The Replacement Of Belief With knowledge In Future Policy-making.
The two previous sections of this website have sequentially reviewed my experience of civil service failure to recognise conclusive knowledge of our experienced reality as being preferable to its own internal debates of belief/counter-belief, and have demonstrated that while political commentators recognise something is amiss, none of them know how to correct it; and that consequently, they merely perpetuate the political debate of opinion/counter-opinion which is never 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 belief-terminating conclusive knowledge of our experienced reality. Consequently, the third section of this website will exemplify how all party-specific belief-only policies could and should be replaced with conclusive knowledge-only alternatives in the manner in which craft knowledge has developed from observation of the compliance or non-compliance of hypothetical belief with reality since time immemorial and in which physico-chemical science has developed its knowledge from hypothetical belief by cause-effect observation of reality, since the eighteenth century, while the miss-named Enlightenment continued to believe that the rational critique of belief/counter-belief produces knowledge through debate, when it merely produces one or other electively transient belief-consensus pending the resumption of the debate to, as likely as not, an elective consensus for the counter-belief; that this has been going on since before and after Socrates had argued that such debate is futile, and for his failure to convince his contemporaries, he drank the proffered hemlock over 2000 years ago.
At this point, I ask, is it still not possible for me to convince my contemporaries of this futility some 2000 years later? Socrates could only contrast belief/counter-belief with the then knowledge of craftsmanship, he himself, being a stonemason, while I and my contemporaries can compare all currently debated beliefs-counter-beliefs with the knowledge which is craftsmanship, engineering and science, acquired since his day. Surely, the wonderment is that we have not yet collectively compared and contrasted all of our thus acquired knowledge with our otherwise persistent reliance on belief and/or counter-belief. Surely, the active acceptance of my newly definitive differentiation of the knowledge/belief dichotomy and with it those of truth/falsehood, wisdom/folly, right/wrong and good/bad, and its practical implementation in all policy-making is now long overdue. If, I can’t get a general acceptance of these definitive differentiations and their application in all future policy-making, through this website, perhaps I’ll consider the hemlock option.
In the meantime, it is my intention that the third section of this website will identify a range of belief-only policy areas which could immediately become knowledge-only areas, the relevant knowledge being already available but currently ignored, and those in need of further knowledge- acquisition and which ought to be suspended until the missing knowledge is acquired by submitting its underlying belief or counter-belief to the observation of its cause-effect or its non-cause-effect relationship to reality, as is done in cause-effect craftsmanship and in cause-effect science. The second section of this website has already introduced some of these belief-only policies in my demonstration that while some press commentators recognise that all is not well with the policies on which they choose to comment, they do not know how to correct them other than through the ‘rational debate’ which Socrates sought to show (through debate) to be futile. However, he was nearly there when he observed that the demos (for example) might listen to a debate on whether or not to build a temple and vote to build it; but that on listening on the next day to another debate on the same question with different debaters, they could well vote not to build it. Again, in further attempting to show that debate was thus futile, he concluded his demonstration by stating that if the demos decided to build a temple, a stonemason would be needed, i.e. someone who actually knewhow to build it; and that knowledge is thus distinguishable from debatable belief and opinion. However, he had no effect on his listeners and has had no effect since. I hope to do better with my readers, though it remains to be seen how many readers I will have for this website. 21/5/21.
Article 54Where Is The Knowledge In Economics?
The first text-book on economics which I read, as a first year university student in chemistry, physics and mathematics, informed me that inflation was caused by too much money chasing too few goods and services; that in such circumstances customers were willing to pay numerically more currency units for such goods and services as are available than they had previously needed to pay; that consequently the unit value of the currency decreases accordingly; and that alternatively when there is a surfeit of available goods and services, their selling prices decreases and the unit value of the currency increases accordingly. Thus, for example, readers were encouraged to note that were the number of units of circulating currency to double for any reason, the selling price of goods and services would reduce to one half of their former level, were they to remain available at such a price. Again, the reader was encouraged to note that the growth of an economy was the growth in availability of goods and services and the growth in the circulating units of currency which thus maintain their value with respect this increasing level and diversity of the goods and services. Again, as to interaction of one national economy with another, the rate of exchange of their currencies comes into play in so far as one country can devalue its currency with respect to another to make its exports cheaper to purchase by another of higher unit value. This became observable during exchange rate mechanism which preceded adoption of a single currency by the EU, a mechanism which enabled the nations of weaker currencies to devalue with respect to the German mark, in order to increase their exports to Germany and other members of the EU, a practice which ought to have raised questions as to the wisdom of a single currency for the EU as a whole.
However, in an article of the Business section of the Sunday Telegraph of 2/5/21, entitled “We are perilously close to another inflationary age, but no one cares”, Jeremy Warner opens by stating that ‘Jes Staley, chief executive of Barclays, thinks that the UK economy is going to boom (grow) for the remainder of this year, with the strongest rate of growth since 1948’; that ‘this would be great stuff if it does’; but that ‘with the economy still around 8 per cent smaller than its pre-pandemic state, it is actually only what would be required to meet Andrew Bailey’s suggestion that all the ground lost to the pandemic might be clawed back by the end of the year’; that ‘the Bank of England Governor made that prediction back in February’; that ‘the outlook has further improved since then’; and that the bigger question is not how long it takes to repair the Covid-related damage’; but that rather it is what happens thereafter’. ‘Does the economy simply return to the lacklustre, pre-pandemic levels of growth, or does it continue to motor, causing things to overheat and a consequent surge in price and wage inflation’? At this point, I ask what meaning attaches to “inflation” in this context. Is it inflation caused by an increase in the circulating units of currency as defined in paragraph 1 above, or is it something else? Again, I ask in what ways has the economic outlook further improved since February. Indeed, he goes on to say that ‘the Bank reckons that Brexit has made it more expensive to trade with Europe’; that ‘the new arrangements will reduce GDP by 3.25 per cent over the long run relative to where it would otherwise have been, around two thirds of which will be felt by the end of 2024’,to which Warner opines that ‘the Bank is being too gloomy about the prospects for growth and therefore too complacent about the emerging inflationary pressures’; and that to ignore the warning signs for too long would require sudden handbrake action by the Bank to correct the problem’; and that ‘any abrupt change in policy might tip the economy into recession, given the still high levels of public and private debt’
At this point, I could go on with my comments on other aspects of this Warner article, but I here conclude that economists and economic commentators continue to debate opinions and counter-opinions which are merely beliefs/counter-beliefs supported by partially selected facts/counter-facts, evidence/counter-evidence and news/false-news, no set of which is ever debate-terminating conclusive knowledge; that this is the basis of all political debate; and that Section 3 of this website will proceed to show how knowledge-only policies which would work in reality, could displace all current belief-only policies which have never worked in reality and never will. 11/5/21.
Article 53Where Is The Knowledge In Anthropogenic Global Warming?
In my previous articles touching on anthropogenic global warming, I have called attention to the fact that those who believe in it, never recognise our existing knowledge that global sea levels have been rising for geological millennia; and that no-one has yet quantified the magnitude of our anthropogenic contribution to this overall warming, if any. However, without any reference to knowledge or to its absence, Douglas Murray, in a Daily Telegraph article of 24/4/21 entitled “The eco-extremists will never be satisfied” and sub-titled “No policy, no matter how damaging to ordinary life, will ever be enough for the cult of Greta Thunberg”. However, his article doesn’t explain how ordinary life is causing the damage believed in by Greta Thunberg, nor does it explain his right to describe it as a cult. Instead, his article opens by saying that, ‘I don’t know how you chose to celebrate “Earth Day” on Thursday’; but that ‘in London the protesters from Extinction Rebellion (XR) decided to mark it by shattering windows at Canary wharf’; that ‘a group of women specifically targetted the headquarters of HSBC, a bank which HR accuses of being linked to that dread fossil fuel industry that keeps our lights on’. Thus, I conclude that instead of offering a critique of the XR message, Murray is simply offering a critique of the means chosen to express it.
