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.
Then why do you need a license for a lawn sprinker? What special interest does that serve?
Im talking to a random word generator right?
Perhaps you can be more specific. Each is in the dictionary, my dictionary anyway Webster's Seventh New Collegiate, 1971. I do not mean any of the terms in my statement 'colloquially'.
What an ignorant statement.
MadIvan is well respected in this forum and his views about Britain are sought by many Freepers.
Do your homework next time before posting stupid comments.
they're in the dictionary, sure, but not with the meaning that FReepers often attribute to them. At least not in any dictionary thet I've seen. What definitions does your Websters give?
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=subject shows subject to be
"One who is under the rule of another or others, especially one who owes allegiance to a government or ruler. "
and citizen to be
"A person owing loyalty to and entitled by birth or naturalization to the protection of a state or nation. "
whereas Freepers usually base their definitions around whether or not a person can own a gun for self defence or not. Before WWI Britons had liberal gun laws but definitely were subjects. These days we have harsh gun laws but are citizens. The 2 just aren't related, unless you wish to redefine the words, which is what has happened on FR. nothing wrong with it of course, but is still a slang meaning.
Anthony Daniels? Didn't he play C-3PO? ;-)
With the citizen's complete disregard and disrespect for the state and government employees. Then coup or rebellion.
Government is the problem, not the solution!
I see you have yet to meet an abortionist or a lawyer.
I also have another advantage, I am old, prepared, have nothing to lose, have no minor children. I WILL defend American freedom.
The BBC is financed by a charge everyone who owns a television pays, called a TV License. I pay £120 a year for this.
Regards, Ivan
Ah, thanks. And you don't have to watch commercials, right?
Well not on the BBC. But to be honest, I'd rather the BBC was privatised and sold to Rupert Murdoch. But I'm rather sadistic when it comes to what I think should happen to the BBC.
Regards, Ivan
Each to his own....
Ol' Rupert ain't that bad. Fox carries Family Guy and is the best football broadcaster...of course they also give us endless "Reality" shows. But it beats the 24/7 'two minutes of hate' from the BBC.
I don't watch the BBC. So, in essence, I'm paying for channels I don't watch. You'll forgive me if I'm a little resentful of that fact.
Regards, Ivan
I agree with a lot of your post. The US is more free in some and less free in others. The same goes for the UK.
Both are under fire from Governments that are overzealous in restricting our rights. I hate the idea of ID cards and "patriot act" style legislation.
I think the act that turned us from subjects to citizens was in the 80's and was the citizen act or the government act.
There has been a lot of hyperbole about people in the UK getting arrested for defending their homes. A lot of this is exagerated. I understand that less than 20 people have been found guilty of using excessive force in the last decade. I am relatively pro-gun but am not too sure that introducing US style laws would be possible in modern Britain.
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