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.

Russian roulette and the impending ban on herbal products

In a recent newspaper there was a piece asserting, ‘you are playing Russian roulette if you take such and such drugs without having them prescribed’.

I thought of adding, ‘and of course you are playing Russian roulette with your life, health and liberty every time you have any contact with a doctor, whether or not this is in order to obtain a prescription’. There is no reason to suppose he is trustworthy – in fact in view of human psychology in general, it is most unlikely that he is well intentioned towards you – and he has the power to deprive you of your liberty and have you subjected to compulsory medication.

* * *

Every time it is made more difficult to obtain medication under your own auspices it is actually making it more difficult, and perhaps impossible, for those who will have nothing to do with the medical ‘profession’ to obtain treatment for themselves. The argument justifying this is that they will be placed under greater pressure to expose themselves to (abuse by) the medical ‘profession’, as that ‘profession’ likes to believe that individuals acting on their own behalf are running greater risks. As usual this is a statistical belief not allowing for individual differences, notably differences in IQ. And it may well be the case that, even on average, the riskiness for anyone of any contact with a socially authorised sadist exceeds that of doing the best he can for himself.

We note, and deplore, that various herbal products will no longer be available from the end of April, as a result of the hostility of the medical ‘profession’ to remedies which can be obtained independently of them. This is absolutely appalling. Apparently it will be necessary to go to a herbalist in person, where the person running the shop may count as an expert, who may prohibit you from having what he does not approve of your having. But no more mail order. So you must either make an arduous journey to subject yourself to a psychologically damaging interview – in principle, as decentralising as an interview with a doctor – or else make an even more arduous journey overseas to a more liberal country where you may be able to make your purchase.

What about elderly people in outlying districts, such as Scotland, dependent on some herbal tincture, now unavailable to purchase by mail order, having to travel down by train from Edinburgh to London to obtain supplies from their usual herbalist?

But the most serious thing, to my mind, is the violation of the principle that a person should not be forced to submit to having decisions about his territory of control made by someone else, doctor or otherwise.

Another principle is also involved, namely that the territory of control within which an individual is free to act legally should be clearly defined. This might be taken as the defining feature of a civilised society. It is nowadays the case (a development that has come in over the course of the last twenty years) that you cannot buy medicines at a chemist’s shop without having your order scrutinised by a ‘pharmacist’, who will assess your order in relation to ‘guidelines’ produced by the manufacturers and which you are not allowed to know. You will not be allowed to have what you want if it seems as if you might be violating some ‘guideline’. E.g. an adult might prefer a strength of preparation made for juveniles, so (it is assumed, by some bizarre logic) he might be about to abuse a child.

This is a terrible development, and means that many forms of medication are now in practice unavailable to those who are strongly opposed to abusive (decentralising) psychological experiences. The situation is about to become even worse, as a result of the impending ban on herbal products.

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.

Medical authoritarianism: opposition starved of funding

copy of a letter to a philosopher

It is really terrible that with the appalling legislation that is constantly being made, which in many cases directly affects one’s own liberty, one can squeeze out so little in the way of criticism, and publish it only on the blog.

Surely some university (yours?) could provide enough to make possible a much greater output of analysis of the principles involved, which one would, if not prevented by lack of support, have been publishing continuously for decades before the whole thing reached so advanced a point.

They are gradually making it impossible for medicines of any kind (including herbal) to be obtained without subjecting oneself to scrutiny by an agent of the collective, even if not a supposedly qualified doctor. So in effect they are making medicines inaccessible to those who will not subject themselves to that kind of scrutiny, whether or not this is because they recognise it as psychologically damaging.

I would suggest that it is the desire to interfere with other people’s autonomy, as well as the more recognised power and profit motives on the part of medical and pharmaceutical professionals, which motivate the development of such restrictions. No one actually cares about the possible harm people may be doing themselves with echinacea, kava kava etc, any more than anyone cares about the much greater harm which may be done to people by heavy-duty chemical or mechanical intervention that is not under the victims’ control. What interventionists do care about is the possibility that the pressure people are under to expose themselves to the latter might be reduced by having access to the former. This kind of infringement of liberty should be regarded as unacceptable, but as usual the academic establishment is on the side of the interventionists.

Alternative views, not currently represented in academia, should be given publicity, but this is unlikely to happen unless we are supported. £500K per annum is a small part of the running costs of most academic institutions, but if we had even that much, it would enable us to be more productive than is possible at present, and with less pressure on our health and well-being.

We could use any funding not only to support ourselves but to employ domestic, bookkeeping, caretaking and secretarial staff, all of which we badly need.

Genes: another excuse for interference

The Daily Mail (and no doubt others as well) has got the idea that some health and behavioural problems, such as drug-taking, may be genetic. This could be taken as a counter-argument against intervening because there are ‘unfair’ differences in health between different sections of the population. However, it appears it is just as likely to be taken as a reason for more intervention. Thus the abusive medical ‘profession’ can indulge in further interference; perhaps sterilisation will be proposed, especially of high-IQ people whose drug-taking is the result of living in so hostile a society.

Suppose it is only health, and not behavioural, problems? ‘How can a clean-living 33-year-old have a heart attack?’ asks the Daily Mail. Oh, it’s in his genes. Therefore (the argument goes) the iniquitous medical ‘profession’ has an excuse for more ‘tests’, and a lot more of taxpayers’ money can be spent on ‘testing’, and possibly keeping alive for longer (at taxpayers’ expense), people who might otherwise not live so long.

So first you increase the percentage of genetic deficiencies in the population (as previously discussed), and then you can justify even more taxation to pay for widespread ‘testing’ and ‘treatment’, which of course involves abusive interaction with doctors, and so the development of an even larger population of medical abusers being paid out of taxpayers’ money.

Heart UK advises that children of people with [familial hypercholesterolaemia] should be tested by the time they are ten. ... but it can be difficult to distinguish ... experts are calling for genetic testing to be more widely available ... it was for FH patients that statins were developed in the 1970s.

