He knows the names of beastly flowers

The ideas that dominate modern educational ideology and practice have been incubating for a long time.

The idea, for example, that evidence of IQ (in the old-fashioned sense) was irrelevant, and had nothing to do with what a person was good at, was implicitly present in a book called The New Broom which my Uncle Harry had had as a boy and which I read at about 8, so it might have been written about 1900. In this book, someone refers to having seen a former schoolfellow sweeping the streets, and says, without any implication that anything had gone wrong and needed to be corrected, that this was a great surprise as this person had always excelled at school and they had all expected him to become Prime Minister. (How foolish they had been.)

In another episode in the book, a new master at a public school does some social engineering. Many of the boys are in the habit of going to the local pub for drinking, smoking and billiards (played for money, no doubt). This is seen as bad, and the new master goes and drags back a boy called Mansell, who is a prime mover in the goings-on. He is forced to play football, which at first he resists with a show of disinterest on the field, but into which he is eventually drawn by his natural aptitude for the game. He ‘could not prevent himself from being fast and clever on a football field’. So soon he is playing for the school and becomes a great team player and a prominent and feted member of the school community. At no stage is the idea expressed that he might be steered into some kind of academic pursuit rather than football.

The same idea, that school life is not, and should not be, about learning, is expressed in a poem in E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children, published in 1906. The poem is about a new boy at a school, who will soon come to know better.

He cannot wicket-keep at all,
He's frightened of a cricket ball.
He reads indoors for hours and hours.
He knows the names of beastly flowers.
He says his French just like Mossoo--
A beastly stuck-up thing to do--
He won't keep cave, shirks his turn
And says he came to school to learn!
He won't play football, says it hurts;
He wouldn't fight with Paley Terts;
...
Now Wigsby Minor says that Parr
Is only like all new boys are.
I know when I first came to school
I wasn't such a jolly fool!

Even as early as this, there is clearly a conviction that it is unnecessary to consider a person’s inclinations. Force him into the situation which will permit him to do what he should want to do, if he were the right sort of person, and he will change into that sort of person, or it is his own fault if he does not.

The antagonism to IQ, and the pressure that could be applied to individuals, became much greater in the Welfare State era, in which many parents were no longer paying directly for what was being meted out to their children, and could themselves be slandered and persecuted.

Even before the onset of state education and the Welfare State, several of those who became leading intellectuals had parents who thought it was a good idea for them to be preserved from, or only minimally exposed to, the school experience. Such as John Stuart Mill, Frederic Myers and Bertrand Russell.

Keeping the Welfare Wolf from the door

The tiny amount of public spending committed to the elderly – 5.8 per cent of national income compared to 11.7 per cent in Italy – is a key reason behind the scandal of tens of thousands of people having to sell their homes every year to pay for their residential care.

Other countries fund care home fees through taxes or national insurance systems, meaning care is available when people need it. The report warns that our low spending rate has also led to an enormous burden on family members, who are left having to take on roles as unpaid carers because the state does not step in.

And it means thousands of pensioners are isolated in their own houses because not enough home helps, meals on wheels services and day centres are available. ...

The £16billion we spend each year includes funding for day centres, residential care home fees, meals on wheels and home helps who assist with eating, dressing, going to the toilet, washing, domestic cleaning and shopping. (Daily Mail, 6 June 2011)

I made the efforts I did over a period of fifty years to make sure that I and any associate of mine made voluntary contributions to the state pension, only because this seemed to be a way of getting an income as of right, since I knew I was not, and would never be, eligible for any state ‘benefit’, such as income support.

Now I find that everyone is advocating, not restoring the non-means-tested part of the state pension to something like adequacy, but providing more ‘home helps, meals on wheels services and day centres’ (ibid.) – all ‘benefits’ which I and anyone associated with me would never take up.

‘The shocking betrayal of the elderly’ (supposedly consisting not in the reduction and means-testing of pensions, but in the failure to provide ‘benefits’ to those who will tolerate them) is ‘revealed in a damning report’ by the over-50s group Saga, the Director General of which is Ros Altmann, who has never (so far as I can make out) shown any concern about retrospective legislation.

