Cherie Blair doesn't get it

I was blogging a couple of days ago about the former prime minister Tony Blair's wife Cherie's ill-judged autobiography that had all the hallmarks of cashing in on her position as a prime minister's wife, and by association a public figure - and a democratic socialist, what ever that means, to boot.

A senior judge has called for Cherie's resignation as a judge over her £1 million memoirs as he considers that her conduct demeans the legal profession. Strong stuff from a judge. According to the Daily Mail:

"Cherie Blair should resign as a part-time judge over the "complete lack of decency" in her £1million memoirs, a top legal figure demanded yesterday.

Former senior judge Gerald Butler QC accused Mrs Blair of demeaning the legal profession.

He said: "If she wants to tread this path of making money by outrageous comments that is up to her.

"But I don't think this is a job for a judge. It shows a complete lack of any kind of decency."

Senior criminal barrister John Cooper, while not commenting directly on the wife of the former Premier, said: "One of the most important factors in being a judge is being able to exercise judgment and part of that is being trusted with confidential material.

"One has to be very careful, in my view, in what one exposes to the public gaze. I know of no High Court judge who has written their memoirs before they have retired."

I have no problem of Cherie, or anybody else, pursuing her economic self interest. What I have a problem with is the fact that she is exploiting her position as a public figure, and she is causing distress to others by her comments in the book, especially to the widow and family of David Kelly, the government weapons scientist who committed a suicide during the run-up to Iraq war.

Cherie, as a caring democratic socialist, replied to the judge's comments in a radio interview:

"To tell the story about being in Number 10 and not to mention David Kelly I think would be actually really impossible," she told Radio 4's Woman's Hour.

Asked if she would resign as a recorder, she insisted: "I certainly won't. The law is very much an important part of my life. I have enjoyed the law and I intend to continue to practise."

She is the former prime minister's wife, not the prime minister. What on earth has government affairs got to do with her?

If her husband would have not been a skillful politician, she would not have had the opportunity cashing in by dishing out the dirt. But the main question that begs the answer is what kind of people do we have in politics and why do people enter political life - altruism, I very much doubt it.

Israel @ 60

I salute you, the Land of my hope and refuge!

G-d, grant blessing to the State of Israel, created to fulfil an age-old dream and to be a haven for the oppressed. Cause to come true once more the ancient vision, that out of Zion shall go forth Torah and the word of G-d from Jerusalem.

Happy Birthday!

New Labour Socialism is Good for Your Wallet

"Labour Party is a democratic socialist party."  Hard to believe, but so reads the New Labour Party's vision statement.

Let's remember what socialism stands for.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, socialism is "a political and economic theory of social organization which holds that a country's land, transport, natural resources, and chief industries should be owned or controlled by the community as a whole." 

The former prime minister Tony Blair and his money crazed wife Cherie have just added a £4 million country house to their existing portfolio of five properties paid by the proceeds of Cherie's vulgar biography, Tony's financial jobs and other spoils of public service.  

Not bad for a couple of socialists.  

The Blairs  set a fine example of conviction politicians and conduct themselves in the spirit of a democratic socialist party.  Labour's vision statement concludes: "The values Labour stands for today are those which have guided it throughout its existence: social justice, strong communities, reward for hard work, decency and rights matched by responsibilities.  We stand for the many not the few." 

Enough said!

Mothers Against Violence - Voice of sanity

With London in the grip of spiralling knife violence horror, a voice of sanity has emerged amidst all the knee-jerk political and media hysteria: "Mothers Against Violence." MAV is a voluntary group of women whose members have been personally affected by gun violence.

In the last ten days alone there have been nine stabbings in the streets of London, six of them fatal.  New figures obtained by BBC London from the Metropolitan police show that while there have been 39 teenage murders in London since January 2007, there have been 69 people under the age of 25 who have been killed in the same period.  These statistics show that mortal street violence is perpetrated by the young against the young.

The MAV spokeswoman on last night's Newsnight programme stated: "Families build communities."  Children emulate their parents and behave according to the example set by their immediate family members.  The long-term solution lies in the family.

There is very little to add to this.  Families are the solution, not some inanimate government, council, social worker or some other state sponsored initiative.  The bleeding-heart liberals of course have always had a problem of portraying families as a preferred state of existance, because they can't bring themselves to agree with what most people know is that the best place for a child to grow up is a traditional family with a clear sense of responsibility and the sense of right and wrong. 

