Brexit: Labour MPs put forward Commons motion to throw out article 50 bill

A group of backbench Labour MPs have put forward a Commons motion to throw out the government’s bill to trigger article 50, arguing they cannot support Theresa May’s plan to take Britain out of the EU’s single market.

Tabled by the former shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander, and supported by 18 fellow Labour backbenchers, the proposal would, if passed, see the bill that would set in motion departure from the EU stopped entirely early next week.

Alexander has tabled what is officially known as a reasoned amendment, something that throws out a bill at its second reading in the Commons, the first time MPs have a chance to debate it.

The proposal calls for the bill’s demise on the grounds that the government has failed to “safeguard British interests in the single market” or offer proper guarantees on whether parliament or the electorate should decide on leaving the single market.

The full list of MPs to support the amendment is: Heidi Alexander, Owen Smith, Ben Bradshaw, Meg Hillier, Angela Smith, Ian Murray, David Lammy, Stella Creasy, Mike Gapes, Peter Kyle, Karen Buck, Helen Hayes, Neil Coyle, Ann Coffey, Tulip Siddiq, Geraint Davies, Rushanara Ali, John Woodcock and Jim Dowd.

Hate Crimes - and the people who appeal to non-objective law.

In 2016, Professor Silver complained to West Midlands Police that British Home Secretary Amber Rudd had committed a so-called 'hate crime' while giving a political speech at the Conservative Party conference. During an interview with Andrew Neil on BBC2's Daily Politics, the unrepentant Prof Silver said: "I didn’t actually see the speech but I’ve read the draft. And I’ve looked at all the feedback that there was to the speech. I’ve read the speech carefully and I’ve looked at all the feedback. It’s discriminating against foreigners, you pick on them and say we want to give jobs to British people and not to foreigners. It was interpreted that way."
During the subsequent discussion on the programme, former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard responded by stating: "Of course it wasn't a hate incident... What Amber Rudd said was no different from Gordon Brown [former Labour prime minister] when he said there should be British jobs for British workers. I think Mr Silver should be thoroughly ashamed of himself because what he's doing is to bring a well-intentioned piece of legislation into disrepute." 
The BBC subsequently reported that West Midlands Police had not formally investigated the speech, but had recorded it as a "non-crime hate incident" in accordance with national police guidelines.

Self-sacrifice and altruism v egoism and self-interest

Why sacrifice?
It didn't use to be like that before Christianity. The Ancient Greeks did not believe in self-sacrifice.

The Hedonists, for example, thought you should avoid pain and maximise your pleasure - especially physical pleasures. They believed in the validity of senses but they questioned the validity of the rule of law and custom and thought you should obey rules simply to avoid pain.
It was a type of self-interest in which the individual was meant to benefit from his own actions here on Earth.

The early Sophists, on the other hand, thought power and wealth - rather than pleasure - were the goals of life, even if people liked to pretend otherwise. They thought knowledge should be practical and education should be private and they upheld the principles of free conscience and free speech.
It was a different type of self-interest to the Hedonists; but the individual was still meant to benefit from his own actions here on Earth.

Aristotelians, on the other hand, believed in self-fulfillment rather than power and wealth. They were pro-reason, pro-logic, and pro-personal happiness. They believed in prudence and wisdom and thought virtue to stem from self-love which they considered the basis of friendship. They believed in honesty, integrity and justice and thought pride was "the crown of virtue" - not something that comes before a fall.
It was a different type of self-interest to the Sophists; but the individual was still meant to benefit from his own actions here on Earth.

The Epicureans also thought personal happiness to be the greatest good. They thought it was to be found in modest pleasures the avoidance of pain and the study of natural causes - rejecting the possibility of miracles. They subscribed to a positive form of determinism in which the virtuous individual could effect a swerve from material hazards and disasters by his own ideas and hard work.
It was a different type of self-interest to the Aristotelians; but the individual was still meant to benefit from his own actions here on Earth.

The Stoics thought all men were the products of nature, which was eternal and subject to casual processes. They rejected the notion of an all-powerful god-Creator. Being virtuous meant being true to reality - not the dictates of some supernatural being. You should be logical, courageous, self-reflective and self-disciplined and if you followed that advice you would be happy no matter what.
It was a different type of self-interest to the Epicureans; but the individual was still meant to benefit from his own actions here on Earth.

Not all the Greeks believed in this-worldly self-interest but, like the poet Homer, most Ancient Greeks thought it "better be the slave of a poor man, in the light of the Sun, than a prince in the life hereafter."