Thus, he goes on to say that ‘there were some fine sights and moments’; that ‘one participant, Susan Reid, a 62-year-old grandmother was quoted as saying “I shouldn’t be having to do this.”’ To which quotation, Murray responds that ‘personally I have always tried to hold it as a general rule of thumb that if you ever find yourself on a week day morning using a hammer and chisel to try to break widows in a public space and catch yourself thinking “I shouldn’t be doing this,” then the likelihood is that you oughtn’t to be doing it’; but that ‘is the problem with the diehards of the climate cult; that ‘for them it is not possible to examine evidence, weigh-up options, and come to reasonable conclusions’; that ‘for them it is not even possible to doubt the efficacy of the cult’s crazier actions even as you are taking part in them’; that ‘for such true believers the whole thing is already clear’; that ‘we are all going to die, very soon’, and that ‘if we aren’t going to die very soon, then our children and grandchildren will, and so we have to do whatever is needed right now to save them from the flames’; that while ‘our ancestors in the middle ages might have been confused by some of the specific language of the climate cult, they would have understood the theology very well’; that ‘the problem with XR and their ilk is that they not only tolerate no compromise or contrary opinion; but that ‘they actually resent the suggestion that there is any such thing’; that ‘as Earth Day came around like some ancient and widely recognised event, governments across the globe used the opportunity to make promises that are almost certainly impossible for them to fulfil’; but that ‘all such were meant to impress the green fundamentalists’; that ‘for example, the US President, Joe Biden, promised he would ramp up his government’s commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions’; that ‘he used Earth Day to announce that the US would aim to cut emissions by 50-52 per cent by 2030’; that ‘President Biden will be 86 by then and, in any event, will be out of any position where he will be held responsible, should the US not manage to make (hit) this target’; but that the happy promise was (would be) left for his successors to clean up’; and that other world leaders made similar promises’. These, I need not individualise here.
Beyond this point, however, Douglas Murray’s article continues by observing that ‘you would have thought that any political movement that had managed to unite Biden, Putin, Trudeau and Bolsonara, might bank its success and (let those thus united) get down to work’; but that ‘climate extremists do not operate like that’; that (instead) ‘they hector and smash, chisel and blockade, when world leaders give (promise) them what they want, they tell them that they are callous vermin’; that ‘the leader of the children’s crusade of our time, Greta Thunberg, demonstrated this nicely on Earth Day’; that ‘as the leaders of the world’s major powers queued up to promise to cripple their economies by an implausibly early date, St Greta released her own statement which blasted all world leaders for “ignoring” what she and her friends call the “climate crisis”’; that ‘had you or I helped to ensure that that President Putin and President Biden were doing our bidding, then we might sit back and consider things as going broadly in the right direction’; but that ‘climate extremists never can do this’; and that ‘this is because they believe that they, and only they, have access to the truth’; and that ‘those who would bow to them ought to keep this in mind’. Thus, ‘anyone who tries to appease the green gods will find the same pattern at work’; that ‘HSBC might divest from a certain proportion of its fossil fuel related holdings, only to be told that it is not enough until the figure is zero’; that ‘the bank will then be criticised for having shares in technology companies and the same dance will go on’; and that ‘so it is with governments – 2050 is not good enough as a target’; that, ‘promise to do the impossible by 2030’ and you will be told that you are not trying hard enough’; that ‘unless you promise to do what the climate alarmists demand of you this very instant and damn the consequences, then you can expect Greta and the rest of them to berate you roundly’; that ‘the more moderate elements will merely demand that you start wrecking your economy immediately’; and that ‘the more extreme will be at your windows ineptly thwacking away with hammers and chisels’.
Thus, Murray concludes his article by observing that ‘the foregoing reaction is a shame, because the future of our planet is a subject worth addressing’; that however, ‘the doomsday cultists are the worst imaginable people to drive the discussion because their idols will not be appeased’. In contrast however, the conclusion which I draw from his article is that he accepts the current belief in anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and in its calamitous consequences; and that he rejects merely the tactics adopted by some of his co-believers in bringing this belief-only calamity to the attention of those believed to be the cause of it, and to those believed to be capable of preventing it. Again, in contrast to Douglas Murray and all his co-believers, I do not accept the current belief in AGW. I consider it to be a very shaky hypothesis in need of reality-validation to positive and thus affirmative knowledge or reality-refutation to negative knowledge and thus rejectable as mere belief, the latter being by far the most likely outcome of reality-evaluation in this particular case.
In the course of this website, I have referred to my newly definitive differentiation of the knowledge/belief dichotomy and with it those of truth/falsehood, wisdom/folly, right/wrong and good/bad, and I have shown on this basis that debate of opinion/counter-opinion is merely the debate of belief/counter-belief respectively supported by partially selected facts/counter-facts, evidence/counter-evidence and news/false-news, no set of which is ever debate-terminating conclusive knowledge; that consequently, debate produces merely a transiently elective belief-consensus pending resumption of the debate and further transiently elective debate resolution; that new knowledge is never produced by debate, however rationally it is conducted; that politics is conducted entirely through debate and elective choice of one or other belief-only policy; that such choice ought to be exercised only over party-specific knowledge-only policies to determine their order of implementation; that thus far, definitive knowledge is available only in craftsmanship, science and engineering, where hypotheses (beliefs) are evaluated by direct, or by experimental observation as to whether or not they are compatible or incompatible with our experienced reality; and that the objective of this website is to gain electorate support for (reality-compatible) knowledge to replace (reality-incompatible) belief in all party-political policy-making.
Again, in a Daily Telegraph article of 4/5/21, entitled “The doctrine of Net Zero makes mugs of us all’, Charles Moore observes that ‘the only clear difference between XR’s dream and our present Government’s policy is that the former wants Net Zero even quicker than the latter’; and that ‘both are trying to force us down the same crazy path’. However, I say that the only way to get off this crazy path is to cease to debate belief/counter-belief by adopting a conclusive knowledge-only approach instead, both here and everywhere else. 4/5/21.
Article 52Where Is The Knowledge for Scotland’s Independence?
This website shows that politics is never more than the debate of belief/counter-belief via the debate of opinion/counter-opinion to one other transient belief-consensus, pending debate’s resumption and another vote ; and that debate can be terminated only by the positive or negative knowledge which concludes it, once and for all. However, before entering the third section of this website which will seek to ensure that knowledge-only policies will be created and implemented in future, I now analyse an article by Philip Johnson, entitled “The Union will remain in peril until an English parliament is on the table”, and subtitled “There is only so long the PM can hold off the forces of separatism without constitutional reform.” He opens his article by saying that ‘we might be on the cusp of the greatest constitutional crisis for 100 years’; and that victory for the SNP in next month’s Holyrood elections will confront Boris Johnson with a renewed demand for an independence referendum which he proposes to deny’; that ‘next month also marks the centenary of the partition of Ireland and the creation of the United Kingdom as we know it today’; and that ‘this anniversary coincides with an upsurge of anger among supporters of the Union in Northern Ireland, who believe they have been betrayed by the Brexit trade deal’.
