An amazing sleight of hand

Andrew Dilnot will propose a cap of between £35,000 and £50,000 on the amount people have to pay towards their care in their last years – with the taxpayer picking up the balance. His proposals would leave the Treasury with an estimated bill of more than £2bn – which would have to come from taxation or cuts elsewhere in Whitehall. (Independent, 4 July 2011)

By an amazing sleight of hand, the Dilnot proposals to tax other pensioners more, in order to ‘cap’ the amount which has to be paid by those who go into care homes, are represented as compassionate towards the middle class, and towards the ideas of thrift and inheritance.

‘Life is littered with potential financial catastrophes, from costly-to-treat illnesses to house fires, but in most cases the risks are pooled, whether through the state or the insurance market,’ said The Guardian. When it comes to care, those with more than £23,250 are on their own facing potentially unlimited liabilities. The results are ‘dire’. So Dilnot’s plan is very welcome, as a way of ‘staving off ruin for an unlucky minority’...

It’s easy to see the Dilnot report as a ‘caring and sharing’ left-wing proposal, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times: a ‘market failure is being corrected’ by a new social insurance scheme (and a new tax). But I think this is wrong. It is not, in fact, about looking after vulnerable people. ‘It's about insuring the inheritance of their children: the state will protect the assets of quite wealthy people from the possibility that they will be used up to pay for their care’, and thus not be available for their relatives to inherit. (From article ‘The cost of growing old’, The Week, 9 July 2011)

Now we know that nobody cares about unlucky minorities, especially those with higher-than-average IQs, and we know also that inheritance is almost as deplorable an idea as heredity.

The several billions a year which the Dilnot scheme would cost the taxpayer (we may assume with some confidence that £3.6bn is a conservative estimate) could be covered, he suggested, by a ‘specific tax increase’ on pensioners.

Whether or not these billions, which would be necessary to cap the care home costs of an ‘unlucky minority’, would be confiscated from other pensioners or from some other part of the taxable population, it should be pointed out that, instead of capping care home fees, the billions might be applied to reversing the means-testing of pensions and raising them to a more realistic level. Those who did go into care homes would then have more funds available to pay towards their own care, but not, of course, so much as if they were (as is intended) the sole beneficiaries of the billions.

In the Oppressive State, all sections of the population with above-average IQs are to be destroyed. So one starts by hating capitalists and landowners who would not be in the positions they are if it were not for above-average functionality and realism on the part of themselves and their ancestors.

But if they are torn down you still have some people of above-average functionality in the population, whose ability and conscientiousness have not yet got them into favourable positions. Before the advent of the Oppressive State in 1945 it was probable that a person who reached the age of sixty fell into this category. They were likely to have a good genetically determined physical constitution and to have avoided the hazards of life which might have led to their death at an earlier age. So they were likely to be realistic, conscientious, forethoughtful and independent-minded. That is, they were likely to be the sort of people that the Oppressive State seeks to destroy.

So you would think it would seem quite a good idea to believers in the modern ideology that pensioners should have their assets reduced to zero, so that there is nothing for their children to inherit.

But if the population of pensioners is split into those who run up significant costs in ‘care’ versus those who do not, and it now appears that the former population is likely to have a lower average IQ than the latter, there is in fact a motive for penalising the latter to reduce costs on the former.

Otherwise one cannot see why believers in the modern ideology should see anything against the idea of the assets of a pensioner being reduced to zero. Ah, but if there is a population with an even higher average IQ that can be penalised to prevent this – then it is an opportunity for a further tax.

We may suppose that now university graduates are so heavily penalised (unless they have a good probabilistic claim to a relatively low IQ), the pensioners are the only remaining population with an above-average IQ which can be squeezed still further. But why is this necessary? Pensions have been withered on the vine for decades and cut by means-testing, so why now propose an extra tax on them to reduce the charges on those who go into care homes?

A possible explanation arises from the fact that the population of pensioners has now become sufficiently differentiated in IQ for a transfer of resources from one section of this population to another to fulfil the criterion that all ‘benefits’ should constitute a transfer of assets from a population with a higher average IQ to a population with a lower one.

Withered on the vine

The state pension was cut (made means-tested) in 2003. Those who were already receiving it, such as myself, or who were within sight of qualifying to receive it, such as some of my colleagues, had been paying into it for several decades during which there had been no hint that it would ever be cut (means-tested) although for some time state pensions had been described (apparently officially) as ‘withering on the vine’, and attempts to increase them in line with inflation or the national wage had presumably lapsed, although I had not been paying attention to what was going on. At any rate, the pension which I started to receive in 1996 was pathetic, bearing no relation to pensions in private schemes or to average salaries. It was increased each year by nugatory amounts, so that the gap between it and a realistic pension appeared to widen rather than be decreased.

In 2003 it was announced that state pensions were to become means-tested, the concept having apparently metamorphosed from that of a replacement for a salary to that of a benefit whose purpose was to save the most needy from starvation. The basic state pension itself was to fall in real terms, and it was no consolation to me that if I became poor enough I could apply for pension credit. This was something I would never do.

Probably many had (and have) the same aversion to this idea as I had myself, although in a less clear-cut form, and the failure (or refusal) of many to apply for benefits to which they were entitled has been ascribed to ‘pride’ or to the complicated nature of the forms to be filled in. (Snooping systems are now being set up to identify hidden carers and hidden cared-for, to induce them to apply for ‘benefits’.) When some element in living costs rose noticeably, optional bits and pieces for special purposes (such as for council tax and the winter fuel payment) were sent in addition to the pension, but not guaranteed to continue indefinitely.