George Michael in Hampstead - or was it George Orwell?

A newspaper advertising board outside the Hampstead Heath Street news agent reads:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

- George Michael

What an easy mistake to make as both George Michael and George Orwell share the same first name. Although the ageing pop star George Michael, better remembered by his exploits in men's public conveniences and drug busts than his schmaltzy music, has nothing more in common with George Orwell except that first name and that both Michael and Orwell are pseudonyms.  George Michael was born Georgious Kyriacos Panayiotou and the author of one of the finest post World War II novels, "Nineteen Eighty-Four", was written by Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell.

I doubt if George Orwell is still on the required reading syllabus in Britain's state schools. I recently asked a group of final year undergraduate students in one of London's largest universities if they knew who George Orwell was.  Not a single hand went up. Only one had heard of the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four, and he was Danish; my British students looked at me if I was a man from the moon.  Cripes! - as Boris Johnson would say!

But let's think about this.  George Orwell, despite his leftist leanings, would not be on the current government's top ten list of must reads. Consider the powerfully disturbing slogan of Oceania's party and its Thought Police:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Isn't this where we have come to?  On the same suburban Hampstead street I spotted a small smart-car with what looked like a periscope sticking up from its roof.  The car had DVLA decals stuck onto its sides, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.  Inside this modern day telemonitor were a driver and an operator who was scanning the license plates of cars parked on the street with his periscope to catch anybody who may have not paid his vehicle tax.  I did not hang around to find out if they were writing on the spot fines, it would have been too depressing to see.  I though I knew the answer anyway.

I don't know about you but I find it almost impossible to keep track of every single command and rule that our Big Brother decrees. I admit to forgetting renew my vehicle tax once.  Luckily I was not spotted by the man with the periscope, but my details were registered at the local post office by being a month late when I realized my mistake and hightailed to pay my tax.

The UK has become a control society where freedom is indeed slavery and ignorance is strength. We have the highest penetration of public CCTV cameras in Europe if not the world outside North Korea, although the police has admitted that CCTVs have not helped cut down crime; we have to use language, Orwell's "Newspeak", that the government decrees is politically correct; a plethora of new health and safety regulations assault us in our places of work and other public places, they even infringe our freedoms in our homes; rubbish has to be sorted into so many different bins that one needs a flow chart to remember what rubbish goes where, and if you get it wrong you get fined; one is not allowed to use red ink when correcting university students' term papers so as not to cause them emotional distress; the list is endless...The government would probably like to install the Orwellian telemonitor in our homes if it could.

When will this end? Are we sleepwalking towards tyranny?  I just want get on with my life, be the best I can be, do the best I can to my family and my community. Only I should decide what that best is as long as it does not injure others or infringe their rights and freedoms. Whatever happened to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?

Gordon Brown's Spin Spend Spins Out of Control

Today's Sunday Times reported that the UK government spending on "special advisers", aka spin-doctors has increased by 40% over the past three years.  The annual cost is now £6.3m.  The cost of Gordon Brown's spin team has risen by £350,000 to £1.75m.

This is our money the government is spending,  sugar-coating unpopular policies to force them down the electorate's throat. Political classes have become the masters, not the servants of the people!  The government and other politicos incredulously think that the people of this great country of ours are fools and don't know what's good for them. Let's hoodwink them, they will thank us in the end, or so the thinking goes.

But guess what? The jig is up for Mr Brown and his cronies, the people know best and see through the smoke screens. Why else would Labour party's support languish at its lowest level since the records began?

Libertarian vs. Liberal

The sub-tile of the blog should really have been the "Diary of Hampstead Liberal", rather than "Hampstead Libertatrian".

"Liberal" is the simplest translation of the Latin "liber", and freedom is what liberalism, in its classical sense, is all about. John Stuart Mill in his essay,  "On Liberty",  first published in 1859, captured the essence of liberalism in one simple principle:  that men and women should be free to do as they please, without interference from the society or the state, unless their actions might cause harm to others.  

When somebody today states that he or she is "liberal", the term in its unmodified form has invariable come to refer to the politics of an expansive government and the welfare state.  The contemporary alternative to the "classical liberalism" is "libertarian". 

"Libertarianism" is a vision how we should be able to live our lives in freedom: as individuals, striving to do our best, and together, cooperating for the common good without state or government compulsion.  It is a vision of how we may endow our lives with meaning; living according to our deepest beliefs and taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions.