Libertarian Party Uk

[nino_savatte]

Yeah, but the 'Swamped by immigrants' stuff, the clause 28 homophobia, the militarism, none of that really chimes with libertarians I've chatted to.

Most are genuinely socially liberal IME, they're just economically social darwinist with it

And there's the contradiction: Section 28. While she was happy to have gays in the Parliamentary party, she came up with that gem.

 

[Stoat Boy]

As part of my course, we had this guy from the EG West Centre which is a Newcastle Uni thinktank come and give us a talk about his vision for education in the UK. He said that education in the UK was a near-total failure, with parents having so little choice, and said that the Department of Education should be abolished and everyone would get a voucher equivalent to the current cost of sending a child to school in Britain. They could use that voucher to take their child to any school they desired.

Thing is, some of the points he made were quite compelling. He said that a large proportion of our schools would have simply closed down if they were commercial businesses. He reckoned that things couldn't get any worse how they were and his radical move would be at least a bit better, and that the voucher would ensure that there was still free education

I think its a cracking idea. The current mix of private and state education is not working at all and I feel that you either have to have one or the other.

 

[Ungrateful]

As part of my course, we had this guy from the EG West Centre which is a Newcastle Uni thinktank come and give us a talk about his vision for education in the UK. He said that education in the UK was a near-total failure, with parents having so little choice, and said that the Department of Education should be abolished and everyone would get a voucher equivalent to the current cost of sending a child to school in Britain. They could use that voucher to take their child to any school they desired.

Thing is, some of the points he made were quite compelling. He said that a large proportion of our schools would have simply closed down if they were commercial businesses. He reckoned that things couldn't get any worse how they were and his radical move would be at least a bit better, and that the voucher would ensure that there was still free education

God not the voucher system for schools again -- Milton 'Pinochet's pal' Friedmann and his cronies were pushing this back in the 70s. A state subsidy for private schools.

The Think tank's argument is a classic fallacy, and its depressing that someone supposedly linked with tertiary education can come out with it:

Prem 1: A particular social policy X is a disaster (education, helath, policing - take your pick)
Prem 2. Something needs to be done about X.
Prem 3. Privatisining (or renationalising or shooting all the teachers) is doing something.
Conclusion: We should therefore privatise (re-nationalise, shoot all the teachers).

Its a fallacy because the phrase 'doing something' has a different meaning in the Premise 2, than in Premise 3. Prem 2, it means 'undertake action to repair the damage', whilst in prem 3, it means the broader 'performing an action'.

Yes state education is poor in this country (though on-the-whole not as bad as The Daily Mail would have us believe), but privatisation and marketisation rarely, if ever, improves social provision (e.g. train services, hospital cleaning, university research). Indeed there was a reason why state education was introduced to England and Wales (albeit far later than most European countries) in the first place and that was because entirely private provision through ragged schools, poor schools, dame schools and charities were so effin shite. There is no quick fix for improving education in this country any more than there are quick fixes for other social ills -- even social revolution. Though one can make substantive, albeit mminor improvements, which can have beneficial impacts in the long term. One minor improvement, which will have beneficial impacts, throughout different social sectors, is by analysing more critically what representatives from free-market think tanks (or other snake oil salesman) and give them the dog's abuse they so richly deserve.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Yes, while he did set out his case very well (and I admired his cojones for coming and standing in front of a class of 25 trainee teachers and outlining why schools should be privatised, given that teachers tend towards the left of the spectrum), ultimately the fact is that privatisation of most things has been disastrous, particularly rail.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest/

 

[butchersapron]

Look at the tag at the top - choice, competition and entrepeneurship in education. These people should not be allowed anywhere near kids.

 

[LLETSA]

I think it's a handy myth that she was a social liberal - spread by the new (mostly genuine) tory social liberals who want to impose her politics but gloss over the rest of it.

