No relief for 'those with the broadest shoulders'

A recent article from the Daily Mail on the Government's plans for pensions tax relief:

Higher earners should lose higher rate tax relief on pension savings, Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander believes. The Lib Dem Cabinet Minister says the Government cannot afford to keep paying such a generous allowance on retirement investments. The changes, which could be included in next month’s Budget, would affect those who pay the 40p higher rate of tax, which kicks in at around £43,000. Currently, of every £1 they save in a pension, the Government contributes 40p in tax relief. That would fall to 20p in line with the basic rate of income tax.

The raid could cost middle-class pensioners up to £7billion a year, and discourage many from saving towards their retirement. If the cut was restricted to those earning over £100,000 a year, it would still save the Treasury £3.6billion. Mr Alexander told the Daily Telegraph: ‘If you look at the amount of money that we spend on pensions tax relief, which is very significant, the majority of that money goes to paying tax relief at the higher rate.

‘It's very important that in these difficult times we are asking those with the broadest shoulders to bear the greatest share of the burden.’ Mr Alexander also repeated his aspiration to raise the threshold at which people start paying income tax...

Lib Dem demands are expected to be raised at a meeting on the Budget next week between David Cameron, Nick Clegg, George Osbourne and Mr Alexander. The raid on pension tax relief may meet resistance from Mr Osbourne, who has stressed the need to avoid raids on the wealthy because they could deter successful businessmen from living in the UK. (Daily Mail, 11 February 2012)

The plight of pensioners is a constant focus of attention, although it is difficult to believe that the increases in life expectancy and cost of living can be a major factor in the constant rise in public spending. It is, surely, the increases in expenditure in favoured areas which make it impossible to ‘afford’ state pensions at a level commensurate with the cost of living. In fact, pensions were hit by the retrospective introduction of means-testing, and also by years of ‘withering on the vine’ with rises per annum which were inadequate to match the real rises in the cost of living, let alone in the cost of things which pensioners were more likely than others to need on a socially recognised basis, such as live-in housekeepers and attendants.

We may be sure that there is no real sympathy with this population, with an above-average IQ and a limited voting life ahead of it. Attention to its problems and claims that ‘something must be done’ are actually designed to justify new forms of taxation, the need for which is predominantly created by expenditure on increasing populations with IQs below the general average.

The objective is to justify additional taxation of this above-average population. In the extract quoted above there is one explicit proposal for how this might be done, although the additional taxation is presented as withdrawal of a tax relief, and it is pointed out that the ‘tax relief’ saved will be mainly at the expense of the population of those with the highest incomes, which is also (very likely) a population with a higher average IQ than other pensioners.

Those with ‘the broadest shoulders’ (the highest average IQs) should bear the greatest share of the burden which results from an ever-increasing transfer of resources to populations with below-average IQs.

The following is a re-blogging of part of an earlier post. In light of the article above, I have felt it necessary to reiterate the key underlying issues.

Further misdirection of attention is in asserting that it is not ‘fair’ that those who go into ‘care homes’ should have to sell their houses (if they have them) to pay for the ‘care’ they receive. This, of course, will lead to families being deprived of their inheritance.

Families are said to be ‘betrayed’ by care home funding, which leads to many pensioners being forced to sell their homes. This is described as a ‘scandal’, and it is hoped that a ‘fairer’ system can be devised. This rhetoric in itself should make one aware that a misdirection of attention is involved.

The population of those who reach pensionable age, and have homes to sell, are a population with an above-average IQ; so will their offspring be. So surely the modern mind can see nothing ‘unfair’ in a relatively high-IQ population being deprived of the inheritance it might have had from its parents, also with (statistically) above-average IQs. It is the obtaining of advantages from a previous generation of above-average people which is regarded as unfair, surely? How can ‘fairness’ be increased by transferring assets from one relatively high-IQ population to another?

And so we infer that these expressions of concern that homes will be lost to some of those who might have inherited them must have an ulterior motive. What is presumably aimed at is justification for an additional tax of some kind, resulting in the usual transfer of resources to a relatively low-IQ population.

It is suggested that what a pensioner pays towards his care home fees should be ‘capped’ with ‘the state stepping in’ to pay the rest. That means taxpayers stepping in to pay the rest, including pensioners who do not go into care homes. ‘In a further blow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley refused to rule out a pensioner tax to pay for old age care.’ Aha! This idea - an extra tax on those above retirement age, mooted in the Dilnot Report - approaches more closely the principle of transferring assets from the relatively high to relatively low IQs.

The population of pensioners who do not go into care homes at all may be expected to have higher average IQs than those who do go into them and have homes they might be required to sell, because the former are likely to have better genetic constitutions, have lived more prudently and/or successfully, or because they have devoted relatives, which are all factors likely to be correlated with high IQs.

So it may be seen as ‘fair’ that those pensioners who do not go into care homes should be taxed in order to transfer assets to those who do go into them.

This is no doubt the real reason for blaming the rise in life expectancy of pensioners for the increasing costs of the NHS, so that as usual a population of people with above-average IQs can be penalised for the benefit of a population with below-average IQs.

As for changing demographics, figures for life expectancy are usually quoted in relation to specific ages. E.g. people who are 50 now have a life expectancy of so much. But by the ages one sees quoted, the majority of those with a low life expectancy at birth are likely to have died off, although not before being a considerable drain on the NHS, state education (with ‘special needs’ tutors?), etc. Clearly these are an important part of the real demography, usually left out of the discussion. Those who are still alive at pensionable age (a population with a relatively high average IQ) are certainly not responsible for the rise in the costs of the NHS caused by the genetically dysfunctional (a population with a low average IQ).

Appealing for help is not illogical

How can it be that I complain of the lack of support for my work? Well, of course, lack of support for ‘my work’ is lack of support for me in the most basic sense, and there has been a plentiful lack of support, to the point of active opposition and obstruction.

When I was at school (at a school which I was forced to attend against my will, having told my parents at the end of the first day that it was a place to leave instantly) a hostile headmistress said to me that it would be good for me not to be treated as an exception. In the sense of being given no help in learning more languages than other people. I thought even then, with very limited information about what was going on behind my back, that while I might not be being treated as an exception in the sense of being provided with opportunity, I surely was in the sense of being the object of the storms of slanders which raged around me.

People tend to dislike my use of the word ‘slander’ in this context, and soften it to ‘gossip’. But in retrospect it is clear that its effects on my life, and on the lives of my parents, were extremely damaging.

Thrown out at the end of the ruined ‘education’ with no usable qualification with which to apply for a grant or salaried appointment in any subject, I was extremely fortunate to be led to the Society for Psychical Research, where I took a temporary job to help finance my return to Oxford at the start of the next academic year in the autumn. There, without research grant, salary, or income support from social security, I intended to pursue my researches in theoretical physics, to the extent that was possible in such painfully impoverished circumstances.

As my work would not be officially recognised as such, I would not have a supervisor (which is necessary for the eventual grant of a D.Phil), but I imagined vaguely that I would send some of my work from time to time to the Physics Department, to let them know that I existed.

At the SPR, however, I found that I would be regarded as eligible for, and would be supported in applying for, the Perrott Research Studentship – a postgraduate grant from Trinity College, Cambridge, a college with which the SPR had strong historical connections.

This was a way in which I could return to Oxford to do postgraduate work with the support of a grant instead of without any financial support at all, so I resolved to stay on at the SPR throughout the next academic year to see whether I could get the Studentship. If I did not, I would return to Oxford anyway and carry out my original plan of doing freelance research on theoretical physics, on my own and in poverty. The money saved during the extra year away from Oxford would at least provide an absolute minimum of financial support; by that time it might pay for a year’s rent on a cheap room.

In fact I was successful in my application for the Perrott Studentship, and had to consider what were the areas of potential research that could be considered as meeting their terms of reference, and would be most likely to lead to results that would gain academic recognition and re-entry to a salaried academic career.

