According to another self-identified ‘victim’ of racial oppression – who, despite this oppression, uses what can only be described as her privileged platform to spew racist bile at the supposed cruelty of the white population- the Royal Family are ‘pale and stale’, not to mention ‘institutionally racist’. If any white person were to write such toxic libel about, say, an African royal family, they’d be sacked on the spot. So why does Yasmin Alibhai-Brown get a free pass?
It really is dangerous and divisive stuff. In her latest vitriolic diatribe against the institution that, for all its faults, is supported by the majority of the population, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, in last week’s iNews, essentially accused its members of being too white. In doing so she was agreeing with the ‘brave’ Bridgerton star Adjoh Andoh, who said exactly that on the privileged platform of national television during the Coronation proceedings.
So, make no mistake, we’ve got two very powerful members of the cultural elite brazenly and unapologetically aiming racist abuse at the white majority. Imagine if the boot were on the other foot.
What if a white English person – or an ‘Englander’ as Ms. Alibhai-Brown so disdainfully refers to the indigenous population – were to say that the cast of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air lacked diversity, or that black footballers were over-represented in the premier league? Or, perhaps, that ethnic minorities are now disproportionately represented on national television, particularly in TV advertisements? It’s unthinkable.
If someone were to slip up and criticise all that so-called ‘positive discrimination’ we’re unwillingly and submissively subjected to these days, we’d be pilloried and viciously harried from public life.
I fear for the future. Divisive race-baiters like Ms. Alibhai-Brown are bullying and forcing through irrevocable change whilst goading and ridiculing the white majority (81.7 per cent of the population, according to the last Census). This can only end badly.
Ms. Alibhai-Brown and Ms. Andoh aren’t the only ones. Look at Diane Abbott MP.
In her toxic and vindictive worldview, cultivated through a prism of paranoia and feelings of perpetual victimhood, revenge against the white majority is the only remedy for the historical injustices suffered by black Britons.
Her latest attack on whites – during which, so warped by CRT-inspired notions of racism, she couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge the indisputable fact that white people, including Jews, Irish immigrants and Travellers, can be victims of racism too – is only the latest example of her overt anti-white as well as anti-Semitic racism.
In 1996 she labelled white Finnish girls unsuitable to work as nurses in her local hospital. She claimed that, coming from Scandinavia, they would not have ‘met a black person before’. In 2010, after contentiously sending her son to a private school – having spent years railing against them – she defended her decision by implying that white mothers do not love their children as much as their Afro-Caribbean counterparts.
In 2012, moreover, she tweeted: “White people love to play ‘divide and rule’. We should not play their game.”
It couldn’t be clearer: Diane Abbott is a racist as well as an unconscionable hypocrite. She is the very definition of a champagne socialist: Do as I say, not as I do.
Let’s hope her latest faux pas leads to her permanent expulsion from the Labour Party. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though. Racism against the white majority has become acceptable. And its most bellicose exponents are awarded with the most visible and influential pulpits to preach their poison and satisfy their lust for vengeance.
Their hate and demagoguery must be challenged.
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The Supreme Court is Our Ship, Don’t Let it Sink
As conservatives and moral traditionalists, it’s easy to get despondent and fearful over just how vast and endless the problems we face today are. Here in America especially, the analogy of the “blue wave” of Millenial and Gen-Z voters often leads one to believe that we are surrounded on all sides by an endless sea of “progressivism”.
Nevertheless, in the great blue sea of blue-haired androgynes, we still have our ship, and we still have strong winds that will, in the long term, lead us to the safety of the land.
That ship is the Supreme Court, and it is our job as voters and conservative/traditional activists to ensure that she sails, and that we don’t let this next decade of judicial dominance go to waste as we have with other institutions of power – like the 2019 dominance of the Tory Party in the UK Parliament.
Where power resides is often unclear to most voters, especially in American politics. Our elected representatives in the Senate or the House are often bought and paid for by donors, PACs, business interests, or lobby groups well before they swear their oath of office and promise to represent their constituents to the best of their ability. The same goes with the Presidency, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that are spent on individual runs for the Oval Office.
However, out of the three branches of government that I would trust the most with representing my best interests, I would have to place my faith in the power of the Supreme Court.
