Posted on 02/24/2005 12:32:34 AM PST by ijcr
A former colleague of mine was involved as an expert witness for the defendant in a civil case not long ago. A short time thereafter, he bumped into the judge at a golf clubhouse, who half recognised him.
"Are you a doctor?", he said.
"Yes", replied my colleague.
"And weren't you a witness in a case recently?"
"Yes".
The judge then asked him what he thought of the outcome. My colleague replied: "I think that the defendant would have received a fairer hearing in a kangaroo court run by generals in a South American military dictatorship".
I need hardly say that this remark brought the conversation to a close. But as reported, it set me thinking about the nature of our own freedom: how much freer are we than the citizens of a South American dictatorship (in the old days, where there were such things)? How free, exactly, are we?
I don't want to indulge in any self-pitying false comparisons. We have neither Gestapo nor Gulag, and it is an insult to all those who have experienced such things in their own flesh and blood (or bone, as they say in Spanish, perhaps more accurately) to compare our small tribulations with theirs. Irritations are not tragedies.
Nevertheless, I think we are less free than we used to be. The weight of the state is making itself everywhere felt. In my former professional life as a doctor, for example, I was obliged more and more to obey the dictates of ministers, rather than those of my medical beliefs.
Whereas when I started out on my career all that was necessary to continue in practice was that I should be qualified and that I should refrain from behaving in an egregious or outrageous manner, by the time I retired this year I had to fulfil all sorts of requirements, all of which (in this age of evidence-based medicine) were quite without evidence of use or efficacy. But that is not the real point of such requirements: they are not there to improve the quality of medical practice; they are there to let us all know who is boss. And even if they were effective, which is intrinsically very difficult to prove, they would still represent a loss of liberty.
The fact is that the requirements laid down by ministers and their bureaucrats now take up fully half the time of senior doctors, when they could be doing clinical work, and this at a time of shortage of medical manpower. Most doctors, except for the apparatchiks among them, are profoundly unhappy about this, and are taking retirement as soon as possible.
An increasing proportion of medical graduates never practice medicine, because the career is now so deeply unattractive to them, and they can do better elsewhere. Having brought this situation about, the government has launched its Improving Working Lives initiative, still failing to realise that it is the sinner, not the saviour.
There are other ways in which the state (by which I mean all agencies vested with public power) weighs increasingly heavily upon us, quite apart from the fact that we spend nearly a half of our working life paying for it. Here are a few random indicators:
1. The other day, at dawn, a large council vehicle parked outside my house with a very tall crane-like attachment, from the top of which photographs were taken of the neighbourhood, including my house. No one had felt obliged explain why, or for what purpose the photographs were to be used. The city is the council's and the fullness thereof.
2. Once a year, I receive through the post a letter marked with the exhortatory words, "Don't lose your right to vote – register now". Added to this is the warning, in case I don't feel like exercising my right, "Failure to comply could lead to a £1000 fine". This is like being accosted by a beggar in the street who simultaneously appeals to your charity and menaces you if you don't cough up.
3. Every few months, I receive a letter from the TV licensing agency, who do not believe that I do not have a television. Once again I am threatened with a £1000 fine, and also warned that my house will soon be spied upon unless I buy a licence.
4. When I drive out in my car, I am immediately in the presence, every few hundred yards, of cameras. (The British are now the most heavily surveyed people by CCTV in the world. There were more than fifty CCTV cameras in the hospital in which I worked, most of them hidden.) I don't want to drive like a lunatic, and in fact conduct on the road is the one aspect of British behaviour that is still superior to that of most foreigners, and was so even before the cameras were emplaced. Even if they are effective, and reduce accidents, they add to the pervasive feeling of being spied upon by the state.
5. Our police now look more like an occupying military force than citizenry in uniform. They are both menacing and ineffectual (quite an achievement), and even law-abiding citizens are now afraid of them. If you want to ask the time, don't bother a policeman. I know from medico-legal experience that the police are far more interested in preserving themselves from the public than from preventing or investigating crimes, up to and including attempted murder. This is not because, as individuals, they are bad men and women; it is because of the same kind of bureaucratic regulation imposed on them as it has been imposed on doctors and other professions.
6. I own a flat in London and have recently learned that I must replace a boiler, not because it does not work or because it is dangerous, but because the regulations have changed, for reasons that it would be impossible to discover, except that they obey the rule of Keynesian economics to stimulate demand and keep it stimulated. And this in practice would mean that, if I still want gas heating, I have to put a new boiler in my living room.
And so it goes on – and on. Very rarely nowadays do I feel myself free of the state. Its power has increased, is increasing and ought to be decreased. But I am not the man to do it. By retiring, I have withdrawn myself from it as far as possible. Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
Anthony Daniels is a writer and retired earlier this year as a doctor.Daniels has had many of his articles posted on FR under his nom de plume.