‘Developed’ by biochemists salaried by taxpayers’ money, probably with university appointments, working in laboratories funded by taxpayers’ money.

Analysing the distortions involved in this is complicated (distortions of this kind could and should be the subject of at least one book), but the point is that the research done is affected by being filtered through a socialist system. The research is not paid for directly by individuals, or carried out by those with independent means, but financed by charities (which are only to a limited extent supported by individuals contributing their own money) and by ‘universities’.

Even if the institutions carrying out research in those areas receive some of their support from corporations rather than the state, those corporations are operating under significant social pressure to give support to the ideology which exists to take money (freedom) away from above-average individuals, and to bestow it, in the form of oppressive ‘benefits’, on those who are below the average on some measure or other. Pharmaceutical companies are, in any case, deriving their profits from an artificial market, since most drugs are not purchased directly by individuals, but prescribed by doctors.

There is no solution but the abolition of the NHS, the abolition of the medical ‘profession’, and the abolition of state-financed research.

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.

Population growth and ideological dominance

In David Willetts’s book The Pinch (Atlantic Books, 2010), it is suggested that baby boomers might feel an idealistic satisfaction in accepting low pensions (or high taxes) for the sake of future generations.

Communism (or its modern equivalent, egalitarian collectivism) is the third world religion, to my knowledge, to appreciate the importance of maximising population growth as a factor in its struggle to become dominant over other ideologies.

Catholicism forbade divorce and artificial methods of birth control, such as condoms. It is starting to weaken its line on the latter, as well as advocating ‘social justice’. Christianity is on the way out, and these are expressions of its defensive retreat.

Islam continues to advocate polygamy, which is probably a good way of encouraging population growth. It used to be quite explicit about the importance of increasing population for armies to fight in the holy world-conquering wars of the future.

The new world religion of communism appears to be doing well in this area. Fifty years ago, staying at the country cottage of Mary Adams of the BBC, fellow-traveller, and friend of Dame Janet Vaughan, the Principal of Somerville, I read the propaganda storybooks that she had got from communist Russia for the enlightenment of English speakers. I remember at least one story about old people willingly shortening their lives by foregoing food so that there would be as much as possible for young people of reproductive age.

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.

Sharing the pain

Motorists hit by the soaring cost of petrol could be spared the 1p a litre rise in fuel duty due to come into force in April. Sharing the pain of rising oil prices between the Treasury and the motorist through the ‘fair fuel stabiliser’ is also still being considered, it was confirmed yesterday. Cancelling the 1p tax increase would cost the Treasury around £600million in the next financial year at a time of acute belt-tightening in the public finances. But Chancellor George Osborne is planning to help cash-strapped motorists either by scrapping the rise or by reforming the fuel tax system through the stabiliser. (Daily Mail, 28 January 2011.)

Sharing the pain between the Treasury and the motorist? What does that mean but sharing it between pensioners and younger people, whether taxpayers or on benefits? Or, actually, sparing those on benefits from any pain at all, and making sure that it is only pensioners, university graduates and the middle class (so-called) in general who are squeezed until the pips squeak. If the Treasury subsidises motorists at all, it will have to take the money to do so away from some other sector of the population. We know that pensioners are the preferred milch cows (from, among other things, David Willetts’s book The Pinch).

The state can alter the terms when it wishes

Of course all discussion about pensions these days is about who really ‘needs’ or ‘deserves’ anything. Of what relevance is it that some decades ago state pensions were supposed to be determined by contributions? Why should retrospective legislation matter anyway, nobody thinks it does now.

Such issues in themselves could easily take a book to deal with.

They like to increase state pensions, if at all, by reference to the CPI (Consumer Price Index) rather than the RPI (Retail Price Index). The RPI is more realistic than the CPI, but not much, because it leaves out much of what is really essential, such as servants, and going abroad to get things which in this country can only be got by exposing oneself to abuse by the medical ‘profession’. (A live-in housekeeper now costs £75K per annum.)

However, what makes the CPI even less realistic is that the cost of housing, renting or mortgage, is stripped out. Perhaps it is thought justifiable to use this index because ‘housing benefit’ is available to those who are prepared to expose themselves to the scrutiny of agents of the collective, and are able to prove to their satisfaction that they have no saved or inherited capital, etc.

Whenever a ‘benefit’ is provided by the state on abusive terms it can be ‘stripped out’ from the supposed ‘cost of living’ – meaning cost of keeping physically alive without being able to do anything.

So the cost of ‘medicine’ can be stripped out by those in charge of pension legislation, as well as ‘housing’, because you are supposed to find the NHS an acceptable substitute for what you might previously have been able to get by paying for it.

When the state pension became means-tested, the part you had of right, with no questions asked, started to fall in real terms, even more than it had been doing. In effect this meant that the ‘basic’ state pension itself became means-tested, since those pensioners who qualified for the new ‘benefit’ – pension credit etc. were also eligible for other ‘benefits’. So, in the eyes of those in charge of pension legislation, there was no need to consider, as part of the cost of living of un-means-tested pensioners, anything which they could get as a ‘benefit’ if they became ‘means-tested’ pensioners who qualified for other ‘benefits’.

The impact of increased fuel costs on pensioners is another cost which the pension legislators can disregard because those pensioners who qualify for the supplementary pension are able to go on the ‘social tariff’. (See earlier post.)

Another fuel-cost reducing ‘benefit’ for which those who qualify for certain other benefits are eligible, including those qualifying for the means-tested part of the pension, is a loft insulation allowance to cover the cost of insulating your house so that your energy consumption, and hence fuel bills, will be reduced. But those who only receive the ‘basic’ (non-means-tested) part of the state pension do not qualify for this.

The state pension was the only ‘benefit’ available ‘as of right’ once the qualifying contributions had been paid, and no doubt this fact was resented, and the intention was and is still to let it ‘wither on the vine’.

When the Crossman Scheme was introduced in 1970, the aim was supposed to be to provide a state pension of about half the average national wage. The average national wage is now about £25K, and if Charles McCreery and I were each receiving half of it, we would have £25K between us with which to continue working towards setting up our independent institution.

