Contact Details: Dr Sean Gabb
07956 472 199, sean@libertarian.co.uk
Tuesday the 3rd July 2012
For immediate release
Modern England: A Nation of Sheep!
I listened to an item on this morning’s Today Programme (BBC Radio 4, 3rd July 2012, c.8:35am) about a man who was “victimised” by a loan shark. Apparently, he borrowed £250 when he was 17 to buy a car. He was then fraudulently squeezed by his lender to pay back a total of £90,000. There was a long interview with the “victim,” in which he behaved and was treated as if he’d been robbed at gunpoint. There was much rejoicing at the news that the lender had been sent to prison – moderated only by disappointment that the “victim” would not be able to claim back his repayments from the taxpayers.
I have no doubt that many small scale lenders are nasty people, who prey on the ignorance of their customers. This being said, the borrower here looks like a fool according to the facts as presented. No sensible man borrows money without first establishing the term of the loan and rate of interest, and so on and so forth, and getting it in writing. And, unlike some illiterate farmer in the third world who is forced to borrow immediately and at usurious rates to replace livestock or buy seed, this borrower only wanted to buy a car. It was the kind of purchase that could easily be put off while he made the normal enquiries.
I don’t think oral, or even written, agreements of this kind should be enforced by the courts. English equity law, indeed, allows the courts to vary or set aside burdensome contracts made by “poor and ignorant people.” The reasonable corollary of such laws, however, is that the poor and ignorant should be barred from voting. If they can’t be held responsible for their own decisions, they shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions that affect the lives, liberty and property of others.
Unless a deliberate fraud, mass democracy is based on the assumption that the overwhelming majority of voters are of normal intelligence, or at least act with some degree of common sense. One of the problems with modern England is that numbers of the unintelligent are rising all the time, and these are protected by various bureaucratic and policing agencies from the consequences of their actions – and they are allowed to vote.
No wonder England is in such a mess!
END OF COPY
Note(s) to Editors
Dr Sean Gabb is the Director of the Libertarian Alliance. He is the author of over a dozen books and a million words of journalism. He can be contacted for further comment on 07956 472 199 or by email at sean@libertarian.co.uk
His recent novel, The Churchill Memorandum, asks what England and the world have been like in 1959 if there had been no Second World War. If you like Bulldog Drummond and Biggles and the early James Bond, this will be right up your street.
Or his book, Cultural Revolution, Culture War: How Conservatives Lost England, and How to Get It Back, explains how its current ruling class has turned England into a totalitarian police state, and how this ruling class can be overthrown and utterly destroyed.
Or another of his books, Smoking, Class and the Legitimation of Power, explains how the current "war" on smoking has nothing to do with making individuals healthy, but everything to do with enhancing the power of a totalitarian ruling class, and enriching its relevant client groups.
You can see other books by Sean Gabb here.
Extended Contact Details
The Libertarian Alliance is Britain's most radical free market and civil liberties policy institute. It has published over 800 articles, pamphlets and books in support of freedom and against statism in all its forms. These are freely available at http://www.libertarian.co.uk
Our postal address is
The Libertarian Alliance
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London
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Tel: 07956 472 199
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