THE COAST AS A
BIRTHRIGHT
or Miliballs on stilts
JUNE 19 2007
I
had always thought David Miliband was a highly intelligent man. I
thought how lucky we were to have men such has him in politics. Then he
comes up with a load of utter tripe about us being an island nation and
everyone having the right to every inch of our coastline. Quite apart
from this theory being a metaphor and a figment of his imagination
rather than a fact, he should know that every 'principal' which
confused human beings invent as being the ultimate truth on which some
series of social or scientific propositions depends, if taken to its
logical extreme, becomes nonsense. If he hasn't understood that by his
age he probably never will. Then there are the actual practical issues
in this particular case, too numerous to mention. It is quite pointless
for a large number of people to walk round the UK on the beach or
coastline, just as it is pointless to make it possible for a small
bunch of obsessive nutters and the inconvenience of millions - for that
is what it would certainly mean. Miliband has clearly not studied
nature and how it achieves its miraculous journey. He has clearly not
understood Tennyson's "...Lest one good custom should corrupt the
world.". He has clearly understood nothing significant at all that
would qualify him as a man to whom we should entrust any part of our
collective heritage. In short, in spite of his obviously well
functioning brain, the man has a massive deficit in his education and
as a result his understanding. I have noticed that this can happen to
people with considerable mental talent. I am afraid he has totally
blown his chance of ever being taken seriously again, and I deplore
this as he has championed, and been able to explain coherently, many
policies of which I have been entirely in favour.
While on the subject of blown credibility, David Cameron has blown his
totally in his claim that to champion individual freedoms we must
oppose what he calls 'top down initiatives' such as ID Cards. The
essence of the ID Card scheme is precisely so that we can allow a very
high degree of freedom. When we do this, we must be able to deter those
who would abuse those freedoms from so doing, as this is what causes
freedoms to be withdrawn in the name of security, safety and other
requirements and interests of those charged with the relevant
regulatory responsibility. To do this, do give individuals a good
measure of privilege and freedom, we have to know who they are. They
have to be identifiable so that they can be allowed to pass without let
or hindrance and, if they abuse it, this privilege can be temporarily
or permanently limited or withdrawn. People will value their
identity as a citizen and it privileges and responsibilities. The world
we are moving into has more privileges for the humblest individual than
were available to a monarch a century ago. As individuals we should
acknowledge this. Mr Cameron claims to be a champion of the individual.
Unfortunately he doesn't have the slightest clue what he is talking
about.
JUNE 28th 2007
David Miliband is now Foreign Secretary. This is a strange appointment
for one so young. I see it as aimed at the domestic audience. Since
what we have to do is to get the UK public to understahd policy with
respect to Europe, the MIddle East, Climate Change etc. this could be a
most ingenious appointment. The government's problem over the past 10
years has been taking the public with them on their policies, bith at
home and abroad. Brown has stated that we can get nothing done wthout
getting it together at home. This makes sense,