The Coalition commenced its era of reform, announcing that the state pension would now be increased per annum in accordance with wages, the CPI, or 2.5 per cent, whichever is highest. This is called the triple lock. Cunningly, the government chose to use the CPI (Consumer Price Index) and not the RPI (Retail Price Index) which at the time was higher than all three.

Now that the withered state pension was rising by this guaranteed amount each year, the bonus for council tax could vanish. As energy prices were rising dramatically, proposals to scrap the winter fuel payment were opposed, and it remained, but has now been cut from £250 per annum to £200.

So the rises in the state pension have been offset by the loss of these temporary subsidies, and the rises in the amount actually received each year by an individual who chooses not to expose himself to state assessment by applying for top-up benefits are correspondingly reduced. Clever!

More misdirection of attention

‘The Mail accepts that, with people living longer, we must pay more towards the cost of our old age.’ (Daily Mail, editorial, 5 July 2011)

Similar things have been said by people associated with Saga and other organisations for the over-fifties.

This is just accepting and reinforcing the misdirection of attention. The Government needs more money to spend and the costs of all its favourite indulgences are no doubt expanding exponentially. But the causes of the explosive growth of expenditure are wrapped up in the classifications of the imaginary society supported by public money (i.e. by taxation – freedom of action confiscated from individuals.) How far do the costs of ‘education’ and the NHS arise from the ever-growing population of the genetically dysfunctional, many of whom can never support themselves in the sense of earning money, even in such fictitious capacities as those of social workers, tea ladies in hospitals, psychiatrists, playgroup supervisors, etc.?

This population has grown geometrically since the sectors of the population most likely to produce dysgenic offspring have increased with every generation, while those least likely to produce them, the so called ‘middle class’, have dwindled as they faced ever-increasing disincentives to having children.

The object of modern society is to destroy those with above-average IQs and/or aristocratic genes. The populations which have the highest average IQs are the only ones that deserve to be taxed – in the view of the modern ideology.

This has already been demonstrated by the onslaught on university graduates, still a population with, overall, a higher than average IQ. The pensioners are vulnerable because those who live longest have relatively high IQs and general functionality.

This is why they should be taxed, not because their living longer than before is a dominant factor in the rising costs of the NHS, the ‘educational’ system, etc.

The associations which are supposed to represent the interests of high-IQ populations, such as Mensa and the National Association for Gifted Children, make no attempt to defend those interests or to protest against a system that is geared against them. The same is true of the associations which are supposed to represent the interests of the elderly; their leaders acting as agents of the collective in keeping the victims quiet and compliant. The members of their associations could be forming pressure groups or, better still, forming cooperative organisations to keep the Welfare Wolf from the door.

Members of the associations mentioned are invited to move to Cuddesdon, and might appreciate the advantages of forming their cooperative associations around us as a nucleus.

The Duke of Edinburgh and others

My colleague Fabian Tassano has put some comments about the Duke of Edinburgh on his blog, and I am reminded of his correspondence with us. We thought that he, if anybody, should be able to think that the most statusful agents of the collective might be in the wrong, and that a status-less person, even if slandered and vilified, might need and deserve support, which they were unable to get from the ‘proper’ social sources, and that this could only be given them by independent-minded individuals.

Indeed, a descendant of the European nobility might feel that he had a responsibility to support those who were attempting to maintain the standards achieved by an intellectual golden age against the ravages of the encroaching tribalism.

And, one would think, such a person might, if not wishing to be openly associated with social outcasts such as intellectual dissidents, have available to him channels by which he could arrange for financial support to reach those who represented old-fashioned ideals and enable them to be more of an influence within the turbulence of modern society. Also one would imagine, such a person might communicate with other individuals who could approach those he wished to help, as if out of the blue, and become the moral and financial supporters they so sorely needed.

But, as it happened, Prince Philip did none of these things, and nor has any other wealthy and influential person to whom we have appealed over the decades and who appeared to take some interest in us. Nor have any of these people given help in their own right in the form of a donation. It seems to be accepted as a law of the Medes and Persians that we are never to be given any real help at all, in the form of money, in the form of useful work or moral support in fundraising, or in the form of suitable university appointments.

I find the meanness towards us of the most wealthy and influential hard to understand. In their position, if I had corresponded with or interviewed a person evidently claiming to be badly in need of support to do something they could clearly see how to do, I could not myself send them away, or terminate the correspondence, without sending them at least a few thousand pounds as a consolation prize and reward for the time and trouble they had put into presenting their case to me.

On the other hand, of course, those who opposed us did so covertly, and with great effect. Our most ostentatious nominal ‘supporters’ would network against us widely and indefatigably, ensuring that no useful help would reach us from any source. And the effects of this networking were permanent. Once it was known that we were personae non gratae with other members of the international establishment, there was no way in which such information could be forgotten or revised.

As those of Prince Philip’s generation die out, our chances of finding a supporter become even more negligible, as we have only ever had even lukewarm support from those born well before the onset of the Welfare State in 1945, who have at least some memory of the standards and ideals in the early decades of the last century.

Paying for others to enjoy a fate worse than death

It is said that the Dilnot report will recommend that people of pensionable age should not have their assets reduced by more than a third by paying for ‘care’ from the state. This does not reassure me at all, since I know that both I and any of my associates would regard exposing ourselves to state ‘care’ as to be avoided at any cost. Going into a ‘care home’ would indeed be a fate worse than death.

