Something Sinister Is About To Happen To Scotland's Children

While the people of the UK are spending their time obsessing over which party will win the general election on May 7^th and who they might have to do dodgy deals with to actually secure power there is something more sinister and Orwellian taking place in the Scottish parliament.

The ranks of the Scottish National Party (SNP) who are in power in the limited Scottish parliament have swelled since the Scottish independence referendum last year and there has been much evidence of them being the most authoritarian party in Britain. But for me (and many others I know) their scariest plan is their Named Person scheme.

In the words of the Scottish governments own website “The Getting it right approach includes making a Named Person available for every child, from birth until their 18^th birthday (or beyond, if they are still in school)”. Sure it sounds innocuous enough, almost as if they want to say “the friendly state will provide someone to look out for your child during their young lives”. That is absolutely the way that some see it in this country but (especially with the No2NP) movement gathering steam most are seeing through this scheme for the Orwellian nonsense that it really is.

So what's exactly wrong with it? Well if you look closely a lot of things. For one it undermines the family and this is a very important point. Many families and carers simply don't need someone from the state snooping into how they raise their children, they have been capable of doing this themselves for a very long time. I wonder personally what kind of questions these state “Named Persons” may ask kids. “What do Mummy and Daddy do in the evening?” for example, “How much do they drink?”, “How clean is your house?” and I think before you know it good parents who maybe have a flaw or two are having their houses inspected by the state and the possibility of their children being taken from them for no good reason at all. It may even be that the states named person takes issue with certain parents because of their lifestyle habits or political or philosophical beliefs and then that child could end up lost in the system for no good reason. But that's my concern, there are many more learned people than me who are equally (if not more horrified) by this scheme.

For example the Faculty of Advocates (who are a body of independent lawyers in Scotland) described the Named Person proposals as as a plan which “undermines family autonomy”, “dilutes the legal role of parents”, and could provide a platform for interference with private and family life.

The Church of Scotland criticises the Named Person proposals because of the potential for a “general diminishing of parental responsibilities” and warns that the scheme may in fact be “counterproductive” to helping the children who need it most (para. 7). It is here we hit on another point. It's clear the Scottish government don't trust us to take care of our kids properly but with constant state intervention into parenting then it encourages (in my view) people to sit back and let daddy government swan in when things start to get a bit rough. There is no doubt that this legislation could actually be more harmful to the well being of children. The British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) in their submission to the Education and Culture Committee highlighted that the universality of the Named Person provision “may get in the way of ensuring that those who really need support actually receive it” (para. 9).

The concerns I have brought up so far are real and very worrying but there is also a legal challenge to this Named Person scheme too. On No2NP.org we can read: It may be in breach of European Convention rights to privacy and family life: Leading QC Aidan O’Neill says the policy: “may not be lawful on the basis that the blanket nature of this provision constitutes a disproportionate and unjustified interference with the right to respect for individual families’ private and family life and home.”

The other legal problem is confidentiality. I find it hilarious that during the Scottish independence referendum the SNP were big on Scotland being independent from England, Wales and Northern Ireland politically but staying in the European Union (EU). So, to the SNP is makes sense to leave one government saying it interferes too much in Scotland's affairs but stay in a larger one that interferes so much it's actually quite hard to figure how many UK laws are made in Brussels (between 5% and 50% is the best I could find because it seems that everyone defines 'law' differently), ah classic political logic. But it also seems that their Named Person scheme could in fact breach EU law on data confidentiality, you see the legislation makes it easier to lower the threshold for officials to pass around confidential data, like kids medical records!

It's not hard to see how damaging a scheme like this could be for generations of young people and it may only be just being tested here in this small country of only about five million. I am not a Christian but the Christian group CARE in their evidence to the Education and Culture committee summed it up nicely for me when they noted that the Named Person provision “reflects an ideological view which denies the primacy of parental authority in relation to child rearing” and expressed concern that children are viewed “essentially as the property of the state” (para. 11). So if you feel like your kids are property of the state then “yay!” for you. You must be so pleased, however if you think that the state should butt right out of your family life then you can only be but opposed to this Orwellian state control of the most vulnerable in society.

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Why Political Libertarianism Doesn’t Stand A Chance In the UK

I don’t vote anymore. I did for many years with a sincere belief that democracy was the best way for human civilisations to organize themselves. I even looked down on – and argued with – non-voters with derivations of the old “People fought for your right to vote” drivel that people now say to me. I now describe myself as a libertarian and a market anarchist.

 

So you can imagine how uninterested I was when the UK government called a general election on May 7^th of this year. However, while talking to a minarchist friend of mine in the US he asked me the question “If you had to vote in this election then who would it be for?” I was kind of struck dumb for a second because while the Libertarian Party in the US may be a big party (although it seems to make absolutely no real impact as far as I understand it) there is nothing comparable to said party in this country.

