BUSINESS FIRST


libertarian Lysander Spooner who said that once elected, governments cease to operate with the consent of ‘all the people’. (I paraphrase; Tim’s article is overleaf.)


This is the most important point of this scandal; it illustrates perfectly how our elites operate, whether it is with contempt for the law and basic decency as exemplified by News International or cosy arrangements between government, central banks and private banks that redound to their own enormous benefit but at great cost to ordinary taxpayers. I'm sure you can think of other examples.


If the NI scandal is the beginning of the toothpaste pouring out of this vile tube then let us hope that sufficient numbers of ‘all the people’ may wake up to demand real change to the way we are governed.


A quick point about Murdoch and how he has been courted by political party leaders for their support. It is true that a steady drumbeat of negative news will damage a party, so having Murdoch on your side makes sense. But the man’s not a fool. He supported people like Blair and Cameron because he knew they were likely winners. Yet they thought they couldn't be winners without him and he did nothing to disabuse them of that. Their obeisance fed his arrogance.


A recent news story:


‘BRITISH businesses have been urged to hire surly, undereducated malcontents because at least they are not foreign.’


‘Ian Duncan Smith now wants British companies to throw their business plans into the bin and hope that by employing indigenous youngsters they will be able to get the computers and furniture out of the building before it burns to the ground.’


Satire? Of course. The Daily Mash does a great job of skewering those who deserve it. But did it strike a chord with you? It did with me. I don’t know what was more preposterous, Duncan Smith’s absurd suggestion that businesses deliberately breach EU-inspired anti-discrimination employment legislation or his cynical showboating that gave the curtain-twitching fraternity at the Mail and elsewhere a spasm of delight that at last a British politician was ‘telling the truth’.


He knows only too well that we are powerless to do as he suggests, even if he wants to. And as the Mash underscored so brilliantly, businesses would be mugs to accept second best out of some sense of misplaced patriotism. Maybe they’re not second best, maybe there are excellent young British recruits just waiting for the call. But the statistics tell a tragically different story.


The HS2 controversy rumbles on, with both sides’ positions become more deeply entrenched. The government has strong support among some elements of the London business


OPINION


community, most notably the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They believe that opening up a high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham will do wonders for London and the country as a whole.


The anti-HS2 brigades now count Mayor Boris Johnson among their ranks. Whatever his motivation in so publicly opposing a pet policy of David Cameron’s (Mr. Mayor is doing quite a lot of that these days…) he has given an enormous fillip to the antis’ cause, which continues to suffer from the unfortunate admixture of NIMBYism to the very cogent and defensible economic arguments against the project.


Personally, I would ignore the howls of outrage across the Home Counties if I felt the £34bn was being spent wisely. But I don’t. The list of transport projects that money could be spent on is as long as your arm, including a new runway somewhere in the South East and fixing a myriad of road and rail bottlenecks around the country that would make life easier for a vastly greater number of people than those who simply want to get to Birmingham 20 minutes earlier.


Ayn Rand has made something of a comeback in the last few months. Sure, the film of her great novel Atlas Shrugged sank without trace, but the book continues to outstrip even The Bible in sales. Rand (and how the former chairman of the Fed Alan Greenspan was her loyal devotee) was the initial focus of Adam Curtis’s BBC2 film series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The film also described the zeal with which she is admired, particularly by some of the Silicon Valley pioneers. And, it was gently suggested, it was all a bit bonkers.


So, her Objectivist philosophy continues to attract hostility because very few people can understand how rational self- interest and the rejection of altruism can lead to a better society. Who knows, maybe it can’t, but we’ll never know because it will never be tested on a scale sufficiently large to make or disprove the case. That said, our current system, in which altruism is lauded and self-interest condemned, does not seem to be a howling success. And the continuing popularity of her work seems to suggest that a very large minority of people find something very powerful in what she says.


Rand was a woman of immense intellect and understanding and some of her writing is inspirational, so I make no apologies for passing on this bit of advice from her for business people doing their best to make a go of it, day after day. For they are the ones who will drive us back to some semblance of security.


Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach.


The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.


Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged // JULY/AUGUST 2011 25


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