This outlook formed the dominant world-view of most educated men of Western Civilisation until 529 AD when the Christian Roman dictator Justinian promptly ordered the closure of the pagan universities.

The era which immediately succeeding his edict is known as The Dark Ages.

So what values did this new Christian ideology promote: self-interest or self-sacrifice?

Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

This alleged phantom "father" was a genocidal maniac with a fondness for extermination. His devotion for sacrifice typified by the demand that Abraham slit the throat of own beloved son Isaac and cremate his body on a pyre in an act of - literally - pointless SACRIFICE.

This extraordinary Jewish Zombie declared that if someone steals your coat you should also give them your shirt. He considered sexual desire to be sinful, meekness to be good, and pride to be wicked. Savings - the life-blood of an economy - he regarded as evil and rich men he declared to be immoral, because God would care for you as he cares for little birds and flowers by means of miracles if you really believed in Him. If you didn't believe in Him you deserved to be turned into a zombie and tortured forever.

Predictably, Jesus came to a grisly end by being crucified thanks to a God who wanted him to die horrifically for the faults of others.

Again self-sacrifice is considered an ideal.

How did Jesus' followers act in regard to this cult of sacrifice? Their habits are recorded in the lives of the saints.

St Macarius, for example, in order to deny himself the temptations of the flesh, immersed himself in a fetid swamp where he was devoured by insects so severely that he was mistaken for a leper – his friends only recognising him by the sound of his voice.
Compelled by the same motive, Benedict of Nursia spent his nights on a bed of thorns, Evagrius Pontieus – a frozen fountain, St. Francis’ refuge from thoughts of "impurity?" – a pit of snow.
Christine of Troud in order to demonstrate her love of sacrifice had herself laid in a hot oven before being turned and racked on a wheel, hung from a gallows beside a corpse, and buried alive in a graveyard. Her life long enthusiasm – to be hanged by the neck from roofs, high walls and church steeples.
Hair-shirts and self-flagellation provided insufficient self-mortification for St. Ammonius – he had his entire body burned with hot irons.
Having vowed herself to chastity by the age of four St. Rose ate only sheep’s gall, bitter herbs and ashes. Margaret Marie Alacoque restricted her diet to rotten fruit and mouldy bread; her beverage of choice – laundry water. She carved the name of Jesus in her chest with a carving-knife and fastidiously heightened her agony by anointing her wounds with hot candle-wax.

These maniacs were not ostracised for their behaviour. On the contrary they were praised and admired for their virtue.

This is the true morality of Judeo-Christianity - this is the real nature of SACRIFICE. All the modern altruists have done is swap the beneficiary - a psychopathic god for psychopathic social-organism.

Unless this morally invidious premise is challenged people will continue to regard capitalism as bad - not for any of its alleged faults or shortcoming but for its very win-win nature.

See Yaron Brook 16 mins onward:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44E6ujRLchs

Auberon Herbert - In defense of Herbert Spencer's "Man v. The State"

TEN MINUTES AND AFTERWARDS.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,---Your reviewer, reviewing Mr. Spencer's
valuable book of " Man v. The State " with great
sympathy and interest, seems to wonder why Mr.
Spencer does not believe in and admire the Factory
Acts. Surely to protect children against parents'
greed of gain is and must be a right act; it seems
to be his instinctive thought, as it is that of so
many other persons!
Will you let me point out one reason why these
acts were and always will be - till they are swept
.away, a very mischievous, though a well-meant,
stupidity ? They are simply one among the many
other unthoughtful attempts to make an official
regulation take the place of the unselfish care of
parents for their children. How absurd the whole
thing seems as one looks quietly back on what took
place! Before any acts were passed, parents were
supposed--and probably with great justice in
many cases--to be overworking their children,
Selling their bone and muscle for the wages they
received. The acts are passed, and then the air is

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filled with congratulations on the immense progress
made. Moloch shall not be worshipped anymore;
the white slavery is over; neither the manufacturer
nor the parent shall draw an unholy profit from
the very life of the children. How hollow and
untrue the whole thing was! As if there would
have been a single worshipper of Moloch, whether
he was parent or manufacturer, the less on the
morrow ; as if, by the mere idle method of holding
some meetings, getting some votes together, and
passing an Act of Parliament, one fibre in the
nature of the Moloch-worshippers would have
undergone change! I say deliberately the idle
method, because here is the root of the whole
matter. All these official reforms are essentially
idle. Is the nation to be sober? Pass an Act of
Parliament out of hand, and shut up the public-houses.
Is it to be provident ? Pass an Act of
Parliament and compel men to make provision for
themselves. Is it to be intelligent ? Pass an Act
of Parliament and harry the homes till every child
is at school. Is it to consist of unselfish and
devoted parents ? Pass a Factory Act, and tie the
hands of the parent so that he can no longer sell
his child's labour. Nothing is required of us but
to hold some enthusiastic meetings, make some
speeches, write some letters to The Times, and
scrape votes enough together, and then all these
great things shall be done. Happy world! How
easily it is to be cured of its faults! We now sink
back contentedly into our arm-chairs for the rest
of our life, enjoy the testimonials we received in
the moment of enthusiasm admire the statues
that were gratefully raised to us, and re-peruse our