What does worry me is what new tax will be proposed to pay for the ‘care’ that the state does get to impose on people. There are many forms of benefit which are lavished on favoured sections of the population which could easily be cut and replaced by repayable loans, but of course it is only the population of pensioners which is to be penalised.

For example, if nurseries, crèches and supervised ‘play groups’ for the under-fives were abolished, and children could not start school until five (or even six or seven?), a good deal of taxpayers’ money would be saved and parents would be discouraged from having more children than they could manage to look after themselves. As it is, the burden of looking after their children is greatly reduced by the proportion of their time that they spend out of sight, out of mind, at school. ‘Social help’, which I believe is provided for families burdened with too many children, could be cut completely or provided only on payment, as ‘social care’ for the elderly is now. ‘Housing benefit’ is also related to family size, and could be provided in the form of repayable loans, similar to the loans made to university graduates.

Reducing the provision of nursery schools might also reduce the cost of ‘education’ at higher age levels, since it would tend in the direction of making parents aware of the advantages of keeping their families down to a more manageable size. Formerly, parents were responsible not only for feeding and looking after their own children, but also paying for schools if they wanted their children to attend them.

If parents were not relieved of much of the burden of looking after children, the saving to the taxpayer could probably be sufficient to reverse the cut in the state pension (euphemistically described as ‘means-testing’) and to increase it to a realistic level which would be sufficient for a high proportion of its recipients to provide themselves with adequate housekeeping and other services, or to have friends or relatives living with them, independently of the state.

Paul Burstow (Care Services Minister) refers to ‘social care’ as having a ‘nasty little secret’. ‘It is not free and never will be free.’ Quite right. That is the ‘nasty secret’ of all state benefits. As I said of my state-funded education, it was not free. It was paid for with the ruin of my prospects in life, the ruin of my parents’ lives, and the gratification that all agents of the collective, official and unofficial, could derive from so satisfactory an outcome.

Chancellor George Osborne is resisting the plans because he believes they are too close to the ‘death tax’ proposed by Labour before last year's general election, under which everyone would have paid £20,000 into a compulsory insurance scheme whether they eventually need care or not. But Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Lib Dem care minister Paul Burstow are both supportive. (Daily Mail, 27 June 2011)

So we know that Paul Burstow is in favour of something close to the former idea of £20,000 ‘compulsory insurance’. How does he put it according to the Daily Mail (2nd July)?

[Mr. Burstow] promised that while the elderly will be expected to contribute, they will not pay as much as many of them have to pay now.

I.e. while those of pensionable age (including those who do not, and would not, have anything to do with ‘social care’) will be forced to contribute, they will not pay as much as many of them (that is, many of those who do go into ‘care homes’) have to pay now.

It is true that £20,000 (the starting figure proposed for the ‘compulsory insurance’ suggested by Labour) is ‘not as much’ as various amounts in excess of £50,000 which are currently being paid by many of those who fail to protect themselves from ‘social care’.

But why should those who do not and never would submit to ‘social care’ be forced to pay this tax, which is supposed to justify putting a ‘cap’ on what is paid by those who do?

They have already had their pensions drastically reduced because the cost of providing for pensioners is supposedly so great. Saying that a pension is ‘means-tested’ is just a euphemism for calling it ‘reduced’ (or ‘cut’), which is what it is, so far as I am concerned, as I would not seek an income supplement for which I had to be ‘assessed’ by agents of the collective, even if I might be supposed to be eligible for it. I was only so persistent in paying in voluntary contributions for so many years because I thought the resulting pension would be paid to me as of right.

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 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.

Penalising the middle class is ‘fair’

Daily Mail, June 27, ‘Middle classes must find £50,000 for care.’ State can't afford more, of course. It could not wish, for example, to cut its expenditure in ways that would discourage the least functional members of society from having the largest possible families, many of whom are likely to need ‘care’ throughout their lives.

It is only fair (the argument goes) that the so-called middle classes on the other hand should have their assets reduced, ideally to zero, which they are able to leave to their children by inheritance. Their children are quite likely to have above-average IQs, and it is only fair that they should be handicapped, rather than having their advantages in life increased still further by inheritance.

State pensions are now means-tested so that anyone who has more than the barest subsistence on retirement will find it difficult not to be brought ever closer to that level. Those who live the longest are likely to have the highest average IQs, and are thus most likely to have their savings eroded to zero before they die. Which is only fair, and redresses an injustice.

Formerly those over a certain age were dependent on their own resources to provide housekeepers, full or part-time, or on the voluntary help provided by friends or relatives. The reduction of the state pension greatly increased the number who were unable to provide even a necessary minimum of paid help for themselves, and the probability of people’s assets being reduced to zero has made it much less likely that it would seem worthwhile to friends or relatives to help them protect their independence in the hope of an increased inheritance.

On another page of the Daily Mail there is an article on why the elderly suffer ‘needless’ fractures. ‘Thousands of elderly people are needlessly suffering excruciating fractures because doctors are failing to spot osteoporosis.’

The National Osteoporosis Society's report says many patients are diagnosed only after they have broken several bones, causing them agonising pain and restricting their movements. Campaigners believe doctors fail to carry out simple checks when elderly people suffer fractures to establish whether they have the disease. More than three million people in Britain suffer from osteoporosis, which causes thinning of the bones, and it is most common among elderly women. ...

The report says 26 per cent of those with osteoporosis suffered multiple fractures before being diagnosed. A survey of 700 sufferers found 35 per cent waited more than a year after first breaking a bone to be diagnosed, while 22 per cent waited five years. (Daily Mail, 27 June 2011)

Well, what do you think doctors are for? Surely you don't imagine they are there to prevent people with above-average IQs from suffering?