In whatever subject I was making my salaried career, which implied aiming at becoming a Professor and head of a department in that subject as soon as possible, the salary would provide me with sufficiently liveable conditions (I thought and hoped) to be able to get something out of doing research on my own in theoretical physics, and also out of writing some of the books which I felt an internal pressure to produce. There would, at best, be far too much pressure on my time for life to be comfortable. I would have to aim at the fastest possible career advancement, and by the time I was a Professor perhaps there would be enough space for productivity in my life to allow for some sense of well-being.

I use the expression ‘career’ and ‘career advancement’ to convey to people what would be involved in practice, but I had never really thought of an academic career below Professorial level as a career in its own right at all, but only as an unfortunate preliminary to my real life as a Professor, the necessity for this preliminary having been forced upon me by the ruined ‘education’. If my ‘education’ had not been ruined, and Oxford University had not been hostile, I would have expected to become a Professor immediately on leaving Somerville.

I should perhaps also make the point that I did not regard the sort of ‘research’ under supervision that was necessary to gain higher degrees as ‘research’ at all. This was another preliminary which society set in one’s way to delay the start of a real life. I had been shocked to discover what went into getting a D.Phil qualification, which one would apparently have to do before entering upon real life, ‘real life’ meaning being free to reconstruct theoretical physics, while living in a hotel environment.

I did not discuss with anyone how little time would be left over from doing what was necessary to earn my salary and work for career advancement, even when I had re-entered a university career by obtaining a salaried appointment, as this was some years in the future, even after being awarded the Perrott Studentship. Nevertheless I suppose some awareness of the constrictions of such a situation entered into Somerville’s extraordinary assertions that, without a research grant or a salaried appointment, I was ‘free to follow my interests’.

When, many years later, I had an interview with a Somerville Fellow in Philosophy, to find out whether my D.Phil in Philosophy would induce them to let me have a salaried appointment, I was amazed that she could assert that I would be ‘less free’ if I had to meet the demands of such an appointment. So I would be ‘more free’, in her eyes, if I continued to live with no source of income.

It is apparently a standard piece of modern ideology that the income which may be derived from an academic career is inconsiderable, and that no money is necessary for staying physically alive, let alone staying alive in circumstances permitting intellectual activity. Nor is money apparently necessary for what counts as actual research ‘work’. Hence people can talk about ‘supporting my work’ as a peripheral frill, the absence of which should not lead to any complaint.

I remember one conversation with a salaried academic, similar to many others, at an international convention on lucid dreams at London University. I said I was unable to get support to take further my research on lucid dreams, or any other topic. ‘Oh, well’, she said. ‘There is no support. I can’t get any either. I have just given up on trying to.’ This person was a salaried academic in America, possibly deriving many advantages and facilities, as well as salary and status, from her university position. Subsequent to the publication of my book, she had become well known for her work on lucid dreams, although probably without ever receiving direct support for that purpose.

I, on the other hand, had produced the book on lucid dreams, on which her work had been based, as an unsalaried and statusless person, implicitly applying for the necessary funding to make further progress in this new area of research. She could, it would appear, see no difference between her own need for support and mine. Like all other academics who have worked and published in the field of lucid dreams, she made no response to my appeal on my website for contributions of £1,000 a year from every salaried academic who had worked in this field.

If someone recognises, as I do, that human nature contains little in the way of genuine altruism, it does not follow that it is illogical for them to complain about their position. It could be argued that complaining is, or should be, dependent on whether one is objectively suffering, rather than on what society happens to regard as worthy of complaint. However, the fact that the present society claims to be interested in ability, and purports to have a system designed to reward those with high IQs, is liable to heighten any bitterness one may feel about one’s position.

Benevolence

Once upon a time a headmistress said of me, ‘It will be good for her not to be treated as an exception.’
I found it very difficult to understand how she could even imagine that she honestly meant something by this, let alone something benevolent, since the sentence seemed to me to have the status of ‘It will be good for this horse to be treated as a dog’.
The use of the word ‘good’ in particular eluded me, until I reflected that there was in existence an expression ‘The only good Injun is a dead Injun’, and no doubt she meant something like that.

(from the forthcoming book: The Corpse and the Kingdom)

Fat cats and starved cats

text of a letter to an academic

Everything goes from bad to worse, as it is intended to do.

Professor David Eastwood, the vice-chancellor of Birmingham University, has been getting £419,000 a year, and others in comparable positions something similar.

If my education had not been so deliberately ruined, or if recognition had been given to my ability to do things whether or not I had been allowed to get paper qualifications in them, I could easily have got into one of those positions. What a difference! Between several hundred thousand a year on the one hand; and no salary at all, not even eligibility for so-called ‘social security’, on the other.

That is the difference between someone who has risen to the top of the educational system which favours mediocrity, and someone who has failed to make their way successfully through the educational obstacle course.

I thought the powers that be were not supposed to like ‘inequality’. When I was at the Society for Psychical Research it was still supposed that the Oppressive State was aiming at ‘equality of income’. I remember Salter at the SPR, a person of independent means, asking me if I did not agree that equality of income was a grim and unpleasant idea. In those days there was still at least a minority of people who did not think that aiming at equalising incomes was automatically virtuous and desirable. Terms such as ‘fair’ and ‘fairness’ had not yet become buzzwords.

Let me know of any vice-chancellorships or similar that you see falling vacant, so that I can apply for them.

Yours, etc.

The departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. 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.

No reprieve for the middle classes

Middle-class families face a battering in next month’s Budget after the Chancellor ruled out major changes to his plans to slash child benefit payments to higher earners. The Conservatives and Lib Dems will hold crunch talks this evening on a Budget that is expected to pave the way for tax raids on the better-off that will continue until 2015.

George Osborne is set to ignore Conservative calls to axe the 50p top rate of tax, and has angered Tory traditionalists by making clear he will not introduce tax breaks for married couples in his speech. The expected assault on the middle classes has provoked claims from Tory MPs that ‘the Liberal Democrats are writing the Budget’.

The Conservatives’ coalition partners are also calling for pension tax relief to be slashed from 40p in the pound to 20p for those earning £100,000 or more – a move that could raise £3.7billion. In addition, they are expected to demand new green taxes to help speed up the increase of the minimum tax threshold to £10,000. The Chancellor already plans to strip more than £1,000 a year in child benefit payments from every family that has one earner paying the 40p higher rate of tax. (Daily Mail, 13 February 2011)

As we have observed before, the unspoken principle underlying tax and benefit policy is that resources should be transferred from populations with higher average IQs to those with lower average IQs.

The population which pays higher-rate tax because it has higher earned income (so-called ‘earned’ ‘taxable’ income is income which is not derived from benefits nor from the moonlight economy) has a higher average IQ than the population of those who do not pay tax at this level. So it is obviously considered correct procedure to cut ‘benefits’ received by the higher-IQ population. This increases the proportion of ‘benefits’ received by a population with a lower average IQ, and will encourage the proportionate growth of the low-IQ population.

Even quite a small percentage increase in the relative growth of one population vis-à-vis another population, continued over time, soon has a perceptible, and perhaps dramatic, effect on the relative proportions of the two populations.

How to stay alive longer

Elderly should be encouraged to downsize ...

[Housing Minister Grant Shapps] said that authorities should encourage elderly homeowners to move to more suitable accommodation by helping them rent their old homes to families. He pointed to the example of a pilot scheme in east London where Redbridge council has helped elderly people move without having to sell their homes in a bid to tackle the housing crisis. They also get to keep rental income from their property, so they can fund any care costs they have to face. ...

There was outrage after a report by a think tank linked to Labour suggested last year that older people should be taxed out of their homes to free up space for younger generations. The Intergenerational Foundation argued that ‘empty nesters’ in their 60s should be encouraged to downsize by a new ‘land tax’. (Daily Mail, 17 January 2012)

Pensioners to be ‘helped’ by councils to ‘downsize’ so that any spare rooms can be used by families. Population with an above-average IQ to be squeezed tighter still, for the benefit of expanding population with average IQ certainly not above average for population as a whole, and quite possibly below it.

But maybe some of the pensioners do not want to downsize. Perhaps some of them, like me, had a ruined education and are still trying to make up for it by expanding their incipient independent academic establishment to a tolerable size for even a minimum of productivity to begin. When it does begin, that will be the start of my adult academic career, so far as I am concerned, even if I am having to start at an age that is past what the oppressive society around me likes to regard as retirement age.