The report, Take Care, was compiled for Saga by the think tank 2020 Health, which analysed OECD figures.

These figures show how generations of British politicians have betrayed our increasingly ageing population and have failed to fund properly the care so many of them will clearly need,’ Mrs Altmann said.

Mrs Altmann does not mention the failure to fund properly the pensions which so many of them were led to expect they would receive without means-testing.

The report warns that our low spending rate has ... led to an enormous burden on family members, who are left having to take on roles as unpaid carers because the state does not step in.

The burden on those who want to keep the Welfare Wolf from the door, and to avoid the state ‘stepping in’ to their lives, could only be reduced by raising the non-means-tested state pension to which I contributed for so many years. On the other hand, increasing the availability of benefits for which I would never consider applying, even if I might be considered eligible, can only increase the burden of taxation on those, such as myself, who are receiving state pensions to which they contributed in full for many years, and who are still struggling to improve their position. A ‘benefit’ which can only be obtained by exposing oneself to ‘assessment’ by agents of the collective is an oppression, and my associates and I are quite oppressed enough already.

It is supposed to be a ‘burden’ on families to keep their relatives out of the clutches of the state? I considered it not a burden, but a necessity, to preserve my parents from such a fate.

When I was thrown out at the end of my ruined education, and found that my father’s health had been broken down by persecution so that he could not support me out of his salary as a headmaster, I thought, ‘You may think society has done its worst to you. But it can always find a way of doing something even worse.’ That has been shown true many times in the ensuing years. You may think that society has done its worst by letting your pension ‘wither on the vine’ and then means-testing it. But it can make things even worse by making it, in effect, more means-tested, so that you will be taxed even more heavily to pay for more ‘benefits’ to be made available to people of your age who are less resistant to oppression than you are yourself.

There is no ‘benefit’ without loss of self-determination (freedom). The non-means-tested state pension was the only remaining ‘benefit’ of which this was not true.

It is not a question of how bad the care homes, meals on wheels, etc. are in comparison with some equivalent that one might pay for directly; the principle of self-determination is all-important.

Cottage to let

Copy of letter to an academic

There is a cottage to rent fairly near us, and this might make more concrete the idea that well-wishers (if we had any) could rent or buy such a place as a retirement home/second home/vacation home, so that they could come and make contact with us, either with them providing moral support or practical help for our plans of expansion, or with us playing the role of financial and social advisors for a consultancy fee.

Twisted legislation on ‘care home’ costs

More twisted legislation on pensioners is threatened. ‘A commission of experts appointed by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is considering a cap [on care home fees].’ (Daily Mail, 19 May 2011)

Pensioners who are committed to ‘care homes’ have to pay the fees if they can afford to do so. If necessary, they have to sell their homes and deplete their assets in other ways, which deprives their children of their inheritances. But we know that nobody cares about that. Inheritance is a nasty idea, as is heredity. If anyone minds at all about forced sales of homes, there is probably some other reason behind it.

Perhaps people will come to realise that care homes are a bad idea and instead will form cooperative associations to maintain their freedom, and independence from state-provided benefits. This would be a good development from my point of view, but is to be avoided in the view of those who espouse the oppressive ideology.

The state wants to be as greedy as it can get away with, so it needs to consider what a majority of people brought up in the modern world will tolerate.

Yesterday [the] chairman [of the Commission on Funding of Care and Support], economist Andrew Dilnot, said: ‘My impression is that what people want most is a resolution. There’s a pretty widespread feeling that it’s not unreasonable that people have to pay something, but they don’t want to face losing everything.’ (ibid.)

So now it seems it is proposed that those who fall into the clutches of the oppressive state should be subsidised by taxing those who make adequate arrangements for themselves.

It was first proposed that on reaching pensionable age everybody should pay a lump sum into a fund to finance those who did eventually go into a ‘care home’. This proposal was not passed, but could always be revived.

Now it is proposed that the cost of incarceration in a ‘care home’ should be capped, so that not so many homes will have to be sold. Those who go into ‘care homes’ would be subsidised by those who manage to stay out of them.