It would certainly grease the wheels better than the £10K we now receive between us, although it would not go far towards setting up and running an academic institution, in which to commence our proper forty-year academic careers.

When I was at the Society for Psychical Research in the early sixties, ‘graduated contributions’ were deducted from my tiny salary and I was sent pieces of paper telling me that I would receive so many pence a year extra (earnings-related) pension one day.

This certainly gave the impression that the eventual pension was supposed to be comparable with that provided by a commercial contributory scheme, as did the fact that businesses could only ‘contract out’ of the state pension system by setting up a really generous and well-run alternative.

What does it matter what impression was given, or even what statements were made? The idea lapsed long ago that an individual needed to know what was legal and what was not, so that he could plan his affairs in view of his own interests as he conceived them to be.

Arthur Seldon, discussing a 1957 report entitled ‘National Superannuation’, says:

The new graduated pension was not designed to have a financial fund, as those on which occupational schemes are based. Then what was to be the pensioner’s guarantee? ‘... confidence can be placed in the survival in perpetuity of a government in Britain.’ From a political scientist of Mr. Crossman’s stature, this is a claim that not everyone will accept ... ‘The State,’ said Aneurin Bevan in 1954, ‘is a sovereign body and can alter the terms of the contract when it wishes without asking anybody. It did in 1931, and it has done it over and over again.’ (Arthur Seldon, The Great Pensions ‘ Swindle’, 1970, pp. 67-68.)

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.

A Hero of Our Time

From time to time, pieces of research are published by universities, or statements are made by journalists, suggesting that compassion is a fundamental piece of psychology, hardwired into human behaviour, and that ‘individualism’ overrides the fundamental human need for group solidarity. At the same time, modern novels frequently portray people behaving badly towards one another, although the authors are usually identified with left-wing ideology.

A remarkably realistic portrayal of human psychology is found in a novel by Mikhail Lermontov, a pre-communist Russian writer. Lermontov was probably himself moving towards a socialist position, having sufficiently offended the Tsar by his criticisms of conditions of living in Russia to be sent into exile in the Ukraine. Lermontov was clearly IQ-ful as well as upper-class, having lived on his grandmother’s estate as a boy and made use of the extensive library to read widely, in English, French and German, as well as Russian.

In his novel A Hero of Our Time, the narrator is a Russian officer who, as he passes from place to place, needs at one stage to take lodgings in a certain house in a very poor and rundown village on the seashore. In this house, which has a bad reputation, he finds living an old lady, a blind orphan boy who has been taken in and supported (presumably for his usefulness in fetching and carrying, in spite of his blindness) and a fey and sexy young woman (described as a ‘daughter of the sea’).

The Russian officer becomes curious and inquisitive about what is going on, and discovers that the household is engaged in, and supported by, a contraband operation which involves sea-borne visits from the young woman’s boyfriend. The woman becomes afraid that the Russian officer knows too much and may inform on them, so she tells her boyfriend (Yanko), and the whole smuggling operation breaks up. This is the final conversation between Yanko, his girlfriend, and the blind boy, overheard by the Russian officer in hiding (my translation):

“Listen, blind boy!”said Yanko “Tell ... that I won’t work for him any more. Things have turned out badly and he won’t see me any more. And tell him, if he had paid me better for my hard work, then I might not have left him. He will not be able to find anyone as intrepid as me.”

After a silence Yanko continued: “She [the young woman] is coming with me, she can’t stay here. Tell the old woman from me that it is time for her to die, she has lived a long time, one must know when it is time to end one’s life. She won’t see either of us again.”

“And me?” said the blind boy, in a voice that harrowed me.

“And what are you to me?” was the reply. ... he put something in the boy’s hand and said, “Well, buy yourself a cake.”

“Only that?” said the blind boy.

“What more could you expect?”

I heard coins ring on the stones. The blind boy did not pick them up ... the boat vanished across the sea ... I started to hear what sounded like a person crying, and realised that it was in fact the blind boy crying, and crying, crying ... I was deeply moved.

Then the narrator of the story gets his chance to leave the village where he has been forced to stay. He never knows what became of the old woman or the blind boy. The episode concludes with some disclaimers on the lines of “What business is it of mine to concern myself with human happiness and misfortune ... What fate threw me into a group of honest smugglers whom I obstructed and disturbed like a stone thrown into quiet waters?”

It seems to be a paradoxical feature of modern literature that modern writers, fully aware of the modern socialist ideology which surrounds them, and apparently in complete sympathy with it, simultaneously present human nature in their works of fiction as quite the opposite of compassionate. Their awareness of the unpleasant realities of human psychology seems not to affect their commitment to a world view which depends on believing otherwise, nor indeed to their implicit demand that others commit to it too. In fact, this may appear as a psychological syndrome, in which apparently incompatible features arise from the same underlying motivation.

But Lermontov, in spite of any incipient socialist ideas which he may have had, was living in a pre-communist society. So the psychological syndrome involved in his describing human interactions with such cynical realism was not exactly the same.

Brief analyses such as these should be being expanded into research papers, but this is unlikely to happen unless Oxford Forum is supported.

Local oppressors: so much better

The Mail led the way in highlighting how NICE, the Government’s drugs rationing body, was denying life-prolonging treatments to cancer patients purely on the grounds of cost. ... Of course, the NHS does not have unlimited funds, and on occasion patients must be told No – however heartbreaking this may be. But these decisions must be taken by doctors who know the person best. Not by bureaucrats sat in regional offices. (‘One more injustice’, editorial page, Daily Mail, 21 November 2010. )

And how is that supposed to help? Instead of an explicit universal prohibition, a subjective decision will be made by ‘your’ doctor who has his own reasons for knowing how much he will enjoy depriving you of something you will really suffer from not having. He may know that you are middle-class, send your children to non-state schools, have a high IQ, and so on. Just how much each individual doctor hates a particular characteristic is variable, but I do not see any advantage in that.