 

So instead of picking a party I found myself beginning to explain how a libertarian political option just simply cannot exist right now in the UK. Yes, there is a libertarian party here but they are small, stand no candidates and many libertarians I know in the UK have more of an anarchist leaning and simply aren’t interested in them. So why can’t a strong libertarian party exist in the UK right now?

One of the first problems in the UK is that while the Labour Party pretend to be ‘centre-left’ and the Conservative Party pretend to be ‘centre-right’ the fact is that neither party has a strong ideology anymore and in reality there isn’t one on the left and one on the right, they’re bang in the middle practically embracing each other in this mixed economic mess where we have a sort of freeish market where business is taxed and regulated by government on one hand and massive state programs like our socialised health care system (the NHS) exist on the other (that would be the left hand presumably).

So you have this problem that when people like me advocate real capitalism – by which I mean an unregulated free market which the government has no involvement in many mistake the system we find ourselves under to be the capitalism I am describing and of course think I am advocating the current system, which I am not.

 

So right away we have a problem, most don’t make a distinction between capitalism and corporatism – where the government can control business through regulation and taxation and make it harder for people to enter the market place by placing so many hurdles in their way and are basically able to pick winners and losers. But when I try to explain this to my anti-capitalist friends they can’t seem to understand that things that enrage them about what they call capitalism, such as governments bailing out banks is not what real free market capitalism is all about.

 

The idea that evil capitalists always exploit workers has pretty much been debunked (primarily by Hans-Herman Hoppe) we’re not going to go into it in too much depth but as a basic example, if I set up a company and hire three guys to make my product I am putting off my share of the money till the products sell (which they might not) whereas the workers I hire get paid every month regardless. It’s the same thing as putting off £10 today for £100 (that you may not get) in a month (my apologies to Mr Hoppe for my over simplification).

 

That’s the most basic and important point for me. The idea of what capitalism is is distorted badly in this country and it doesn’t help when you have high-profile clowns like Russell Brand adding to the distortion (although at least we agree on the not voting thing). The reason this is important is because it leads into many of the other problems of trying to have political libertarianism become popular in this country. Problems like “what about the National Health Service?”

 

The National Health Service (NHS) is the system of socialised medicine in the UK. The mainstream media very often liken it to the “closest thing to a national religion”. Yes, unfortunately when it comes to the NHS the rose tinted glasses are firmly on many of the population, I have spent more time than I would like in NHS hospitals and I can’t understand all the love it gets personally. Like when people defend the government building and maintaining public roads when they’re clearly in a mess.

 

Now, the problem for any would-be political party in the UK is that if you don’t pander to the NHS then every other party and the mainstream media will all attack you can call you heartless and cold and before you know it the phone has stopped ringing and you are irrelevant.

 

We have actually seen this in action with the UK Independence party (UKIP). Now some libertarians were (and some still are) excited in these parts about UKIP. My understanding is that they came from a more libertarian place originally. I even recall their leader Nigel Farage on BBC’s “Question Time” show years ago talking about the need to move to a more insurance based healthcare system – a statement which he would definitely not make now. But if you look at UKIP’s manifesto these days you will see that they too are pandering to the NHS (some think specifically to target older, disillusioned Labour voters).

 

But that’s just how it is. Even though the NHS is wildly inefficient and increasingly expensive there is a weird attitude here to it almost like “Look how enlightened we are to have our benevolent medical system that everyone can access”. Now you can look at a previous article of mine or anywhere you like for arguments against socialised medicine, that’s not the point right now. The point here is that a libertarian party would surely be running on a campaign of cutting government spending to as low as it possibly can get. You can’t do that with a huge socialised healthcare beast.

So if our fictional libertarian party opposed the NHS then, as I said they would be attacked viciously by the other parties, mainstream media and other political and religious groups. On the other hand if they wanted to keep the NHS (and not vastly reduce it, a move that would have the same vicious reaction from all the same players) then how could they be called a libertarian party? And what libertarians would actually vote for them?

 

Even though it is deeply flawed and cuts off all actual choice of healthcare the strength of emotional feeling towards the NHS at this time is simply far too strong for a party to run on a platform of ending or even reducing it. It would be a non-starter and not just the NHS, a libertarian party would presumably cut many things people get ‘free’ here (replace free in your mind with my money stolen through taxation) and people just love their ‘free’ stuff.

 

Of course, while the NHS and all the rest of these social programs are not free for me since I’m paying for it through high taxation for many people here it is free. Thanks to the massive welfare state in the UK there are whole generations of families even, who have never worked a day in their lives and live at the expense of everyone who does work.