An alternative to the lump sum confiscation from all on reaching pensionable age, which has also been proposed, is an additional lump sum ‘death duty’ to be paid out of the estates of those who die (after reaching pensionable age, or before as well?) to pay for the costs of care home incarceration, whether or not the deceased had himself ever been subjected to a ‘care home’.

The Daily Mail understands that capping fees at £50,000 is the favoured option of the Commission on Funding of Care and Support, appointed by the Government after the election. ... The other options being considered were a person paying a percentage of care costs, with the state picking up the rest; and the state paying a certain amount, above which the person pays. (ibid.)

Perhaps once again the driving force is the dislike of penalising a population with, on average, lower IQs, and of leaving a population with higher IQs unscathed. Is it not likely to be the case that those who are fit enough and/or resourceful enough, and/or sufficiently provided with devoted relatives, to avoid going into a ‘care home’ at all, constitute a population with an average IQ above that of the population of those whose health is suspect and who are too passive, or ‘past it’, to fix themselves up with adequate arrangements at home?

So it cannot (the argument goes) be fair that those who are robust enough to escape the ‘care homes’ should pay less towards the cost of them than those who are forced to rely on them. There is no suggestion that the cost reduction granted to ‘care home’ occupants will be financed by reducing state spending in other areas, e.g. overseas aid. It is therefore bound to come out of higher taxes, even if this is hidden, as many new taxes now are.

When I reached the age at which I started to receive a state pension – which was already somewhat ‘withered on the vine’ – I was not forced to contribute a lump sum towards my future possible incarceration in a ‘care home’ and would have been appalled if I had been, as I would never submit to any such fate, and was still trying to build up capital towards the start of an adequate academic career, of which I had been deprived by being exposed to state-funded ‘education’.

My parents’ lives had also been severely damaged by the ruin of my life, and my father had been an invalid ever since. I had no salary and no eligibility for ‘social security’, and suffered very much myself from lack of basic ancillary staff. Nevertheless I would not consider my parents being forced into ‘care homes’ and promised them that, whatever happened, I would find ways of providing for their needs at home.

It would certainly not have seemed ‘fair’ to me if their estates had each been reduced on death by a lump sum to pay for the ‘care’ which they might have, but had not, received.

Right and wrong ways of reacting to slander

What none of my college or other ‘friends’ have done for me, and are still not doing.

In the first place, they could have come to work for me themselves, even if only in vacations from their salaried jobs. Whether they did so themselves or not, they could have encouraged their sons and daughters, and any other younger friends and relatives, to come and work in their vacations, and encouraged them also to think in terms of making a permanent career with me.

Even if they had never given me any help throughout their working lives, one might have expected that when they retired they might feel they had more freedom to do so.

They could have moved nearby, and perhaps bought houses with spare rooms which could be used by my struggling organisation as storage rooms or office rooms. Or if they did not want to move nearby, they might have been suffiently well off(since at least some of them would have inheritances to add to their own savings) to buy second or holiday homes in or near Cuddesdon.

They would not need to live in these houses themselves for us to derive some benefit from them as extra space. If they did live in them, occasionally or continuously, they could also come and do voluntary work for us, and/or act as ‘supporters’ in fund-raising activities and appeals to specific potential donors. Or, of course, they could contribute financial support themselves, and leave money or assets in their wills.

Especially those who have no children to leave it to, and I know of several who do not, and especially those who failed to oppose the slanderous gossip that always arose around me.

‘Someone says her father is pushing her?’ anyone should have said on hearing it. ‘It is no business of ours. One should not pass on slander that may be untrue. Whether true or not, slanders of that kind can be extremely damaging and do untold harm to the lives of those who are gossiped about. Personally, I will not indulge in considering such things for a moment.’

Those who failed to stand up for me and my parents in this way should now realise how wrong they were not to do so, and should feel all the more moral obligation to make reparation to me now, since I am still struggling to restore myself to a tolerable and productive position in life.

