Hutton, like Dworkin, is deeply Illiberal.

There's another characteristic whine from Hutton in the Guardian this morning. The recently dead Dworkin, Hutton writes, "argued that to live well and with dignity was every human being's aim – one that law and government should support" and that this was true liberalism. Poppycock. 

Let's just Fisk that quote above. By 'support' Hutton actually means 'enable' - he sees an all-powerful State regulating individual lives and rationing-out rewards equally to all, using law to prevent the emergence of a meritocracy in a system in which all are beholden to State Welfarism and to the State alone for the fulfilment of their own lives. What a dreary, squalid Soviet Hell.

In proclaiming the virtues of a Statist, repressive and coercive vesion of what he terms 'liberalism' in the Guardian, Will Hutton demonstrates nothing but his own essential illiberality. Hutton simply can't stand the simple realisation that even the Economist has reached that many more British people, and particularly the young, are rediscovering true Liberalism. Tolerant of people's differences, but with a deep distrust of the State, the Political Class and Welfarism; we should rejoice that the new generation of Brits growing into power are likely to follow Burke rather than Engels. Hutton despairs.

Let's turn that quote around and say "Neither law nor government should obstruct, hinder or restrict every human being's aim to live well and with dignity". That'll do.

Will Hutton: Yes to Press Regulation

Will Hutton writes in the Observer today why he, 'as a journalist and ex-editor', favours regulation of the press. We reproduce an edited version of his piece here.

"There's really a lot of bunk talked about freedom of expression. It's really not that important, is it? After all, most people's opinions seem to be nonsense to me. I'd rather hear the views of the sort of sensible people I have seated around my dinner table. 

Freedom of the Press leads to irresponsible criticism of the sort of fine upstanding people who run Common Purpose, an organisation selflessly devoted to ensuring that the views expressed at my dinner table are promulgated throughout the public sector, and of such wholly impartial and independent organisations as the Media Standards Trust and the Institute for Bureau of Investigative Journalism, all committed to eliminating the sorts of nonsense opinions held by the majority of the public. 

As for the exposure of my good friend Hugh Grant in paying for oral sex in a public place from a black crack whore, it was clearly despicable. It cost him his charming girlfriend. If people like Hugh can't be allowed to deceive their partners without the press sneaking on them what sort of world do we live in?

We've already got courts and injunctions, of course, but these are really expensive and have to be paid for from my friends' private resources. How much fairer it would be if the taxpayer instead paid the cost of hiding their secrets from the public, allowing them to retain their own wealth for social good.

Of course a Press Regulation body will only protect those at the heart of the establishment - it really can't be concerned with injustice against unimportant people, and since the taxpayer will bear all the costs of protecting the rich and famous from the Press I'm sure people will agree that this is right."

A simple immigration strategy

Will Hutton in the Observer this morning struggles to defend the left's support of mass immigration against a popular and Europe-wide reaction against some immigration. Yet again, he trots out that old canard that immigration increases Europe's GDP. Yes, of course it does, but unless it also increases each nation's per capita GDP then its a negative and pointless change. 


In 2007, Channel 4 commissioned an important report from the ippr that analysed immigrants by country of origin and whether they were net contributors to or takers from the economy; in other words, whether they increased per capita GDP or decreased it. Some were clear; immigrants from the US, Australia, NZ, France, India and suchlike were positive, immigrants from Somalia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and so on were negative. Many were neutral, such as Nigeria. It isn't a conclusive document or one upon which the UK can base immigration policy - for each immigrant must be treated as an individual - but it usefully identified all the 'heads of proof' that a coherent immigration strategy needs:-

• Is the immigrant healthy, with no pre-existing chronic medical condition?
• Is the immigrant educated and fluent in English?
• Will they obtain employment immediately in a occupational group for which there is a shortage of skilled or qualified Britons?
• Are they willing and capable of integrating into a liberal Western capitalist democracy?
• Are they capable of financially supporting all dependants, including housing, medical and educational costs?
• Do they hold fixed and immutable beliefs that are incompatible with national security? 

If they pass these tests, the chances are that their presence in the UK will make us all marginally better off. 


Until the left come to terms with a hard-headed, nation-first approach to immigration policy based on sound economics and free of taste discrimination they will continue to flounder.  

Will Hutton to lead pay review? Are they joking?

One of the most pernicious diseases to hit the public sector under Labour is the culture of managerialism. Together with the targets, performance indicators and benchmarking, together with the Audit Commission determining exactly how each of the lowliest parts of the public sector should do its job, together with the octopus of State Central Planning that manipulated the levers, came a wave of 'modernisation'.