What any pensioner with a house of his own could do (and from some points of view should do) would be to sell his house and buy one in Cuddesdon, perhaps not with so many spare rooms as his former house but with as many as possible, do some voluntary work for my struggling and squeezed independent university, and cooperate in some of the business operations which can be set up to make the best use of the abilities of associate workers who may have restrictions on their physical mobility, and of the abilities of those who do not.

My institute is desperately in need of storage and office space and could probably pay them rent for their spare rooms to supplement their incomes. Then the rooms would be being used to reduce the disadvantages of a population with above average IQs, instead of used to provide advantages to the expanding low-IQ population.

Now the pensioner, living in the house which he owns, and which now has too many vacant rooms, may of course have no plans of his own to get started on his long-delayed business ventures or academic research; nevertheless, if he is persuaded to leave his familiar environment for an unfamiliar prison cell, and knowing that it is the end of his life and that he is now expected by everyone to go into a decline, this can easily undermine him psychologically so that he does go into a decline very soon after. I know of several cases of people who have died soon after selling their houses to go into retirement.

Therefore it would be a good idea if people were to move to Cuddesdon, or nearby, well in advance of retirement age, do some voluntary work for us and perhaps join in on some of the smaller business projects, in anticipation of more full-scale involvement at a later stage.

Professorship in Education

Below is the text of a letter of application to Oxford University recently sent with regard to a professorship in Education.

Dear ...

I am applying for the Professorship of Education being offered by the Department of Sociology in association with Green Templeton College, as advertised in the University Gazette, and attach my CV, which includes the contact details of three referees, together with notes on my CV and a testimonial from the late Professor H J Eysenck.

As my position is an anomalous one, I would be grateful if you could read the enclosed notes on my CV, as they give information about how I came to be in this position. As you will see, my CV is one that was prepared to go with an application for an appointment in philosophy, rather than education. I cannot in fact comply with all the criteria listed in the requirements for the post. However, I can comply with some of them.

I have decades of administrative and fund-raising experience as the Director of the Institute for Psychophysical Research. I also have completely original insights into what is called the educational process, due to the unique and extreme circumstances of my early life and education. The introduction to my book Advice to Clever Children provides some background on how I have been exposed to the inner machinery of the educational system, from being observed by educational experts as a case study at the ages of 4 and 11, to experiencing the contrasting approaches and outlooks of private and state schooling. The latter provided me with knowledge of the underlying motivations of those that chose to teach; having teachers for both of my parents doubtless also contributed.

I am in fact capable of carrying out research, teaching, and administration in areas in which I do not have paper qualifications, owing to my own ability to learn new topics very fast and very thoroughly in any situation in which I need to learn them.

For realistic information about my life, abilities, and situation, please see the Preface ‘How this Book came to be Written’ to my book The Lost Cause, a copy of which is available at http://celiagreen.com/thelostcause-preface.pdf. I apologise for the anomalies in my application, which arise from the extreme social misplacement which has resulted from my ruined education. There is no recognition of the predicament of the exiled academic.

I am making this application in spite of being above the normal age for a Professorship because the process of recovering from a ruined education is extremely slow, in fact there is no provision for it to be possible at all. There was a time lag of decades before the work which I had done in exile from an academic career led to my being offered testimonials from senior academics who were willing to act as my referees. After still further delay, one of the areas of pioneering work which I had initiated (lucid dreaming) came to be recognised as a suitable topic for doctorates, yet this still did not lead to my reinstatement in a normal academic career.

The enclosed notes can give little impression of what I would have achieved by now if I had had a normal life, i.e. one that was normal for a person like me. As it is, they are a statement of how efficiently the expression of my abilities has been prevented by the society in which I have been living. Academics advising me have often said, ‘Don’t say anything about your ability, only about what you have done’, and ‘Don’t mention your unofficial teaching and research.’ But society can prevent one from doing anything officially, i.e. within a normal academic position, and is what one does outside its auspices in an attempt to regain reinstatement, automatically to be regarded as disqualified from consideration?

Apart from the fact that getting me back into a normal position as a senior academic would be remedying an extreme anomaly and injustice, there are strong reasons for supposing that the field of Education would be benefitted by a Professor who is prepared to take into account factors other than those which have supposedly been considered by those who have done research in this field over the preceding decades. Clearly their insights into the situation have not created any solution to the current situation, and in practice the results of the current educational system are deteriorating rather than the reverse.

So the academic world should consider there is a need for work to be done under the auspices of someone who does not have a vested interest in the rationalisations which are currently fashionable. Those who were successful in entering normal academic careers to which, no doubt, they felt they were suited, did have such a vested interest.

The attitude to the outcast of the socially approved academic system should, in itself, be the subject of research. When one is outcast, destitute, and socially disgraced, one is described, amazingly, as being ‘free to follow one’s interests’, it being supposed that a university appointment would be a restriction on one’s freedom.

It should not be held against me that I have published fewer papers than other applicants. The exiled academic, struggling to build up an institutional environment from scratch without an income, and with no eligibility for income support when not receiving a salary, lives in circumstances which negate the possibility of carrying out research of any kind, even leaving out of account that if one did manage to produce publishable research it would have little chance of acceptance by academic journals, on account of one’s lack of an academic appointment.

I give the referees I do, as best I can, because it should be regarded as amazing, and highly creditable, that I am able to give any at all. However I expect that my referees will observe the usual conventions that (a) one’s case is not to be considered highly anomalous and in need of redress, that (b) only work done by the holders of official academic positions counts as academic, and that (c) there is supposed to be no such thing as ability which is transferable from one field of intellectual activity to another. Therefore they can do no more than damn me with faint praise for the few pieces of work which I have been able to do within the restrictive parameters of what is regarded as ‘relevant’.

Finally, I should like to make a statement. It may be that you reject this application out of hand, on the basis that it does not meet the ‘essential requirements’, or that I otherwise fail to fit the University’s idea of what an education professor ought to be like. However, it is my belief that if the University really wanted to contribute to the advancement of education, rather than merely occupy a prestigious role in what has developed under the label of ‘academic educational theory’, it would take this application very seriously indeed.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Celia Green

No escape from state education

The basic moral principle is that one should avoid imposing on other people one’s own interpretation of the existential situation, and overriding their reaction to it. This principle is weakly, and occasionally, recognised in human societies, and best protected, more or less unintentionally, in capitalist societies in which you can only get other people to do anything for you if you are willing to pay for it. This does not mean that they will necessarily provide you with what you really want, but at least it avoids the socialist situation in which, in many important areas, such as health and education, you can only get what other people want to provide you with; in fact you may be forced to surrender your liberty entirely and submit to what they want to impose upon you.

At present it is possible, although very difficult, to opt out of the state educational system and let your child work at home, although you must still in many ways comply with state prescriptions about what will count as acceptable.

This, however, is coming to be regarded as unnecessarily permissive. Within recent years I have seen the view expressed that this loophole is no longer necessary, as the present state educational system is tolerant of all religious beliefs (this, apparently, is the only grounds on which objection to the state system could be considered acceptably valid). From this point of view, people can now have no justifiable reason for preferring any variant to the system provided by the state, and so it should be a legal obligation to ensure that one’s children are forced to attend the child-prisons, as required.

Baroness Delyth Morgan, debating this issue, argued that home schooling ‘could be a cover for child abuse.’ (Daily Mail, 20 January 2009)

This dubious logic may be generalised to any area in which the individual is free to do anything other than comply with the requirements prescribed by the state. He might take the opportunity to commit any crime or depravity that occurs to him. ‘Satan finds some mischief still, for idle hands to do’, as the 18th century hymn-writer said.

If people are not fully occupied with the necessities of staying alive, they may (it is feared) use their freedom to do something unacceptable, including finding out important things in science, especially if they are rich enough to be able to afford to do this independently of having a university appointment. So, better that there should be no freedom at all.

Of course, one may mention that state-provided incarceration may also be a cover for child abuse, which obviously includes any sort of programme of psychological warfare and undermining devised by teachers.