The Wardenship of New College

Three years ago my colleague Dr Charles McCreery, as an alumnus of New College, nominated me for the position of Warden of New College. His application was not accepted and I was not on the list of nominees circulated for voting.

This is the letter from someone at New College, turning down the nomination. Charles did not make any reply at the time because we thought the effort would be wasted on a single person, and we should reply only in the form of an open letter which could go on my blog.

Dear Dr McCreery,

Thank you for your letter about your colleague Dr Celia Green. You were unable to find the further details of the Wardenship on the College website because they were removed when the deadline for applications passed on 11 January. From the information you've provided, it appears that Dr Green is 72 years old, putting her above the statutory retirement age for the post, which is 70. I'm afraid this means we will not be able to consider her.

It is only now, three years later, that I am managing to put a reply to this on the blog, which in itself shows how bad is our position in exile from society, and how effectively we are stifled and censored, although there are many areas to which we could and should be able to contribute.

The fact is that a rule about retirement age cannot be held to apply to someone who has been wrongfully deprived of even starting on a career. If an egregious injustice has been committed, then it may be necessary to break an artificial rule in rectifying it.

No rules were broken in ruining my career because there are no explicit rules about an obligation to provide a person in the ‘educational’ system with qualifications appropriate for the sort of career to which they are suited and which they need to have; their need to get started on it being made more urgent, and not less, by the passage of time. There are no explicit rules which the educational system breaks in not allowing them to obtain qualifications suitable to their ability, and, one may think, this is because the educational system has the express underlying purpose of destroying the lives of those with the greatest ability. Even if one does not think this, it indicates that the educational system is extremely dangerous.

Herded into mega care homes

Why should the state provide ‘care homes’ anyway? Because it is nowadays theoretically responsible for keeping everybody physically alive, and if they cannot keep themselves alive they must be incarcerated, so that they will die under ‘medical’ supervision.

How did the situation ever arise that the state is responsible in this way? When pensions were first proposed they were supposed to be like commercial pensions, based on what a person paid in, and there was no guarantee that they would provide for them in any particular comfort indefinitely.

Then the Welfare State came in, with benefits to this and that acceptable purpose and, of course, the NHS! So any physical ailment can be tackled with some semblance of ‘treatment’.

But suppose one does not want the state to provide support, incarceration, treatment etc. as it sees fit? Can’t one just opt out, and say, ‘I do not want anything to do with the NHS or state pensions, so I prefer not to pay NI contributions’?

Well, no, you can’t say that. The Welfare State has bought you, and now owns you body and soul.

Quoting ‘research’ into the number of people who live with or without ‘help’, John Bond, professor of gerontology and health services research at Newcastle University (i.e. a professor of ideology, paid out of money confiscated from taxpayers) says:

‘It seems many people are able to manage living on their own with physical disease, but if they develop dementia they are a greater risk to themselves and the community.’ (Daily Mail, 11 May 2011)

They are certainly likely to prefer living on their own, in their own homes, so it seems we have to invoke ‘risk’, to justify incarcerating them. They might wish to decide for themselves what risks to take, so we invoke ‘risk to the community’. What risk to the community is an old person suffering from Alzheimer’s likely to be?

There was a time, before the Oppressive State came in, when you had to commit some specific offence in order to be incarcerated, and you did not have to worry about somebody’s subjective opinion about how likely you were to commit it.

The Dilnot Commission, set up by the Government to investigate a funding system for elderly care and support, is due to report this summer. Martin Green, of the English Community Care Association, says homes already supply the most cost-effective way of providing care. ‘It would be more viable to have bigger care homes in the future ...’ (ibid.)

Well, yes, if the government thinks it is its business to provide for people, no doubt it is cheaper to herd them together like battery hens.

Sight has long ago been lost of the idea that a pension should be adequate to provide a person with a live-in housekeeper if they want or need one, and that earlier in life people should be given the option of paying into a scheme that is designed to provide this.

And what is this sinister suggestion about a ‘funding system’ for care homes? Those who submit to entering them pay fees, provided by the sale of their homes or other assets. Those who manage to keep out of them do not pay fees, and should not pay ‘funding’ for those who do not preserve their liberty.