 

I recall watching a documentary with my wife about ordinary life in communist East Germany. We were absolutely shocked by the amount of people (it wasn’t that many but we thought one was too many) who said that they would prefer to be living back in East Germany as opposed to modern Germany. It wasn’t until we heard their reasons that it started to click for us. Many common reasons were guaranteed jobs and child care and it got us thinking how many people view the state as a kind of benevolent father figure who takes care of them. I know so many people who’s lives would shatter if the state went away because the state gave them a house (and sends people out for ‘free’ to fix anything that may need it), money every week and free school for the kids. All things they badly need.

 

So again, I will presume that our fictitious libertarian party in the UK, being libertarian would again have to opt for very minimal government spending so the massive welfare state that exists would have to be properly cut back. If you listen closely enough you can almost hear the other politicians, mainstream media, religious groups, social groups all grabbing their pitchforks and heading for Twitter screaming “You don’t care about the poor you evil bastards!” As in our previous case the reverse is also true, if a libertarian party only wanted a very modest cut in welfare or no cut at all then a) how are they a libertarian party? and b) what self respecting libertarians would actually vote for them?

 

So, while I identify as an anarchist and don’t believe that a minimal government can be sustained. It’s easy to see the reason why there is no strong libertarian party on the sidelines with a little representation and a chance of more (like the Green Party or UKIP) is this odd cultural problem. It’s not cool to talk up capitalism and when you do the term is often confused with the corporatism that we live under as opposed to free market capitalism. The NHS is unfortunately a sacred cow that no politician dare suggest we even shave never mind kill. Opposing the NHS is the kiss of death in the media in the UK currently and until it crashes it will keep it’s appeal. Then we have state infantilization of the people on a mass scale via the magic of the almighty welfare state that so many complain about but no one actually wants to cut in any real way.

 

So what would be needed would be a full-on cultural change that involves a large section of the public and at least a portion of the mainstream media – especially the mainstream media because despite all the great alternative media that is now available old school mainstream media scare tactics still work here and they work well. The mainstream media in the UK always try to shut down any kind of radical change, that’s why the ‘yes’ side was demonized by almost every newspaper and TV station (with the notable exception of the Glasgow Herald) during the Scottish independence referendum that is also why they are going so hard after UKIP right now. So this kind of extreme change could take a generation or two to come along would, in my opinion have to occur before we could see fertile ground for political libertarianism to take root in the UK.

 

I’m done with politics anyway personally and I choose to disengage as much as I can from the state in my ordinary life, not try to play them at their own game. Oh and my answer to the voting question my friend in the US asked “I would draw a little box, write my dogs name ‘Barney’ and vote for him.”

A Message from A State Hospital

The 4am face of the lady behind the thick glass begins to talk to me,
it never changes every time I come in.

“Who is your doctor?
Why are you bothering us at this time?
We’ll get you seen in like an hour,
go sit down.”

The red metal seats with the holes in them in a row,
I sit in one as far away from everyone else as I can
you see I want to actually get this over with.

But it is not that simple,
for there are people with blood dripping from their heads
oozing onto the shirts of their favourite football teams
the porters keep them separate
for now.

The extreme end of one side is fascism
then extreme end of the other is state socialism
sure we can bring politics into sport
as long as there is politics.


They are in Scotland arguing over a divided Ireland
IRA this
UVF that
I hate the back and forth so much that I want to smash their heads together with a hard crack.
The thought satisfies me a little as I lurch my head back and look at the now-yellow ceiling tiles.

What I know is useless to them,
So I refrain from jumping in and stay in my red metal seat,
the men continue to shout as I listen intently.

“Fuck the queen!”
from one side
“Fuck the pope”
from the other.

I become angry because they are distracted
they are being played off against one another
their anger erupting in the form of glass bottles
cracking against heads outside damp pubs
screaming the clichéd words of their fathers.

I am unsure whether its the fact that they are indoctrinated
or whether it’s that they don’t think for themselves that upsets my balance
“What about no fucking state!?”
Keeps going through my mind
but I won’t shout that
besides they are now shouting so loud that I can’t concentrate on my own resentments
never mind theirs.

I am struck all of a sudden by their similarities
“My state management ideas are better than yours!”
“My religious upbringing is the right one!”

I don’t care whether their parental figure is the pope, the queen or Willy fucking Wonka
I think as I wish I was anywhere else.
It’s a blind nationalism that makes you feel comfortable,
Everyone else believes in it, so why not?

The men behind the curtain just sit back and watch you idiots rip each other apart
based on flawed theories of history and economics
while they bleed you dry
you fight each other over sport for sport.