call liberal democracy has emerged in the Anglosphere as a natural outgrowth of existing, law-abiding and moral-abiding ways of life. For this reason, liberal democracy among the English speaking peoples has been naturally associated with an ethos of duty—which, as Burke pointed out, is not and should not be deduced from will. For this reason, too, liberal democracy in the Anglosphere has been tremendously stable. And the English-speaking peoples have always been the first to rise in defence of their cherished liberties—their way of life.
 
In continental Europe, by contrast, the idea of liberty has tended to be understood as an adversarial project: adversarial to all existing ways of life simply because, in a sense, they were already there; because they had not been designed by ‘Reason’. This has generated a lasting instability in European politics. This adversarial attitude, combined with a widespread disregard for limited government, has led European politics to be recurrently dominated by two absolutist poles: revolutionary liberals and later revolutionary socialists, on the one hand, and counter-revolutionary conservatives, on the other. They both have aimed at using government without limits to push forward their particular, and usually sectarian, agendas. Their clash—the clash between the so-called liberal project and traditional ways of life—has been at the root of the historical weakness of European liberal democracy, when compared with liberal democracy among the English speaking peoples. This weakness also explains why, differently from the English-speaking peoples, continental Europeans are not usually the first to rise in defence of our liberties when our liberties become at risk.

João Carlos Espada, Edmund Burke and the Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty (2006)

Royal Family 1: Politicians 0

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My first reaction to the news that the Prince of Wales will be going to the D-Day celebrations after discreet negotiations and a “change of heart” on the part of Presidents Sarkozy and Obama was that he should not have given in but treated that bunch of self-publicists with the scorn they deserve.

I was wrong and the Prince was right. The three narcissists have already shown themselves to be puny and contemptible and the day is not about them but the veterans who will be glad to have the Prince there to represent the Royal Family. It is good to be generous and to place emphasis where it belongs.

Once again, Royal Family 1: Politicians 0. And that is how it should be. Let’s just hope the Prince will not go with President Obama to Dresden where the latter will almost certainly apologize for America (and Britain) doing their share in defeating Nazism.

Cross-posted from Your Freedom and Ours

It Isn’t A Good Idea Over There, So Of Course We Have To Copy It

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Milo clued me in to a new scheme the British government came up with. Turn in your old car to be destroyed (at taxpayer expense!) and get a credit towards a new one.

There already is an incentive offered to get people to buy new cars. It is called a “trade in”, where cash or credit towards a new car is offered by the dealers themselves. And then the dealers fix up the old cars and sell them for a lower price to those who can’t afford a new one. Everyone wins!

But the new scheme in Great Britain would do away with used cars. Buy a new one or go without. I suppose the government over there just hates poor people.

I wouldn’t even bother to mention this at all, considering how it is an internal political matter in a foreign country, except that I just found out that Pres. Obama has suggested that the US adopt the same stupid plan!

Words fail me.

(Hat tip to Insty, and I cross posted this essay over at Hell in a Handbasket.)