John Galt speaks

I saw this over at Old Holborn's site and yes, I watched it. All 15+ minutes of it.

You are no doubt aware that I'm a fan of Ayn Grant's magnificent opus "Atlas Shrugged". I will no doubt be reading it again in the coming months. Her "hero" is a character called John Galt.

Here is a video of Ryan Air's CEO Michael O'Leary speaking in Brussels earlier this year. His speach could have been written by Rand. Please take the time and watch it all the way through. See if you don't find yourself agreeing with him long before the end.

Ayn Rand was right...

In her masterpiece "Atlas Shrugged" ten years in the writing and published over 50 years ago, Ayn Rand paints a picture of a future where the state controls everything and the individual is unable to create wealth or to use his natural talent to progress.
My life experience tells me that her premise is right. Despite what the equality legislators would have us believe, we are not all equal. Some people are better than others in business, while others are better athletes, some can sing or are virtuoso musicians. Passing a law cannot change that.
Our education system has held back the gifted whilst discouraging the ordinary in a vain quest for homogenation, for making everyone the same.
We're not. We can never be the same. We are all different.

I was listening to the radio the other day and every singer sounded different. They each had a unique sound to their voice. It has to be that way. What people remember about Sinatra, or Ella, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Bryan Ferry, Annie Lennox, Amy Winehouse was that they were instantly recognisable by the sound and quality of their singing. When all the fuss about their private lives has subsided, what will remain is the quality and distinctiveness of their voice. We are not all alike. We can never be. We should never aspire to be the same as everyone else.

So why is it that when I turn on some TV shows or open up my paper I'm confronted with an image of someone who's apparently constructed from an identikit?
The same hair, the same fake tan, the same makeup, the same teeth...and as for the women.......

Since I was a teenager I've smiled at the absurdity of young people eschewing school uniform is a vain attempt at individuality, only to dress in t-shirt and jeans, and thereby looking exactly the same as everyone else. I almost laugh out loud at the fat useless lumps of lard walking around town in sportswear, trying to look cool when it's pretty apparent that they couldn't even run for the bus, let alone do anything remotely sporting.

OK, I've made it clear that I don't want to be one of the herd. I don't want to look like them, dress like them, act like them and most of all, think like them.

This makes me potentially dangerous to the state. Because government policies are worked out by sociologists who have studied the behaviour of large crowds, they can cope with a few like me adding static to their graphs and charts. But what if there were more like me? What then? What if the masses refused to conform? What if the masses refused to consume what they were fed, whether it be in the supermarkets or through the media?

In my life as a musician, I've tried to avoid following the crowds or the latest fashion, except when it suited me. The music that excited me was never played on Radio 1 or shown on Top of the Pops. I discovered it for myself, through underground and specialist press and word of mouth (usually John Peel's).

In my working life I've tried many jobs. I'm pretty adaptable and can turn my hand to most things but the fact still remains that when up against a naturally talented businesman he beats me hands down. When up against a skilled painter and decorator my rudimentary DIY skills leave me at the start line. My friend (a painter and decorator by trade) could finish painting my living room ceiling before I had the lid off the paint tin. People are different, have different skills and therefore have different earning potential.

I had quite a lot to do with young people in recent years. As my son grew up I got to know his friends and for a time I was involved with a church youth group. In my working life I met and worked with a lot of young people. About twenty years ago I noticed that the youth seemed in my eyes to be more compliant, less rebellious, less questioning than my generation back in the 60s. That may seem a surprising thing to say, but remember, my generation changed the world. I think the education they received stunted their enquiring minds.
More recently I've been working in a solicitor's office and I regularly receive CVs from students seeking job experience or a training contract. I sometimes laugh out loud at what they write. The grammar is either non-existent or cut and paste googlespeak. I'm not certain if these young people writing and sending out these flowery pieces of fiction actually comprehend exactly what is written. Yet I also sense an air of expectation, of entitlement, that somehow they deserve a job, just because, well, just because of who they are.

Which brings me rather circuitously back to Ayn Rand. One theme that recurs in her book is the sense that various characters deserve a break, deserve a job, deserve a good wage, deserve the same as the hard working hero who earned his wealth through his own enterprise, hard work and imagination only to have the state steal it from him in the name of equality and fairness.

Life isn't fair. Let's get that straight. I may play a musical instrument and sing a bit, but that does not entitle me to the same riches as Paul McCartney or Elton John. I may not have had the same success as those two, but I cannot expect to have, because I didn't travel the same hard road as them, I didn't get the lucky breaks as them (mainly because I didn't put myself in the right situation or meet the right people). Most of all, I didn't have anything like the same talent as them.

The thinking that Rand rails against is the idea that somehow legislation should be passed that forces the better and more successful musicians to give up their wealth or squander their talent in order that the little guy like me might have a chance.
What nonsense. Yet governments still try to do this.

So what can little insignificant me do about this?