He then suggest that ‘there are two two possible responses, one constitutional, the other political’; that ‘the first would be to accept that an SNP win on May 6 is a mandate for another referendum and let Nicola Sturgeon hold one’; that this is the best time possible for Unionists’ because ‘Scotland’s voters are aware that being part of the UK has helped them through the Covid pandemic and accelerated the arrival of the vaccine’; that ‘they know they get a good deal out of the Barnett formula with £150 spent on public services north of the border for every £100 spent in England’; that ‘they don’t want to join the euro, but they would have to if they sought membership of the EU, even assuming their application was not vetoed by Spain’; and that ‘recognising this weakness, Alex Salmon is now proposing signing up to Efta instead’. At this point I respond that while some Unionists might be aware of the foregoing benefits of the Union and be willing to vote accordingly, those favouring independence have evidently been ignoring these benefits, though, they might even be unaware of them.
However, Philip Johnson states that ‘all of these arguments could be deployed in a campaign held soon’; but that ‘denying a referendum will change the narrative to one of an English Tory leader blocking Scotland’s right to self-determination’; that ‘those urging Boris to tough it out need to consider that it will be politically impossible to hold the line, while by then, the advantages (cited above) will have been lost’; and that ‘it would be preferable for Boris to call Ms Sturgeon’s bluff by proposing an immediate plebiscite and not wait until 2023 as the SNP leader has suggested’; and that while ‘this would be a gamble, it would be one the separatists would lose’. Again, Philip claims that ‘the second issue can be resolved by repudiating the Northern Ireland protocol and ceasing to treat part of the UK as though it were still a part of the EU’; that ‘the PM does not want to do this because he signed the associated international treaty, evidently trusting that the Unionists would not notice that the status of the province had thus been changed’; that ‘again, politics might work here, if an agreement can be reached with the EU to remove the absurd amounts of red-tape that now foul up trade between Britain and Northern Ireland’; but that ‘the province would still have to stick to single market rules, and so the fundamental flaw at the heart of of the protocol would remain’.
At this point, I respond that debate and/or argument settled by voting is always a gamble and is ultimately merely a coin toss in the absence of debate terminating conclusive knowledge; that consequently the Unionists need to present their case as the positive conclusive knowledge which reality-refutes the beliefs of the separatists as negative knowledge; and that the Northern Ireland protocol is the result of a belief-consensus reached in the absence of debate-terminating conclusive knowledge and as such, ought not have been signed by the PM. Nonetheless, Philip Johnson goes on to state that ‘such matters need permanent fixing through new structures of governance’; that ‘to this end, the Constitutional Reform Group (CRG) is today proposing a new Act of Union to forestall what it fears will be the break-up of the UK’; that, ‘made up of Tory, Labour and Lib Dem politicians, as well as former first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the CRG says in a letter to all party leaders that the existing constitutional arrangements for the United Kingdom are “unsustainable and deficient”’; that ‘when it comes to discussing these great matters, however, the biggest piece of the jigsaw always seems to be ignored’; that ‘proposing a new relationship between the constituent parts of the kingdom is all well and good’; but that ‘it needs to accommodate the dominant member, England’; that, indeed, ‘one of the reasons why devolution was always a problematic concept was because it enfeebled the forces of the Union which bind England to the rest’ (to the whole); that ‘its institutions tend to unify, whereas the differing traditions and history of its component parts pull in opposite directions, sometimes breaking the bonds entirely as in 1921’; that ‘devolution has again weakened the glue’; that ‘the challenge is how to stop it cracking apart entirely’; and that ‘this needs to address the English Question’; that ‘without committing itself, the CRG says this option should be available through a referendum to set up an English parliament and replace the House of Lords with an elected national assembly’.
At this point, Philip asks ‘would this help consolidate a new set of constitutional arrangements – or blow them apart because of England’s size and dominance’ and he answers that ‘he doesn’t know’; but that ‘the question needs to be discussed within the context of a proposed new settlement’. However, he concedes that ‘Boris Johnson, like his predecessors, will not want to go anywhere near this if he can avoid it, hoping that defeat for the SNP and a wet summer in Northern Ireland will dampen the immediate problems he might otherwise face’; that ‘yet in their 2019 manifesto, the Tories promised to set up a constitutional commission to look at all the issues thrown up by devolution, Brexit, judicial activism and the rest’; that ‘events put paid to that and there seems to be no hurry to revisit the idea’; that ‘perhaps there will be something in the Queen’s speech next month, but such reform is difficult and arguments hard to make’; ‘that politicians tend to embrace concepts until they have a big enough majority not to bother’; that ‘Tony Blair’s flirtation with PR in 1997 comes to mind’; and that ‘more likely Mr Johnson will try to manoeuvre his way across this minefield without treading on a detonator’; but that ‘he needs a map and he’s not yet got one’.
To all of the above, my response, as always, is that politicians, commentators and the voting public continue to deal with debatable opinion/counter-opinion which is never more that belief/counter-belief respectively 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 consequently the outcome is never more than a transient belief-consensus pending the resumption of the debate and another vote; that nothing is ever permanently resolved by this process; that this is why this website advocates the replacement of belief with conclusive knowledge for all future policy-making; and advocates that future voting be to decide which party-specific knowledge-only policies are to be implemented. At this point, I recall that I wrote to my then Brexit-supporting MP, advocating a post-Brexit adoption of my newly definitive knowledge/belief differentiation; that he replied to say that Brexit would be a dawdle’ but he ignored my suggestion that knowledge ought to replace belief in all post-Brexit policy-making. Clearly, politicians and commentators prefer the current miasma of belief/counter-belief which is why I now offer this website directly to the electorate which currently decides which belief-only policies it prefers, but which ought to decide which party-specific knowledge-only options it prefers, given that the former have never caused their promised effects in reality, while the latter always would. 29/4/21.
Article 51The Fundamental Error Of The Enlightenment.
The eighteenth century Enlightenment was merely a reactivation of the classical thought process attributed to Plato who erroneously claimed rationality per se as the provider of knowledge, despite his tutor Socrates having more than adequately demonstrated in his dialogues that conclusive knowledge could not be reached by debate, however rational the debaters and/or their listeners might be. Thus, it has been left to me to recognise that the missing factor in this miscalled Enlightenment is its failure to differentiate knowledge from belief; that belief is transformable to positive or negative knowledge, only by being validated or refuted by evaluation of its compliance or non-compliance with our experienced reality; that this website has accordingly shown that craft belief was and is transformed to craft knowledge only by applying a believed (hypothetical) cause to a work-piece in reality, and by observing the effect on the work-piece in reality; and that scientific knowledge was and is acquired only by experimentation which enables the believed (hypothetical) cause to result in the effect requiring such explanation; that if such effect is not observed in the experiment, another hypothetically believed cause must be reality-evaluated, even if this requires another experimental arrangement to be designed and built; and that, clearly, in the absence of the reality-evaluation on which craftsmanship and science is based, belief can never be converted to positive or negative knowledge by rationality alone.