Better to have a blanket prohibition based on some objective criterion, however arbitrary, and to have to pay to get the refused treatment if you do not qualify. You are over the age of 57, or you are over 6 foot tall? Then you do not qualify for the free medication, and can only get it by paying for it. Actually it is quite likely that many of those refused the treatment would be willing and able to do so, as they would be more likely to fall into the category of bourgeois over-achievers or intellectuals, who are more likely to be refused things than those who are regarded as acceptably down and out.

There is certainly no advantage to the individual in having decisions about himself made by members of the local community who think they know him well, compared to having them made at a distance by bureaucrats. It is not that the latter are likely to be well-intentioned towards him, but that the damage which is intended can be more accurately directed by members of the local community, including one’s ‘own’ doctor.

In my own case, I was prevented from taking advantage of the legal possibility of taking exams (including degrees) before the ‘normal’ age, by the hostility of the local community, including some relatives, who knew too much about my father and myself.

The most I ask of society is that it should express the will of the majority in a blind and imperfect way. That would at least give one a sporting chance of survival. (Celia Green, The Decline and Fall of Science, 1976, p. 173)

A very poor deal

The Great Pensions ‘Swindle’ by Arthur Seldon (*) was published in 1970. I have never found this book at all easy to read, as Arthur Seldon was himself a politician and finds various arguments for and against different forms of taxation and redistribution far more meaningful than I do, as they depend on many unexamined assumptions.

However, in the course of discussing some past debates, he draws attention to two fundamental weaknesses in the state pensions system.

(1) That universal pensions could not be affordable at the proposed level if the annual out-payments had to be taken from taxation on a year-by-year basis, i.e. if no cumulative fund were built up to provide a capital basis, out of the income of which pension payments would be made.

Beveridge, in 1941, said at one point:

“It seemed to me right to make pensions as of right ... genuinely contributory; for pensions there must be a substantial period of contribution.”

The “substantial period” he recommended in the Report was 20 years. This advice [i.e. to build up a fund] was ignored. (p. 58)

People were misled, at least initially, into believing that they were paying into a contributory scheme, and that what they eventually received would reflect what they paid in.

However, Arthur Seldon’s book makes it clear that this was never in line with the ideas of many politicians. Should people be able to get better state pensions by contributing more? That was a controversial idea even then, and by now surely few would support it openly.

(2) The other way in which the state pension scheme was always a swindle (on the electorate by the government) was that the contributions paid in would have been enough to pay for much higher pensions. People are seldom aware of the potency of compounding interest, and if money is invested and the interest ploughed back as increments to the original capital, over a period of years the original capital is multiplied by a factor which is surprising to the unsophisticated.

I have done a rough calculation of this effect, and it comes out that if you save one tenth of your salary (assumed constant for simplicity) for 40 out of 45 years, compounded at 5%, then at the end you will have saved a capital sum capable of generating (at 5%) about 75% of your salary in perpetuity. By contrast, what the state currently takes in as National Insurance contributions is well in excess of 10% of people’s salaries, whereas the basic state pension it pays out is equal to only about 20% of the average national wage.

In 1970, Seldon’s comments on the Crossman scheme which was then proposed, included the following:

The only thing that is clear is that most people would be paying, as tax-payers and consumers, more than they think they would as employees. Young people especially will be paying in contributions for 30 or 40 years that could have brought them really high pensions if invested at high yields of interest. (p. 78)

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.

*Arthur Seldon, The Great Pensions ‘Swindle’, Tom Stacey Books, 1970

The pensions swindle and euthanasia

The Daily Mail is working on the idea that we should not want to live beyond a certain age and should be pleased for the qualified sadists (medical doctors) to do us in when they think fit. Cilla Black does not want to live beyond the age of 75, it is said, and now Max Hastings comes out with ‘Thanks to medical science, most are in better shape than any previous generation of our age.’

The idea is, no doubt, that it is on account of ‘medical science’ that one in six will become a centenarian. If I get there it will certainly not be on account of 'medical science, as I have always shunned the medical ‘profession’, which has become ever more stupid, unprincipled and sadistic over my lifetime (as I gather from accounts of other people’s experiences).

When IQ was admitted to exist, it was also admitted that high IQ was correlated with longevity, whether as a result of genetic factors or because people with a realistic and forethoughtful approach to life were more likely to avoid the hazards that often led to death at earlier ages.

Most of us would say that we shall not want to continue if we lose our minds: it is tragic to see very old people who have lost contact with reality vegetating for years in the lounge of a care home, head drooping or staring blankly into space. The irony is that when we reach this state, we become incapable of making rational decisions about our own future or anything else.

Better by far (in my opinion) to have no ‘care homes’ at all, at least none financed by the state. What happened before the onset of the Welfare State was that if a person became too dysfunctional to support himself, and had not enough savings of his own or supportive relatives, then he succumbed to adverse conditions and was found dead at home or on the streets without having fallen into the clutches of the medical ‘profession’. Conscious or subconscious motivation of his own may have gone into his failure to provide for and protect himself, but he was not, on the whole, exposed to having decisions made for him by doctors concerning whether it was in his interests to go on living.

No doubt there is a hidden link to the pensions swindle here. Governments do not wish to go on paying the pensions that people were promised, so they need people to agree to euthanasia. Journalists such as Max Hastings, or entertainers such as Cilla Black, must therefore give a strong hint to the population that it would be sensible to let doctors pull the plug when deemed appropriate. They must provide a (notional) example to others by saying they might choose this option for themselves, though they need not necessarily stick to their suggestion when it actually comes to it. I believe it is what modern politicians and economists would call ‘a nudge’.

After two-thirds of a century of Welfare State ideology more people than ever before are reaching the age of 100. They live longer because, among other things, they are provided with money to buy food whether they could otherwise pay for it themselves or not, and medical treatment for all diseases, including obesity and alcoholism, whether or not they could or would pay for it themselves. Also they are prevented by legislation from exposing themselves to various risks which they might not themselves have avoided. And so they are at less of a disadvantage in comparison with the few who would live to a hundred anyway on account of high IQs and/or realism and forethought. Doesn’t that sound fair?