These days we’ll often hear and see politicians and activists on social media and in other public forums hounding about the “abuse of power” in the Supreme Court, especially after the recent decisions to overturn Affirmative Action for university applicants, striking down Student Loan Forgiveness, and allowing businesses to refuse services if it goes against their religious beliefs (a.k.a being allowed to refuse baking a cake for a homosexual wedding).
Hillary Clinton, everyone’s favorite former First Lady and “future President”, accused the Supreme Court of being on the side of the wealthy and major corporations.
AOC cried that the recent decisions were “destroying the legitimacy of the court.”
Many more have advocated for more Supreme Court Justices, or regulatory bodies overseeing the Supreme Court so that it doesn’t make the “wrong decisions” for the American people.
While there are plenty of detractors to the efficiency and legitimacy of the Supreme Court, I still argue that this is probably the most important branch of government to protect, and fight for, due to the nature of its being. It was around this time last year I wrote about the Supreme Court in the wake of the Roe v. Wade decision.
Once again, demonstrably, we have seen why the Supreme Court is the most important branch of government, and why it is under attack, and why these days in particular it is the most important battleground for American conservatism in politics.
Unlike Congress, or the Executive, Supreme Court Justices are not elected – they’re selected, by nomination, from a sitting President. The power of money and lobbies are, at the very least, dampened by the fact that they have no official power in choosing a Justice, nor any means to fund campaigns or influence election processes.
Justices are in the role for life. An appointment that doesn’t rely on reelection is one that doesn’t rely on being financed by donors and backers. Once they’re there, they’re there for good. Personally, I trust a judge who doesn’t need to go begging to anyone that will fund their campaign coffers every two to four years more than I do a sitting member of Congress, Republican or Democrat.
When it comes to the selection process, the concern for almost everyone is that those who are selected are “the wrong type of person”, and stacking the Supreme Court with partisan ideologues. Often, if not always, the nominated judge will reflect the character and ideology of the serving administration. Our most recently appointed Supreme Court Justice, Kentaji Brown Jackson reflects the Biden administration almost perfectly. She’s an activist judge, appointed not just because of her record and experience, but also because she fits the diversity quota, and agrees with the “current thing”. This is a shame, because I can only imagine how humiliating it must be to be selected primarily because of your gender and race, rather than your achievements.
And it was no secret that it was a race-based decision. The Biden administration promised well before his decision to select Jackson that he was “looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure we in fact get everyone represented”.
Naturally, any one who points these facts out is an intolerant racist who wants to “keep Black Women™ down!”
It is no secret that Republicans select conservative judges to the Supreme Court in a similar fashion – rather it’s expected that they will.
But, as I’m sure you know dear reader, politics is not about compromise or shaking hands with the other side of the aisle. Politics is about winning. The Supreme Court in the United States is no different.
Which is why the Trump administration was a Godsend for conservatives in the United States. Not one, not two, but three successful nominations of conservative Justices have ensured that the Supreme Court will remain one of the few branches of government that is on “our side” at least in terms of beliefs and core values.
If Trump is able to secure a second non-consecutive term, or if we are able to have any sort of Republican in the next administration, it is likely that we’d gain at least one more conservative Justice, ensuring that a liberal Supreme Court is almost virtually impossible within the next two decades.
In recent years, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade amongst other landmark decisions, we’ve merely had a taste of what sort of power the Judicial Branch of government in the United States holds, and what they can do with that power.
If we were to see a completely stacked conservative Supreme Court, with Justices Sotomeyer and Kagan aging out of the role and being replaced, who knows what sort of decisions could be reversed and which others could be implemented? One can only dream!
But leaving the Supreme Court to its own devices is simply not enough. While I trust our current conservative Justices more than most politicians to make well-guided, reasoned, and inherently moral decisions in the judicial branch, they cannot tackle all problems on their own.
We ought to take a lesson out of the Left’s guidebook, and through demonstrations publicly and online, through widespread discussion, and most importantly through trawling through the hundreds, if not thousands of landmark decisions to nitpick and find Constitutional inconsistencies and government oversteps. They are there, and a case for overturning them can be made with the right amount of knowledge, preparation and legal due diligence.
