The Clean Air (Human Rights) bill

(Image credit: Matt Palmer, Unsplash)

There is upcoming, on Friday November 7^th, 2025, the second reading of a parliamentary private member’s bill. It is titled the “Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill.” I must say that this is the most tyrannical and extremist piece of legislation I have yet read.

This article was not intended to be part of a set. Yet, it follows on directly from my recent essays on “Our Enemy, the UN” [[i]] and the perversion of the precautionary principle [[ii]].

The bill’s history

The bill was introduced by Sian Berry, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion. It had previously been brought up in 2022. It had its first reading on July 1^st, 2025: [[iii]]. Its stated purposes are: “To establish the right to breathe clean air. To require the Secretary of State to achieve and maintain clean air in England. To make provision about environmental targets and minimum standards in relation to clean air. To make provision about the powers, duties and functions of public bodies in England in relation to air pollution. To give the Office for Environmental Protection additional powers and duties related to clean air. To require the Secretary of State to comply with the United Nations Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. To require the Secretary of State and public authorities to apply specified environmental principles in carrying out their duties under this Act. And for connected purposes.”

Of the 12 presenters of this bill, two are Green MPs, five Labour, two Lib Dem including Roz Savage (proposer of the Climate and Nature bill [[iv]]), one Independent, one SNP and one SDLP. Ten of them are also listed as supporters of Zero Hour [[v]], promoters of the Climate and Nature bill. Of the other two, one made her maiden parliamentary speech on May 1^st, 2019 in the debate that ended with parliament declaring a “climate emergency.” And the other has been a senior advisor to Sadiq Khan, mayor of London.

Ella’s Law

The bill has the popular title of “Ella’s Law,” after Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who died in 2013 aged 9. Her mother, suspecting that a cause of death might have been pollution from traffic on the nearby South Circular Road, began to campaign for a review of the causes of death. The suspected pollutants were nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and particulate matter small enough to enter the lungs (PM_2.5).

In her campaign, she was aided by Professor Stephen Holgate. Holgate was chair of the UK government’s Committee on Medical Effects of Air Pollution (COMEAP) from its inception in 1992 until 2001. He was still active on that committee as late as 2010. He was chair of the 2016 working party that produced the highly alarmist RCP (Royal College of Physicians) report: “Every breath we take: the lifelong impact of air pollution.” And in 2021, when UKRI, “UK Research and Innovation”, instituted a “Clean Air Programme,” he was first among those appointed as “Clean Air Champions.”

Ella’s mother became a Green Party supporter, and later candidate. She is now an official World Health Organization (WHO) advocate for health and air quality. And the coroner, who did the re-examination, decided to fall in line. He changed the cause of Ella’s death to “asthma contributed to by excessive air pollution.” He also observed that “there was no dispute at the inquest that atmospheric air pollution is the cause of many thousand premature deaths in the UK.” Though, to my knowledge, no other UK death certificate has ever mentioned air pollution.

There is a website devoted to Ella’s Law. Its major supporters are listed here: [[vi]]. Sadiq Khan is, unsurprisingly, the figurehead. The RCP is also there, having written supportively to Baroness Jones, who introduced the bill back in 2022. But who signed that letter on behalf of the RCP? No less than Professor Stephen Holgate.

And a Tory peer and former paralympic swimmer enthused: “continuous improvement… year on year, is built into it.” Ignoring that such “continuous improvement” means not only ever-mounting costs to us the people, but also an ever-tightening noose around our necks.

The environmental context

Before I look at what is in the bill, I’ll say something about the history of air pollution in the UK. DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) publish a yearly report on the levels of many different pollutants, including NO₂ and PM_2.5. This shows, among much else, graphs of the changes in emissions and concentrations, often going back more than 50 years. The latest report, for 2024, is here: [[vii]].

This shows that NO₂ concentrations have gone down by a factor of almost 3 since the mid-1990s. UK emissions are also less than a third of what they were in 1990. And “all background locations were within the limit value.” (The EU limit, set before Brexit).