But then, having protected the dysfunctional from the consequences of their accident-prone ways of life, there is too large a population to be provided for out of taxation, so all must have their life-span curtailed, including those who are still functional and would have been so anyway. What could be fairer than that?

From cradle to grave – the social workers will be waiting to whip away your baby if they think there is a risk you will not look after it in the right way; the doctors will be waiting to put you down if they think you would prefer not to go on living, or would prefer not to if you had the right attitudes.

Socialism is incompatible with individual liberty. Capitalism alone protects it.

How the hell can I go on holiday?

In connection with the previous post, my colleague Fabian has commented to me that nowadays, even if someone felt as I did about the hopelessness of their position in being deprived of an academic career, they would feel too inhibited to admit it, perhaps even to themselves.

In fact I myself wished not to violate social taboos, but I was certainly very strongly aware of the hopelessness of my position as the dominant and overriding consideration in my own mind, and it is not realistic to give accounts of what I said, in these early situations, which often had such far-reaching consequences, without mentioning my own mental processes.

I was always having to find alternative ways of replying to questions without breaking the social taboo. So when Lady McCreery asked about holidays, I might, if a direct and natural reply had been possible, have said, ‘How the hell do you think I can go on a holiday at all, when I have been thrown out without a usable qualification, I have no tolerable way of earning money or of drawing income support (as I would not be supposed to be qualified for any job that I could accept) and my college will give me no support in any plan to get a qualification or to get appointed to do anything that I really could do, whether supposedly “qualified” or not?’

So my reply about curling up with a book on theoretical physics has to be seen as an attempt to say something that was true, but not too violating of social taboos, and which would probably have been true even if I was on a suitable academic career track. I never did set much store by changes of scene per se, and the holiday I remember as having got quite a lot out of when I was eleven had included the reading of H G Wells’s Outline of History, and a popular introduction to atomic physics.

If I had been in a normal life I might have considered going on holiday for some particular variation of intellectual input, and because other people considered it a natural thing to do, probably something like the summer school at Grenoble University which I had been prevented from going to when I was 15. So I might have been able to reply to Lady McCreery, ‘Oh, I usually like going to France or Germany, but I might go to Italy next year.’

As for Lady McCreery’s description of me as ‘patronising, offhand and humourless’, to the extent this was not just projection, whatever in my manner seemed to her to support such a description may well have arisen from my awareness of my horrific position, in which I certainly had no social identity. My position was exceedingly grim, and to the extent that my outlook came across, she might easily describe it as humourless. Comfortable or cheerful it certainly was not.

Similarly, when I met Charles’s sister Sarah, if I had had any normal social identity by which to be introduced, I might have avoided the humorous self-dramatisation. As it was, what I said was true of the underlying realities of my position, and would have been so even if Charles had been able to introduce me as an Oxford professor of physics, chemistry or anything else. In that case, there would have been no need for me to give any further account of myself.

Since the time the events described took place, I have observed many other illustrations of the type of behaviour referred to (in fact it has been a constant feature of my life ever since I was thrown out), and I have concluded that it is part of a general syndrome. People seem not to notice your bad position, talk to you in ways which call for responses from you that are incompatible with that position, and then express surprise or contempt when you do not make adequate responses of the required kind – or, when you make efforts to do so without entirely denying the facts of your life, they mock those efforts. It is pragmatically useful to assume that they are not really unaware of the underlying realities, but that they are enjoying the fact that they can put you under socially sanctioned pressure to distort yourself, and can denounce you to others if you fail to do so.

An MP and the Education Minister: joking about my position

With regard to the events described by Charles McCreery in the previous post:

I always felt that I was in a most unnatural position of intolerable deprivation in having been thrown out of Oxford with no recognition of my need to get back onto a normal university career track (meaning normal for me) as soon as possible.

And so when anyone started to talk to me as if getting to know me, or even interacting with me about something, I was always surprised at their failing to recognise the obvious, and not saying ‘What a terrible position you are in! We must find a way of helping you to get back.’

When they did not show any signs of recognition and instead talked to me about holidays, or criticised the way I interacted with people, I was always shocked and amazed, although I said nothing. I was not in a normal life, and until I was, nothing like holidays, or concealing my awareness of people’s hostility towards me (I was called ‘tactless’ for failing to make my antagonists sound sweetly reasonable), could be expected of me. A down-and-out living in a packing case cannot be expected to welcome visitors to tea in the same way as a person living in a semi-detached with lace curtains.

And then again, if a person is in a terrible position so that their only chances depend on someone being prepared to make an exception in their favour, surely responsible influential people would be especially careful not to say damaging things about that person. Obviously the ‘Celia of the universe’ slander, like so many others, could only be damaging to any chance I had of a benefactor recognising the anomaly of my outcast position.

Charles refers to his conversation with Norman St John Stevas in the presence of the then Education Minister – just the sort of person that I thought should be interested in hearing about how so anomalous a situation could have arisen, and feel it his business to remedy it. But here was Norman talking about me, in front of him, as being associated with a ludicrous slander that distanced me from any possibility of being regarded as an exceptionally able, but otherwise perfectly normal and respectable, academic who was only prevented by an egregious anomaly from re-entering a suitable career at a senior level.

A student of the universe

The following is an account which my colleague Dr Charles McCreery has sent to the prospective biographer of his father, the late General Sir Richard McCreery, which describes two further episodes concerning my interactions with his family.

I attach a copy of a piece which Dr Green blogged recently which refers to her first (and virtually only) meeting with my mother.

This occasion dates to a time when, as I have already mentioned, far from cutting myself off from my family, I was attempting to include them in my chosen line of work, and before I had realized that these attempts were futile, indeed counter-productive, inasmuch as they were used by my family to generate fresh canards of a destructive kind.

In this instance my mother emerged from the meeting (I had left them alone together) looking triumphant, and saying: ‘I sized her up immediately: completely humourless’.

