Article 23

Politicians and Public Versus Bureaucrats.

Despite politicians having become the “fall guys” for the mistakes of bureaucrats as exemplified by Daniel Hannan and Charles Moore (c.f. Articles 21 and 22), politicians could nonetheless take command of public affairs, were they to become agents for the replacement of belief with knowledge in all future policy-making in compliance with electorate requirements to do so. Were this to happen in response to the public campaign now mounted by this website, both voters and politicians would wrest control from the current belief-only bureaucrats by confronting them with definitive cause-effect knowledge to the benefit of all three groups for the first time ever, rather than continuing to confront beliefs with counter-beliefs. To this end, this website shows in its preamble that this change from belief to knowledge is long-overdue, while my analysis of recent media articles shows that their writers are beginning to sense that all is not well with the bureaucratic responses to the Brexit referendum and to the Covid-19 infection, though these writers have yet to recognise that improvement is possible only if they and their readers to renounce their mistaken reliance on belief/counter-belief debate and to accept the benefits of debate-terminating conclusive knowledge wherever and whenever such is already available, or needs to be acquired prior to all policy formulation, let alone its implementation.    

At this point, I repeat that none of the foregoing implies a single knowledge-only future. Differing party-specific policies will always remain selectable by voters. However, knowledge-only policies and knowledge-only means of implementation would deliver policies which would work in reality, in contrast to the belief-only policies and belief-only means of implementation which have never delivered their promises in reality, and will never do so whichever party is in power, or ever will be in power. Thus, I repeat that voters must require politicians to offer party-specific knowledge-only policies for electorates to decide which party will be elected in the knowledge that the thus chosen policies will deliver their promises in a beneficial manner if effectively implemented and delivered by the bureaucracy, and in the knowledge that belief-only policies have never delivered any benefits  in reality.      

Again, at this point, I repeat that both Brexit and the Covid-19 infection have been miss-managed as belief-consensual topics rather than as matters to be decided on available knowledge or held-over until the necessary knowledge is acquired.  As to Brexit, it ought now to be obvious that, as always, when we don’t recognise knowledge or ignore its absence we have nothing but the debate of opinion/counter-opinion which is no more than the debate of belief/counter-belief supported by partially selected facts/ counter-facts, evidence/counter-evidence, and news/false-news, no set of which is ever debate-terminating conclusive knowledge; and that in such circumstances, as always, a vote is taken; and that with respect to Brexit we held a referendum which voted to leave the EU.  However, it ought also to be obvious now that such an elective belief-consensus is no more than a coin-toss which is open to reversal at the next election, referendum, or coin-toss. Again, it ought now to be obvious  that the EU did not and does not want us to leave and actively seeks to reverse the referendum as does the referendum minority and their supporters in parliament; and that consequently a counter-vote in parliament or another referendum could reverse the earlier result; and that it is this expectation which explains why no progress has been made towards agreeing the terms under which we will leave, despite the referendum having been four and a half years ago.  Had we concluded on the basis of knowledge that the belief-only multinational EU is even less likely to solve its problems than is the single UK, we would long since have resumed our independence on the basis of the referendum itself, as was promised prior to it.

As to the Covid-19 response, it ought now to be obvious that this too has been treated as a topic for belief/counter-belief debate, and is thus mistakenly described as science-based; that all actions taken at the behest of the involved bureaucracies have been belief-only; that lockdown is not uniformly applied or even generally applied across the globe; that where it is applied it is for the first time ever; that thus far UK attempts to control the spread of infection have been  by isolating the non-infected from the infected rather than by isolating the infected from the non-infected; that the latter option minimises the numbers isolated and correspondingly minimises the economic damage, while the latter  maximises the numbers isolated and the corresponding economic damage; that there appears to have been no discussion as to the rationale behind the latter choice other than to save the national health service; that nonetheless, its PPE supplies were inadequate and its elderly patients were discharged to old-folks homes without any consideration of whether they had been infected in the hospital and were thus vectors for further infection; that bureaucratic control was thus belief-only rather than knowledge-only; and that the Brexit and Covid-19 fiascos more that adequately reveal the need for knowledge to replace belief everywhere in government. From this point onwards, I will intersperse my analyses of belief-only /knowledge-absent media articles, with examples of where benefits would accrue were knowledge/ absence to be rectified by recognition of already available knowledge or by future application of knowledge yet to be acquired.                                                                                                      18/9/20.