So what role does rationality play? My answer is that it avoids mistakes in making deductions from existing knowledge, but that even so, science additionally requires the conclusions from any rational train of thought to be confirmed by yet another experiment to demonstrate that the new effect of this rationally deduced new cause can be recognised by observing its expected effect in reality; that in mathematics rationality derives conclusions from axioms, but that the repeated use of the equality sign denotes that nothing has been added or subtracted in transforming the axioms to the conclusion; and that consequently the conclusion is simply a useful re-statement of the axioms. However, for example, when mathematical analysis of equations embodying experimentally derived knowledge predicted that a certain star would appear closer to the Sun in the next solar eclipse than it would were light beams not deflected by gravity on passing close to the Sun on their way to an observer on Earth, such observers were sent to a suitable location to photograph this eclipse for comparison of the known position of the star with its observed position on the photograph, thus experimentally confirming the mathematically derived conclusion that light beams passing the Sun are indeed influenced by the Sun’s gravity.
In light of this preamble, and by way of introducing the third section of this website, I now add to my earlier examples of the extent to which Plato’s mistaken reliance on rationality-only, is still influencing the modern world and is now long overdue for correction, by analysing an article by Robert Tombs which appeared in the Saturday Comment in the Daily Telegraph of 17/4/21, entitled ‘The West is playing with fire by rejecting the Enlightenment values that defined it’. It opened by stating that ‘those who associated Prince Philip with a life of pomp, deference, polo and palaces have learnt that his early life was one of danger, disruption and tragedy’; that ‘at the time of his birth, an influential best seller was Osbert Spengler’s The Decline of the West which reasoned that our present worries are nothing new’; that ‘the First World War had shattered a two-century story of rising European power, wealth and cultural primacy’; that revolution destroyed the Continent’s cosmopolitan aristocratic society’; that ‘economic turmoil undermined social stability’; that ‘Fascism, a toxic hybrid of archaism and modernity, took hold in the cradles of European culture, shaking its moral foundations’; and that ‘for many intellectuals, the liberal order was doomed’. However, he doesn’t stop to explain how the much vaunted rationality of these intellectuals was thus overthrown, nor does he recognise that this overthrow was of one set of beliefs by other sets of beliefs in the absence of any corrective knowledge. However, his reference to Prince Philip reminds me that while he avoided all reference to anthropogenic global warming and organic farming (which I define as belief), he was an enthusiastic supporter of species conservation (which I recognise as having a knowledge-content).
However, Tombs goes on to say that ‘of course it (the previous order) wasn’t’ (doomed); that ‘the hard-fought victory of 1945 brought a period of relative stability’; that ‘though overshadowed by the Cold War stand-off between the USA and the USSR, it was a time of unequalled peace and prosperity for Britain and Europe’; that ‘the collapse of the communist bloc in the 1980s and 1990s created a short period of euphoria when the apparent triumph of western liberalism even seemed to herald “the end of history” through “the universalisation of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”, in the words of Francis Fukuyama’; and that ‘only western ideas, it seemed, provided a coherent blueprint for human progress’; but that ‘almost at once, instead of global harmony there began another phase of challenges to Western assumptions, not least from within’; that ‘we may be seeing the end of three centuries during which free thought, reason, science, education, commerce and technology seemed to have given Europe and its offshoots not only the material power but also the intellectual leadership which provided the means and confidence to create the The Industrial Revolution as the model and the universal standard of modernity and progress’. However, at this point, Tombs fails to recognise that the Industrial Revolution was not brought about by rationality alone; and he fails to recognise that it was brought about by the rapidly increasing acquisition of cause-effect knowledge of reality.
Again, he proceeds to say that ‘though the British and French Empires were significantly different as was the later American hegemony, they had in common what has been called “liberal imperialism”, the belief that the West which had been first in discovering Enlightenment values, had the right and even the duty to spread them in what the French called a “civilising mission”’; and that ‘when the subject peoples eventually threw off imperial rule, it was usually in the name of the West’s own proclaimed values of democracy, liberty and equality’; but that ‘Europe shrank as its imperial structures unravelled in the 1950s and 1960s’; that ‘this was seen to be less than revolutionary and even the fulfilment of western ideals’; that ‘the British Crown presided over independence ceremonies designed to celebrate former colonies becoming fully fledged members of the Western world’; that ‘the Commonwealth was the expression of this aspiration’; and that ‘the United States took over the role of the European empires in maintaining a liberal world order based on new post-imperial institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation, while the European Economic Community seemed to reinvigorate the ambitions of a defeated Europe’; that ‘in short, from the Eighteenth century to the end of the 20th, the history of the world seemed to have merged into the history of the West’; that ‘when he (Tombs) was reading history at Cambridge in the early 1970s, one of the most popular papers covering world history was unashamedly entitled “The Expansion of Europe”’; and that ‘the Enlightenment provided a universal narrative, in which it was assumed that sooner or later every people would embrace the model of modernity’. Again, he implies that rational belief is the sole source of progress, and again he ignores the role of knowledge; and that the contention of belief/counter-belief necessarily leads to progress, whereas I have demonstrated that knowledge alone, leads to progress.
However, he goes on to say that ‘that the intellectual world has vanished’; that ‘we have entered into another “Decline of the West” in which external and internal forces are again engaged’; that ‘the West has lost the technological, economic and organisational advantages it had enjoyed for two centuries as a result of early industrialisation’; that the rest of the world has largely caught up, not least due to a Western policy of encouraging economic development’; and that, accordingly, ‘we have a total inability to impose order on the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa, once acquiescent in Western Authority’; that ‘the self-confidence of the West has been rejected by much of its own intelligentsia’; and that ‘this is the real meaning of the vogue for cultural and intellectual “decolonisation”’; and that this in turn ‘is why it is extended beyond history and literature to music, science and even mathematics’; that ‘what is being denied is that Western ideas or culture can claim any universal validity or special importance’; that instead they are attacked as hypocritical, morally corrupt and oppressive’; that ‘John Locke, theorist of political rights was a racist; David Hume, a founder of modern ideas of self, was a racist’; that ‘Mozart and Beethoven wrote during “the age of slavery”’; that ‘our museums are products of empire; that ‘our universities, churches and charitable foundations, are tarred with the same brush, and make fulsome expressions of shame’; that ‘instead of the Enlightenment narrative of progress we see a nihilistic rejection of history and culture creating an intellectual and moral void’; that ‘Britain and its allies may have to navigate something like the pre-Enlightenment world’; that ‘for the first time in more than two centuries, the world is not being led by some version of the Enlightenment’; that ‘instead of enjoying “the end of history”, we are threatened by what Samuel Huntingdon called the “clash of civilisations”’.
However, in contrast, I say that everyone who comments on history, current policies and the requirements of future policy, as exemplified by Robert Tombs, fails to understand the inherent error of the Enlightenment as have all their fore-runners, since Plato rejected the understanding reached by his tutor, Socrates; and that the error arises from a ubiquitous failure to recognise that the application of rationality does not transform belief to knowledge; that belief is transformed to positive or negative only by evaluating its compatibility or its incompatibility with our experienced reality; that rationality alone merely enables belief and counter-belief to be debated to one or other transiently elective belief-consensus pending resumption of the debate (as Socrates first noticed); and that the subject of debate is merely belief/counter-belief respectively supported by partially selected facts/counter-facts, evidence/counter-evidence, and/or news/false-news, no set of which is ever debate-terminating conclusive knowledge; and that until this conclusion is ubiquitously recognised as truth, wisdom, right and good we will continue to wallow in untruth, folly, wrong and bad, in our inability to differentiate the knowledge/belief dichotomy and its associated dichotomies.