In fact it might be argued that it was my mother who had displayed the sense of humour failure on this occasion. During the interview she had asked my colleague where she went for her holidays. Dr Green had not been able to afford a holiday for years; or perhaps I should say that, having been driven out from Somerville without a research grant, she had chosen to save every possible pound from her small salary from the Society for Psychical Research towards being able to buy a house in Oxford.

To avoid making my mother appear tactless, Celia had replied to the effect that her idea of a holiday was to curl up with a book on theoretical physics.

My mother reported this exchange to me with apparent glee, as if it supported her ‘humourless’ assessment.

My family apparently suffered a similar sense of humour failure following my sister Sarah's first (and, again, virtually only) meeting with Dr Green. The latter is given to making layered or provocative remarks of a would-be humorous nature to people she considers open to such things, and on seeing my sister for the first time she felt, rightly or wrongly, that my sister fell into this category. Accordingly, she introduced herself to my sister by saying, ‘I am a student of the universe from Oxford.’ Both elements of this statement were true on a literal level, since my colleague specialized in theoretical physics during her first (maths) degree. It could, of course, also be taken on a more philosophical level, if someone was so minded.

This utterance became transmuted by my family into something not at all humorous, and seriously damaging, namely ‘I am Celia of the universe’. This slanderous version proved to have much more staying power than the real one. Decades later (in 1987), I met Norman St. John-Stevas (as he then was) while he and the then Secretary of State for Education and Science, Kenneth Baker (now Lord Baker of Dorking), were queueing outside the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford to vote in the election for Vice-Chancellor of the university. Norman came out with: ‘And how is Celia of the universe?’ This was despite the fact that Dr Green and I had met Norman on more than one occasion in the intervening years and we had both corrected him in person as to what Celia had actually said. Clearly the risible and slanderous implications of the distorted version had far greater appeal.

As my colleague remarks in another of her published aphorisms: ‘The mature person never tells the truth when a lie will do.’(1)

(1) Green, C., The Decline and Fall of Science, Hamish Hamilton, 1976, p. 169.

Civilisation and capitalism

Capitalism is often referred to pejoratively, as in this quotation from popular author Oliver James.

Selfish Capitalism, much more than genes, is extremely bad for your mental health.

Oliver James is an Old Etonian who has managed to succeed in modern society, but who does nothing to help us, who have been less fortunate than himself.

Last year my colleague Dr Charles McCreery attended an Old Etonian reunion dinner at Blenheim Palace at which Oliver James was supposed to be present, although Charles did not see him there. Charles was attempting to raise awareness of our situation among the Old Etonian population, but neither Oliver James nor any other of them has taken any interest in finding out about our needs for help of all kinds.

* * *

Civilisation does not arise because anyone wants or appreciates it. It is an unstable and accidental by-product of commercialism, superimposed on a population which has a long-standing property-owning (capitalistic) hereditary aristocracy. Until the commercialism arises, the aristocrats do not arouse hostility on a significant level, because their abilities are fully engaged in stressful and excoriating activities, such as defending and running their estates, fighting in wars, etc.

With the advent of commercialism, however, some of them start to be free to use their abilities in ways to which they are well-suited, which they are getting something out of, and which may lead to extensions in the understanding of reality, such as scientific enquiry, exploration or composing music. This arouses hostility because they are seen as ‘too happy’ (as I was before I was prevented from taking the School Certificate exam at 13) and they are then described as ‘leisured’ and ‘idle’.

The next stage is that democracy sets in, partly on account of the idealistic respect for individuality which the ‘privileged’ elite has started to develop. Unfortunately, this transmission downwards of aristocratic values, such as self-determination, means that the incipient civilisation is doomed. Instead of liberating autonomy-loving instincts, the extension of freedom liberates destructive impulses. The possibility of owning property on a scale sufficient to provide freedom of action is rightly recognised as the most important thing to be destroyed, and society heads back to a state of communistic tribalism.

This is the inevitable result of democracy; the majority of people have no interest in maintaining a situation in which at least a few people have the freedom (i.e. capital) to use their abilities in a way which suits them, so capitalism and thus individual liberty become eroded, as is now happening. This is in spite of the fact that a relatively civilised society was in some ways advantageous to the general population.

* See here for an interesting twist on James’s affluenza theory.

The absurdity of the ‘social tariff’

Recently there was a proposal that the winter fuel allowance, paid to those over 65, should be effectively means-tested by being paid only to those who already qualified for some other means-tested benefit. Those receiving the basic state pension, but not the supplementary income support, would stop receiving it, thus noticeably increasing the disadvantage of not qualifying for the supplement.

Probably this was considered too obvious a form of means-testing, so this benefit (winter fuel allowance) was continued as payable to all over a certain age, regardless of their assets. But what has now been surreptitiously introduced is another form of energy-related concession, which will (effectively) be means-tested: the so-called ‘social tariff’ of the energy companies.

One is now informed that if one is over 60 one ‘should be better off’ on the ‘social tariff’, though one can only find out if one is eligible by ringing up one of the energy companies. So now, presumably, there will be less need for pensions to be adequate, since all who cannot ‘afford’ energy will not have to pay for it. This will therefore probably drop out of the ‘cost of living’ used to assess pensioners’ needs, in the same way that the cost of healthcare has dropped out of it, since you are supposed to regard the ‘free’ NHS as an acceptable alternative to medication for which you might formerly have wished to pay.

No, the newspaper says, if you are on the ‘social tariff’ the supplier will not worry if you are late paying your bill but (although the newspaper does not say so) they may of course notify the social services to see if you would not be better off in a ‘care home’. As, of course, they might when you make your first telephone call to them to find out whether you are eligible for the ‘social tariff’ .

When the state pension started to be effectively ‘means-tested’, and to ‘wither on the vine’, I thought that however far it fell below one’s real needs it would at least have to preserve some relationship to the cost of the most basic physical needs. But no. Never underestimate the cunning of governments.

