Into Africa

THE British chancellor of the exchequer, Mr. Gordon Brown, toured southern Africa recently. Newspapers described this tour as an attempt by the dour, charmless, and uncouth Mr. Brown to cut an international figure before he assumes the prime ministerial mantle of Mr. Blair at some time in the near future. His first act of statesmanship was to promise to give $15 billion of British taxpayers’ money to fund primary education in the Dark Continent. Furthermore, he promised to persuade other countries to follow suit.

There was little outcry against his preposterous and immoral proposals, which were typical of his dirigiste instincts, which are now also those of a large proportion of the British electorate. Dirigisme is so deeply engraved in the British psyche that when, on the rare occasions a chancellor of the exchequer such as he lowers a tax, he is universally said in the newspapers and on the radio to have “given money away,” which is a little like saying of a street robber that, if he leaves you the clothes you stand up in, he has given you clothes. On this view, the government’s relation to the population is that of parent to child. Money is the government’s, to decide what to do with; and the serious things of life, such as health, housing, education, pensions, and welfare, having been thus taken care of, it doles out pocket money for the children to spend on such little extras as they childishly desire.

About the Author

Anthony Daniels

Mr. Daniels, a retired doctor who worked in several parts of the world, is the author of Mass Listeria, a book about health scares.

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THE British chancellor of the exchequer, Mr. Gordon Brown, toured southern Africa recently. Newspapers described this tour as an attempt by the dour, charmless, and uncouth Mr. Brown to cut an international figure before he assumes the prime ministerial mantle of Mr. Blair at some time in the near future. His first act of statesmanship was to promise to give $15 billion of British taxpayers’ money to fund primary education in the Dark Continent. Furthermore, he promised to persuade other countries to follow suit.

There was little outcry against his preposterous and immoral proposals, which were typical of his dirigiste instincts, which are now also those of a large proportion of the British electorate. Dirigisme is so deeply engraved in the British psyche that when, on the rare occasions a chancellor of the exchequer such as he lowers a tax, he is universally said in the newspapers and on the radio to have “given money away,” which is a little like saying of a street robber that, if he leaves you the clothes you stand up in, he has given you clothes. On this view, the government’s relation to the population is that of parent to child. Money is the government’s, to decide what to do with; and the serious things of life, such as health, housing, education, pensions, and welfare, having been thus taken care of, it doles out pocket money for the children to spend on such little extras as they childishly desire.