As has been pointed out before, a person who survives to an above-average age is likely to have an above-average IQ, also above-average forethought, conscientiousness, and so on. Becoming a doctor never required too much in the way of IQ and it is very likely that the average IQ of doctors has fallen. People from the ‘poorest’ backgrounds are encouraged to qualify as doctors, while the ‘middle class’ are discriminated against, in this as in other areas.

It used to be said, over a decade ago, that doctors regarded 55 as the cut-off age for women, after which it was not worth diagnosing anything serious.

Michelle Mitchell, charity director for Age UK, said: ‘Funding for social care is already inadequate. We are fearful that even more vulnerable older people will be left to struggle alone and in some cases lives will be put at risk’. (Daily Mail, 27 June 2011)

Actually, funding for ‘social care’ is not inadequate but excessive. There should be no such thing as ‘social care’.

Associations such as Age UK, Age Concern, Saga etc. should encourage their members to contact us via our website and, if it is not already too late, come for holidays in Cuddesdon as a preliminary. Then they should come to live as close as possible to us, and if they do some voluntary work for us, we will help them in setting up cooperative operations to make themselves independent of state help – i.e. to keep the Welfare Wolf from the door. And, maybe, even work towards greater prosperity by cooperating in business ventures.

A short life and a merry one

In about 1970 they ‘upgraded’ the state pension system; the real motive for this being that they wanted an excuse to get in more money for the government to spend as it pleased. To justify the increased taxation involved, it was necessary to talk as if a person’s contributions were paying for a certain level of pension, in a way that was comparable to previous commercial schemes.

Actually of course this idea lapsed into oblivion over the decades, and the idea of a pension metamorphosed into that of a ‘contract between generations’, with present taxpayers paying for the support of old and infirm former taxpayers, in the hope that doing so would gain them similar consideration from future taxpayers.

As a result, it becomes possible to complain about how many pensioners there are in relation to present taxpayers, and how much each taxpayer is having to contribute. And once again, providing for pensioners can be used to justify an increase in taxation, more money rolling in for the government to spend on its favourite things, which are all oppressive (teachers, doctors, psychiatrists and counsellors, social workers, lawyers, policemen). Several of these sectors of the population are, I feel sure, increasing in size and expensiveness far faster than the population of pensioners. So, of course, is the population of immigrants, who are having a ‘baby boom’ of their own.

After a good deal of hullabaloo a ‘committee of enquiry’ concludes that pensioners must continue to pay for ‘care’ which they receive (or to which they are forced to submit) from the state. At least they must pay up to a certain amount, so long as they have any assets left, after which the state will pick up the tab. But even this limited liability on the part of the state is a grievous burden, and so we are still left with an excuse for creating a new tax in some shape or form.

Middle class pensioners should pay between £35,000 and £50,000 for their old age care, a review will recommend this week. ... At present, anyone with savings or assets above £23,250 - including property - has to pay for their care in full, forcing thousands to sell their homes. The review will raise that threshold so that more people with modest savings benefit, at a cost to taxpayers of around £3billion a year. But the middle classes will have to pay more. Mr Dilnot will recommend they pay between £35,000 and £50,000. ...

Organisations including Age UK, the British Heart Foundation and the Alzheimer's Society yesterday wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron urging him to accept the Dilnot proposals. They said: ‘The social care system has been in growing crisis for years. Our organisations deal every day with people at the most vulnerable points in their lives who are either not receiving any social care support or a small level of help that is grossly inadequate to their needs.’

‘We call upon the Government to take this opportunity offered by the Dilnot Commission and produce a White Paper in the autumn detailing how it will create a sustainable and fair social care system, including how it will be funded.’

Chancellor George Osborne is resisting the plans because he believes they are too close to the ‘death tax’ proposed by Labour before last year's general election, under which everyone would have paid £20,000 into a compulsory insurance scheme whether they eventually need care or not. But Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Lib Dem care minister Paul Burstow are both supportive. (Daily Mail, 27 June 2011)

It is said that people do not like thinking about the future (especially, probably, those with below-average IQs) and so do not save enough to provide for themselves when they are no longer earning money. Therefore they must be forced to do so, by having their money taken away by the government, and so must those who do think about their futures.

Perhaps most people do not want to think about what lies ahead, and intend, consciously or subconsciously, to end their lives semi-accidentally if things become difficult. Why not leave them to get on with it? If they have not provided for themselves, perhaps they have (consciously or otherwise) opted for ‘a short life and a merry one’, as one of my former dentists said of a colleague who had a liking for real ale and died soon after his retirement.

Why not leave them to it? How is it better for them to end their lives under medical supervision in a ‘care home’ prison, with complete loss of autonomy?

Why should you want those such as myself who do try to build up capital, to improve their future lives, to be made responsible for supporting those who have not been interested enough to support themselves – by confiscation of capital by the government? The population of savers is likely to have above-average IQs; in fact it may well include a significant proportion of people with exceptionally high IQs, who realise that they have no other chance of making their position less intolerable in a society that is motivated by hostility to people like them.

And that, of course, is the answer to why they should be penalised by confiscation, in theory because they are causing an intolerable strain on the government’s resources; in reality because the government ‘needs’ to continue expanding its spending at a rate of knots on less threatening populations which will never have any independence of thought or action.

It is disgraceful that organisations such as Age UK, Age Concern and Saga actively support the raising of the pension age and the Dilnot proposals. ‘The social care system has been in crisis for years’. Of course it has, and the only solution is to abolish ‘social care’ altogether.