So, while in many other aspects of American politics it may seem that we as conservatives and moral traditionalists are overwhelmed by the crashing waves in a sea of rabid liberalism, we still have power over a mighty ship that we must ensure does not sink into the abyss.
The only way to survive those rogue waves is to sail over them, and sail we will.
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Bring Back Food Rationing!
Having never experienced food rationing myself I cannot say what it is like, but I am assuming the experience is not as bad as images suggest. My reasoning is straightforward and can be put in the form of an argument as follows: (1) The National Health Service (NHS) is good; (2) Food is more important than health; therefore, (3) A National Food Service (NFS) would be good. Is there anything wrong with this argument?
Let’s look briefly at the truth or falsity of the premises, before elaborating. A supporter of an NFS, along with many millions of others, would affirm with confidence that the NHS is a ‘good thing’. That is, it is a desirable if not indispensable institution, at the beating heart of our national life, a support and a lifeline for all of us, relatively free at the point of use, providing the full panoply of basic medical services, from care for minor ailments to treatment for serious illnesses and conditions such as cancer, heart disease, broken limbs, disfigurement, deadly infections, and so on. Yes, it is currently in the worst shape it has been in for decades, to the point that in the current election campaign the major parties do not even pretend to mouth slogans such as ‘Twenty-for hours to save the NHS’, so far gone is the patient.
That does not mean the NHS is undesirable, though, does it? Anyway, just suppose it is a good thing for the sake of argument and let’s revisit the premise later. Premise (2) says that food is more important than health, and the truth or falsity of this depends on what we mean by ‘important’. Think of it this way. Although both food and health are quite basic human goods, there is an asymmetry. Without food – by which I mean adequate nutrition, not simply fasting for a bit or going on a diet – you are guaranteed to be unhealthy. But if you are unhealthy, it is not guaranteed you will lack adequate nutrition. Some illnesses make it hard to keep food down. Some illnesses deprive a person of their appetite. But these are exceptions. You can be seriously unhealthy, headed for the grave, and yet still not be suffering from malnutrition. If you are malnourished, however, you will be unhealthy there and then, with no further steps required, no exceptions to be made.
Ask yourself this admittedly remotely hypothetical question: faced with the choice between inadequate food and inadequate health (short of death!), which would you choose? I’d go for inadequate health, thinking that with inadequate food I’ll be unhealthy anyway, so why not just have ill health but at least plenty of food, hoping that I can maintain my strength and give myself a fighting chance against my illness? Again, as a general rule if you have zero food you are dead in a few months. You’d have to have a pretty rare condition – pancreatic cancer, say – to be dead in a few months. If you add not having water to not having food – and I do want to add that since I am classing food and water together when I hypothesise about a National Food Service – you are dead in a few days. Very few illnesses or combinations of conditions kill you in a few days – maybe bacterial meningitis or necrotizing fasciitis.
So yes, of course health is important, but food is just that bit more important. That said, by ‘important’ in premise (2) I am packing a little more into it than the asymmetry just outlined. I also mean that if there is such an asymmetry, then however society is structured so as to make health care readily available should be similar in key respects to how society should be structured so as to make food readily available. This is how the conceptual connection between ‘good’ in (1) and ‘important’ in (2) should be interpreted. (I could split the argument into sub-arguments to make this crystal clear, but it’s not necessary).
Now, does our conclusion (3) – ‘A National Food Service (NFS) would be good’ – follow from the premises? If so we have a valid argument, and if the premises are true then we have our ultimate goal, a sound argument – to lapse into philosophy-speak. Well, I’ve gestured at the truth of (1) but also said we should just assume it for the fun of the argument. A full defence of (1) would come from the endless literature doing just that – defending the goodness of the NHS. I’ve argued at greater length for the truth of (2) and its connection to (1). Suppose I’ve done the job. Then how could the conclusion not follow? It must, of logical necessity. There is no escape. We need a National Food Service.