Thus, having shown in the first section of this website that throughout my career as a scientific civil servant, no politician, policy-making civil servant or commentator has ever differentiated knowledge from belief, and having shown in the second section, by analysis of press articles that no commentators on political affairs ever do so either, my intention in the third section is to prevent the future implementation of belief-only policies where knowledge-only alternatives are available; and/or to suspend them until knowledge-only alternatives are available. 25/4/21.
Article 50The Ubiquitous Need For Knowledge To Replace Belief In Policy-Making.
This article recalls that the first section of this website demonstrated the continuous failure of political parties and civil servants to recognise this need in party-specific policy-making; that the second section demonstrated that while political commentators recognise the ubiquitous need for improvement in all such policy-making, none of them actually know how such improvements could be made; and that consequently they merely perpetuate the ubiquitous debate of belief/counter-belief, whatever the topic they have chosen to address; and that all of these commentators and the voting public are content with debates of opinion/counter-opinion which are never more than debates of belief/counter-belief respectively supported by partially selected facts/counter-facts, evidence/counter-evidence or news/false-news, no set of which is ever debate-terminating conclusive knowledge, while in contrast, the acquisition of cause-effect knowledge is the basis of all craftsmanship and of all experiment-based science, while the arbitrary (non-experimental) selection of cause and effect parameters denotes the pseudoscience which, though again mere belief, is now being increasingly mistaken for science by politicians, policy-makers, commentators, and voters alike.
Again, the second section of this website has recalled that UKIP, having not yet implemented any belief-only policies as a former or current government, and therefore having no belief-only past to excuse to the electorate, is well placed to introduce and to implement knowledge-only policies as a future government; that UKIP is thus the party most likely to devise and to implement knowledge-only policies, were it to gain power in a future general election; that to this end the second section of this website has provided the first demonstration that Brexit could already have been presented by UKIP as a knowledge-only policy; that independence for Scotland could already have been shown to be a belief-only policy which could be reality-refuted by a knowledge-only analysis.
Thus, I now expect the content of this website to be more acceptable to UKIP than to any other political party in the first instance; that I should accordingly now bring this website to the attention of the UKIP leadership with the intention of achieving my knowledge-only objective in collaboration with this political party more quickly and more thoroughly than with any other, and with the objective of bringing it to power more quickly than it could achieve by itself, were it to remain merely a belief-consensual party vying for power among all the others on offer. 16/4/21.
Article 49Scottish Independence Is A Belief-only Policy.
Scottish independence has always been a belief-only policy with no knowledge-content at all, while it has recently become a question of which SNP leader/ex-leader is to be credited with its implementation, if ever. However, the policy of maintaining the United Kingdom can be re-cast as knowledge-only to the benefit of UKIP, were that party to adopt such a re-casting. In an article in the business section of the Daily Telegraph of 29/3/21 entitled “Independence risks economic havoc for Scots” Louis Ashworth and Tim Wallace refer to ‘three recent events which have changed the situation for Scotland since the SNP began its campaign for independence, namely Brexit, a Covid-enforced boom in debt, and a global plunge in oil prices, all of which make the prospect for independence significantly more challenging’.
As to Brexit, these authors recall that ‘the long-standing policy championed by Nicola Sturgeon, is for an independent Scotland to swiftly rejoin the European Union’; but that ‘analysis suggests taking such a step too quickly could have devastating consequences’; that ‘Scotland’s economy is hugely open, with imports and exports each equivalent to around 60% of GDP’; that ‘the country trades about three to four times as much with the rest of the UK as it now does with the EU’; that ‘because Brexit is believed to be bad, Scexit and rejoining the EU is believed to be good economically’, though David Phillips, associate director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies is quoted as opining that ‘he is not sure this is true’. However, trade modellers from the London School of Economics are quoted as saying that ‘secession would eventually slash income per capita in Scotland by as much as 8.7%’ in contrast to Brexit’s anticipated long-term hit of 2%’; that ‘joining the EU‘ would do little to mitigate the cost of Scottish independence’; that ‘it would shave this fall to between 6.3% and 7.6%’; and that ‘returning to the EU would definitely be worse than remaining in the UK’; and that ‘the EU would have to become Scotland’s most important trading partner’; that ‘Hanwei Huang one of the report’s authors says disentangling the Scottish economy would likely prove more complicated than Brexit’; and that ‘it would probably depend on the future relationship between the UK and the EU’; and that Ashworth and Wallace conclude that ‘the dangers of an immediate re-entrance to the EU show how much the economic case for Scottish independence has weakened since 2014 – even before factors such as the Covid-19 recovery are considered’. I would add that the EU may no longer welcome a Scottish accession given the EU’s own internal problems.
As to the Covid-enforced debt, Ashworth and Wallace recall that ‘this is the biggest peacetime budget deficit ever’; that ‘it has surged by more than a third, from £1.5 trillion in 2014 to more than £2.1 trillion now’; that ‘working out how to split this bill. built up over centuries, will be politically fraught and economically critical for a new independent nation trying to win the confidence of international markets’; that ‘in 2014 the devolved Scottish government suggested splitting it by “historic contribution” to the overall finances of the UK, arguing that since 1980 oil revenues meant that Scotland has chipped in more than the rest of the UK’; that this would result in Caledonia taking around 5% of the overall national debt’ that ‘Westminster argued this was spurious, as extra spending also goes north; that in addition, the sums change depending on the base year’; and that ‘counting only from 1990 to 2014 Scotland’s share doubles to almost 10%’; and that ‘this raises the debt share from £105 billion (5%) to £ 210 billion (10%)’; and that ‘an alternative would be to split the debt in proportion to the relative populations which at 8% for Scotland would make its share of the debt, £170 billion’; that ‘either way, investors who bought UK bonds would not see some morph into Scottish bonds’; and that ‘instead, Scotland would pay the interest on the agreed share of the debt, then potentially take some on as the bonds mature’.
As to the oil, ‘the North Sea is no longer the gusher it once appeared to be’, and Ashworth and Wallace thus note that ‘in 2014 oil prices seemed to be permanently high, with fevered talk of Brent crude reaching $200 (£145) per barrel: ideal conditions for financing Scottish spending for the years to come’; but that ‘prices tumbled (as belief in anthropogenic global warming took hold), dragging tax revenues from the North Sea to a small fraction of their old level’; that ‘investment has plunged, output is set to fall steadily’; that ‘the 2050 net zero emissions targets mean this energy source is now out of favour altogether’; that ‘a 2018 report from the Sustainable Growth Commission, established by the SNP acknowledge this shift away from fossil fuels’; that ‘before the pandemic,Scottish tax revenues per capita were a touch lower than those in the UK as a whole, while spending was higher’; that ‘Mairi Spowage at the University of Strathclyde notes that this extra spend means that Scotland typically runs a notional budget deficit around six percentage points bigger than the UK’s’; and that ‘we are told little about the the long-term sustainability of the public finances of an independent Scotland, because presumably different choices would be made and different priorities set’.
Yes, but I say that presumably we are told nothing of these potential differences because their revelation would reduce to zero the public appetite for an independent Scotland; that were the current belief/counter-belief debate as to whether or not Scotland should be an independent country, to be replaced with a definitive knowledge-only policy to remain within the United Kingdom, we would hear nothing more from the belief-only supporters of independence; and that were UKIP to adopt this newly definitive knowledge-only approach, it would greatly increase its electoral support in both Scotland and in the rest of the UK.