And there is no solution for the country as a whole but to abandon the concept of ‘state benefits’ altogether. There is no ‘benefit’ without reduction of liberty, and the concept of the state as the ultimate provider can lead only to the destruction and bankruptcy of the society that adopts it.

Thus spake Zoroaster

Among the departments which should be productive in my suppressed and unrecognised university is one for the History of Religion. Information in this area is suppressed and ignored because it is not in the interests of any ideology to know what was really the case.

Information about Gnostic Christianity was of no interest, because Gnosticism was dualist, dualism being an automatically pejorative term. That is, they thought in some form that there was good and evil, soul and matter, and that ‘normal life’ was evil and to be transcended and escaped from.

Quite recently, it was asserted on the BBC that Christianity was original in having an end-of-world idea, in the sense of a radical change in the scheme of things. Previous religions and ideologies had not had this.

However, the end-of-world idea, along with a ‘dualist’ rejection of life as it is, occurred a lot earlier. In fact, it seems to have been originated by Zarathustra, whose ideas influenced Nietzsche in writing Thus Spake Zarathustra.

Zoroastrianism had not only an end-of-world (end-of-history, end-of-time) idea, as associated with early Christianity, but even a Second Coming idea. A human leader would arise who would lead the forces of good to victory over the powers of evil, and the world would be changed in the ‘Making Wonderful’. This Second Coming person was supposed to be a descendant of Zarathustra.

Paul Kriwaczek, in the book In Search of Zarathustra, seems to suggest that the Gnostics, Cathars and Bogomils were descendants of this Zoroastrian tradition and its offshoots, and nothing to do with Christianity, which he identifies with the sacrificial victim/redemption story and considers original, being apparently unaware of the prevalence of traditions of the ‘Golden Bough’ type. Kriwaczek was not an academic but travelled widely in the Middle East.

Clearly all this has been very much suppressed, presumably because it demonstrated the possibility of not being interested in the social goings-on of any particular tribe, and did not identify ‘good’ with ‘belief in society’.

Unfortunately, many people (including, probably, Kriwaczek) see Nietzsche as advocating a rejection of bourgeois capitalism and conversion to egalitarian socialism (‘Man must create his own values’, etc.).

The cost to the taxpayer of the dysfunctional

I have long wondered whether making pensioners the scapegoats for the increasing expenditure on ‘care’, in order to justify still more taxation (or reduction of pension entitlements), is a misdirection of attention. It seems to me possible that the drain on the taxpayer of the increasing population of the dysfunctional (including low-IQ) population is far greater.

On the one hand, it appears that one third of women and one fifth of men who reach pensionable age go into a ‘care home’, and for an average of about 2 years. So a population of 12m pensioners implies about 6m care-home years. On the other hand, there are allegedly 3.2 million people on disability allowances. Of course a great fuss is made about those who pretend they are unable to walk but are seen climbing ladders, playing tennis, etc.

The number of drink and drug addicts, now counted among the ‘disabled’, is known to have risen dramatically over the last ten years. But the population on disability allowances also includes those who are physically and/or mentally handicapped by the genetic endowment with which they were born, or by accident or illness later in life. These may spend far more than two years in care homes, possibly 30 or 40. Also there are many special needs ‘schools’ for those with low IQs and/or behavioural problems.

The population at special schools, or receiving state-funded tuition at home, is not included in the 3.2 million who receive ‘disability allowances’, as these are only paid to those who are over school age.

The proportion of the genetically dysfunctional among the 3.2 million does not need to be very high for the expense to taxpayers of ‘care’, and the increase in this expense per annum, to exceed that for the population of pensioners.

Modern theories of intelligence

It is difficult to believe how completely what was formerly accepted about IQ has been rejected and replaced by an entirely different set of assumptions.

The people who were positive factors in my early life were no doubt familiar with the view of general ability which was expressed at the time, and with which I was familiar myself from my father's educational books and general conversation. The g factor (g for general) was of predominant importance. If your g factor was high enough you could do anything, that is, the idea was widely accepted that ability was transferable from one area to another. If a person showed very great ability in some area, one might expect them to excel in others. This corresponded to what I observed in my own case. I could see that the mental functions that went into picking up any new subject quickly were much the same. When I got a distinction mark in Further Maths in 3½ days, I thought I was showing that I could also pick up to a high level any subject which I had not previously studied very quickly, so I should not be prevented from taking exams in chemistry, physics, languages or anything else just because I had not been studying them previously.

So, of course, when I started to make breakthroughs in topics formerly associated with parapsychology as soon as I started to know anything about the phenomena involved, I thought I was demonstrating clearly enough that I should not be prevented from entering an academic career in any subject, whether or not I had a paper qualification in it, and whether or not I had prior knowledge of it. Which I probably had not, because what went on in most areas at Oxford was rubbish which one would not want to know much about unless it contributed to some specific purpose, such as passing an exam (i.e. obtaining a qualification for social purposes), or teaching and writing papers in a salaried university career.

The idea that ability shown in one area was indicative of underlying ability which would be likely to show itself in another was, however, far more prevalent when I was very young than it is now. When I was at Oxford and afterwards, any relative success in a particular area was regarded as evidence of some peculiar kind of ‘interest’ in it, which was not supposed to require being set up to carry out well-financed research in it.

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.

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.