We invite those who are approaching an age at which they may need help to come and live in, or as near as possible to, Cuddesdon. If they were to do some voluntary work for our independent university, we would help them to organise support for their requirements on a cooperative basis, to enable them to live without exposing themselves to the hazards of collectivist help from Council or state.

Remedies, feeble and/or dangerous

In You Magazine, discussing flashback memories that may or may not be veridical, Zelda West-Meads says ‘I’m not a doctor so I don’t know what part, if any, the drugs play in your flashbacks.’ What makes her think that she would know, or might know, if she were a doctor? What makes her think doctors know anything much about the drugs which they are able to prescribe (and often force on victims against their will)? The fact is, West-Meads does not know, and even if she knew quite a lot about the drug in question and the individual in question, she still would not know whether in this particular case it was producing veridical flashbacks.

Then West-Meads tells her correspondent, ‘Please get professional help – you could contact the British Psychological Society ... for private counselling.’ That is a very dangerous thing to suggest. Why ever should ‘professional’ psychologists or doctors be regarded as likely to tell a victim anything that is helpful rather than damaging? Many who seek ‘professional’ help become drugged zombies, dependent for life on socially authorised oppressors.

Then again, in the Mail on Sunday, Lisa Buckingham refers to the practice now adopted by some local authorities, of forcing individuals to pay for planning permission by exploiting legislation which was never meant for this purpose. She also criticises the goings-on of the FSA (Financial Services Authority), suggesting that ‘what is needed is an independent investigation of the FSA’s role.’ No, it isn’t. What is needed is abolition of the FSA and of all planning by ‘local authorities’. (In fact, abolition of local authorities altogether would be a good idea.) How could an investigation be ‘independent’? Everyone concerned would be accepting the usual unexamined assumptions, as Lisa Buckingham does.

‘Of course,’ she says, ‘we need to continue to build houses for poorer people to live in.’ No, we don’t, in a collectivist sense. An individual might wish to, using his own money, but once you start letting social entities, such as Councils, do what they see fit with money confiscated from individuals, there is no end in sight.

Forcing a supermarket giant or huge construction company to build affordable housing, roads or schools in return for planning permission is an accepted part of local authority funding.
Using these same tactics on individuals building a summer house, or small developers putting up a couple of executive homes, amounts to little more than bullying exploitation.

A subjective sense that, beyond a certain arbitrary point, oppression becomes ‘bullying exploitation’ does nothing to halt the downfall of civilisation.

And why should forcing supermarkets to spend their shareholders’ money on affordable housing not also be regarded as ‘bullying exploitation’? It is adding another tax to those already being paid by the company and by its shareholders when they receive dividends.

Maybe some of the shareholders, like me, need to build up capital to work towards remedying the damage done to their lives by an ‘education’ over which they had no control. And perhaps, like me, they would not be eligible for affordable housing, however poor they were.

The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources. I hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed university research department, to all universities, and to corporations or individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

Olive leaves and the British Heart Foundation

A pill made from the leaves of the olive tree could be a powerful weapon in the fight against heart disease, scientists say. According to research, the olive pill is as effective as some prescription medicines at reducing high blood pressure...

The British Heart Foundation urged those on blood pressure medication not to stop taking their drugs without first consulting their GP. (Daily Mail, 15 April 2011)

Now, why ever should the British Heart Foundation think that advice from a doctor is likely to help a person come to the best decision about what will be good for him? At least, that is the implication of the urging uttered by the British Heart Foundation. What is their motivation for wishing you to think that a doctor is likely to know what is good for you, or likely not to advise you to do the opposite, if he does know? Presumably a lot of the people in the BHF are themselves socially authorised sadists (medical doctors).

The question of motivation and incentive in relation to medicine and medical charities is one of the issues on which critical analyses could be being published by Oxford Forum if it were provided with adequate funding to do so. Meanwhile, spurious papers on medicine and medical ethics, containing numerous unanalysed and tendentious assumptions and making policy suggestions which are likely to be damaging to the real interests of patients, will continue to flood out from socially recognised sources.