Again, an editorial/leading article in the Daily Telegraph of 31/3/21 quoted the Institute of Fiscal Studies in saying that ‘Scotland’s funding is 30% higher than the equivalent in England’; that this difference is almost entirely due to the relatively high levels of money allocated to Scotland by the UK Government through the Barnett Formula’; that ‘the net level from Scotland’s devolved taxes make only a marginal contribution’; that ‘the Scottish Government has been provided with an extra £9.5 billion to help address the Covid-19 crisis in 2020-21 and is set to receive a further £3.3 billion in 2021-22’; that ‘Scotland has also benefited from the UK investment in vaccine development and manufacture’; that ‘had the SNP managed to take Scotland out of the UK in 2014, it would be subject to the vaccine fiasco now on show on the Continent’; and that ‘the SNP is even using some of the Covid money to subsidise school meals and bus passes’. At this point, I would add that were the SNP to take Scotland out of the UK, the new naval ship-building programme for the Clyde and the Forth, would need to be re-located to England or maybe to Northern Ireland; and that similar considerations would be applicable to the current submarine base in the Clyde area, all of which would result in revenue losses for Scotland. Thus, I maintain that the current belief-only case for Scottish independence could be recast as a knowledge-only case for remaining in the UK. 3/4/21.
Article 48The Differentiation Of Science From Non Science (Nonsense).
Having previously shown that Brexit was treated as a subject for belief/counter-belief debate by all political parties, media commentators and the voting public, instead of being treated as a knowledge-only policy in need of knowledge-only implementation; that this latter approach would have terminated debate long since, as it would all political issues which are invariably treated as subjects for belief/counter-belief debate without ever recognising the absence of debate-terminating knowledge, which alone would enable implementation of a knowledge-only solution to a knowledge-only problem: I now exemplify the ubiquity of this absence of knowledge by showing that some other belief-only policies are open to recasting as knowledge-only alternatives as I have shown Brexit to be; that those which can not be thus recast, must be rejected as belief-only policies unfit for implementation; and that others must be suspended until the necessary cause-effect knowledge is acquired and applied in their implementation. However, before these benefits can be realised, it must first be recognised that the foregoing requirements have been been ignored from time immemorial; that my new classification of existing and future policy-options must now be generally accepted in order that belief-only options may be recast as knowledge-only, rejected as belief-only, or suspended until their beliefs can be reality-validated to positive knowledge or reality-refuted to negative knowledge by the cause-effect experimentation in,or direct observation of, reality, as promulgated by this website which not only differentiates the knowledge/belief dichotomy definitively, but also those of truth/falsehood, wisdom/folly, right/wrong and good/bad, and which thus also differentiates the practical reliability of cause-effect craft and scientific knowledge from the impracticality of belief; and draws attention to the ease with which non-science (nonsense) is currently passed off as science in a general failure to differentiate science from non-science (nonsense) despite the ease with which the general public differentiates craftsmanship (knowledge) from botched work (absence of craft-knowledge).
As to the science/non-science, issue, my readers will recall with respect to response to Covid-19, that commentators often refer to whether or not politicians are following ‘the science’, while other commentators excuse any failure to do so, by reporting that scientists themselves are not in agreement. However, I hope my readers can now recognise that scientists never disagree with science as here defined as knowledge which has been reality-validated by cause-effect experimentation; that where they disagree is where there is universal disagreement i.e. in all areas of belief and opinion as herein definitively differentiated from knowledge by their validation or refutation by reality; that recognition of available knowledge or of its absence, is capable of terminating all belief/counter-belief disagreements and the debates to which they incessantly give rise; and that where self-styled scientists argue belief against counter belief and vice versa, they are not acting as scientists. Thus, I have shown in previous articles of this website that politicians, media commentators and the voting public are invariably engaged in debating belief/counter-belief in the absence of debate-terminating conclusive knowledge; that none of these debaters recognise the need to acquire conclusive knowledge; and that were they do so, much of what is now implemented as self-styled expert policy would not be implemented were knowledge to replace belief as I herein advocate. Before proceeding, from this point onwards, I recall for my readers that the debate of opinion/counter-opinion is merely 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 debate-terminating conclusive knowledge.
Thus, having recast Brexit as a knowledge-only policy to the potential benefit of UKIP, I intend to confront the belief-only Scottish National Party (SNP) with a recasting of the current case for remaining in the UK as a knowledge-only policy, again for potential promulgation by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). As to our UK governmental response to the Covid 19 pandemic, I have previously recorded that the Cygnus investigation of belief/counter-belief produced nothing useful; that the attempt to isolate the non-infected from the infected rather than the reverse was counter to all previous practice and ill-advised in apparently having ignored the previous practice which would at least have isolated the infected from the non-infected in the hospitals themselves and would have emphasised the need to supply adequate levels of PPE therein; that while much was heard about whether or not politicians were following the science, the only recognisable science in the whole affair was and is that which produced the vaccines; that meanwhile overseas travel from areas of infection was unrestricted and/or patchy for far too long; that the age-distribution of infection and death-rate was largely ignored in policy-formulation which continued to be belief-only; that no attempt was made to separate the Covid death-rate itself from death by under-lying conditions and from old age itself; and that we must be much better prepared to apply knowledge instead of belief for the next pandemic which could well have a higher and more equally distributed age-related death-rates; but that this will not happen without active recognition of the need to differentiate knowledge/belief dichotomy as advocated in this website.
Again, with respect to global warming, I have already noted that policy has thus far been belief-only in that it is believed to be caused by our increasing emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by our increasing combustion of fossil fuels since the start of our industrial revolution; in that these increasing emissions are believed to be the sole cause of our planet’s increasing temperature, of its melting polar ice caps and of its high altitude ice; in that this anthropogenic melting in turn is believed to be causing global sea levels to rise to the detriment of low lying coastal areas and their inhabitants; and in that it is believed we should terminate all combustion of fossil fuels and rely on non-fossil energy sources whatever the additional costs might be. Yet again, the mining of coal suitable for the production of coke as required for the production of steel in the UK has recently been banned. However, I here state that these terminations exemplify the category of belief-only policies which must be rejected as unfit for implementation or must be suspended until the necessary cause effect knowledge is acquired and applied to them (c f opening paragraph of this article. Indeed, this website has already recorded that the onset of sea level rise vastly predates our industrial emissions carbon dioxide.
As to whether the belief in anthropogenic global warming should continue to be implemented as policy or rejected as unfit for such implementation, I have previously cited our knowledge that the Channel Islands were earlier part of what is now mainland France; that at least some of the Hebrides were part of mainland Scotland; that a city, formerly on the Nile Delta and trading with Ancient Athens, is now beneath the Mediterranean Sea; that two cities formerly at the mouth of the Indus are now beneath the surface of the global ocean. Again, perhaps to top all that, the Sunday Telegraph of 21/3/21 reported that cave paintings were accessed through a sub-sea tunnel from an entrance 37 metres beneath the Mediterranean Sea by Henri Cosquer who dived through a 120 metre tunnel (in 1991) which led to a huge chamber partially above sea level the walls of which were decorated with some 500 paintings of 11 different species including horses, deer, bison and a lion, penguins, auks, seals and jellyfish, now recently dated to two discrete periods – 30,000 and 19,000 years ago – which tells us that sea levels have risen by at least 37 metres since then, though this conclusion was not mentioned in the Telegraph article, no doubt out of respect for the current belief in sea level rise being due to our more recent industrialised combustion of fossil fuels. How much more reality-refutation of belief to negative knowledge will be needed for suspension of our current responses to the belief in anthropogenic global warming, and how much more will be needed before it is concluded that this belief is unfit for implementation as policy (cf., opening paragraph)? Again, I recall reports that the Thames was subject to freezing in winter from 1300 to 1800 sometimes to the extent of bearing the weight of crowds of ice-festival attendees. 26/3/21.