The mansion tax

One of the principles of a fair and sensible tax system, says Philip Collins [in The Times], should be to avoid taxing effort and work, and to target "idle wealth", notably property, instead. Yet currently 44% of tax receipts comes from income tax, while a "meagre" 5% is from land and buildings. This is why the Lib Dems' proposed mansion tax is such a good idea. Council tax in its current form is crazily outdated: tax bands are still based on 1991 house prices, and all properties valued above £320,000 in that year now fall in the highest tax band. So in some areas, a £10m mansion will pay the same tax as a one-bed council flat. A graded levy, proportional to the value of the property, would redress that absurd imbalance. It would be easier to collect ("unlike income, property is visible and that makes the tax harder to evade"). It would flatten out the volatility of the housing market. It might even help narrow the gaping north-south divide: 60% of the entire property tax bill would be paid by just four London boroughs. A graded tax on property would make far more economic sense than our present system, and would be much "fairer than taxing hard work". (The Week, 9 April 2011)

There is little ‘work’ done within the present artificial economy. Little is done that an individual would be prepared to pay for with his own money; it is extremely difficult to get anyone to do anything useful for one in a useful way, i.e. so that one’s freedom to do other things is increased, and not decreased by supervising unreliable people and dealing with the problems they create.

‘Work’ which is paid for, directly or indirectly, by taxation (freedom of action which has been confiscated from individuals) is a different matter altogether and should be given another name, such as oppression. Teachers, doctors and social workers do not work, they impose on people what other people wish to impose upon them, and should be recognised as oppressors.

In Philip Collins’s preferred world, oppression, i.e. reducing the freedom of others, is to be recognised as virtuous, so that its perpetrators should retain untaxed any rewards in the way of freedom for themselves which they derive from it.

On the other hand, those who have accumulated freedom in the form of capital assets which might facilitate their being able to ‘work’ meaningfully (i.e. independently of the collective), should have their freedom constantly eroded in order to increase the resources available to reward agents of the collective, who devote their lives to the reduction of freedom.

The ‘fair’ economy should be devoted to the continuous reduction of freedom; this is its only raison d’être, and ‘effort’ which is applied to oppression is ‘virtuous’.

The disappointing ‘genius factory’

In the Sunday Telegraph magazine, Seven, there is a review of a book called The Genius Factory by David Plotz.

Scouting around for a hero to save the human race, few of us would immediately target the world of optometry. But, in 1980, Robert Graham, a millionaire who’d made a fortune from shatterproof spectacle lenses, announced a new project doing just that. His Repository for Germinal Choice would produce a master race of inspirational leaders by matching up high-IQ women with the sperm of Nobel Prize winners and other “geniuses”. (Seven magazine, 3 April 2011, article ‘Whatever happened to the babies bred to be geniuses’ by Lucinda Everett.)

I would not have thought that Nobel Prize winners would provide a particularly suitable population from which to produce either inspirational leaders or exceptionally high IQs. They have above-average IQs to be sure, but also personalities that lead to socially recognised success in their lifetime, which requires an ability to work within the career frameworks and socially acceptable ways of thinking of their time.

“If you compare them [the people born as a result of these matches] with a random sample of Americans of the same age, they’re slightly better, but nothing astounding,” says David Plotz, author of The Genius Factory, a book about Graham’s experiment. (Ibid.)

‘Some haven’t made anything of themselves’, says David Plotz. That is scarcely surprising. Personally, I have encountered every opposition throughout my life so as to make it as difficult as possible for me to do anything that might appear out of the ordinary.

Nevertheless, I have given quite enough evidence of ability in at least some areas to justify support to do more, but I have not received it.

We invite Doron Blake (named in this article), and any other product of this scheme, or anyone who thinks they may have a higher IQ than they might appear to have, to consider coming to join us, the high-IQ ghetto of Great Britain, and join in our cooperative efforts to build up our independent university, with several departments supported by a business empire, until such time as it is able to get sufficiently substantial support to dispense with supporting business activities.

Perhaps Robert Graham would like to come himself, or at least contribute support from a distance.

How not to improve prospects for the able

Ministers want to end the head-start given to rich children, whose parents land them great internships and jobs ‘by having a word down the tennis club with people that matter’, a coalition source said. ... [Mr Clegg said] ‘A country that is socially mobile bases opportunity on your ability and drive, not on who your father’s friends are.’ (Daily Mail 5 April 2011.)

This is certainly not a socially mobile country. Opportunity is not based on ‘ability and drive’ except inversely. In my experience, opportunity is rigorously denied to ability and drive.

One rationalisation that is made use of, in the process of blocking the really able, is blaming parents for pushing the person of ability in some way, as happened to me.

Although my parents were in no position to provide me with contacts, it was the ‘Old Boys’ Network’ that gave me any chances I have ever had in attempting to recover from my ruined ‘education’. The ‘family connections’ involved were not my own, but those of other people, and so they were not very stable or wholehearted, but I would have been even worse off without them.

The Old Boys’ Network might have been more useful to me if not so intimately intertwined with the Old Girls’ Network, which was extremely active in opposing me. In this sense feminism has been a bad thing, and has made it harder for people like me to rise from humble backgrounds - and probably even from wealthy backgrounds. There are now many more statusful and influential women who, in my experience, energetically oppose the rise of a woman with drive and ability.

I have clawed my way up painfully with all gratitude to capitalism (starting with no money) and to the Old Boys’ Network, although it largely turned against me - on account of my drive and ability, perhaps; I might have done better if I had had less of both, to judge from the academically statusful people who blocked my path. The school and university system provided me with nothing but opposition.

[Mr Clegg and Mr Duncan Smith] insisted the strategy is not ‘social engineering’ but about ‘creating a level playing field’. ‘We want a society in which success is based on what you know, not who you know or which family you were born into,’ they said. (Ibid.)