While ‘home schooling’ is considered an option that provides unnecessary freedom for the individual, it should be noted that it scarcely exists at present in the UK. While it is possible to claim that your child reading books at home constitutes ‘education’, as soon as you consider him ready to take an exam, you must invoke the approval of the education ‘authority’.

Personally I did not think of taking an exam as separate from the process of preparing for it, so someone like me would have tripped over the landmine straight away (even if my parents had home-schooled me).

It is very dangerous to have anything to do with an education ‘authority’. In fact, if you are forced into the clutches of one as soon as you want to take an exam, you cannot really be said to be opting out of the education system at all. Being allowed to spend less time in a school doing purposeless things which are not directly aimed at exam-taking does you little good if the time saved from demoralising purposelessness at school must be spent in demoralising purposelessness at home. As soon as you want to do anything for real, you have to fight it out with the local authority. But that is precisely what you may wish primarily to avoid in ‘opting out’ of the state educational system.

I conclude that although at present there is a nominal possibility of ‘opting out’ of state education, this is only a euphemism, and there is no real possibility of keeping clear of the dangers of contact with education authorities.

There should be a real possibility, but that would involve quite different arrangements to be made. Far from considering how the deadly clutch of the education authorities on the lives of their victims could be loosened, there is a drive to eliminate even the ambiguous possibility which exists at present.

The Welfare State and the exponential function

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. (Professor Albert Bartlett)

I do not know that I would agree that unawareness of the exponential function is the greatest shortcoming of the human race, but certainly this unawareness (real or apparent) facilitates legislation which is designed to reduce the advantages of one section of the population while increasing those of another. This may be represented as ‘fair’, but it should not be overlooked that it may produce drastic shifts in the balance of the population quite rapidly.
If an initial quantity A increases by n%, and the result is again increased by n%, and so on, the resulting growth is shown by the graph of
y = A(1 + n/100)^x.
To illustrate how this may apply to groups in the population which are increasing continuously, here are the charts of a hypothetical population group which numbered one million in 1945 (at the onset of the Welfare State) and increased by 1%, 2%, 3% and 4% respectively until the present day, i.e. 66 years later.

Characteristically, the exponential graph remains close to the lower axis at first, but the gradient gradually increases until it is more vertical than horizontal and tends asymptotically to infinity (i.e. it approaches infinity ever more closely and rapidly, but without ever reaching it).
On the timescale being considered, the increase in the population supposed to increase by 4% per annum is already acquiring the characteristically exponential appearance, aiming upwards rather than merely along the lower axis.
The unsophisticated are unlikely to imagine how great the changes may be which ultimately result from relatively small percentage changes in taxation or benefits, which may be applied, initially, only to small populations.

I appeal for financial and moral support in improving my position. I need people to provide moral support both for fundraising, and as temporary or possibly long-term workers. Those interested should read my post on interns.

Who cares?

Recent remarks by the Care Services Minister, Paul Burstow, express the warmest goodwill towards unpaid carers who help elderly relatives. But there is something suspicious about this, as about recent expressions of outrage that house owners who go into care homes should be forced to sell their houses to pay their fees, so that their children will be deprived of their inheritance.

We know that, as a population with above-average IQ, pensioners do not attract sympathy, but are scapegoats and whipping boys. So if a Care Services Minister sounds as if he wants to do them good, we must ask ourselves what is his real motivation. It is a case of ‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’, ‘I fear the Greeks when they come bearing gifts’, as a Trojan is supposed to have said when he saw the Greeks, enemies of Troy, bringing a wooden horse (the Trojan horse). When taken into Troy as a harmless gift, armed warriors emerged from it in the night.

Now we may suppose that not only are pensioners personae non gratae, but also that those who are most likely to give them unpaid help are likely to be relatives with above-average IQs. So the object of the exercise is certainly to prevent pensioners in need of help from getting any, at least not without falling into the power of the Welfare State and surrendering their liberty. Also, no doubt, there is an intention to prevent the carers from deriving any benefit from exerting themselves on behalf of their relatives. It might, for example, be preventing their relative from impoverishing himself, perhaps selling his house, in order to obtain paid help from the Welfare State or the free market. And the unpaid carers, or other relatives with relatively high IQs, might then inherit more assets than if they had failed to provide for the needs of the relative.

Clearly, no Care Services Minister could want this to happen. So carers must be protected against themselves; they must not be allowed to decide for themselves what has priority in their lives.

And, after all, what is the real underlying motivation? Nothing to do with health and well-being, we may be sure. The object of socialism is to destroy freedom. A pensioner and relatives who are looking after him probably have relatively high IQs and some middle-class or upper-class relatives not too far back. They are sitting on a chunk of assets, maybe more than one house, and investments, and this chunk will not be diminished so long as they do not pay money to outside workers or sell a house to pay for a state care home, etc.

So the assets will pass on to a population also with above-average IQs, their descendants. What can be done about this? The carers might wish to live in hardship for a time for the sake of the long-term rewards. However, they must not be allowed to work harder than other people decree is good for them. (My education was ruined by people who ostensibly wanted to save me from working too hard.)

The NHS will have to 'cooperate with carers'? But surely that can only mean that carers will be forced into meeting doctors (!) and getting their permission for everything they do. The doctors will say what the carers will be allowed to do, and that which is not allowed to be done by them will presumably need to be paid for. With any luck that chunk of assets will crumble to nothing, long before it might be inherited.

The welfare wolves close in

As has been pointed out, pensioners are fair game for anything because they constitute a population with an above-average IQ. At the start of their lives, they are exposed to compulsory education, but at the end of it they are free, with whatever assets they have managed to retain after living for so many decades in the oppressive society. This cannot be allowed.

Britain’s army of unpaid carers are to get new rights to protect their health and wellbeing under plans being considered by the Government.

More than six million people care for loved ones, friends and neighbours but many fail to get the recognition and support they need, say campaigners.

For the first time, plans to reform the social care system, due to be published next spring, will make carers’ needs a priority (Daily Mail, 28 December 2011)

But we know what ‘rights’ and ‘needs’ mean. If you are given a ‘right’, society is given the ‘right’ to force you to have what you have a ‘right’ to.

In the spring, Sainsbury’s will pilot a scheme in 14 of its London stores to identify hidden carers who may need support.

I have already commented on the disgusting idea of having supermarket staff trained to ask ‘unobtrusive’ questions without revealing their motive for doing so. Any supermarket that involves itself in persecution of this kind should be boycotted. I hope Sainsbury’s sales will drop significantly on this piece of news.

The Care Services Minister, Paul Burstow, says disarmingly:

Without the support of relatives and friends, many people who aren’t able to look after themselves would not be able to stay at home.

(Unspoken implication: we will be able to close in on them so much better if it is made illegal for them to get unpaid ‘help’.)

The Care Services Minister continued:

Carers should have their needs looked after as much as the person they are caring for. A carer’s health often suffers because they don’t have time to look after themselves. Some often don’t have time to eat properly. So it’s vital we support them to look after their health and wellbeing.

As ever, any amount of coercion and interference is justifiable because it is assumed that the motives of all agents of the collective are benevolent.

The NHS will have to cooperate with carers, and those being cared for, to ensure their needs are assessed in a bid to make their lives easier.

One proposal is for the rights of carers to be put on a firmer footing so that in social care law they have similar rights to the people they care for.

This could entail pledges to facilitate the wishes of carers who want to stay in employment, while young carers could be given help to stay in education.

Carers must, of course, be given help to enable them to stop caring at all, and to subject themselves to socially approved ways of spending their time, especially of course educational incarceration.

Who wants the NHS taking an interest in their health and well-being? I certainly do not. Why should the NHS be regarded as benevolent? Its motivation is a composite of those who run and work in it. I certainly do not regard the motivation towards me of the man in the street or of the average politician as benevolent; and that of qualified medical sadists is even more likely to be malevolent, since they are willing to work for financial reward in an oppressive and immoral capacity.

What would relieve the stress on carers much more effectively than interference, medical or otherwise, would be to restore pensions to something more like what the pensioners who paid into them for forty years or more might have expected.

Suppose the basic (non-means-tested) state pension were raised from about £5K per annum to about £15K per annum – then every pensioner would have an extra £10K per annum to spend on paid help, delivered meals, etc, which would certainly relieve the burden on many carers, at present unpaid.