Here in Zone-2 London, my GP used to be overworked and underpaid, but he'd known me since I moved here and on my very infrequent visits he'd want an update on what I'd been up to in the past year as much as he'd want a blood pressure reading. He ran his list together with a part-time locum and a receptionist. Then came a tsunami of health service cash. The rather scruffy terraced shop where he used to hang his shingle was closed and a pretty Victorian villa down the road was bought and refurbed at a cost of about £3m. The receptionist was re-designated practice manager and two more receptionists hired. A nurse appeared, with her own consulting room. Two more full-time GPs turned up. The list was exactly the same size, and patients were randomly allocated to whichever had an appointments slot, strictly limited to 15 minutes.

Well, my old GP didn't take to this 'modernisation'. For a start, he'd lost 'his' list to a faceless NHS organisation. He couldn't enjoy a rambling half-hour chat about fishing any more. And the new Trust that now paid him kept giving him targets to report on; what had he done to reduce teen pregnancy / domestic violence / diabetes? So he took early retirement.

I've had to visit twice since he's gone, to what is now no longer the GP's surgery but State Health Plant Number 532. First time I got a cold and lugubrious Frenchman who peered confused at his computer screen. It took ten of our allotted fifteen minutes to work out that my records had been wrongly transcribed, and included those of a woman with Psoriasis. He rapidly scratched out a prescription to be rid of me. I looked it up. It was inappropriate. I devised my own cure with the aid of the internet. The second was a Tamil chap, no more competent. I haven't bothered going back since.

This tale is symptomatic of what's happened under Labour. At the old surgery there were no appointments, you just turned up and waited. If you weren't that sick (and many weren't) you got fed up waiting and went home. No wasted guaranteed 15 minutes. And the doc knew you, making his work more effective and efficient. And he worked maybe 60 hours a week for a £45k salary - good value.

Anyway, Will Hutton. It soon became clear that lots of doctors like my old GP and lots of patients like me were unhappy, despite the record number of tractors being serviced by the State Health Plants. So the NHS engaged Hutton's Work Foundation to survey everyone to find out exactly how unhappy we all were. Then they set performance targets to reduce the unhappiness level.

Looking at Hutton's board, you find PWC, a trade union official, the permanent secretary of the Department of Communities and a brace of senior HR and management consultants. These are the very people who have caused all the mess in the first place; these are the modernisers, who pushed their culture of managerialism into things that worked quite well, and made them work appallingly badly. These are the people who should be removed from every public procurement list in the country and never used again. But what does Cameron do? Appoint Hutton to oversee a senior salaries review.

It's madness.

Guardianistas savage Hutton

When that old Blairist Will Hutton tried to make the case for a federal Europe in the Guardian on Saturday, his opinions attracted over 300 reader comments, around 90% of which are unashamedly hostile. Even the Guardianistas, it seems, are fed up with this manipulation:

- You don't have a clue, do you, Will?
- The article above is nonsense from top to bottom, a farrago of lies and disinformation. Will Hutton is a painfully constructed and fragile skein of ignorance and vanity.
- Good title - shame about the substance of your article which is nonsense.
- What a load of cobblers! What an arrogant anti-democratic typically europhiliac tissue of lies!
- Will Hutton is either hopelessly misinformed here, or is being disingenuous in the extreme.
- Ah, what a surprise; the oldest lie/disinformation of all from Mr. Hutton: the classic false dichotomy - 'this EU or no EU'.
- Will Hutton, pompous and bloated as ever.
- I do hope Will that you had been drinking heavily before writing this astonishing piece of hectoring, factually incorrect, nonsense.
- This article is nonsense from top to bottom.
- Your article frightened me in its totalitarian tone .
- What a load of absolute rubbish by Hutton.
- The younger more astute Will Hutton would have understood the difference between being Pro-Europe and being Pro-Lisbon
- GO **** YOURSELF Will Hutton!
- This article is nonsense from top to bottom, aside from the first paragraph which was about right.
- Predictable dishonest pro-EU propaganda and fearmongering from a 'made man' in the Euro elite.
- your article is nonsense from top to bottom, cant you understand that some of us quite well understand what the eu wants and we don't like it.

Gives a flavour of what Guardian readers think of Hutton's position. The hand-knitted yoghurt sandal wearers have just risen a notch in my opinion.