Thatcher was a social conservative who didn't understand how the liberal economic dogma to which she subscribed erodes the social base of traditional conservatism. That's why the Tories will ever more have to appeal to social liberalism and why the ultra-right is destined to be forever marginalised.

In reality, the liberal left's victory in cultural terms is the result of no secret plot or organised agenda, as certain types of right-winger like to claim, but the natural outcome of the economic liberalism the Thatcher governments imposed.

 

[kyser_soze]

I have no issue with education vouchers provided:

1. The national curriculum is done away with and other models of teaching are allowed to develop/exist
2. Top-ups aren't allowed - everyone gets the same amount (SN kids can be assessed on an individual needs basis)

Introducing vouchers into the system as it currently functions would be a fucking mess, offering nothing to anybody. Getting rid of the NC and all the Key Stage rubbish, constant testing etc all should go anyway...

 

[danny la rouge]

A purely polemical dislike of regulation shadowed by real growth of the state and regulation - regulations aimed at her political enemies - just look at the anti-union legislation for example. A consistent liberatartian should fully endorse the freedom of labour to organise and so on.

Precisely.

 

[BlueSquareThing]

I have no issue with education vouchers provided:

1. The national curriculum is done away with and other models of teaching are allowed to develop/exist
2. Top-ups aren't allowed - everyone gets the same amount (SN kids can be assessed on an individual needs basis)

Introducing vouchers into the system as it currently functions would be a fucking mess, offering nothing to anybody. Getting rid of the NC and all the Key Stage rubbish, constant testing etc all should go anyway...

Welll, yes - and is increasingly ignored in many ways (although alarming numbers of schools have ordered K3 tests... )

The only things vouchers would then do is add a layer of cost in terms of admin and allow urban kids to move around between schools easily - which they can do anyway more or less - and rural kids to go to the nearest school unless mummy can drive them in the 4x4 or they can afford to pay to go on the special minibus which goes round picking up all the bright kids who got into the posh school...

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

A purely polemical dislike of regulation shadowed by real growth of the state and regulation - regulations aimed at her political enemies - just look at the anti-union legislation for example. A consistent liberatartian should fully endorse the freedom of labour to organise and so on.

I'm not sure how this happened but I find myelf in complete agreement with you butchers.

 

[Blagsta]

C'mon Blagsta, you can do better than ad hominem.

Do you dispute the bit about comprehensive schooling, to give just one example.

I don't know how else to respond to someone who quite clearly inhabits a completely different reality. Cultural Marxism? This is the sort of crap the BNP et al come out with.

 

[Blagsta]

I'm not sure how this happened but I find myelf in complete agreement with you butchers.

Well you did just come out as a socialist!

 

[nino_savatte]

Without Thatcher, this party might never have existed. They took their cue from her.

 

[butchersapron]

Nonsense, there's always been this sort of idiot around.

 

[nino_savatte]

Even members of UKIP have described themselves as "libertarian".

Interesting article from the Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...s-talk-of-split-unless-party-is-reformed.html

Some of this lot went and joined the Libertarian Party.

I think it would also be fair to say that many r/w libertarians can be found within the Tory Party. Alan Duncan is a good example of this tendency.

 

[liampreston]

I remember the Libertarian Party being launched with terrible fuss and bluster, but unless I'm missing something, they've not appeared in any by-elections at council level, have not yet announced their Euro candidates, and appear to have not updated many of their websites for weeks.

Like with so many new political forces launched with such media fury I suspect they will be kicked into the long grass and on-line archives before the summer is out.

 

[butchersapron]

Where's oh where is darios? He's been arguing for years that anti-capitlaists and radical should unite with these thacherites, yet when a discussion specfically on his party occours he's nowhere to be seen. Nor for that matter is the thread starter.

 

[butchersapron]

I remember the Libertarian Party being launched with terrible fuss and bluster, but unless I'm missing something, they've not appeared in any by-elections at council level, have not yet announced their Euro candidates, and appear to have not updated many of their websites for weeks.