If carers are given a right to have their needs assessed, will they also have a right to refuse assessment of their needs?

Lucid dreams, Disney, and a new philosophy department

copy of a letter to a salaried philosopher

I suppose a Philosophy Department would be the most obvious thing for my incipient (squashed and suppressed) independent university to start with. It is incredible that no university anywhere has taken any interest, nor any sufficiently wealthy individual.

On the face of it, a Philosophy Department is cheaper to set up than a Science Department, which makes it less good from our point of view. The larger the scale of the operation, the easier to include a dining hall and kitchens, and live-in staff.

A further shocking reminder of our continued lack of support (not to mention hostility towards us) is provided by the fact that lucid dreams are now part of the popular culture, as well as continuing to provide an area of research for many salaried academics. A recent episode of a popular new Disney cartoon series, evidently expected to reach a wide audience, starts with one of the main characters having some odd experiences, then saying, ‘Oh, this must be one of those lucid dreams.’

I was shocked when I first found that lucid dreams were being taken up by various American academics without the slightest benefit to me, and I have been more amazed the longer lucid dreams have continued to receive attention (of a kind – though not of such a kind as to advance understanding of them, or to provide the slightest opportunity to any of us).

As you know, I worked on them in bad circumstances as the best thing I could find with which to regain entry to a suitable academic career.

I do not think you, or any other senior academic, should find the continuance of our cold-shouldered position acceptable.

David Cameron is proposing to spend about half a billion pounds on advising ‘problem families’, and it is long odds that this will do no good to anyone, in fact it may make things somewhat worse. But that amount of money, although small for setting up a full-scale university with several research departments, would enable me and some other downtrodden people with high IQs to use our abilities to be productive.

NHS budget ‘to rise for ever’

Andrew Lansley last night warned that NHS spending may have to rise for ever, simply to keep pace with rising life expectancy.

The Health Secretary told the Spectator magazine he was not satisfied with managing to get a real-terms rise in health spending for this Parliament – he wanted to see increases in the years beyond. Mr Lansley said the NHS was still immune from cuts, even though other departments were having to cut back on spending.

He added: ‘We have been very clear that the NHS is going to have real terms increases year on year. We have a profile of rising demographics and demand and cost pressures and technology in the NHS.’

Asked whether he believed that spending would have to rise in real terms every year from now ‘until kingdom come’, he said: ‘I believe so.’ (Daily Mail, 14 December 2011)

This is misdirection of attention in order to focus attention and blame on those of pensionable age – a population with above-average IQs. The ‘rising demographics’ referred to – rising expectation of life – may owe something to the increasing number of people who reach pensionable age as a result of NHS expenditure throughout their lives, rather than as a result of their own genetic endowment and prudent life-style. But is the expectation of life not also somewhat reduced by the ever-increasing population of life dependents? Kept alive at considerable expense, the genetically dysfunctional must, statistically, have a below-average expectation of life.
And surely this ever-growing population must contribute far more to the increasing costs of the NHS (and also of ‘education’ and other forms of ‘welfare’) than does the population of pensioners which statistically has an above-average IQ, and is hence the most convenient scapegoat.
On page 23 of the same issue of the Daily Mail there is a report on the case of a girl who has died at 13 after a short lifetime of painful and expensive medical treatments, reduced in her case by her convincing her parents that she would prefer to be free to get what she could out of life without treatment (at least without the most expensive treatment, which kept her in constant pain).
How does the life expectancy of those who never have a normal expectation of life, but are kept alive as victims of the NHS, affect the overall life expectancy figures?

* * *

The state pension system was not originally part of the (oppressive) Welfare State, but mimicked commercial schemes, in which what you paid in was supposed to be what determined what was to be paid out to you at a certain predetermined age, whether or not it provided adequately for your ‘needs’, as determined either by your own aims in life, or by what other people would consider acceptable.
As the costs of the Welfare State, and its growing population of dependents, increased, the state pension was brought under the umbrella of Welfare by being retrospectively means-tested. This brought the population of pensioners, with its above-average IQ, into play as an acceptable scapegoat on whom the rising costs of the NHS etc. could be blamed.
So long as they had commercial-type pensions they were outside the benefits system, and pensions were paid ‘as of right’. That is the reason that I, as a victim of state-funded ’education’, made voluntary contributions for so many years.
Now attention can be focussed on this above-average population as the cause of the rising costs.

* * *

Further misdirection of attention is in asserting that it is not ‘fair’ that those who go into ‘care homes’ should have to sell their houses (if they have them) to pay for the ‘care’ they receive. This, of course, will lead to families being deprived of their inheritance.
Families are said to be ‘betrayed’ by care home funding, which leads to many pensioners being forced to sell their homes. This is described as a ‘scandal’, and it is hoped that a ‘fairer’ system can be devised. This rhetoric in itself should make one aware that a misdirection of attention is involved.
The population of those who reach pensionable age, and have homes to sell, are a population with an above-average IQ; so will their offspring be. So surely the modern mind can see nothing ‘unfair’ in a relatively high-IQ population being deprived of the inheritance it might have had from its parents, also with (statistically) above-average IQs. It is the obtaining of advantages from a previous generation of above-average people which is regarded as unfair, surely? How can ‘fairness’ be increased by transferring assets from one relatively high-IQ population to another?
And so we infer that these expressions of concern that homes will be lost to some of those who might have inherited them must have an ulterior motive. What is presumably aimed at is justification for an additional tax of some kind, resulting in the usual transfer of resources to a relatively low-IQ population.
It is suggested that what a pensioner pays towards his care home fees should be ‘capped’ with ‘the state stepping in’ to pay the rest. That means taxpayers stepping in to pay the rest, including pensioners who do not go into care homes. ‘In a further blow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley refused to rule out a pensioner tax to pay for old age care.’ Aha! This idea – an extra tax on those above retirement age, mooted in the Dilnot Report – approaches more closely the principle of transferring assets from the relatively high to relatively low IQs.
The population of pensioners who do not go into care homes at all may be expected to have higher average IQs than those who do go into them and have homes they might be required to sell, because the former are likely to have better genetic constitutions, have lived more prudently and/or successfully, or because they have devoted relatives, which are all factors likely to be correlated with high IQs.
So it may be seen as ‘fair’ that those pensioners who do not go into care homes should be taxed in order to transfer assets to those who do go into them.
This is no doubt the real reason for blaming the rise in life expectancy of pensioners for the increasing costs of the NHS, so that as usual a population of people with above-average IQs can be penalised for the benefit of a population with below-average IQs.
As for changing demographics, figures for life expectancy are usually quoted in relation to specific ages. E.g. people who are 50 now have a life expectancy of so much. But by the ages one sees quoted, the majority of those with a low life expectancy at birth are likely to have died off, although not before being a considerable drain on the NHS, state education (with ‘special needs’ tutors?), etc. Clearly these are an important part of the real demography, usually left out of the discussion. Those who are still alive at pensionable age (a population with a relatively high average IQ) are certainly not responsible for the rise in the costs of the NHS caused by the genetically dysfunctional (a population with a low average IQ).

Two footnotes

notes on photos of my parents

1. My father missed getting a First by one mark. There was an easy explanation of a shortfall in his marks, but the examiners made no allowance for it, and awarded him second class honours. There was no oral examination for borderline cases at London University in those days, as there was at Oxford and Cambridge.

In fact he had arrived 40 minutes late for the practical exam, to which he had to travel on an unaccustomed Tube route. He was working too hard in the Gas Works to try out the route in advance, and missed a connection on the day of the exam.

2. Classes taught by my mother were getting such good results that she was expected to become a headmistress almost immediately, in spite of some resentful grumbling among other teachers to the effect that she must be ‘pushing’ her pupils.

Photos of my parents

My parents were great people (‘great’ in the old-fashioned sense) who had terrible lives. Like me, they were models of what the modern world most wishes to destroy, having aristocratic genes and high IQs. They were very idealistic, honest and responsible, perhaps too much so for their own good (or for mine). Here are a few photographs which may convey more than is easy to verbalise.