Er, do we? The title of this article refers to ‘rationing’. Actually, food rationing is really not something you’d want to experience. Nobody in their right mind wants food rationing, except the crooks who make money off it and are not subject to the rationing themselves. I think I’d rather emigrate than have food rationing – at least as a way of life. So what I really think – and I’m sure you agree – is that food rationing is not something we’d want brought back. And so the prospect of a National Food Service should fill me – and you – with utter dread. If that is the case, then we must do what we philosophers call a modus tollens: I give you an argument pointing inexorably to a certain conclusion. But that conclusion is on its face absurd. You and I won’t accept it. So we are forced by logic to deny at least one of premises (1) and (2). Having already made a pretty good case for (2), we have to deny (1) after all, contrary to the initial ‘for the sake of argument’ assumption. The NHS is not good – not in concept any more than in current execution.
Wait a minute, you might object: I’m comparing apples and oranges. There is no rationing in the NHS! But there is, I insist. True, we don’t all walk around with health care ration books with quotas of medicines or treatments printed on each ticket. But health care is rationed nonetheless, as any fule kno. You get a precious ten minutes with your GP, then you are politely expected to leave (unless things are serious as judged by that GP alone). You cannot get any treatment you want, no matter how effective or promising; it all depends on cost and the voluminous guidance of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). Ultimately, who gets what is for the government of the day, acting on the advice of – sorry, I can’t resist – Twenty-First Century Science.™ The details of NHS rationing are there for all to see. This leads to very bad consequences for patients in a multitude of cases, with the example of breast cancer drug Kadcyla being instructive.
A critic of my argument might insist that food and health are dissimilar in important ways that undermine premise (2), the claim that food is more important than health. Recall that my argument is not just that food is prior to health in terms of human well-being, but that because of this its allocation in whatever way society allows should be the same as the way health care is allocated in that society. All things being equal, perhaps that is true. But all things are not equal, says the critic. There is a whole side to food provision that has no health care parallel. There are restaurants, gourmet dining, eating for pleasure, eating as a cultural pastime. Whereas health care is about meeting needs, there is more to food provision than simply meeting needs.
It is not clear to me that there is a disanalogy. Health care also has its niche, exotic, cultural, aspirational side. Think of purely aesthetic surgery – nose jobs, teeth whitening, skin lightening, Botox, hair removal, hair transplants, body modification, and so on. These are all far more about satisfying desires than meeting real needs. They are generally not necessary for health. The critic retorts: ‘then they are not about health care, so why are you bringing them into the discussion?’ My reply: ‘then neither is fine dining or wine tasting part of food provision, so why are you bringing them into the discussion?’ In other words, cheek filler and fine dining stand or fall together. Either both are on the table or neither are. I think it’s more plausible to say they are both on the table as quite remote parts of health care and food provision, respectively. Now, cosmetic surgery is not routinely available on the NHS, except for mental health reasons or if the cosmetic aspect is accompanied by a real functional need (e.g. to breathe clearly). This is well and good. Similarly, in my National Food Service regime, oysters and crab-flavoured ice cream would also not routinely be available (except perhaps if they were essential to nutrition!). These would have to be purchased on the private market.
The critic might try this gambit: health care, the kind of care that doesn’t just maintain health but that keeps you alive, can be astronomically expensive. People can’t generally afford it. Adequate nutrition can be had very cheaply. So people need help from the state with the former but can pay for the latter themselves. My reply is that if this point is a good one, it only favours restricting the NHS to the really expensive treatments, not retaining the kind of all-encompassing, womb-to-tomb NHS we have now. So the critic’s point undercuts their own idea that an NFS is not desirable but the NHS is. Moreover, some staple foods, which millions require for nutrition, are particularly expensive to produce, e.g. rice; these rely heavily on government subsidies, loans, and other price support mechanisms. So why not go the whole hog with food, so to speak, and bundle it into an NFS? Anyhow, the overall cheapness of food argues in favour of an NFS because it is really, truly, hard to believe that an NFS would cost more than the NHS – which is pushing £200 billion in annual cost, that is to say, about £3000 annually for every human being in England. I am having to stretch my credulity beyond breaking point to suppose that universal food rationing would cost anywhere near that much. But I have no method of estimating it. (The last I looked, by the way, £3000 would buy every human being in England a helluvalot of health insurance. Just saying.)
