British politics changed this week - principles are being discussed

Having lived only in the UK and New Zealand, I've witnessed only a few passings of political leaders.  In the UK,  I barely missed Ted Heath and James Callaghan's passing.  In NZ, I recall the passing of Rob Muldoon and David Lange, oh and Bill Rowling (truly a footnote I barely recall).

None have been more than a fraction of the influence that Margaret Thatcher has had on the world, and because she was driven first and foremost by principle and a commitment visceral belief in freedom and resistance to communism.

The more there is of her, the more it is abundantly clear that she turned the tide of history for the UK, and that the left, with its faux compassion and peculiar attachment to central planning, only wishes it could do the same in reverse.

The media coverage of her has been wall to wall, and there is no lack of writing for and against her, but what really counts is the level of discussion.  Conservative Home is perhaps the best place to find links to much of that coverage, positive and negative.

Perhaps the most poignant point made of her yesterday was in the House of Lords. Lord Tebbit, who left Parliament in 1987 for family reasons, regretted his retirement from politics saying "I left her, I fear, at the mercy of her friends. That I do regret".   Men, and they all were, who will themselves be footnotes in history, floored a giant.  Yes, because she made one big mistake, but none would get her to change that through principle, but for popularity.  She wasn't going to have that.

Time after time, backbench Conservative MPs have paid testimony to her out of principle. Those who opposed her have shown themselves up for what they are.  Socialists who think they know how to spend other people's money, whose compassion is only shown by their belief in spending other people's money, and whose decade after decade of caricature have been shown up for being false.

Portrayal of Thatcher as a warmongerer, for taking on the invasion of the Falklands by a fascist military dictatorship is simply churlish.  To say she supported apartheid has been thoroughly shouted down, because she considered those fighting it to be no angels either.  The claims that what she did "caused the ills of today" are treated as laughable, 23 years later.  Memories of rubbish piling up in the streets, blackouts and strikes shutting down the economy, and limits on foreign currency purchases, cause some of the young to notice how far we have come.  Few want to go back to a phone monopoly that took weeks to supply a new phone.

Finally, the caricature of her as a predatory heartless hater of the poor is shown to be just that - the creation of leftwing spin that could not confront her willingness to cut the blood supply of dying industries, that was draining the life from the living.  She didn't cut the welfare state, she didn't privatise the NHS and nobody could accuse her of withdrawing state support for the poor.  She was a conservative, not a libertarian.  She believed the welfare state existed to cover people when they had bad fortune, to give them what they needed before they found or created a new opportunity.  The left simply wanted all of these people to be forever dependent on the state, and the unions that destroyed businesses by demanding pay rises of 20-30% every year.

"Divisive" Thatcher won three elections in a row, with landslides, whereas the 1970s were plagued with governments of tiny majorities and a short run coalition.  Indeed the late 1970s were plagued with militant union strikes under the Labour Party, as the unions thought Callaghan to be too moderate, as what they wanted was Soviet style socialism (don't believe me? Google "Arthur Scargill and Lenin").  

There were 605,000 miners in 1960, 289,000 in 1970, 235,200 by 1979 and 62,000 in 1990.  Far more lost their jobs under Harold Wilson than under Thatcher.  Manufacturing production rose 7.5% between 1979 and 1990, smashing the lie that she destroyed industrial production.  What did happen was that the services sector took off, shrinking manufacturing as a proportion of GDP.  

What shines above it all were her principles, and these are like a shining light in today's politics of spin, compromise and polls... they are worth remembering.

Eastern Europe did it, why not Liverpool and Glasgow?

Thirty years ago Margaret Thatcher closed antiquated, heavily loss making industries, putting hundreds of thousands out of work in many towns in the North, Scotland, Wales and elsewhere. 

Today, many of those towns and cities appear to have never recovered.  It takes little for the BBC or other journalists to find groups of disgruntled people old and young, saying that Thatcher took away their jobs, their childrens' jobs and destroyed all hope.  It is like without nationalised industries, they can do nothing.  The GDP in many of those regions is between 55 and 70% state based still.

Twenty or so years ago, post-communist democratic governments across eastern Europe closed antiquated, heavily loss making industries (perpetuated under 40 years of the sorts of policies Arthur Scargill and the British trade union movement advocated), putting millions out of work in most cities across their countries.

Today those countries are transformed, with new industries, with new jobs, with thriving growing economies.  Some with per capita GDPs at the levels of the poorer western European states.  They have open competitive economies, with public sectors less than half the size of what they were when they threw off the shackles of authoritarian communist governments.

Why?

Margaret Thatcher : The not so libertarian PM who stopped the socialist slide

I was young when I first heard of Margaret Thatcher, and having a few relatives who were socialists, I wasn't fond of her at the time, although she was a curious figure, as I hadn't ever seen a political leader who was a woman.  Certainly the mainstream media in New Zealand and most of my teachers held her in some degree of scorn.  However, I learned better, one could tell from so many of those who opposed her, what she was made of - courage.  Courage to take difficult decisions that caused much short term pain, for long term gain.