If you want a level playing field, eliminate state education and state-funded universities which stack the odds too heavily against drive and ability.

Your ability to rise should depend on what you know? But one is only supposed to ‘know’ things in which one has a socially recognised ‘qualification’, and it is easy to prevent a person from getting those. And even if what one knows is recognised, what actually matters (or what ought to matter from the point of view of making useful contributions) is whether one is able, or motivated, to do anything with it.

More rewards for the unforethoughtful

A new non-means-tested pension scheme, to start about 2015, is supposed to provide support greater than the current basic state pension and the current means-tested supplement combined, but it will not be available to existing pensioners.

A new flat-rate pension is expected to be worth at least £155 a week, it emerged last night. Ministers will next week press ahead with proposals for the most radical reform of the state pension system since its inception. The new system ... will provide a guaranteed level of support greater than the amount people currently get through the basic state pension and means-tested pension credit. Women, who often do not receive a full state pension as a result of taking time out of work to look after children, will be the biggest winners as a result of the flat-rate payment. But it will only be available to people reaching the state pension age from now, rather than existing pensioners. (Daily Mail, 1 April 2011.)

All existing pensioners must have fulfilled the requirement of making qualifying contributions every year without fail for a large number of years. They have demonstrated conscientiousness and forethought, which are correlated with high IQ. So they are certainly not the sort of people who should be rewarded (according to the modern ideology). This would be against the rule of modern society, which is that resources are to be taken away from sections of the population with above average IQs and bestowed upon a population with a lower average IQ.

The population which is to benefit from a non-means-tested flat-rate pension will, apparently, include many who fail to make the presently-required number of payments, including women who take time off work to have children and do not make voluntary payments to fill the gap. This seems to be a less highly selected population than those who have demonstrated conscientiousness, and could include individuals with a wide range of IQs.

All current pensioners receiving the full basic pension were so conscientious that they never missed out on a qualifying year. They will continue to receive only the basic pension, thus staying well below the poverty line, unless they are eligible for the means-tested supplement, and are prepared to submit themselves to the process of applying for it.

‘The question of ethics with regard to pension policy is one of the issues on which Oxford Forum could be producing fundamental critical analyses if it were provided with adequate funding. We appeal for such funding to enable us to write and publish on this and similar issues, which are currently only discussed in the context of pro-collectivist arguments.’ Charles McCreery, DPhil

State pension: 65% below the poverty line

From time to time someone complains that the state pension, together with the means-tested part, is becoming less and less adequate to cover the most obvious, basic costs of keeping physically alive.

A pension of £10,000 a year will barely cover the basics such as food, fuel and utility bills. It is below the minimum income standard set by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which estimates somebody needs at least £14,400 a year to escape poverty....The full basic state pension is £97.65 a week [i.e. £5078 per annum]. (Daily Mail, 30 March 2011.)

The fact that a means-tested supplement to the pension is available will never be any good to me, or to anyone who is here now, because we would not apply for a means-tested benefit even if we became eligible for it. One simply would never have anything to do with what could only be got by exposing oneself to scrutiny and ‘assessment’.

Throughout the four decades when I paid in voluntary contributions for myself, and encouraged everyone here to do the same, I did so because the eventual pension would be ‘as of right’ and not to any extent means-tested, even if what was paid out ‘as of right’ was at the whim of the government.

I see also from today's Mail that pensioners with savings who go into ‘care homes’ will find themselves paying more, to subsidise those who do not have to pay fees because they do not have savings. That is better, at any rate, than making all pensioners, whether they are in ‘care homes’ or not, pay a tax to the government to subsidise those who go into these ‘homes’, as was at one time suggested.

Making people pay for living in these prison-homes is all right if that is really what they choose for themselves, i.e. provided they cannot be forced to go into a state (or private) death camp against their will, but can be left alone to starve to death at home if they prefer. Unfortunately, I believe this is not the case, and pensioners can easily be ‘sectioned’, or the current equivalent thereof, by a couple of authorised medical sadists (doctors). Even if not legally coerced in this way, I doubt whether many in ‘care homes’ could be said to have chosen what they are being forced to undergo.

Jefferson on debt

Thomas Jefferson (one of the Founding Fathers of the United States) said, in effect, that the first duty of a government was not to let the country get into debt.

I ... place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. (Letter to William Plumer, 1816)

Realistically, one might go further and say that the first duty of a government is to ensure that the country is as rich as possible and also always increasingly so, and that its defences against invasion by other countries are as strong as possible. This will prevent it from being at the mercy of other countries in various ways.

For a time Britain and America were able to improve their position, partly as a result of being relatively difficult to invade. So long as a country is building up its capital it is having to be realistic. But when sufficient margin of advantage has been built up, this gives it the freedom to abandon realism and reduce its resources by setting up social game plans which do not need to have any relation to reality.

For a century now a game plan about social engineering and ‘education’ has been operative and has contributed significantly to the destruction of this country’s resources. Now the country is bankrupt but this does not mean that there is a return to realistic considerations. Defence is the first thing to be axed so that the ‘essential’ games, such as education, medicine, general interference and ‘aid’ to poorer countries, can continue to be played.

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.

Apocalypse Now

Apparently, if meltdown cannot be averted at one of the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan, radioactive material will spew up into the atmosphere and could be carried 200 miles by winds.

This is what happens when the scientific resources which arose from a small ‘pampered’ upper class with a higher than average IQ have become available for the use of massive populations with an egalitarian ideology.