Article 47A Beveridge Moment?
In an article entitled ‘entitled ‘The country craves a “Beveridge moment” but it is beyond our grasp’, and subtitled ‘As the Budget will show, Britain is still miles away from the kind of radical programme we need’, Nick Timothy records that ‘Keir Starmer has called for it’; that ‘Tory MPs say they want it too’; that ‘academics and Whitehall mandarins have joined them’; and that ‘so too has the Archbishop of Canterbury’; but that he (Timothy) questions whether ‘the end of the pandemic really is likely to bring about a Beveridge moment for Britain?’ He notes that ‘the parallels are tempting’; that ‘the Beveridge Report, written as the Second World War raged, was a blueprint for a better future once the country’s collective struggle and sacrifice had finally ended’; that ‘identifying “five giants” – idleness, ignorance, disease, squalor and want – the report proposed comprehensive social and economic reforms which would support citizens from “cradle to grave”’; that ‘commissioned by the wartime National Government and written by a Liberal, its spirit was as cross-party as its contents were radical; that ‘published in 1942, all the main parties promised to implement its vision, albeit in competing forms’; that ‘Rab Butler, a Tory education minister legislated for universal education in 1944’; and that ‘after the war, Labour, led by Clement Atlee, founded the welfare state and the NHS’. However, Timothy now asks ‘are we likely to see such a profound change now’?; and responds that ‘there certainly appears to be public demand for it’ that ‘the “Talk Together” project which has had conversations with almost 160,000 people reports great pride in the way communities have come together with 12.5 million people volunteering during the pandemic and a desire for society to grow closer and more connected in future’; that the ‘Renew Normal” commission which has talked to 50,000 people who call for a drive towards stronger communities and greater social justice’; but while Timothy concedes that ‘the public demand is there’. he observes that ‘the political supply is not’; that ‘this, to be fair to our political classes, is not altogether surprising: the problems and crises now being post-modern in their complexity’.
At this point, he asks his readers to ‘contemplate the role of technology and global trade as mid-skilled/mid-paid jobs decline in the West, or the part played by social media in corroding trust in news reporting and in democratic processes, or the multitude of troubles – poor infrastructure, lack of skills, brain drains, bad governance, the decline in social capital, and the loss of civic confidence, which lie behind the struggles of many provincial towns’; and he claims that ‘these examples of the huge challenges facing ministers to-day demonstrate the difficulty of the task ahead’; that ‘the complexities listed above, together with the easy movement of people, the freedom of global capital, the power accumulated by a handful of international business leaders, the breakdown of the traditional family, and the radical individualism of our society, result in the need for solutions which cannot be brought about by the swish of a minister’s pen or by the creation of a single national institution’; that ‘we would probably find it incredibly difficult to agree even on which giants must be slayed today’; that ‘in London or the university towns, many might repeat the arguments and objectives of the Black Lives Matter movement or of the transgender activists’; that ‘in less prosperous parts of the country, there might be more concern about employment and opportunities to train’; that ‘some see globalisation, liberalised trade and supranational government as exhilarating harbingers of a brighter future’; that other see in these changes the danger of loss: of jobs, security, and democratic control’; and that ‘neither Britain – nor any other Western country, for that matter – enjoyed the kind of intellectual and political development which led to Beveridge’; that ‘various Conservative social reforms of the 1920s and 1930s, from a huge house-building programme to health and pension reforms, came first’; that ‘thinkers from Right and Left converged on a new consensus which eventually outlasted its economic utility and made possible this period of profound social reform’; that ‘today, while there is no shortage of interesting policy thinking and signs perhaps of potential convergence between factions at least, like the Red Torry and Blue Labour schools, we are still some distance from a moment of clarity on how to move on as a country, neither in the recent Budget nor in any set-piece political speeches or moments are we likely to see a grand vision or truly comprehensive plan to really change our society’.
He then goes on to say that ‘the reason for this is not just intellectual’; that it is due to the depth of our disunity in the form of sharp differences of values and interests’; that ‘the educated and the wealthy often seek freedom; that the less privileged and least secure seek protection from change and harm’; that ‘some find their place in the world through attainment and professional status’; that ‘others attain it through family, friendship, and social community’; and that ‘others attain it through associations based on place’; that ‘whether we require unity before undertaking economic reform (or the reverse) is a chicken and egg situation’; but that ‘it will require a more unified spirit – and more unified leadership – to win support for the compromises and sacrifices demanded by reform which unavoidably will come at a cost’; that ‘the starting point for an ambitious programme of change must thus recognise that while values and interests inevitably and incessantly conflict with one another, we can build institutions and encourage norms of behaviour which will help us to manage and mediate these conflicts’; and that ‘we must encourage the traditions, habits and institutions which help us to see past our different points of view and recognise familiarity in one another’; that ‘the more we lecture one another about how to live and what to do, the less we will do anything together at all’; that ‘with a sense of common identity and solidarity we will be able once again to do great things together’; and that ‘one of our national stories from which we can draw strength, which reminds us of the common life which we all share, and from which we can take inspiration, is the Beveridge moment of the 1940s and the monumental achievements which followed’.
However, in contrast to the above analysis of our current situation, I say that such moments would be more frequent and their achievements would be more secure were we to replace belief/counter-belief with cause-effect knowledge prior to the formulation of all future policy, and prior to our specification of the knowledge-only means by which such knowledge-only policies are to be implemented in the real world. 23/3/21.
Article 4646: Yet Further To The Re-Casting Of Brexit As Knowledge-Only Policy.
Chapter 4, Euro-Corporatism, of Daniel Hannan’s book, notes that the back-room deals which the EU makes with Big Business are exemplified by its efforts from 2005 to regulate and in some cases to ban, a number of higher-dose vitamin and mineral supplements, herbal remedies and other alternative medicines to which some twenty million citizens around the EU were having frequent or occasional recourse, there was no evidence of them deleterious to health’; that ‘opinion was divided as to their efficacy’; and that he and his wife differed in this regard’ However, while I interject that this topic is a matter of belief/counter-belief than one of scientific cause-effect knowledge, this differentiation does not in detract from Daniel Hannan’s argument, in that it is never ever cited as the means of concluding any argument. Instead, he expresses puzzlement as to why ‘the EU would want to ban or restrict substances which were at best health-giving or at worst harmless, while their banning was alienating health-shop owners and their customers all over Europe’; that ‘the EU cited ‘the precautionary principle’; but that there ought to be such a thing as the presumption of innocence in commerce as in criminal justice’; that ‘no herbalist sets out to poison clients, such an intention being a poor business model’. However, his puzzlement was abated by his recognition that ‘in the Eurocrat-view “unregulated” is synonymous with “illegal”; that the absence of regulation might be the natural state of affairs, yet it finds no sympathy in the EU’; that ‘British herbalists had been self-regulating since Henry VIII gave them freedom to trade without being prosecuted for witchcraft’; and that ‘in Brussels this ancient liberty, was a loop-hole in need of closing’.