She was courageous, and it was difficult to be neutral between her and a tinpot military dictator seeking to take some islands full of hard working farmers and fishermen, and then difficult to side with a communist mining union, that used violence against those willing to turn against them.   I became warmer towards her over time, as her opponents increasingly looked like control freaks, or deniers of economics, and she looked ever braver as time went on.

For there was, at the time, a stark choice.  Margaret Thatcher, against those who thought they knew best how to run businesses, grow the economy and provide people with a living.  In 1983, Labour's Michael Foot tried to sell neutrality in the Cold War, unilateral nuclear disarmament, much higher taxes, nationalisation of major industries, withdrawal from the European Economic Community (to create a fortress Europe).  It nearly came third in the popular vote as it opposed fighting for the Falklands and supported unions that openly sympathised with the Soviet Union.

Margaret Thatcher against those who taught the politics of envy, the politics of moral relativism, and those who believed fervently in class warfare.  Margaret Thatcher against those who thought that the UK should be neutral in the Cold War, as if neutrality against totalitarianism was the moral highground.   Ken Livingstone was one of those who embraced the authoritarian left, and continues to crawl in the gutter.

She was no libertarian, but in the equation of freedom for me, she moved two out of three in the right direction, and the black marks she left on freedom do not mean she deserves the opprobrium her death is now bringing from the simple minded and the statists who despise her. For none of them have the slightest interest in individual freedom.  Indeed, the reason she stirred up such venality is because she argued on principle - short term populism was not her game.

That in itself, is rare in politics today.  

Why is the peace movement so quiet about Korea?

North Korea threatens to start a war with the United States, threatens with bellicose rhetoric to attack with nuclear weapons, to wipe out the enemy.

What do you get from the so-called "peace" movement and the political parties which so rabidly go on about nuclear weapons?

Nothing.

The Green Party is completely silent about north Korea.  Just imagine if it were the United States, or even the UK or France threatening to attack another country.   Just imagine if any nuclear weapons state was happily and gleefully testing nuclear weapons, to show off that it shouldn't be messed with.

The leftwing blogs similarly have largely little to say.  The Standard ignores it.  Real estate agent Martyn Bradbury's outlet ignores it. Idiot Savant ignores it.  

Tim Selwyn thinks that the regular US/ROK military exercises are a "provocation", as if close allies facing a proven holder of all types of WMDs shouldn't make a show of strength as a deterrent.   In fact he just wants New Zealand to not be involved, even though New Zealand fought bravely with the UN-led forces in the Korean War to defeat north Korea's attack on south Korea.  He appears to grant moral equivalency to US and DPRK forces, while criticising the DPRK for being crazy, he doesn't think it is "ok" to support a close ally and major trading partner, the ROK, in deterring Pyongyang.  His rabid anti-Americanism gets in the way of him supporting New Zealand willing to oppose one of the worst dictatorships in modern history.   

Internationally, Greenpeace is silent.

I don't believe most on the left support the DPRK, for it would be akin to supporting the Khmer Rouge, Mao, Stalin or Hitler.  The regime is reprehensible, and commits acts against its own citizens that are sheer horror.   Find another regime that imprisons small children in gulags for the political crimes of their family.

Yet it is that sheer horror that should unite them in opposition to the regime.  There should be protests outside DPRK embassies, there should be peace marches, there should be effigies of Kim Jong Un burnt in the streets.

But nothing.  Surely the left aren't sympathetic to this slave state?

No, I am sure most are not, but they are fickle because the DPRK wants to take on the great Satan - the USA.   So it doesn't really matter if warmongering dictators threaten to attack US targets, for the so-called peace movement presumably thinks they are "fair game".

What happens if the bluff is real?  What happens if there is an attack, will the left claim it is ok for the US to respond?  What if a north Korean nuclear, chemical or biological warhead is released on south Korea?  Will the left/peace movement believe it is ok to respond in kind to utterly destroy north Korea's military capability?

I doubt it.

Why so neutral in the face of unspeakable evil?  Most on the left and in the peace movement accept it was right to fight Nazism.

Why is it not acceptable to deter totalitarian socialism, and to fight it when it attacks?

Is it just because hatred for the United States is stronger than anything?

Financial Transactions Tax fails the test of reality... again

Financial Transactions Taxes (also known as Tobin taxes) are the fond friend of the banker-bashing left, believing that there are vast fortunes of money swirling around the ether that, if only they could take a tiny cut of it all, they could save the world.

It has been advocated widely by the likes of Paul Krugman, Bill Gates, Resource intensive fat capitalist dickhead hypocrite  Michael Moore, Greenpeace, Oxfam, WWF, Occupy Wall Street and Fidel Castro

So the EU proposed one, and it has been getting introduced in 11 EU Member States.

It appears to be failing to deliver ... and the Swedes would rightly say, having been there before, "told you so".