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own speeches, as there remains little else for us to
do in presence of the regeneration in human nature
that our last batch of regulations has effected. In
view of this modern plan of growing good in ten
minutes, we disquieted ourselves very uselessly
in past days about the amount of original sin in
human nature and the ills and infirmities to which
human flesh was heir. What fools men are not to
enjoy perfect health, when Holloway's pills,
Clarke's blood-mixture, and Eno's fruit-salts are
to be had for the ordering; and what fools they
are not to become sober, provident, intelligent, and
unselfish, when all that is wanted is only to pass
two or three Acts of Parliament to provide them
with the qualities wanted!
The word idle seems to me to suit the case with
great nicety. Taking care of the people by Acts of
Parliament seems to me very like the care of the
mother for her child, who rings the bell at the
Foundling Institution, places her child on the
door-step, and then contentedly goes on her own
way. Whatever may be the future of the child, it
must be confessed that the trouble on her part is
short and soon over. The long slow years of anxiety
and watching that await other mothers will not fall
to her share. It was all ended for her, fortunate
woman, when she rang the institution-bell. In
the same way the political philanthropist has learned
to lay his burden in the same expeditious manner
on other shoulders than his own. The world's
troubles are to be easily thrust on one side according
to his creed. A new law, a new office in some
public department, a new batch of officials, will
cure all human perversities, from the parent that

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does not send his child to school down to the
abandoned city sinner who outrages Mr. Dowsett's
feelings by playing cards in the railway-carriage.
Why should we tread any longer that toilsome
road by which men have sought to better themselves
and each other? Why paint a picture by
hand, when you can do it so well by a chromolithographic
process? Why exert ourselves to
enlist the active moral forces of society on our side;
to work by sympathy, discussion, advice and
teaching of every kind; by personal contact; by
that wonderful force of example which makes every
better kind of life a magnetic power among the
lower kinds; by that softening of character and
greater gentleness that diffuse themselves everywhere,
whilst savagery of all kinds is melting quietly
away, under the thousand silent influences of
civilization; by raising and ennobling our own
motives for helping each other, and, above all, by
constant efforts to enlarge and increase our own
powers of seeing clearly, so that we may understand
what are the causes of the evils we see round us,
and what are the conditions under which they can
be successfully attacked? All this is simply superfluous
in presence of the modern omniscient and
omnipotent Act of Parliament. Think how much
trouble, how many long years of slow conversion
are saved by our present admirable process of
compulsion. Charlemagne--not St. Paul or St.
John--was the really enlightened Christian apostle.
Be baptized, or [damned-JW], is the one argument specially
fitted for the souls of men. But, however excellent
these compulsions may be for the first ten minutes,
still every ten minutes has its afterwards; and let

89
me now ask, what is the after-fruit borne by these
compulsions? Let us take for granted that before
the first Factory Acts were passed many children
were overworked. There were two ways open for
those to take who felt the wrong and wished to 
remedy it. There was the easy, rapid, and
unfruitful parliamentary way; there was the way
--slow, up-hill, but very rich in after-fruits--of
appealing directly to the people to reform the thing
for themselves. I know this last way would have
been slow. I know that all those who wish to
gather fruit before the tree is planted would have
exclaimed, "And meanwhile the children are left
to suffer." I know it would have required a
personal devotion and belief in their work far
greater than that which is necessary for conducting
a parliamentary agitation, with its showy and
rather sensational rewards; but I also know that
in the end the parent would not simply be rendering
mechanical obedience to a law; I know that
vigilant individual care and intelligent appreciation
of the interests of their children would, as a
consequence, have slowly grown to be a part of
their character. How can these things ever grow
into being, if by a compulsory law you make them
as regards each special case in turn unnecessary ?
Did anything in this world ever come into being if
you first rendered its growth superfluous ? What
is it that develops all the best qualities of human
nature? Simply the pressure upon us of those
natural pains and penalties that make themselves
felt in the absence of these qualities; then the
intelligent perception that we are meant for our
happiness to have these qualities; then the strong