Like with so many new political forces launched with such media fury I suspect they will be kicked into the long grass and on-line archives before the summer is out.

Darios informed us they were rapidly making the traditional left history (well, even more historical than they currently are) zooming up the inside lane.

 

[ExtraRefined]

A purely polemical dislike of regulation shadowed by real growth of the state and regulation - regulations aimed at her political enemies - just look at the anti-union legislation for example. A consistent liberatartian should fully endorse the freedom of labour to organise and so on.

Most libertarians would have no problem with removing restrictions on unions, but would also have no problem with employers refusing to hire unionised employees, or firing anyone who tried to form one.

2. Top-ups aren't allowed - everyone gets the same amount (SN kids can be assessed on an individual needs basis)

This completely defies the point - the whole idea is that if parents want to spend money on getting their children a better education rather than going to Corfu or buying a telly, that's up to them.

 

[butchersapron]

Most libertarians would have no problem with removing restrictions on unions, but would also have no problem with employers refusing to hire unionised employees, or firing anyone who tried to form one.

Is that right? Are you in the Liberatarian Party? Is this their policy? Or is this just a general libertarian?

...and if you are right in how you characterise most libertarians thinking (which i believe you're not, i think you're imagining an idealised perfectly consistent libertarian when it's plain that that most are not, they're just confused tories) i think that defintively pulls the rug out from the argument for any sort of rapprochement between them and radcials and anti-capitalists that LIberatrian Party members have been arguing for on here.

 

[frogwoman]

It's the political equivalent of annoying kids you get in 6th form philosophy seminars saying that "there's no such thing as morality because everyone has different ideas - so you cant say that eg. murder is wrong" ...

 

[Azrael]

Crossland could have been describing the way the grammar school system worked with that quote, couldn't he?

Erm, he was.

Labour's ends are vague enough: reduction in inequality, "social justice", that sort of thing. I don't think for a second that the free market can be harnessed towards those ends; that's why I called Labour's ideology incoherent.

As for concrete policies, I'd have thought their aim of 50% in university, over 70 billion on education in general, authoritarianism without punishment etc were specific enough.

If Labour aren't left-wing, what are they?

I don't know how else to respond to someone who quite clearly inhabits a completely different reality. Cultural Marxism? This is the sort of crap the BNP et al come out with.

Please withdraw your association with that nasty outfit and the racial bigots who inhabit it.

You really need to look at what neoliberalism is. It isn't a pared down state at all.

Well no. I've no time for it, and I've criticized Baroness Thatcher countless times on here for her dogmatism. Conservatism is indeed "a disposition, not a dogma", that's its strength. The problem is power-hungry men and women who abuse that flexibility to remove principles of any kind.

Labour MPs have certainly compromised themselves to get power, but their own "disposition" hasn't gone away, and some pretty rigid dogma has followed them into the corridors of Whitehall.

 

[Blagsta]

Please withdraw your association with that nasty outfit and the racial bigots who inhabit it.

I don't have an association with them.

I was pointing out that some of your line of argument is similar to the "cultural Marxism" argument put forward by the extreme right.

 

[Azrael]

To give the equally tired response, Hitler was a vegetarian teetotaler. Trying to discredit by association is a poor tactic.

 

[Blagsta]

To give the equally tired response, Hitler was a vegetarian teetotaler. Trying to discredit by association is a poor tactic.

As I said - you're quite mad aren't you.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

If Labour aren't left-wing, what are they?

...not left wing?

Is this a trick question?

 

[Azrael]

As I said - you're quite mad aren't you.

If you can't stick to the basic rules of debate, I suggest giving this a rest.

 

[Blagsta]

Your views are nuts. How else do I respond?

 

[Blagsta]

You should at least be aware of where your line of argument comes from
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55833
and the sort of people that push it
http://www. iamanenglishman.com/page.php?iCategoryId=1127&iParentId=1097