Thus, Chapter 4 goes on to state that ‘some of the larger pharmaceutical companies, well understanding the Eurocrat-mindset, saw this as an opportunity to put their smaller rivals out of business’; that ‘the new legislation required expensive tests which were beyond the means of small producers’; that ‘the big companies were able to meet the new costs without difficulty’; that ‘as independent herbalists reduced the range of what they could sell and in some cases went out of business altogether, the giants assumed a larger market-share’; and that ‘while the multi-nationals did well out of the new arrangements, the consumers did badly’; but that ‘the European economy as a whole suffered too’; that ‘whenever a cartel of large companies succeeds in raising barriers to entry, the general climate becomes less congenial to start-ups, and some entrepreneurs take their energy elsewhere’; that ‘while lobbying is not unique to Brussels, it is worthwhile asking whether legislation of this kind would have passed through the (then) twenty-five national legislatures’; that Daniel Hannan ‘doubts it’; that ‘across Europe MPs were deluged , just as he was, with letters from the users of alternative medicines who feared that the new restrictions would damage their health’; but that ‘the decision was not in the hands of national legislators: it was made by the non-elected Commission and approved by the European Parliament – whose members are remote to the point of near-invisibility’. Indeed, Chapter 4 recognizes that ‘one of the reasons why the European continent is stagnating and its share of world trade is deceasing, while all other economies are growing, is that cronyism and protectionism flourish in the necessarily undemocratic institutions of the EU’; that ‘on the basis of the Robinson/Acemoglu differentiation of extractive/inclusive states, the EU is an extractive institution, designed by those who distrust democracies and which lobbies to keep things as they are’; that this system is a paradise for vested interests’; that ‘vested interests do not like (competitive) innovation’; and that nation states are inclusive and have individual judiciaries’, At this point, I would add that extractive systems are incompatible with inclusive systems; and that nation state interests are incompatible with membership of the EU.
Chapter 4 concludes that ‘the sheer diversity of conditions and needs across the EU guarantees that overall regulation has unintended consequences’; that ‘(individual) economies always suffer when a cartel reaches a deal with (supra-national) officials’; but that ‘those who suffer most are those whose standards or products diverge most from those of the cartel’; that the more inclusive and pluralist an economy is, the more losers there will be when (overall) regulations are passed’. Again, Daniel Hannan takes one example to illustrate this phenomenon. When he was writing his book, the EU was drawing up a directive which directly threatened the viability of Britain’s commercial ports, which are private, profitable and plentiful, and which tend to be smaller than those on the Continent and more numerous around our coasts, and which don’t rely on state aid, generate a healthy surplus for the Treasury, and sustain some hundred thousand jobs, while those on the other side of the Channel tend to be sparser and larger and are generally state-owned or dependent on grants, and are less likely to compete with one another’. Nonetheless, the European Commission has moved a regulation which would require them to introduce a measure of internal competition by requiring them to contract out their mooring , dredging, unloading, bunkering and so on to rival providers, while the regulation itself also provides for the formal establishment of (over-seeing) regulatory bodies’.
Chapter 5, Britain’s Lack of Influence, opens with a reference to the tendency of EU supporters to say, when confronted with some indefensible Brussels policy: ‘well, that’s something we ought to reform, rather than just walk away.” it then shows that ‘the story of the United Kingdom’s involvement with the EEC, then with the EC and later with the EU, is one of failed UK attempts at such reform’; that ‘you won’t find many British politicians over the past fifty years, from any party, who openly favoured a United States of Europe’. Almost all said that ‘they wanted a Europe of nations – a flexible alliance of states cooperating to achieve what they can’t achieve singly, but ultimately being responsible to their own democratic institutions’; that ‘if that model had ever been on offer, there would have been no argument’; and that ‘we would never have needed a referendum’; that ‘you would have had to be rather eccentric to object, in principle, to participating in a regional club committed to the promotion of trade and intergovernmental collaboration’ and that ‘the problem has always been that while British politicians and writers have fantasized about a Europe of nations, the EU has steadily been moving towards a political union of nations’. Chapter 5 then recalls that ‘the EEC which Britain joined in 1973 has since extended its jurisdiction progressively to foreign policy, environmental regulation, immigration, criminal justice and social policy’; that ‘it has acquired, one by one, the powers of statehood, from uniformed armed forces to a standardized driving-licence’; that ‘it now aspires to a common tax and social security system, a federal police force and as army’; and that ‘all the while successive British leaders have been singing the same song about a Europe of nations’. Chapter 5 then describes ‘the sequence of events which successive leaders of all political parties have condoned to the detriment of the UK’s interests’; and which I don’t have space to reproduce here, but which I commend to my readers who now have the advantage of being able to differentiate belief from knowledge whereas Daniel Hannan attributes ‘our EU incompatibility to our twin concepts of common law and parliamentary supremacy’ without any reference to my more recent knowledge/belief differentiation.
In Chapter 6, Sovereignty of the People, Daniel Hannan recognizes that ‘the European Parliament is subordinate to the supremacy of the EU’s written constitution’; that ‘this relationship reflects that of the relationship of its national parliaments to their individually written constitutions’; that in contrast, ‘the UK constitution is subordinate to the UK Parliament’; that consequently ‘the European Parliament is a relatively weak body which cannot, except in very special circumstances, propose laws’; that ‘its role is to amend legislation put before it by the non-elected European Commission’; that ‘MEPs welcome consensus and like to bring as many parties as possible into their majority coalitions’; that politics happens in committees, not on the floor of the chamber’; that ‘speeches to plenary sessions are necessarily perfunctory affairs since most speakers get no more than two or three minutes to make them’; that ‘the EU’s constitution was drafted in 2004 and put to member states for ratification in the form of the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe’; that ‘when this treaty was rejected in referenda in France and the Netherlands in 2005, Eurocrats decided to keep the contents but change the name, because a new name was politically necessary to allow national governments, including Britain’s, to wiggle out of their promises to hold a referendum on the text’; that ‘as the author of the European Constitution Valery Giscard d’Estaing frankly admitted: the institutional proposals of the constitutional treaty are in the Lisbon Treaty, only in a different order’. Thus, chapter 6 records that ‘the EU has a written constitution’; that ‘Eurocrats like to describe themselves as guardians of the treaties’; that ‘these treaties are interpreted by the European Supreme Court just as formerly in twenty-seven of the twenty-eight states their national constitutions were interpreted by their respective national supreme courts; that ‘curiously, the EU’s Supreme Court is called the European Court of Justice (ECJ) though it functions as a constitutional rather than a criminal court’; but that the UK has never formerly had a supreme court’; and that formerly our parliament was the supreme law-giver and our courts applied the law to particular cases.
At this point, I record that Chapters 7 to 10 inclusive are entitled Europe – Country, Fried Air, What is the Alternative? and Better Off Out. In addition there is a Conclusion entitled Two Roads Diverged. Chapter 7 considers the extent to which the EU has succeeded in acquiring the attributes and functions of a State, Chapter 8 considers that Britain has achieved nothing (fried air) in achieving a Europe of Nations, Chapter 9 opts for the Nation we have been and could be again, and Chapter 10 argues that import costs would be reduced and our export prices would become consistent with the growing economies of the world, were we to leave, while the Conclusion demonstrates that remaining would not permit us to stay where we are; that we would remain on a conveyor-belt to where we ought not to want to go. In conclusion, I say that this book, in spite of itself, demonstrates that Brexit is a knowledge-only policy. 2/3/21.