As to PM_2.5, “everywhere in the UK was well within the annual mean limit value.” Concentrations of PM_2.5 have roughly halved since 2011. Emissions have gone down by a factor of more than 3. And the only spike during 2024 was due to Bonfire Night.

Leaf through the document, and you will see similar patterns for many pollutants (except ozone, whose chemistry is strange). A steep drop in emissions and concentrations in the 1990s, as relatively easy reduction measures were rolled out (such as installing scrubbers on coal-fired power stations). Followed by a continuing, but slower, drop since 2000, or for a few of the pollutants a levelling-off of concentrations. Haven’t we done well?

What is in the bill?

The “right” to breathe “clean air”

The bill opens: “Everyone has the right to breathe clean air.” Then goes on to declare that this “right” is to be treated as if it was named in the European Convention on Human Rights.

This raises two sets of questions. First, just how clean is “clean?” And, given the huge reductions in pollution over decades as documented in the DEFRA report, is the air in the UK not already clean enough? It is several orders of magnitude less polluted than it was in the 1890s. Or in 1952, when the “Great Smog of London” took place. Or even in 1990. Where is the evidence that all these reductions have not been sufficient to make the air truly clean?

And second, how can anything be a human right, if it is not possible to identify an obligation or set of obligations which, if everyone kept to them, would guarantee respect for that right? A lot of air pollutants in the UK, for example sulphur dioxide, come mainly from sources beyond human control, like volcanoes. And the biggest particulate matter episode in 2024 was the result of air that had come all the way from Russia. Good luck to anyone who tries to defend such a “human right” against Viking volcanoes! Or even Voivode Vladimir.

The timeframe

The bill, as written, dates from 2022. It therefore sets targets which are unachievable, and in some cases already past. Will anyone in the parliament notice?

NO₂ and PM_2.5

From the start, this bill shows up its promoters’ and supporters’ obsession with tightening the screws on us the people. They seek to force on us their malign culture of arbitrary, collective, ever tightening targets and limits on what we may do. And, as I showed in earlier essays, that culture is driven along by a mad craving for “safety at any cost,” regardless of how much harm is caused to the people they are supposed to represent and serve.

Clause 2 shows up obviously who are the bill’s main targets for demonization: drivers of diesel cars. For earlier assessments, including one by COMEAP as recently as 2022, had concentrated mainly on levels of PM_2.5, with NO₂ considered only as an “other pollutant,” the health benefits of reducing which “should not be overlooked.” Yet this bill seeks to focus on NO₂, which is emitted significantly by diesel engines but far less by petrol engines, as the primary target for draconian reductions. Even though COMEAP, in their last major report on the issue back in 2018, could not agree among themselves on how toxic PM_2.5 and NO₂ are together compared with PM_2.5 alone.

The CCCA

The promoters of the bill want to set up a new organization they call the CCCA (citizens’ commission for clean air). It will be required to review annually both the pollutants covered by the bill, and the limits set on them. It must make use of advice from the WHO, the UK Health Security Agency (HSA), United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and “scientists” (unspecified). The EU’s European Environment Agency (EEA) is to be involved. And the CCCA must apply the precautionary principle.

These organizations are hardly politically neutral ones. This is, very clearly, an attempt to force even harder on to us the UN and globalist agenda, which I described in my essay on over-precaution as “ever more, and ever tightening, government overreach, without any need for them ever to have to prove anyone guilty of anything.” The CCCA will have the power to add pollutants to the schedules, or to lower limits, at their pleasure.

For greenhouse gases, the CCC (Committee for Climate Change) will be given powers very much comparable to the CCCA for pollutants. And the UN’s IPCC must be used as advisors.

The CCCA will have extensive powers to institute or intervene in legal proceedings. It will have powers to force compliance with the “duties imposed by this Act.” And as to clause 20, which specifies the “environmental principles” it must apply, I suggest you read it yourself (but take a sick-bowl with you).