OK, how about the ‘black market’ objection? This says that just as we saw a lot of illegality during wartime food rationing, we would see the same the minute an NFS came into existence. And we don’t want that. In reply, this presupposes we do not see illegality as a result of having the NHS. I’m not talking about dodgy tattoo and piercing parlours or lunchtime liposuctions. I’m referring to ‘medical tourism’, where thousands upon thousands of UK citizens go abroad for medical treatment (234,000 in 2021, with 34,000 foreigners coming to the UK for treatments, stats here; gets the noggin joggin’ doesn’t it?). That in itself is legal, of course, but it is surely the case – data are hard to come by – that at least hundreds, if not thousands, of people are injured by negligent doctors, in dodgy or uncertified clinics, or by illegal procedures abroad. I am not thinking of cosmetic surgery (which is the number one reason for medical tourism) since that is not available on the NHS anyway, but rather of things like orthopaedic surgery and dental procedures (it being notoriously hard to get on the books of an NHS dentist).
It is tough to see a significant disanalogy between health care and food provision when it comes to the idea of a nationalised service – socialism, effectively. If there is none, then either we should go with food rationing or we should dismantle and privatise the NHS. As I said, I’m not a fan of food rationing and I doubt you are. I like my private supermarkets, the abundance of choice, the full range of pricing, the efficient delivery, and the reasonably pleasant shopping experience. (Things are going downhill, to be sure; thanks a bunch, America.) But that’s only the supermarkets. I live near an award-winning cheese shop, an award-winning butcher, an overpriced organic shop, and can get pretty much any food online that I can’t find locally. All in all, I can’t complain. Do I want all this to be turned into a bunch of Stalinist showrooms with tasteful lighting illuminating a few mouldy potatoes? All right already, I’m exaggerating. But you can bet that an NFS would be a sodding awful experience without end (unlike post-World War 2 food rationing, which ended in 1954).
And a privatised health service? I admit, my own experience with the NHS has been pretty positive. Our local surgery is clean, neat and friendly, the local hospital likewise, so again I can’t complain. But that’s my area. Stories abound of shoddy service: paint peeling off the walls, DNRs on anyone over 70 (at least during COVID), old people lying on trolleys in corridors for hours and days on end, people sleeping on the floor, half a day to get seen by accident and emergency, botched maternity care, murderous nurses, sepsis here and sepsis there, often woeful food, radical discontinuity of care, hospitals rated inadequate, a culture of cover-up, bullying, endless negligence payouts, bloated bureaucrats on golden pensions, and so on and on. The word on the street these days about the NHS is not exactly positive.
There is no room to rehash the endless debate over privatised health care. That said, I am not advocating for a fully privatised system anyway. Not even our private food system is without government supplementation, for example free school meals and financial assistance to food charities, not to mention government subsidies for agriculture. In a private medical system, there would be similar government assistance, safety nets, and the like. In addition, just as private food is heavily regulated so as to reduce the risk of contamination, food poisoning, and waste, so a private medical system would also be heavily regulated to ensure basic standards from top to bottom.
The worry that is perhaps most often raised is that whereas food products are commodities and hence subject to commodity pricing, many life-saving medicines and treatments are the result of decades of high-cost research and development, require intellectual property protection, and need to have their costs recouped through high pricing. The hope that I and many others have is that as long as technology progresses, prices will trend downwards and affordability will increase. This is particularly so with the mass production of generic medicines. A hundred years ago, hardly anyone ate steak. And hardly anyone had access to antibiotics. Still, there is a long way to go in light of the Big Pharma quasi-cartel, corrupt regulators and legislators (the old ‘revolving door’), and the artificial stimulation of demand due in large part to a woeful lack of government or private interest in preventive health care – the best health care of all.
No, I don’t want to stand in a queue outside a state-run food dispensary. And I want more than ten minutes with my GP. The logic of not bothering about the latter leads to not being fussed about the former, at least if my reasoning is correct. I think we should reject rationing altogether, outside of war and national calamity. If I want a National Food Service, I’ll head over to North Korea. Thanks but no thanks; I’m off to Tesco for a sirloin.
David S. Oderberg is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading; d.s.oderberg@reading.ac.uk; www.davidsoderberg.co.uk; davidsoderberg.substack.com. All opinions expressed are personal and not associated in any way with my employer.