So without using a search engine...what is Dr. Daniels' nom de plume?
Brityank?
Answer: not very. As Admiral Nelson used to say, thank God I live in a civilized country.
I wonder if Mad Ivan knows...
How free is Britain today? More so than they will be tomorrow. Just wait until that EU "Constitution" takes full effect. Having a German hobnail boot on their throat and a French high heel on their b@lls ought to make them really feel like they've become part and parcel of "Europe". (Or should I say Eurabia?)
You can do that in the US too.. =o)
Interesting article. I'm afraid the US isn't far behind.
His articles appear in City Journal and at times in the Daily Telegraph.
I don't feel less than free. But then again, I'm not in a highly regulated profession like a doctor. The biggest bit of regulation I have to face at the moment is Sarbanes Oxley since I work for an American firm.
PS - you'd be better off asking a fencepost than Jovial Cad what he thinks, he's an anti-British bigot.
Regards, Ivan
It surely isn´t. What kind of freedom is it when you are not allowed to drink a beer on the (public) beach, or aren´t allowed to smoke even in bars, restaurants? Buckle up, it´s the law, ok, I get this since it´s not a big thing and it serves you as well as the society both. But where does it end?
Ivan, dear boy,
You should take a look at Nanny Knows Best if you've never seen it. If even half of what they say is true, the Englishman's liberties are a shadow of what they once were.
-ccm
The fact that we complain as much as we do about an intrusive state is indicative of our basic liberties still being in place.
I should point out, it's apparent that both the Tories and Liberals are going to run the next election partially on a platform of rolling back some of the encroachments Labour has made.
Regards, Ivan
Remember the good old days? When it seemed like Heath, Wilson, Callaghan were always battling the Miner's Union? Or, saving the pound from IMF restrictions? So simple back then.
For me the good old days were when Mrs. Thatcher was handbagging the hell out of everyone.
Regards, Ivan
"oursouls: Since 2005-02-20."
Now why, oh why, does that somehow not surprise me?
...(snicker)...
So you can offer no rebuttal of my points other than to call it "nonsense" with no accompanying argument or justification and to point your finger at the date when I registered on this site?
My, what an intelligent fellow you are.
Hmmm, don't know the gentleman's real name, but this particular article is a warning to us all, everywhere, and I hope he tends his garden well. He surely has a green thumb. (Saw a tv commercial on cable last night exhorting South Africa tourism. My hair stood on end.)
Guess that's in the same steep decline as stiff upper lips and basic human liberty out your way too, eh?
Your "anti-British bigot" bilge is, besides being nonsense, the textbook definition of laughable. What I am is an "anti-Mad Ivan nonsense & smarmy half-truths" bigot. To that charge I happily plead guilty...
Britain is doomed.
You really can't help yourself, can you? This whole act you put on, gaining gratification by being abusive to people online, is pretty pathetic.
Ivan
The Brits rejected the Idea of a Constitution of the Sovereign U.S.A.,....and they are today 'still' opposed to that U.S.A. citizen 'Sovereignty'
(That ain't very free......The British peoples are still 'subjects'...?)
/EU's U.N.
As an American living in the UK, I can vouch for the fact that the title of this article is quite incorrect -- one feels quite free to do what one wants in the UK
The spirit that animated Runnymede is certainly dimmed, but I don't think down-and-out for the count just yet--and may well be ripe for reanimation. Time will tell.
"Pathetic" it 'tis, indeed...
You done yet?
Ivan
"The Brits rejected the Idea of a Constitution of the Sovereign U.S.A.,....and they are today 'still' opposed to that U.S.A. citizen 'Sovereignty'
(That ain't very free......The British peoples are still 'subjects'...?)"
Thanks for an illuminating post. The 30 seconds or so you spent thinking about this subject was time well spent. Where can I catch one of your lectures, professor?
Theodore Dalrymple is his nom de plume. He is published quite a bit in City Journal among others.
Only as free as the United States of America backs them.
Any Questions?
"what is Dr. Daniels' nom de plume?"
C3-P0?
It doesnt end till YOU decide to end it.
Dont succumb to the impotence of the herd.
Recently, a minister friend of mine from England was visiting, and attended church with us. We heard a very good sermon, but afterward my friend informed me that, while he agreed with the sermon, he would have been arrested for giving that sermon in England. My guess is that England is NOT very free.
Just to test the issue of England's freedom, publicly express the opinion that Islam is an evil religion of hate. Another good test would be to try and find your local gun shop and buy yourself a handgun for protection.
I remember the "good old days" when those buggers made us drop pounds shillings and pence and go decimal. I believe it was Feb.1971. Until then we were paid in Guineas ie one pound and one shilling.