As to its constitution and workings, it appears that the secretary of state cannot dismiss the chief executive of the CCCA, even if they are “unable, unfit or unwilling to perform their functions.” Furthermore, the CCCA can appoint anyone it pleases to any of its advisory committees. This looks to me like a commission that will quickly go out of control, into tyrannical extremism; just as the CCC has done.

Requirements on organizations and individuals

Clause 5 requires owners of workplaces, of new and refurbished residential developments, and of other buildings used by the public, to report indoor air pollution against WHO guidelines. And it will require UK based organizations of all sizes to report their greenhouse gas pollutants. (Hint: CO₂ isn’t a pollutant! But our enemies think it is.)

It will require daily information about ambient pollutant concentrations to be provided to the public. And if a limit is forecast to be, or is actually, exceeded, “necessary steps must be taken to inform members of the public by means of radio, television, newspapers or the Internet.” Their idea of how to solve a putative pollution problem, so it seems, is to adulterate our airwaves with alarums!

When a threat to current or future public health or to the environment is suspected, clause 6 enables the secretary of state to “restrain any person or persons responsible for causing or contributing to the alleged pollution.” Without any proof, or any due process of law at all!

Clause 6 also says, “regulations must restrict the sale or use of combustion appliances that emit pollutants to the air.” It looks as if these will include domestic gas and solid fuel boilers.

Requirements on other parts of government

Clauses 7 to 15 direct the Environment Agency, the CCC, local authorities, the Office for Environmental Protection, the Civil Aviation Authority, National Highways, Historic England, Natural England and Network Rail to “achieve and maintain clean air,” or similar.

The controlled pollutants and their limits

The schedules 1 to 4 show, it would appear, that someone has spent a lot of time pulling together scare stories about just about every air pollutant in the universe, and trying to work out just how low a limit for each they think they can get away with setting.

I checked NO₂ and PM_2.5, and a couple of others, and in these cases the limits tally with the WHO’s latest (2021) set of guidelines: [[viii]]. But there are a lot more pollutants covered by the bill, than those the WHO issues guidelines, or even good practice statements, for. Some of those are reported on annually by DEFRA: but some don’t even make it there.

For example, what the heck is radon doing in there? Radon is a radioactive noble gas, which as far as I know isn’t produced by any human activities. How, then, can it ever be reasonable to try to regulate it? And there are also “biological pollutants,” dampness and mould, with a limit of zero! How, could any old church, or other building more than 100 or so years old, be completely free from these?

The WHO’s guidelines

By the way, if you skim-read the WHO’s guidelines, you can see how they have been setting out to tighten the screws, again and again. Every so often, they set a new “AQG target” guideline figure, often an order of magnitude below previous targets. And then the previous target shifts and becomes an “interim target,” while earlier interim targets themselves get re-numbered to match.

There is a lot of discussion of “systematic reviews” of earlier scientific literature. But one thing that is signally lacking is analysis of actual mortality data before and after pollution reductions of the past. You would have thought that the WHO would want to show proof positive that their ever-decreasing targets and limits have in the past led to clear reductions in mortality. Yet I see no such thing.

Furthermore, I have severe doubts as to whether the quoted mortality risk factors for some, if not all, of the pollutants actually reflect reality. I do not have space to address that here, but I will look in future to put together a summary of the history of air pollution toxicology for the UK. And the parts played by the WHO, the EU, COMEAP and others in this process.

Costs

I will close with a rather strange statement from clause 22 of the bill. “Nothing in this Act shall impose any charge on the people or on public funds.” This seems to contradict clause 9, “The Secretary of State must provide money to local authorities from central funds sufficient to enable them to carry out their duties under this Act.” This is typical of the attitude of environmentalists to the costs of their wild ideas; they simply don’t care a damn about costs to the people, nor do they bother to do any proper cost-benefit analysis.

To sum up

“Tyrannical and extremist” is how I described the bill in my first paragraph. That is no under-statement. This bill, if implemented, will hand all but absolute power to a commission of petty despot “experts,” to set ever tightening, and ultimately unfeasible, air pollution rules that, like “nett zero,” will hugely reduce our freedoms and our quality of life.

