Mutley , A Philosopher For Our Time

Mutley made a profound remark yesterday: “The main problem in discussing this kind of issue is that it comes down to tens of millions of individual choices made by people.. and public policy is largely ignored or ineffective anyway.”
We were talking about Harperson’s barely concealed wish to commit phallocide on the male population but it’s a goodish statement of one of the main struts of the small c conservative case.

Richard Thaler an adviser to David Cameron is articulating the New Psychological economics. It tries to describe a realisation that people are not gnats or atoms re-emphasising real people and their choices .The left tend to assume manageable relationship between Policy and behaviour . As Thaler elaborates, this may not be the case and therefore gross intrusions are likely to be counterproductive .States , he thinks should look at the “Nudge “ Example:
“Then there is the power of social norms; letting people know what other people do. Informing them that most of their peers are organ donors leads to more registered donors.”

Using 1940s instruments in the connected modern world has been tested to destruction over the last 11 years . Doctors , for example , pay them performance related bonuses and they will work more . Good theory : actually they work less, having all the cash they can spend, contract out the graft and become expert at running a scam .Support for women in the workplace will slowly bring about a new balance between the genders . Good theory; actually women are non negotiably averse to being the main bread winner and there is no prospect of the house –husband leaving the pages of fiction. People balance needs that are not described in Marxist or basic economic models and their descisions make new realities .

Steve Richards is a Brown nose but nonetheless ,concludes , in the New Statesman that this will be the last Scot to lead the Labour Party.."Parts of the media and some voters regard him as the personification of the more collectivist Scottish culture “.
Mutley`s law holds good .“... Tens of millions of individual choices”, have already decided made England and Scotland two nations . Labour have had a majority in both but as the prospect of governing England on the back of Scotland loomed it became clear separation was accomplished . No Englishman can rule in Scotland of course and now the reverse is as true .
David Cameron will hold formal control over Scotland but we should not be impressed. As we know from theory and experience, a small incursion of choice into a market ( say of schools ...) transforms the whole system even if most of it retains its previous provision structure. All must compete . . . Similarly, whether or not Salmon can engineer his referendum a Conservative government has to proceed on the basis that he could, and act accordingly.
Politicians are by- passed, in the real world the Union has been killed by Mutley`s law.I would like to make the additional point, that in the pages of such books as “After Blair “( Kieran O Hara )..” Everytown” by Julian Baggini and the above mentioned new economics, intellectual excitement is located for the first ,time neither on the left ,nor on the Libertarian right . The time of the 'conservative' has come and Mutley is one of its foremost philosophers Medal , medal , and yet again I say ....medal