Before that date, you could buy a newspaper for a penny and a decent bar of chocolate for 3d.
As an aside you could not exit the country with more than 10 pounds in cash and it was recorded in your passport.
O, Lord above, send down some doves.
With beaks as sharp as razors.
To cut the throats, of them there blokes,
that sells bad beer to sailors.
Alternatively try drinking a can of beer in a New Jersey Park (I did, I nearly got jailed). Light up a cigarette in an NY restaraunt or have your wife go topless on a Californian beach.
Your Welcome.
......a 30 hours series forthcoming on EXACTLY what 'happened' to the British subjects' Middle-Classes economy?
/citizenship sovereignty?
That's always been my policy, of course, Maddy old boy. Since about the first time you initiated an unprovoked flame-war with me, as I recall...(and it had nothing to with the U.K., either, for those of you wondering).
Frankly, I don't care to do any of those.
While I understand your point, there is a large difference between not being able to drink beer on a beach and not being able to deliver a Biblical sermon.
Excuse me, but you start in on my country, playing fast and loose with the insults: if a British person said similarly on this board, they'd have their head handed back to them. I respond in kind. Then there is a space of months when I say absolutely nothing to you - and then you drop in on a thread uninvited with your abusive behaviour. As this thread shows, you continue this abusive behaviour towards my country and countrymen. I have noted that generally speaking, unintelligent insults backed up with a supposed "chuckle" appears to be your modus operandi. I don't want to speak to you - you have nothing worthwhile to say. I have not made it a point of crossing your path to continue a "flame war"; you have made a point to insult the UK at every opportunity you spot, and further to that, be extraordinarily abusive to any British person who speaks up, and even be abusive to people like Miss Marple.
I don't know what motivates people like you to behave like you do. I don't care. From my perspective you're just a someone with a chip on your shoulder and a bad attitude and thus best avoided.
Ivan
There are other indications that Britain is not free:
- Drive while drinking alchohol and you will be arrested
- Drive without a license and you will be arrested
- Collect child porn and you will be arrested
- Grow marujanna and you will be arrested
- Try fighting in the street (with a consentual sparring partner) and you will be arrested
How all freedoms have been eroded in Britain.
This is all true I'm afraid.
And worse still...we can be arrested for taking the life or property of another person!
I mean can you imagine! Not being allowed to rob and kill at will?
Freedom eh?
However, we are still allowed to cross the street without harrasment from the law unlike some places (jaywalking is it called?)
What? Damn ... hang on, I have to go and bury something ...
You'll have to get a council permit if you want to do any burial
Cute, but it doesn't wash and is simply another in a long line of semi-slanders you've attempted to push in my direction--only to find, much to your disappointment I note, that some folks push back.
The implication in those three sentences is that, at some misty time in the past, I "started in" on the U.K. and a hero arose to defend her honor: Maddy old boy Ivan.
We both know that that implication is as untrue as the day is long.
Indeed, it's another semi-slander; but my posting history is open to one and all whom wish to retrace those steps and invest the time to read it, as is yours. Suffice it to say (and again, we BOTH know this; you're not kidding anyone but yourself) that you fired a posted, unprovoked shot across my bow in an attempt to impress someone you apparently perceived needed "rescuing" or "help" in that opening sally between us; you got taken to serious task in the subsequent flame war and came out looking somewhat ridiculous in the aftermath; and that's where it ended--at least as far as I was concerned.
Fast forward to now: I post a comment to a thread, not even thinking about you or that past entanglement or anything else, really, and suddenly Maddy old boy is back on the warpath again.
ALL of this--every bit of it--has been initiated by you, for whatever reason (Paging Dr. Freud...). That said, as long as you want to keep it up, I'm game. Pathetic as it continues to make you look with every outing...
I am sure the mods are watching. If they examine the record, they'll note I said nothing to you for months on end. You decided to leap in on a thread I posted a couple of days ago with your rude and insulting behaviour and you've been determined to be rude and insulting ever since. I realise you have an exaggerated image of yourself, but your smear attempts will not wash.
I have nothing further to say to you.
Ivan
That could explain number 1:
1. The other day, at dawn, a large council vehicle parked outside my house with a very tall crane-like attachment, from the top of which photographs were taken of the neighbourhood, including my house. No one had felt obliged explain why, or for what purpose the photographs were to be used. The city is the council's and the fullness thereof.
Yes, those both make sensible tests of a nation's freedom. The freedom to make idiotic, racist remarks and the freedom to have easy access to the means to kill fellow citizens. Britan scores badly on both of those. But I would also propose another test - are you allowed to see images of naked men and women - and their genitals - on terrestrial TV channels?
Here I think Britain has the edge.
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