Of course, this is “only” a private member’s bill, so there is a decent chance it will be kicked into the long grass for now, just as the “climate and nature bill” was back in July. But no-one in their right minds should fail to oppose it with everything they have, or to see its proponents and supporters for what they are – enemies of human civilization and of humanity.

[[i]] https://reformpartygodalmingash.uk/our-enemy-the-un-by-neil-lock/

[[ii]] https://reformpartygodalmingash.uk/predatory-precaution-by-neil-lock/

[[iii]] https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-07-01/debates/4A1F4AE9-2DF1-437E-87A3-8EBD1017E5FC/CleanAir(HumanRights)

[[iv]] https://reformpartygodalmingash.uk/the-uk-climate-and-nature-bill-by-neil-lock/

[[v]] https://action.zerohour.uk/mp/

[[vi]] https://ellaslaw.uk/support-for-ellas-law/

[[vii]] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68da4202c487360cc70c9e4f/air_pollution_uk_2024_issue_1.pdf

[[viii]] https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/551b515e-2a32-4e1a-a58c-cdaecd395b19/content

Predatory Precaution

(Based on an image, credit: Schwoaze, Pixabay)

Today, I’ll uncover one of the worst, and most insidious, of all the bad things that are being done to us human beings today. That is, the perversion of the so-called “precautionary principle” into a tool for tyranny and predation.

I have written on this subject several times, with emphasis on different aspects of the matter. But today, for the first time, I will try to bring my thoughts on it all together in one place.

The origins of the precautionary principle

When I was young, I was taught a precautionary principle that said, “Look before you leap.” In other words, don’t take any rash step until you are pretty damn sure that the overall results are likely to be good rather than bad. Good advice, no?

But this has not always been the way the principle has been formulated. This article from 2021 in the British Medical Journal gives a good view of its early history: [[1]]. It traces the principle from ancient Chinese origins to “First, do no harm,” which many people think of as the Hippocratic oath for doctors. So far, so good.

The start of the perversion

But then, German environmentalists, with their lop-sided view that all air pollution is bad, even if the nett benefits of an activity are greater than the costs of the pollution it causes, got in on the act. The precautionary principle was changed. Gradually and subtly at first, it moved from “first, do no harm” to “take regulatory action, even if the evidence is uncertain.” This change was intensified by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), particularly in the drafting of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which banned emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

This paper [[2]] documents some of the steps, by which the precautionary principle began to morph into something very different. It tells how activist scientists, combined with power-hungry regulators, perverted the earlier approach that “emphasizes precaution and scientific knowledge before action” into a system of “rules… that compel lower-level decision makers (households, firms and other organizations) to not engage in activity that risks tipping-points and other irreversible outcomes.” The coin had flipped from reactive regulation based on actual, measurable damage, to proactive regulation, based on speculation and scares.

With hindsight, we can see that all this was a “perfect storm” for tyranny. It allowed to the unscrupulous abundant opportunities for ever more, and ever tightening, government overreach, without any need for them ever to have to prove anyone guilty of anything.

The precautionary principle might sound like an abstract, even a “philosophical” idea. How can such an innocuous sounding idea make people’s lives a misery? But in truth, its perversion has had profound, negative effects on all our lives.

The 1992 Rio Summit

The UK Tory party, for one, had by 1992 already formed a perverted view of the precautionary principle. In their 1992 election manifesto, they described it as: “the need to act, where there is significant risk of damage, before the scientific evidence is conclusive.” That is a far cry from “Look before you leap!” Indeed, it is not at all far away from its opposite.

At Rio, John Major and cohorts signed up to the “Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.” [[3]]. And, in particular, to Principle 15: “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

Now, I find that idea rather bizarre. For, if you don’t have a high degree of scientific certainty about the size and likelihood of a problem, how can you possibly assess whether or not a proposed counter-measure is cost-effective? Yet, with a recklessness typical of dishonest, unaccountable, psychopathic politicians, they signed us up to it anyway.

That was an egregious violation of the true precautionary principle. And it marked the first of the three major steps, in which the UN, the EU, the UK government, and the globalist and corporate ruling classes and their hangers-on, perverted it into a tool for tyranny and predation on us human beings.