Notes on property taxes

It appears that they have it in mind to tax property, which is bad for us as we still have no income from society for anything we do (or could do), and we still need to build up capital towards the institutional environment to which, once we get it, extra research departments can be added and the university press made increasingly productive.

The ‘mansion tax’ would only be the beginning of a tax on ever smaller properties, no doubt.

* * *

All you can say for the means-tested state pension is that it may just about cover the taxes we pay to the state. I.e. instead of paying all the taxes and making voluntary contributions to the state pension each year, we now make no contributions because everyone is fully paid up, and the reduced means-tested pensions received by me and Charles McCreery may just about cover, for the four of us, council tax, car tax, television licences, cost of garden refuse collections, cost of getting large rubbish taken away by the council, and cost of dumping unacceptable items of rubbish in the local rubbish dump (which is not very near). And perhaps there is a small net gain to us, so that we can say that, at long last, we are receiving a bit more each year from the state than we have to pay back to it.

If they had not introduced means-testing on the state pension some years after I had started to receive it, it might be adequate to cover capital gains tax (CGT) and ‘mansion tax’ on any houses we may own in the future. But probably not for long, as the taxes would keep increasing more than in line with (realistic) inflation, whereas the pension would not, even if not means-tested.

* * *

So those who are trying to remedy the bad position (non-position) in society imposed on them by their ruined ‘education’ have to be taxed (at any rate, they are taxed) to reduce their rate of progress towards an adequate life, and they have to transfer a part of the progress they have made to provide supposed ‘advantages’ to those who are not yet disadvantaged, many of whom will never be able to make any use of the sort of opportunities which we need and from which we have been excluded by the hostility to ability of modern society, as was expressed in our ‘educations’.

‘Education’ means, unfortunately, a very vulnerable period of one’s life when one needs to be acquiring qualifications which will establish one’s claim on the sort of position in society which one needs to have, but in which one has no control over the arrangements which are being imposed on one.

* * *

David Willetts said of the Baby Boomers that they had had such a good life that they should wish their pensions to be reduced so that coming generations could be provided with ‘educations’ as lavish as their own. I was a pre-Baby Boomer so this did not obviously apply to me, but I feel sure that plenty of them, including some with the highest IQs, and some whom I have known, were thrown out at the end of their ‘educations’ with no access to any career to which they could feel suited, and with only the sense that their relationship to their own internal sense of direction had been broken.

So, like me, it is likely that they would be more interested in using their pensions to work towards improving their own lives, rather than in sacrificing their pensions so as to make it possible for yet more people to be subjected to the ‘educational’ process.

We invite such people, whether or not they are prepared to complain of the bad effects of their ‘education’ on their prospects in life, to come and live near us in Cuddesdon, which is commutable from both London and Oxford, and cooperate in our plans to remedy the situation of individuals in an anti-individualistic society.

* * *

Building up capital may be the only method a person has of being able to be productive in a way to which they are suited, as it was with me. Not having any way of getting a salary, and being unable to draw the so-called social security, I put getting a roof over my head first, and at least the increases in value of the house which I bought in the Banbury Road were not taxed. This house had enough space for laboratories and offices, at least on a minimal scale, if I had been able to get funding to do research with which to assert my claim on a normal high-flying academic career. The salary which I could not get would have been taxed, and I would have been getting my pension contributions paid, but as it was I had to pay voluntary contributions myself out of non-existent income.

Eventually the house was worth much more than at the outset, although still not enough to set up even a minimal institutional environment within which academic work could be done.

So now people such as Philip Collins seem to think my accumulated capital should be taxed, i.e. I should have to find money to pay as tax out of my still non-existent salary, while I continue to try to expand my institutional environment to a point at which I can start on my adult academic career, already fifty-five years delayed.

I shall never stop trying to get all the things I should have had as part of a forty-year academic career in a professorial position as the Head of a department. That is, the salary, status, contacts, laboratory facilities, personal secretaries and other staff, and the dining hall facilities, etc.

I still need these things in order to have a productive and satisfactory life, and I see plenty of things in which to do progressive research for forty years.