William Alfred Green, aged 15

The first is of my father (William Alfred Green) at the age of 15. He must have left the East Ham Grammar School by then, since the school-leaving age was 14, and his ostensible father did not want to support him for a moment longer than was necessary. So he left school and home, as his ostensible father (an engine-driver) had taken a mistress and did not want to have any children from his former family living at home after their ‘mother’ had died.
My father was the youngest and the only one still living at home. His ‘mother’ (who may have been an aunt) died when my father was 12. From the age of 14 onwards, my father supported himself by working very long hours as a junior (hack) chemist at the Beckton Gas Works, preparing at night school for the equivalent of the exams taken at 16 and 18. He did his homework on the Tube train which he took to get to the night school.
Then, also from night school, he took an Honours degree in chemistry, externally from London University. As he was very tired from his day’s work at the gas works, he found this difficult, in spite of his high IQ, and did not take the degree until he was 24. [1]
He disliked the working-class environment in which he grew up, and felt a strong need to rise in the world. His ‘mother’ was an invalid until she died, so she cannot have contributed much in the way of emotional support.
He read very few books while he was living at home, in fact I do not think he can ever have had time to read many. Nevertheless he came top of the borough in the grammar school scholarship.
He was fortunate to meet my mother (Dorothy Elizabeth Green, née Cleare), when they were both 14, at the East Ham Grammar School. She was precocious and brilliantly maternal, and must have supplied at least some of the deficits which resulted from the insecurities of his early life.

William Green and Dorothy Green (on left)

The second photograph shows them together, in their late teens, on a seaside holiday, or more likely weekend break. They both look older than I was told they were, which sometimes results from high IQs. In my father’s case the discrepancy with his chronological age is particularly marked, which probably results from the hardships of his early life, and from his continuing to work hard in his determination to rise in the world by taking a degree, in the first instance. At the time this photo was taken my mother was probably at the teacher training college, and the third person in the photograph (on the right) was at the college with her. This person later became a teacher at the primary school at the docks of which my father was then headmaster.

William Green at East Ham Grammar School

The third photo shows my father with other teachers at the East Ham Grammar School (middle of back row). He would now have been in his late twenties, having completed his degree but found no prospects open to him. With my mother’s support, he had hastily qualified as a teacher in the last year that this was possible without attending a two-year residential course, as my mother had done.
His hopes of rising to an adequate position in society had, however, been destroyed, and my mother married him when they were both about 24, recognising, I think, his need for support in living out his ruined life. This was damaging to her own prospects of a successful teaching career, although she continued to work as a supply teacher until I was born. [2]

Hitting the high-IQs (as usual)

There are complaints that George Osborne’s ‘Austerity Budget’ fails to provide sufficient protection for ‘the most vulnerable’ sections of the population. Populations regarded as ‘vulnerable’ and ‘deserving of protection’ are highly correlated with ‘populations with the lowest average IQ’.

Confirming that most benefits will rise in line with inflation, Mr Osborne insisted the move was ‘fair and affordable’ and would protect the most vulnerable in society.

The Chancellor is understood to have stuck to plans to uprate benefits after seeing polling which confirms that capping or freezing benefits for the unemployed or other groups – such as the disabled – would be very unpopular. (Daily Mail, 30th November 2011)

Pensioners have always been a useful target for cuts in benefits and increases in taxation as, whatever modifications are made in living circumstances, the population which reaches pensionable age continues to have an average IQ which is higher than that of the population as a whole.

The result of such cuts is that this population will have less money with which to provide support and assistance for its offspring, and reduced assets to leave to them. And, if there is a genetic component to IQ and associated characteristics, reducing the advantages of this population will tend in the direction of reducing the proportion of the population as a whole which has above-average IQs.

Similarly, a population which has its income reduced by the austerity budget is that of those earning over a certain amount (£40,000 p.a. or in some cases £26,000) who will no longer be eligible for child benefit. Those with lower incomes will continue to receive child benefit, in fact it will be increased by the full rate of inflation as measured by the CPI.

Thus those who ‘need’ it most will continue to receive it. Those who have incomes above a certain level will no longer do so, but they are supposed to ‘need’ it less.

It may be noted that this achieves a further shift of resources from a population with a higher average IQ to one with a lower one, and (if there should happen to be an inherited element in IQ) this will, as usual, tend in the direction of discouraging those with above-average IQs from having large, or perhaps any, families.

So the rate at which the proportion of low IQs in the population is rising will once more be increased.

The age at which pensions become payable is of course to increase, and we may expect that it will be progressively increased in the future, thus penalising those who have successfully survived to a certain age (albeit in some cases with expensive assistance from the NHS), and who are therefore likely to constitute a population with above-average IQ.

Mr Osborne insisted the changes were vital as life expectancy continues to increase. He said that standing still was not an option, warning that the cost of paying the state pension is going to become ‘more and more unaffordable.’

What is meant by ‘affordable’? Apparently something cannot be afforded if it can only be paid out of money left over when other, supposedly ‘ring-fenced’ obligations have been met. Does the rise in life expectancy have a great deal to do with the ever-rising costs of the NHS, schools and universities, and other ‘social services’? Every child that is added to the population is an immense potential burden on the taxpaying population; those which are genetically dysfunctional the most.

The cost of the dependent population, which includes those who are dysfunctional by reason of low IQ, is certainly increasing much faster than the cost of supporting pensioners is increasing by reason of a lengthening lifespan.

Once again the (relatively high-IQ) population of pensioners is a convenient scapegoat, and is penalised to offset the massively increasing costs per generation of the dependent population, which on average seems likely to have a lower average IQ than that of the pensioners.

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.

Morals or money?

Melanie Phillips complains of the loss of moral principles in modern society.

Two ... incidents happened recently. A 79-year-old woman has died from head injuries after trying to fight off teenage muggers who robbed her of the bag containing her husband’s ashes.

This attack followed hard on the heels of a story about a teenage burglar who, asked to write a letter of apology to his victims, wrote instead that he wasn’t bothered or sorry at all, and that the burglary was all their fault for leaving their window open.

Such incidents suggest that we are dealing with something beyond merely ruthless acquisitiveness and contempt for the law. They suggest a total absence of empathy for another person, which is the basic requirement of morality and, in turn, of a civilised society. They illustrate a brutalisation of humanity. (Daily Mail, 28 November 2011)

Describing a speech by Phillip Blond (credited as a key architect of David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ idea), she writes:

He [Blond] condemned the doctrine of ‘moral relativism’ according to which no values or way of life can be said to be better than any other.

Melanie Phillips concludes her article thus:

For if we really want to stop Britain’s terrifying drift into brutalisation, where a widow is robbed of her husband’s ashes and the young become strangers to remorse or reason — not to mention the summer’s riots and the economic crash — we surely have to accept that the moral vacuum into which we are staring is one that Britain’s bedrock faith must once again fill.

In 1945, with the onset of the Oppressive State, the link between the individual and reality was broken. Henceforth what determined the well-being or otherwise of yourself and your children would not be whether you could pay for what you and they needed, but whether other people would accept your needs as deserving of support with the money confiscated from other people in taxation.

This achieved a progressive shift in the ownership of resources from the middle class and aristocracy (the elite) to the least functional sections of society.

Nearly 70 years on from 1945, we read of the reduction in the size of families of the middle class, and of the deterioration in the quality of the upbringing which they are able to provide for their offspring. At the same time we read of reduction of benefits available to pensioners, and of unemployed fathers of large numbers of children, many of whom are living on benefits and all of whom, presumably, are receiving an expensive state education.

Attempts may be made to tweak the situation and to ‘kick-start’ the economy by further taxation of the above-average in order to provide ‘help’ for individuals or projects considered socially acceptable, but can such attempts ever work?

Over any considerable period of time it appears to be impossible that policies of this kind could prevent the continuous decline of civilisation. This is because the real causes of the ever-increasing drains on ‘public money’ are never mentioned. Among them is the geometrically increasing cost of supporting the population of those who are not, and never can be, productive members of society (even if interfering in other people’s lives as a doctor, teacher or social worker is considered as a positive contribution to society).