90
attachment to the qualities themselves that is developed
in our struggle to gain them. But how can
any of these things be if you step in between the man
and Nature's way of teaching him with your hasty and
ill-advised compulsions? The parent's treatment
of the child, as regards his labour_ would have been
both to parent and child an ever-growing and everwidening
education, if you had only had a little
more patience as regards learning Nature's ways,
and a little less arrogance as regards your own.
And now see to-day the second chapter that
is already following on the first. Over a long
series of years we have been congratulating ourselves
upon the philanthropy of these Acts and
their excellent effect upon the people. A universal
system of national education accompanied by
compulsion has succeeded to the Acts as their
logical complement; and now to-day--thanks to
the efforts of a few discerning people who have
not simply followed a fashion in this matter, we
wake to find that we are applying this system in
such a hasty and reckless manner that we are
injuring the very brains and bodies that we
intended to benefit. Of course, the responsible
office cannot see the mischief---what public office
ever did see or understand the more subtle and
less direct consequences of its actions? Of course,
the great mass of parents that have let the
education and management of their children slip
practically out of their hands, that have measured
their duties by an official regulation, that have
allowed a group of worthy gentlemen at Whitehall
to think and act for them, and have accepted so
much public money for thus morally effacing them

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selves, that, in a word, are drowsing while others
care for and control the very greatest of their
interests, have, just so far as they have done this,
disqualified themselves from exercising a wise and
intelligent discernment as to where the true loss
and the true gain lie. How can it be otherwise ?
All great State systems stupefy,. Without dwelling
upon the oppressive uniformity; the sacrifice of so
many views to the one view; the stiff wooden
parts; the pedantries and complexities that accompany
all attempts at official nursing of a nation;
the hard and fast regulations that turn grants of
public money into a curse and not a blessing ; the
moral deterioration that results from marrying
together one of the noblest of all efforts, that of helping
the children in the path of knowledge, with the
meanest of all precautions, " Let us do it at the
public expense,"--leaving all this out of consideration,
the one great fact remains, sufficient in itself to
damn the whole thing, that where you have a national
and universal system, there you necessarily have two
political parties struggling for its management, and
blotting out all individual choice and perception
by the discipline--in an intellectual sense the
brutalizing discipline--that each party for the sake
of defeating its opponent learns to submit to. All
discipline for fighting purposes brutalizes in this
sense. It deprives men of more than half their
perceptions. And so it comes naturally about
that, having adopted the very best means to make
ourselves thoroughly stupid about education - first,
by Factory Acts, and then by their logical completion,
a universal State system - we now find
ourselves face to face with dangers, the very

93
spontaneously and without pressure, that each action
by which the good and the bad are compulsorily
placed on the same level--for example, the selfish
and the unselfish parent, or the drunkard and the
sober man--tends in the long run to delay the
emergence of the better type from amongst the
inferior types. Every such kind of interference
relieves the unworthy of the consequences of their
actions, and takes from the worthy the occasions of
acquiring, and preserving, and strengthening those
qualities that are good and useful. In a word, so far
as you are able to do it for the moment, you make
goodness unnecessary; and as unfortunately the
world was constructed on a plan which makes goodness
an essential element in obtaining happiness, you
are trying to go by one road, while Nature is trying
to go by another. My two friends, Mr. Mundella
and Sir W. Lawson,- both of them, against their will,
architects of national incapacity,-may quarrel with
my verdict on their work; but, quarrel or not,
I must tell them that they are both doing their
best, - the one to make temperance, and the other 
to make the intelligent care of parents for their
children, an unnecessary part of human nature.
They are both throwing all the power and influence
that are in their hands on the side of the inferior
type; they are both, so far as they can do it,
preventing the development of the better type.
They are both manufacturing virtues which are the
mere imitations of virtues, sham products that, as
time will tell them, will neither wash nor wear.
Many men before them have tried a fall with
Nature and her conditions, and have scarcely had
the best of it. Nature in her irony often allows

94
us a ten minutes of seeming success when we go
against her methods, and I doubt not that both
Sir W. Lawson and Mr. Mundella will have a ten
minutes of their own; but then comes the aftertime
in which the bent bow flies back. I hope, as
it does so, it may not hit any of my friends too
violently in the face who have been so strenuously
bending it down.

I am, very faithfully,
AUBERON HERBERT.
Ashley Arnewood Farm, Lymington.