More soon

Atlas Shrugged

I've been a bit busy and haven't posted for a while. However I saw this link to the long awaited (by me) film of Atlas Shrugged which opens in the US in April.
If it is half as good as the book it will be great


And here's an interview with Ayn Rand from about 50 years ago. Like it or not, what she warns about is coming about. Isn't it time we listened to what she is saying?

X-Factor politics

The Last ditch has an excellent post about the current election and the fact that we have three parties all sharing the same centre ground. You can read it here.
http://lastditch.typepad.com/lastditch/2010/04/the-same-difference.html#comment-6a00d83451f09b69e20133ece34e04970b

I just posted this on my Facebook page "Ayn Rand said this "There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil." And we have three political parties all competing for the middle ground."

The author of The Last Ditch has this to say-

As voters peer and struggle to discern the differences between the parties now in contention, the truth is that - in key respects - they are the same. They are all Party X.
Vote for party X and this will happen:

1. You will work (if you work) for half the year for the government
2. The government will take the fruits of your labour and give them to the least deserving people of the world, whether they be African dictators (to buy weapons to use against their people), domestic criminals (to buy weapons to use against you when they burgle your house) or busybodies (to equip them to interfere in your life).
3. The government will believe that it knows what is best for you, despite being staffed by people every bit as prone to error as you are yourself.
4. The government will continue to make you hated or ridiculed in the rest of the world (and expose your warriors to danger) by conducting itself as if a small island nation of no particular current consequence was morally superior to all others.
5. Political games will be played at Westminster, while the laws are made by unelected men and women in Brussels.
6. Most of our children will be tragically denied a decent education while one side of the House of Commons rails but does nothing and the other side stokes envy of the few who do what all decent parents would if they could only afford it
7. Serious criminals will be glamourised, coddled and protected, while decent people will be criminalised to make them docile (and give the police some cheap wins).
8. The government will get larger.
9. The economy will rise and fall periodically, while the underlying trend in terms of the lifestyle an ordinary person's wage can buy continues downwards.
10. Our leaders will try to bask in the reflected glory of our daughter civilisation in America, while the worst (and I fear the most) of us continue secretly to envy it and wish it ill.

Now aint that the truth.

Fuss about nothing?

The airlines have revolted and are flying planes into UK airspace, forcing the airports to open.
Millions have had their travel plans disrupted and the MotoGP race due to take place this weekend has been cancelled.
So what is actually going on?

The Register is reporting this-

"So the UK Met Office closed European civilian airspace on the basis of one computer model, which it didn't check against reality. We already knew that the great volcano shut-down was based on a model, but we didn't know how little atmospheric sampling was performed to test the simulation against the atmosphere. It turns out only four test flights have been made to sample the composition of the cloud.
Matthias Ruete, the European Commission's transport chief, accused the Mystic Met of preferring virtual reality to evidence. "We have a model that runs on mathematical projections. It is probability rather than things happening," he said.
As a result the Met Office continued to issue projections of where it thought the ash cloud should be, but was unable to report its density and composition with confidence. These are critical vital factors an airline needs to know. European airlines sounded the alarm on Sunday, when they noticed that the satellite pictures didn't tally with the centre's output."

You can read the rest of the article here-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/20/mystic_met_volcano_model/

So what is going on? I assume that the insurers hold the key. Everybody fears being sued and nobody is willing to put their jobs on the line.

Im a big fan of Ayn Rands "Atlas Shrugged". In her book the action revolves around a transcontinental railway as airlines hadn't taken hold in the US when she wrote it.
However, the parallels are uncanny.

Then there is the governments response. What response I hear  you say? Exactly.

A TV presenter named Dan Snow took three inflatable boats to Calais to collect some friends. The French authorities wouldnt let him take them for hours. In the end he was able to bring some Brits home, but not his friends.
The media picked up on this and the government was stung into action.

I can imagine the conversation-
PM- We must do something!
Flunky- That bloke off the TV has taken some boats to Calais in a rerun of Dunkirk. He s getting all the media attention.
PM- Media attention? We must do something about that. Theres an election going on.
Flunky- Why not a rerun of Dunkirk? You know, send a warship or two over to collect our people?
PM- We must do something. Were losing in the polls!
Flunky- This is something.
PM- Let's do it! Erm, do we have any ships left?

Its a fiasco of the worst kind. Knee jerk politics. Media hype and scaremongering.

Ayn Rand was right all along.

Ayn Rand quotes

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. "


"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil."

 "Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims"

"So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money? "

"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see. " 

 "The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

More here-
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/ayn_rand.html 


 

Ayn Rand was right all along

The Devils Kitchen blog has an interesting post. He's commenting on the number of laws that Labour have passed in the last thirteen years. It's 4000 plus and still rising.
I've often said that the law will make criminals of us all, and it appears to be looming closer each day.
DK quotes from Ayn Rand's 1957 masterpiece "Atlas Shrugged", and I've copied the quote for you to read
""Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against—then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of law-breakers—and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

So now you know. Governments rule by guilt and fear. They have to have a bogeyman to keep you in line. Once upon a time it was the "reds under the bed", now it's climate change.
Don't believe a single solitary word. Ever.
And wake up to the fact that we are facing enslavement.