How about food and clothing suppliers being made to set up ‘social tariffs’ as well, so that the cost of food and clothing will vary according to the means of the purchaser?

Then it would not matter if the basic state pension is clearly inadequate to pay for the costs of living in food and clothing, as well as gas and electricity.

More on the state's infidelity

I wrote previously about what the government has now announced it will not pay to Christine and Fabian by delaying the age for receiving pensions, although they are both already fully paid up (or very nearly so) after decades of hard work in making qualifying contributions out of a low and often non-existent income without ever getting into debt. Only of very recent years has the threat arisen of changing the pensionable age from that which was known and expected throughout those decades.

Of course, old-fashioned private pension schemes could not get away with breaking their contracts in this way. Perhaps modern ones can if the government legislates that they must. The government itself, of course, can claim that it cannot afford not to without damaging its provisions to the real needs of foreign aid, the medical and educational oppressions, and social interference of every kind. It would not do at all if someone were rewarded for conscientiousness in making voluntary contributions by getting a pension of greater value than the benefits which could be claimed by the unforethoughtful. You might call that elitism.

Recently a new pension scheme was proposed which would not depend at all on contributions made, but only on some years of residence in the country. Those who had made contributions under the old scheme would receive their pensions under the old system, which would be less.

With a bit of delayed reaction time, it started to be suggested that it might not be fair for those who had paid contributions to get less than those who had not, and I think it has now been reluctantly agreed that those who had paid into the old system would get their pensions upgraded to the level of the new system.

The changing face of paternalism

In my piece about Christmas Benefits, a lady receiving benefits is quoted as saying that if the government gives her money she has a right to spend it as she pleases and should not be criticised for doing so. Evidently there is sufficiently general sympathy with this view of the matter for many people like herself to continue receiving similar forms of support with no detailed enquiry into the use that is made of them. (I am not suggesting detailed enquiries should be being made. Apart from anything else, it would be prohibitively expensive. In principle I agree that if the state gives an individual enough taxpayers’ money for him or her to save out of, that is the individual’s business. The problem is that it is not realistic to go on paying benefits on this scale.)

The attitudes which I have encountered throughout my life, and certainly from the time when I was prevented from taking the School Certificate exam at 13, have been diametrically opposed to the permissiveness and generosity which is shown to people in the position of the Christmas Benefits lady.

When I was 21, thrown out at the end of the ruined education with no usable qualification, I found that I could get a research grant from Trinity College, Cambridge to do a postgraduate degree, which I hoped would get me back on to an academic career track. Rosalind Heywood at the Society for Psychical Research, presumably not yet in focus on my unacceptable outlook, and thinking of me as of any other impoverished young student, suggested at that early stage that I should apply to the Parapsychology Foundation in New York for supplementary funding, to which she would evidently give her influential support. I remember discussing with W H Salter and Sir George Joy in the office how much I should apply for, and Salter said in a throwaway manner, ‘Americans always give enormous grants. See what you think you really need and apply for twice as much.’

In fact I saved money throughout the period of my postgraduate degree at Oxford (in spite of taking more taxis than other people would have done) by making the most economical arrangements possible, and continuing with the policy which I was already applying to my paltry SPR salary of regarding only half of my income as available for spending.

At various stages during my postgraduate studies, Rosalind became suspicious and tried to force me to give an exhaustive account of how every penny was disposed of. I was not very good at making up an acceptable cover story. I am sure that many students spent a lot more than I did, but I was not in focus on their most expensive activities, and most of what I spent the money on was unacceptable.

Eventually, at the end of the Trinity College grant, it became necessary to obtain funding for the next stage. I did not conceal from my chief supporters, Sir George and Salter, that I had saved a couple of thousand pounds. Both of them, at different times, appeared shocked at my saving money, but the income from my capital was clearly trivial, so Salter, overcoming his horror and dismay, filled in ‘negligible private income’ on application forms for funding.

However, no funding at all could be obtained from any source, and all prospective support broke down. So I was forced to finance myself and any associates without any outside funding, and without being eligible for ‘income support’ since, as I have explained before, I could not apply for ‘social security’ as I was not considered qualified for any job that I could have accepted.

The rigorous withholding of support continued for years, in fact until the present day, and I suppose the idea was that I would be forced to run down my small capital until even that tiny piece of independence was destroyed.

At the end of the seven-year covenant from Cecil King, Lady Hardy (wife of Sir Alister Hardy and sister of the Bursar of Somerville) asked a friend of mine what we were going to do when the King money ended. Would we be leaving the house in the Banbury Road? ‘Well, no,’ my friend said. ‘We will be continuing to live there as before.’ And, my friend said, Lady Hardy’s face dropped unmistakeably, which implies that Lady Hardy was anticipating as a pleasurable experience my being thrown out on the streets without a salary or a roof over my head. Being deprived of this anticipated pleasure was enough of a disappointment for this to show visibly in her expression.

One may contrast this situation with Miss Bookey’s apparent pleasure and enjoyment of my joyful happiness on having the opportunity to get ahead in the Lower Fifth.

At the end of the King money, one might have expected senior academics, enquiring into the position of much younger people attempting to do progressive research in a situation of great difficulty, to be doing so in order to examine ways and means of replacing at least some parts of the vanishing support, so that the aspiring and hard-working young people could carry on.

In fact everyone was always obviously pleased at any misfortune that befell us, and obviously displeased at any disaster we managed to avert.

Miss Bookey, and the Reverend Mother before I was prevented from taking the School Certificate exam, clearly represented an attitude that had only been possible to an earlier generation, of being pleased to see an exceptional person deriving benefit from their ability, and being glad to have the opportunity to help them do so.

You could call both attitudes paternalism, in the sense of thinking you know what would be ‘right’ for someone. In one case you think it is right to help them, in the other that it is right to ruin them.

Your name will be up there one day

The following is an extract from a piece which my colleague Dr Charles McCreery has sent to the person who is planning to write a book about his father, the late General Sir Richard McCreery. It gives some background to my post about the sacrifices of sadism, which refers to his father paying his Eton school fees.