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The Reality of Degree Regret
It is now graduation season, when approximately 800,000 (mostly) young people up and down the country decide for once in their lives that it is worth dressing smartly and donning a cap and gown so that they can walk across a stage at their university, have their hands clasped by a ceremonial ‘academic’, and take photos with their parents. Graduation looked a little different for me as a married woman who still lives in my university city, but the concept remains the same. Graduates are encouraged to celebrate the start of their working lives by continuing in the exact same way that they have lived for the prior 21 years: by drinking, partying, and ‘doing what you love’ rather than taking responsibility for continuing your family and country’s legacy.
However, something I have noticed this year which contrasts from previous years is that graduates are starting to be a lot more honest about the reality of degree regret. For now, this sentiment is largely contained in semi-sarcastic social media posts and anonymous surveys, but I consider it a victory that the cult of education is slowly but surely starting to be criticised. CNBC found that in the US (where just over 50% of working age people have a degree), a shocking 44% of job-seekers regret their degrees. Unsurprisingly, journalism, sociology, and liberal arts are the most regretted degrees (and lead to the lowest-paying jobs). A majority of jobseekers with degrees in these subjects said that if they could go back, they would study a different subject such as computer science or business. Even in the least regretted majors (computer science and engineering), only around 70% said that they would do the same degree if they could start again. Given that CNBC is hardly a network known to challenge prevailing narratives, we can assume that in reality the numbers are probably slightly higher.
A 2020 article detailed how Sixth Form and College students feel pressured to go to university, and 65% of graduates regret it. 47% said that they were not aware of the option of pursuing a degree apprenticeship, which demonstrates a staggering lack of information. Given how seriously educational institutions supposedly take their duty to prepare young people for their future, this appears to be a significant failure. Parental pressure is also a significant factor, as 20% said that they did not believe their parents would have been supportive had they chosen an alternative such as a degree apprenticeship, apprenticeship, or work. This is understandable given the fact that for our parent’s generation, a degree truly was a mark of prestige and a ticket to the middle class, but due to credential inflation this is no longer the case. They were wrong, but only on the matter of scale, as a survey of parents found that as many as 40% had a negative attitude towards alternative paths.
Reading this, you may think that I am totally against the idea of a university being a place to learn gloriously useless subjects for the sake of advancing knowledge that may in some very unlikely situations become useful to mankind. Universities should be a place to conceptualise new ways the world could be, and a place where the best minds from around the world gather to genuinely push the frontiers of knowledge forward. What I object to is the idea that universities be a 3-year holiday from the real world and responsibilities towards family and community, a place to ‘find oneself’ rather than finding meaning in the outer world, a dating club, or a tool for social mobility. I do not object to taxpayer funding for research if it passes a meaningful evaluation of value for money and is not automatically covered under the cultish idea that any investment in education is inherently good.
In order to avoid the epidemic of degree regret that we are currently facing, we need to hugely reduce the numbers of students admitted for courses which are oft regretted. This is not with the aim of killing off said subjects, but enhancing the education available to those remaining as they will be surrounded by peers who genuinely share their interest and able to derive more benefit from more advanced teaching and smaller classes. Additionally, we need to stop filling the gaps in our technical workforce with immigration and increase the number of academic and vocational training placements in fields such as computer science and engineering. With regards to the negative attitudes, I described above, these will largely be fixed as the millennial generation filled with degree regret comes to occupy senior positions and reduces the stigma of not being a graduate within the workplace. By being honest about the nature of tomorrow’s job market, we can stop children from growing up thinking that walking across the stage in a gown guarantees you a lifetime of prosperity.
On a rare personal note, having my hands clasped in congratulations for having wasted three years of my life did not feel like an achievement. It felt like an embarrassment to have to admit that 4 years ago when I filled out UCAS applications to study politics; I was taken for a fool. I have not had my pre-existing biases challenged and my understanding of the world around me transformed by my degree as promised. As an 18-year-old going into university, I knew that my criticisms of the world around me were ‘wrong’, and I was hoping that and education/indoctrination would ‘fix’ me. Obviously given the fact that 3 years later I am writing for the Mallard this is not the case, and all I have realised from my time here is that there are others out there, and my thoughts never needed to be fixed.