If you do everything possible to multiply the population with the lowest IQs, you will soon have an immense and growing burden on the resources which can be provided by taxpayers.

Oh, but that is only if the factors that influence IQ are at least to some extent hereditary, you may exclaim, and this is something that we find quite unacceptable and will on no account consider.

Nevertheless if, as I strongly suspect, the size of the dysfunctional population, and the expense of providing for it, continues to increase with every generation, it is a matter of indifference how far the factors which lead to this outcome are hereditary or otherwise. This population becomes a burden on the economy which outweighs any efforts which may be made to increase its income by productive activity.

The behavioural standards of a society with this characteristic are likely to decline inexorably towards brutal levels, whatever ostensible morality is being urged on the population.

Brief analyses such as these should be being expanded into research papers. We call on those who recognise the pro-collectivist bias in current academic research to support Oxford Forum.

Letter to a Polish reader

Thank you for writing, and saying

I think Celia Green is one of the great modern British writers – in the perfect world she would be a household name.

It is nice that you get something out of my books, even if I do not get much out of modern British writers.

The reason I have produced so few books, and none of recent years, is that the publication of the books did nothing to relieve the frustration of my position as an exiled academic.

Debarred as I was from any academic career to which I was suited, I needed the books not only to generate income to replace that which I should have had as an academic, but also to build up capital towards the establishment of an independent academic organisation to provide me with living conditions compatible with intellectual productivity.

Unfortunately the books did not in any way generate opportunity. Writing, publishing and distributing them remains a heavy burden on our limited manpower and resources.

We need more people to come and live nearby, to do voluntary or paid part-time or full-time work. This should seem attractive to those approaching retirement, but apparently does not in this country, as nobody of that age group comes.

This is apparently because there is such a taboo in helping anyone who complains of their bad social position and attempts to remedy it. Possibly the taboo is less strong in Poland, where everyone is less cushioned by the welfare state.

Would you be able to come for a short break in Cuddesdon? We are too overworked to spend unlimited time with you, but could meet enough to give you some information about our needs and about the advantages there might be for those working here.

Then perhaps you could tell other people in Poland who might be interested, and this could eventually help us to write more of the books we are currently prevented from writing and publishing by the constriction of our position as well as our lack of academic status.

Pro-capitalism

I am amazed at the antagonism to capitalism that is expressed in sympathy with the anti-capitalism protesters.

Capitalism is the only thing that has given me any advantages in life with which to repair the damage of a socialist environment, which ruined my life and the lives of my parents when I was exposed to a state-financed education.

Having been born as the offspring of two socially displaced families, I had no capital of my own and was dependent on the educational system to get into the sort of academic career which I needed to have. However, in practice my education was run by people who had no interest in my well-being or that of my parents, at the time or in the future, to put it mildly.

When I attempted to stake a claim on re-entry to a university career by doing research outside of a university, the only significant financial support was from a newspaper tycoon, Cecil Harmsworth King. Before being turned against me by those who thought that research should only be done inside universities, he provided just enough financial support for me to do the preliminary work to open up at least two new fields of research.

No further financial support from any quarter was forthcoming to enable Dr Charles McCreery and me to carry on with the development of these fields of research, which were taken over (at least nominally) by people who already had academic salaries and status.

The only further improvement in our position came from ownership of a house in which we lived for many years with no heating and scarcely any furniture.

I am certain that opportunity in life depends only upon capitalism, and is damaged by socialism, although the latter purports to provide it for those who are ‘poor’ enough.

Much sympathy is evinced for those who protest against capitalism. My protests against socialism receive no sympathy.

The anti-authoritarian syndrome

Once when I was at Miss Maughfling’s (the preparatory school I attended) I got sent to write lines instead of going out to break. I was in the kitchen (a large room) with the other children, and the kettles were on to make the drinks that Miss Maughfling handed out. You could have milk, cold or warm, or hot orange juice made from concentrate, which was what the kettles were for.

The steam was coming out of the spouts of the kettles and I knew, from prior experimentation at home, that it was not actually very hot. Some other child sounded afraid of it, and I said ‘But it is not very hot really’, and passed my hand through one of the jets of steam, amused at the shock of the nearby children.

Just at this point Miss Maughfling came into the kitchen and was horrified. I was not to go out to break, she said, but must write lines – ‘I must not touch steam from boiling kettles.’

I did not think she was exactly in the right, and I did not think there had been anything wrong with what I had done. Nor did I mind about missing the break on the lawn at the back of the house, which was of little interest to me.

So I went up to the classroom and dutifully wrote out the lines, neatly and well-spaced as I wrote everything else.

It was just a thing to do, so I did it as well as possible.

By the end of the break I had covered quite a few of the pages I had been given (loose lined sheets of paper) and Miss Maughfling looked surprised as she inspected them.

‘You must have worked very hard,’ she said, nonplussed, as if she would have expected something different.

The fact was that I did not have an anti-authoritarian syndrome, as so many do. I had read too much, for one thing, to think of adults as unmotivated paragons or purveyors of wisdom.

But the important thing is that I always did things in the best possible way; if they were boring this seemed to me the way to make them least boring. In effect, this was centralised and later made it possible for me to get some intensity out of fairly dull work in the early years at the convent.

Many people have learnt a disidentification with what they are doing and this can be extremely difficult to overcome. They can’t, even if they want to, do things in an error-free way. They can only find them ‘interesting’ if done in a rush at the last moment. There are several variants of this, but they all more or less preclude any more advanced form of centralisation.

Aged one

Celia Green, aged one

copy of a letter
Thank you very much for finding and sending the scan of the photograph of me aged one. We still have not found the original (all this moving around while being so short-staffed) and I would have been sorry to lose it altogether.
I think my mother realised it showed how precocious I was and kept it hidden, so that we only found it after her death. It was in a box-file in which she had kept other mementos of my precocity, such as the first book which I was found to be able to read, and the introduction which I wrote at age 5 for my arithmetic textbook. I know that she gave the little book away when I was thrown out at the end of the ruined education, and I expect she thought she should accept that I had come to nothing after all, as she had always been told was likely. At the same time she dismantled my cupboard full of chemicals, which was symbolic of my wanting to take a degree in chemistry (externally from London, when I was 14).
We looked for the introduction to the arithmetic textbook, and Charles was disappointed not to be able to see it, but it was not in the box so she must have thrown that away as well, in acknowledgement of the ruin of my life.
Looking back, I am afraid that the tragedy of my life and of my parents’ lives was determined very early on by my father’s willingness to be influenced by educational experts.
My mother said there was one who visited me ‘to see how precocious a child could be’, and in fact I remember someone who sat in the corner of the room when I was about four and asked my father guardedly when I had learnt to read. To which my father replied ‘She could read anything by the time she was four. ’
This ‘expert’ was probably one of those who promoted the view that precocity was meaningless, just an anomaly in early development.

Accommodation wanted

copy of a post to our Facebook group:

There are some people who express enthusiasm for such books and research as we have been able to produce. In fact we have produced only a very small fraction of what should have been possible if we had been less rigorously deprived of support.

If anyone’s enthusiasm for our books and research extends to wishing to see more of either produced, we would appreciate it if they would think how they could give us some financial or practical support, or encourage others to do so.

One way in which people could help would be by buying or renting properties near to us in Cuddesdon (on the outskirts of Oxford with an Oxford postcode).

We are very cramped for space and extra space would be used either for offices or for accommodating visiting voluntary workers or potential supporters.

If a house or apartment were bought outright rather than rented it could either remain in the buyer’s name or be donated to one or more of us.

Currently the following large house is on the market, which is sufficiently close to us to be very useful: The Mill, Cuddesdon, guide price £1,650,000.

There are currently two other, smaller, houses in Cuddesdon on the market for renting, at £1200 per calendar month and £800 p.c.m. respectively. The former is more spacious and would come close to significantly relieving our problems.

Another way in which people can help us is by coming as visiting workers or supporters, but in this case the problem of accommodation arises, and it would be desirable for them to be able to pay for this during their visit, also to be running a car if possible, as the accommodation might not be very near to us.