I started to read when I was three. By the age of five I was reading Biggles books, of which there were a large number in the house. When I was four and my sister was six we acquired a governess, Miss Gigg. At first she gave us lessons separately, on account of the age difference (my sister is a year and nine months older than I). However, it soon became apparent that I was able to keep up with my sister academically, and the governess gave us lessons together.

In this context it may be relevant to mention that I was told that the whole of my sister’s boarding school (St. Mary’s, Wantage) was once given an IQ test, and that my sister came top.

When I was sent to boarding school at the age of nine, I came top of the introductory class and my colleague Celia Green remembers me telling her soon after we met (in 1963) that the lady who took this class, Miss Wright, on one occasion looked at a list of boys who had won scholarships to public schools in the past and said, ‘Your name will be up there one day’.

However, my parents gave me to understand that the reason for my apparent exceptionality was that I had had a governess from the age of four. They then colluded with the headmaster to prevent me from taking a scholarship to Eton.

As one of Dr Green’s aphorisms points out, ‘It is very easy to make someone into a failure; you have only to prevent them from being a success.’

The Food of the Gods

The following text is from the last page and a half of H G Wells’s The Food of the Gods. When I was twelve I regarded this as the most inspiring passage of prose I had ever come across. I still find it expresses something I can feel identified with.

‘It is not that we would oust the little people from the world,’ he said, ‘in order that we, who are no more than one step upwards from their littleness, may hold their world for ever. It is the step we fight for and not ourselves.’

‘We are here, Brothers, to what end? To serve the spirit and the purpose that has been breathed into our lives. We fight not for ourselves, for we are but the momentary hands and eyes of the life of the World ... Through us and through the little folk the Spirit looks and learns. From us by word and birth and act it must pass – to still greater lives.’

‘This earth is no resting place; this earth is no playing place ... We fight not for ourselves but for growth – growth that goes on for ever. Tomorrow, whether we live or die, growth will conquer through us. That is the law of the spirit for ever more. To grow according to the will of God! To grow out of these cracks and crannies, out of these shadows and darknesses, into greatness and the light!’

‘Greater’, he said, speaking with slow deliberation, ‘greater, my Brothers! And then – still greater. To grow and again – to grow. To grow at last into the fellowship and understanding of God. Growing. Till the earth is no more than a footstool. Till the spirit shall have driven fear into nothingness, and spread ...’ He swung his arm heavenward: – ‘There!’

His voice ceased. The white glare of one of the searchlights wheeled about, and for a moment fell upon him, standing out gigantic with hand upraised against the sky.

For one instant he shone, looking up fearlessly into the starry deeps, mail-clad, young and strong, resolute and still. Then the light had passed and he was no more than a great black outline against the starry sky – a great black outline that threatened with one mighty gesture the firmament of heaven and all its multitude of stars.

The state’s infidelity

copy of a letter to an academic

Apart from means-testing the pensions, i.e. depriving Charles and me together of about £4,000 per annum, maybe more – which we would have been getting if the means-testing had not been introduced – the pensions due to Christine and Fabian have been delayed by a total of 9 years, thus depriving us of at least £50,000 (9 x present pension as reduced by means-testing) which the government should have paid to us if pension qualifying ages had not been retrospectively changed.

Thus the means-testing and change in qualifying ages together have deprived Fabian and Christine of at least £70,000 which they were due to be paid on reaching their former qualifying ages, both being fully paid up, or very nearly so, in terms of qualifying years (i.e. years in which requisite contributions have been made).

This income would not have been adequate to set up a satisfactory residential college with at least one research department, but the future loss of it is a serious drag on our continuing attempts to make progress towards the start of our 40-year adult academic careers.

Benefits Christmas

The Daily Mail has an article about a mother with four children, living on benefits, who is planning to spend a large sum on giving the children a good Christmas.

Benefits Christmas: Single mother Eloise spends £3000 to give her four children EVERYTHING they want for Christmas. And guess what? You're paying for it.

... she’s not a member of your average working family. She’s on benefits, meaning that effectively it’s your money which is paying for her children’s Christmas - Xboxes and all. Moreover, as far as Eloise is concerned, it’s all entirely fair - in fact, the merest hint of a raised eyebrow at her circumstances is enough to make her see red. ‘It makes me furious when people criticise how I choose to spend my money,’ she says. ‘Taxpayers seem to feel that they have the right to tell people on benefits how to spend their money,’ she adds. ‘They don’t - the government decides what people like me are entitled to, not the taxpayer. If it’s offered to us, then of course we’re going to take it and we shouldn’t be criticised for doing so. Frankly, I believe it’s my right to do what I want this Christmas with the benefits I deserve. ’

The Daily Mail journalist points out that ‘it’s your money’ (i.e. taxpayers’ money) ‘which is paying for her children’s Christmas’.

Working out what she receives in ‘handouts’ per year, the journalist makes it come to £21,528. That includes free school meals, but does not include the free ‘education’ and medical ‘health service’ which is accessible to all, including those who are contributing to the cost of it by paying taxes.

Including the cost of free ‘education’ for four children and free ‘health care’ for five people might, perhaps, double the figure representing how much it is costing taxpayers to support this family. It is scarcely surprising that the country is bankrupt.

It is a fact of genetics that if conditions arise which favour the survival of life forms (plants or animals) with certain characteristics, a subgroup of the species soon arises which is increasingly well adapted to the favourable conditions and increasingly numerous. For example, subgroups of various birds have developed which are adapted to deriving their support from bird-tables supplied by human beings, probably becoming in the process less well adapted to supporting themselves in other ways.

There is no reason to suppose that the situation can be remedied by offering those living on benefits inducements to work. The only possible solution is to scrap the Welfare State altogether, including state education and medicine.

That is, it is the only solution that could possibly work; but I am not supposing that there is any possibility of its being implemented by a democratically elected government.

Brief analyses such as these should be being expanded into research papers, but this is unlikely to happen unless Oxford Forum is supported.