The scientific advances in question were made largely as a result of a few members of the pampered upper class having the freedom to do research which they did not have to justify to anyone else until they had done it.

The ‘privileged’ populations to which they belonged, and their influence on the running of the affairs of their countries, have been continuously, and by now drastically, reduced.

‘Government of the people, by the people, for the people’ was the cry as the Welfare State came on in Britain. Since then the population of the world has vastly increased, countries are run by more or less democratically elected leaders and not by hereditary aristocracies. Many of these countries, using ‘public’ money, can afford to make use of scientific advances to provide what their enormous populations now need (or consider themselves to need) in ever more dangerous ways.

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

Robbing Jeremy to subsidise Wayne

The transfer of resources from populations with higher IQs to those with lower IQs continues. Herewith two examples:

(1) £900 of higher university fees (paid by those who are not ‘poor’ enough) to go to subsidise the ‘poorest’ university students. A population with higher IQs on average will pay more so that a population with lower IQs on average will pay less.

(2) Pensioners receiving Pension Credit (i.e. the means-tested part of the state pension which you get if you have very little capital, whether saved or inherited) to get £120 per annum reduction in their energy bills, the cost of this being borne by other customers of the companies, including (of course) pensioners who do not receive Pension Credit. Again, a population with a higher average IQ will pay more so that a population with a lower average IQ will pay less.

Latest in the destruction of liberty

copy of a letter to a philosopher

There go on being terrible developments which directly damage us, or show underlying attitudes which are hostile to us, but I can squeeze out very little comment – and that in a way that can be, and is, ignored.

(1) Pharmacies: if you go to buy a non-prescription medication you are questioned about who it is for and whether they are taking any other medication. If you go again in a few days’ time to buy more, you are refused. The concept of keeping a stock of basic things so it can be used when necessary is not acceptable, nor is building it up if it has been depleted. Hence the cost of living rises to include going abroad to replenish stocks.

(2) 37% of 16-year-olds cannot obtain a C grade GCSE in maths and English. We know that GCSEs have been massively dumbed down, so is that not evidence that the average IQ of the population has been successfully shifted downwards? No, it is justification for prolonging the school-prison day. 10 hours is suggested, and prison on Saturday mornings as well. And, of course, for those with high IQs, as well as those with low IQs.

Quite horrific. From the time I was 14 onwards, I regarded the school day as a bad experience to be recovered from when I got home in order, just possibly, to do something I could get something out of. With a 10-hour day there would be no possibility even of a glimpse of freedom in the evening.

(3) An onslaught on inheritance tax is anticipated, taking considerations of ‘fairness’ into account. I know it is considered ‘unfair’ that anyone should have anything they can leave to their offspring. But it fact it is ‘unfair’ that those with the greatest assets and probably the highest average IQ should not be able to leave these in entirety to their offspring, who are likely to have the greatest need for protection from the state educational system, and will be most disadvantaged by being exposed to it.

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.

Blank slates with 'interests'

copy of a letter to a voluntary worker

There are fundamental ways in which the modern ideology is against us; in its hatred of capitalism and its hatred of IQ. These are not so independent as they may appear to be and, as I think, arise from the same underlying hatred of centralised psychology.

In a letter to a potential supporter, which is already on my blog, I said that the forces which destroyed my education and my life were the same forces that are destroying civilisation.

The antagonism to exceptional ability is not expressed overtly. However, in fact everything is geared against it.

Consider the extraordinary, old-fashioned attitude expressed by the Reverend Mother who nearly managed to give me a chance in life by letting me take the School Certificate exam at 13. She was about 40 years older than me, so had lived a substantial part of her life in the pre-1945 world.

She was prepared to accept that there was such a thing as innate ability and to draw conclusions about how it would develop at later ages.

So in her testimonial to Oxford she said that she recommended me unreservedly. I was more than merely talented, she said, and certain to contribute significantly to the intellectual life of my time.

I was surprised at her being willing to express such certainty. However good I was at taking exams at an early age, how could you draw conclusions from that about what I would do as an adult? And, after all, I had no particular intention of contributing to anything; I thought that all I wanted to do was to do some research in some science or other, and probably write some books, the latter seeming to be a natural thing to do, although at that time there was nothing in particular that I wanted to express.

But, if you are prepared to trust your perceptions, maybe you can predict quite accurately how a certain type of personality will relate to its social environment in later life.

Attitudes quite different from the Reverend Mother’s were expressed by everyone else, both at the same time and earlier.

My father, fobbing me off from finding out how to take degrees in science subjects, and expressing no doubt the received wisdom of the local educational establishment, would say that I couldn’t tell from what interested me now what I would want to do later. Only the passage of many years could reveal this. Perhaps I would not want to do anything academic at all, or perhaps I would want to write books about the architecture of ancient Greece. So meanwhile I should not do what I thought I wanted to do immediately.

The modern attitude is that there are no individual characteristics, so nothing one does can be regarded as evidence that one might do much more if provided with opportunity. Also there is no longer any respect for the underlying common factor, which used to be called the ‘g’ factor, and which was recognised as the predominant factor in performance in any field.

Nowadays a fictitious factor of ‘interest’ is supposed to be all-important. So nothing I have ever done has to be regarded as justifying giving me opportunity to go ahead in any field on a more adequate scale than the best I ever had in the past, or on any scale at all.

However, as one observes people’s reactions in practice, it seems that any evidence of ability which one gives or has ever given is, subconsciously or otherwise, recognised as a threat that one might do something really significant if not bound hand and foot with barbed wire. So it is a justification for choking off every penny of support from every quarter.