Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good book about a rotten state..., February 17, 2009
The blunt title is not just an attention getter for this book, but a statement of fact. Butler truly describes how bad things have gotten in the UK under current Labour government led by Gordon Brown. While many of the problems began under Blair he explains how they have accelerated under the current Prime Minister.
The book sets out to detail all the various aspects of life that have worsened under Labour ranging from personal freedom thru taxation to the most basic provisions of health in the NHS. Dr Butler effectively prepares anyone who wishes to perforate the continued assertion that Britain is in its current state because of Conservative administration that ended over a decade ago.
He details the insidious nature of the politicalization by the Labour Party of all parts of the bureaucracy of British governance. Instead of unelected faceless bureaucrats there are party apparatchniks meddling in every aspect to make sure it meets with the Labour plan for Britain. In the greatest of ironies all those things that were criticized by Labour in opposition have been seized on an amped up under Labour.
A crumbling economy, infrastructure and place in the world continues to demonstrate Labour course to repeat the disasters of Labour controlled 1970s.
This book is both enlightening and wholly depressing for those who admire the UK. New Labour promised so much only to deliver far worse.
While Dr. Butler is not that keen on the current Conservative solution to New Labour, he does offer sage advice to all those willing to consider his ideas. If the Conservatives adopted his plan for their next manifesto they might have a good chance of sorting out the current mess.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Flawed study of a flawed system, May 21, 2009
Butler is the Director of the Adam Smith Institute, which the publisher calls `non-political'. Yet the Institute calls itself `the UK's leading innovator of free-market economic and social policies'. Hardly non-political then: I wonder if it gets tax relief as a charity?
Butler points out that the government has sidelined parliament, the civil service, the monarchy, the Cabinet and the judiciary. It has attacked our liberties, through surveillance, insecure databases, ID cards and floods of regulations. The Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life said the government's effect on public trust was `wholly, completely and unforgivably negative'.
The number of occupational pension schemes has halved since 1997; only one in three is still open to new members. Pension funds invested large sums in British industry, and Brown's theft of £175 billion from them meant that they had less money to invest. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that civil servants warned Brown that this would happen. Brown denied that he had received this advice. The government, allied with finance capital, is destroying the economy, especially its key part, manufacturing industry.
Savings are vanishing, personal, company and public borrowing are all booming: household debt is £1.6 trillion, government debt £4.6 trillion. 80% of new jobs in the private sector have gone to migrant workers from Eastern Europe `keeping wages down', as Butler notes approvingly.
The welfare system is not working, education could do better and so could the NHS. But Butler's proposal to privatise them all would make things worse. He writes, "the private sector ... creates the wealth that the public sector spends." No - under privatisation the public sector funds the private sector. Much of the money that Labour claims it has put into hospitals and schools actually went straight through and out the other side into the grasping hands of private firms.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sorry tale of Britain's decline in prosperity and liberty, April 5, 2009
Dr Butler has penned a ruefully accurate portrait of a country that has - despite all the promises made in 1997 by the-then premier of Tony Blair - become less prosperous, less free, more unequal, more nannied and supervised than what existed before. I think what makes this book particularly useful is how Dr Butler draws together the different critiques that have been made by various commentators in recent years and puts them all together. He covers the deterioration public finances - already bad when this book went to print and now even worse - the inefficiency of our education and health sectors; the shocking erosions of important protections of freedom, the snooper state and the obsession with removing all risk from our lives. Dr Butler is particular effective in his use of data and real-life details to make his points, whether it is showing how regulations of "wheelie bins" can be used to harrass householders, through to the many examples of how confidential personal data has been lost by state officials.
I guess if there is a criticism here, it is that this book is mostly likely to be preaching to the converted, although I hope that even those who might be quite sympathetic to the Labour Party might have pause to wonder why things have gone wrong for this administration. Even so, Dr Butler avoids hectoriing his audience or assuming that they all share his preconceptions. Up to a point, though, this book will tend to put off anyone who views society, economics and politics through mostly statist lenses. But if Dr Butler had to explain his philosophy and economics from first principles, he would have had to write a much longer book.
Dr Butler clearly demonstrates that classical liberalism is more than just about economics, but about freedom in every aspect of human life. I hope this book inspires those in opposition to this government to start addressing some of the many problems it addresses. They have a lot of work to do.
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