Geniuses should be reclusive

‘And there are other things. I couldn’t go to discos to meet girls because my ears are very sensitive to noise and they hurt.’ (Low tolerance of noise, along with several other of Simon’s idiosyncrasies, are symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome – a mild form of autism – but he has never been diagnosed.) [Daily Mail]

There is a wish to believe – and hence, in effect, a belief – that a high IQ, and the sort of interest in reality that may go with it, are pathological and arise from some sort of personality disorder.

Simon Norton admitted to various characteristics regarded as symptomatic of this. Perhaps that is why journalists are willing to interview him and are not willing to interview me; I would not fit so well the preferred image of the genius with serious deficits in non-intellectual areas.

Perhaps the characteristics regarded as symptomatic of Asperger’s syndrome might result from the demoralising effects of a modern education on a person with a high IQ (and hence precocious).

The attempt to get by in life without thinking about basic practical essentials (rather than trying to become rich enough to have a housekeeper and other ancillary staff) is encouraged by Oxford University and, presumably, other universities as well. Academic rejects are not encouraged to attempt to remedy their position in any way, but to ‘follow their interests’ while living in a cheap bedsit.

Perhaps the inattention to hygiene etc. has something to do with the lack of a suitable identity as a socially accepted intellectual.

It has often been assumed that I must be, for example, reclusive. When I was living without an income any side effects of that were interpreted as indicating my identification with the dropout position.

Lady Hardy, wife of Professor Hardy, met two associates of mine in Oxford when all my plans to obtain finance for my independent research institute had been defeated. ‘I saw that Celia the other day,’ said Lady Hardy, with distaste, ‘she was looking very scruffy.’

Did she expect me to buy a new raincoat at the expense of such savings as I could make? In fact my raincoat then was of very good quality, a Burberry, and although showing the effects of age, perfectly functional for its intended purposes.

New definitions for ‘saving’ and ‘planning’

As I have previously said on this blog, the state now appears to feel free to change legislation in ways that are effectively retrospective, in that they make a mockery of past efforts by forethoughtful taxpayers – such as myself and my colleagues – to plan for their life after normal retirement age.

Commentators whom one might expect to be critical of such retrospectiveness seem to share the basic philosophy that it is not too unacceptable, sounding mildly disapproving at best but in many cases simply taking it as read that, say, the presence of a budget deficit justifies breaking what was once thought of as a relatively sacrosanct principle.

Ruth Sunderland, for example, refers to the complaint made by many women that the rapid shifting of the age at which they will start to receive their state pensions ‘simply does not leave them enough time to plan’. But she does not appear to complain of the sudden introduction of means-testing. Those who had been paying into the state pension scheme could not have planned for that change because it was retrospective, and they had no warning it was going to happen.

Having undermined savings efforts by breaking a principle in one area, the government evidently feels justified in breaking principles in complementary areas; for example, using the idea that it is legitimate to be forced to save.

In an alarming speech, Martin Weale [a leading expert at the Bank of England] urged Britons to wake up to the fact that their level of saving is too low and that they are spending too much. ... The top economist said people were deluding themselves about the type of retirement they could expect, unless they were happy to work ‘much later’. ...

Starting next year, new rules will force all bosses to pay into a pension for their workers for the first time, unless the worker decides to opt out. ... Pensions minister Steve Webb said ... ‘Our workplace pension reform is vital. From 2012, automatic enrolment will mean millions of people saving into a pension for the first time, with a contribution from their employer.’ (Daily Mail, 26 August)

Having one’s money confiscated is not the same as saving, even if money is also confiscated from your employer at the same time, thus surreptitiously reducing the resources which he has available to pay you directly.

If this money were not confiscated, those who wished to save in the normal sense of the word, i.e. build up their own capital, might use it to do so. Hence this legislation is reducing the possibility of savings being made.

Theoretically the money will be preserved from the irresponsible activities of those who might wish to use it for something else before reaching what the government of their day decrees to be ‘retirement age’. Possibly those who might choose to act in this way do so knowing that their family history indicates the likelihood of their dying before receiving anything in the way of retirement pay; or having decided, consciously or unconsciously, to get lost on a mountainside somewhere and die of exposure before they suffer from the drawbacks of ageing.

At a time when the national finances are under severe strain, later retirement ages for both sexes are unavoidable. ... Pension planning is a long-term undertaking that ideally should be carried out over an entire working lifetime. (Ruth Sunderland, Daily Mail, 14 October)

Later retirement ages are only ‘unavoidable’ if you rule out such possibilities as abolishing state education, child benefit at all levels of income, the NHS, etc.

And you can only plan with money that is in your own hands.

In my twenties, being deprived of the possibility of earning a living as an academic, unable to envisage earning a living in any other way, and also deprived of the possibility of income support when receiving no income from any employment, I made great efforts to ensure that I would pay the voluntary contributions into the state pension scheme. In deciding to do this, rather than to keep an equivalent amount in my own hands and invest it as best I could over the years, I was considerably influenced by the fact that the state pension was paid ‘as of right’ as a result of contributions made, and was not a ‘benefit’ supposedly related to your ‘needs’ as assessed by agents of the collective.

I paid in contributions every year over a period of about forty years, and had started to receive a disappointingly withered pension, when it was announced that state pensions would now be means-tested. Some years later it was announced that the age at which people would receive them was not what they had previously expected, but was liable to shift forward at the whim of the government.

So my attempts to ‘plan’ for my income after the age of 60 had been misguided, as I had not taken into account the possibility of retrospective legislation.

Oxford Professorship in Psychology: not even shortlisted

In response to my application for the Oxford Professorship in Psychology I received a brief rejection letter from the University's Personnel Officer. Herewith the text of my response.

As it said in my letter, I hereby appeal to any senior academic to come to visit me at my impoverished independent university, to discuss ways of supporting me, so that I do not go on being prevented from contributing to the intellectual life of my time.

I continue to apply for professorships and other posts. I still need to start on my forty-year academic career with full salary and status at professorial level.

Dear ...

Thank you for your letter of 6 May. It appears I was not even shortlisted for the Professorship of Psychology being offered by the Department of Experimental Psychology in association with Magdalen, for which I made an application in March.

It is an indication of the oppressiveness of modern society that nobody considers it their business to enquire into the predicament of the victims of social outrage and support them in recovering from it.

And yet, not long ago, a teenager with an IQ said to be 130, currently in prison, was awarded damages against an education authority which had failed to provide him with enough intellectual stimulation. This was regarded as having led to his turning to crime instead of to gainful employment. I realise this provides no grounds for my entertaining any hope that I could sue for loss of my earnings from an academic career as well as my father’s loss of salary as a headmaster when he was forced to retire early on a breakdown allowance.

Normally in this situation I would ask you if you would let me come to see you to explain my position, to make it more likely that you will remember me if a suitable appointment arises. However, I realise that it would be unlikely to do me any good if you did grant me an interview with you. Nevertheless, I think that you should wish to come to see me to find out what help you could give me in returning to a normal position in society.

One form of help which you could certainly give me, even without coming to see me, would be money. Without a salary, and having to provide myself with an institutional environment as best I can, it is almost impossible for me to write books expressing my views, to publish those which have already been written and stockpiled awaiting editing, or to carry out any of the research which I have now been prevented from doing for several decades, and which I need to do to enhance my claim on restoration to the sort of career which I should have been having all along.

In your position, I would probably be happy to contribute half of my salary on a regular basis if I heard of someone in so grievously anomalous a situation as mine is.

This is a standing invitation to you or any other senior academic, to come to visit me at my impoverished independent university, to discuss ways of supporting me, morally or financially, so that I do not continue to be prevented from contributing to the intellectual life of my time, as a headmistress (who perhaps lost her job for the crime of allowing me to be too happy at her school) once said that I was certain to do.

However, I am not inviting you or anyone else to come without warning, and an appointment would have to be made well in advance, and accompanied by a donation of at least £5,000 towards the support of my institution, or to me personally. In fact, it would be better if made to me personally, as our affairs are too constricted and under-staffed to accept any additional burden in the way of processing and accounting for donations.

I do not expect you to come, although I think you should, but a donation of that size would at least prevent a visit, if it were to happen, from being an entirely fruitless drain on our time and energy.

Yours sincerely,

etc.