The 1998 Wingspread Conference

In early 1998, the Wingspread Conference on the Precautionary Principle was held in the USA. It was hosted by Samuel Curtis Johnson, long-time chairman of S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc., a founder of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and described by Fortune magazine as “corporate America's leading environmentalist.” It was convened by a shadowy organization, only founded in 1994, called the Science and Environmental Health Network (SEHN).

This was the second of the three major steps, in which the principle was perverted, in effect, from “Look before you leap” or “First, do no harm,” to “If in doubt about a risk, government must act to prevent it.”

The SEHN’s (much later) account of the conference is here: [[4]]. It described the participants as “treaty negotiators, activists, scholars and scientists from the United States, Canada and Europe.” It says: “The key element of the principle is that it incites us to take anticipatory action in the absence of scientific certainty. At the conclusion of the three-day conference, the diverse group issued a statement calling for government, corporations, communities and scientists to implement the ‘precautionary principle’ in making decisions.”

The Statement extended Principle 15 from the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. It says: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.”

This is a radical re-write of the precautionary principle, in at least four ways. First, the idea that the action to be taken must be cost-effective, which had been included in the Rio Declaration, was thrown out of the window. As a result, the principle became a recipe for predation on taxpayers. Second, the re-written principle required precautionary action to be taken, even if there is no proof, or even hard evidence, that there is any danger at all. Third, it inverted the burden of proof, and undermined the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. And fourth, when they talked of “the public,” they didn’t mean us ordinary people. What they meant is that government shouldn’t have to bear the burden of proving its accusations. So, all of us, for simply going about our daily lives, are to be treated as guilty, unless and until proven innocent (and that won’t be easy!) That is tyranny.

However, the Statement also said: “The process of applying the Precautionary Principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action.”

That one concession apart, with a few strokes of the pen, the Wingspread activists gave the political and corporate élites and their hangers-on carte blanche to violate our human rights as they please in matters affecting the environment. They put something they called “the environment” up on a pedestal, above the human environment; the rights and freedoms, justice and honesty that we human beings need in order to survive, flourish and prosper.

In summary: They inverted the burden of proof. They rejected the presumption of innocence. They required the accused (that’s us) to prove a negative. They mandated “precautionary” action, however much pain it would cause. And they threw out all consideration of objective cost-benefit or risk-benefit analysis.

The 2002 Inter-departmental Liaison Group for Risk Assessment report

2002 was the year in which the perversion of the precautionary principle, which had begun with the Rio Declaration and been extended by the Wingspread Statement, was not only explicitly incorporated into UK government policy, but strengthened too. The Interdepartmental Liaison Group for Risk Assessment, a working party originally set up in 1994, produced a report called: “The Precautionary Principle: Policy and Application”: [[5]]. It followed on from a corresponding EU document, agreed in 2000.

They saw the purpose of the principle as “to create an impetus to take a decision notwithstanding scientific uncertainty about the nature and extent of the risk.” They saw it as to be applied whenever “it is impossible to assess the risk with sufficient confidence to inform decision-making.” They wanted to invoke it “even if the likelihood of harm is remote.” They said, too, that “the precautionary principle carries a general presumption that the burden of proof shifts away from the regulator having to demonstrate potential for harm towards the hazard creator having to demonstrate an acceptable level of safety.” And they misused an aphorism attributed to Carl Sagan, saying: “‘Absence of evidence of risk’ should never be confused with, or taken as, ‘evidence of absence of risk’.”

This goes further even than the Wingspread Statement did. It doesn’t just invert the burden of proof and require us, the accused, to prove a negative. But it enables them to take “precautionary” action against any risk, even one that is minuscule or very unlikely, instead of requiring an objective risk analysis accurate enough to support good decision making. Moreover, they want the decision to be taken before all the evidence has been mulled over. And even if there’s no evidence at all that our activity causes any harm to anyone, they wouldn’t accept that as evidence!

In essence, the UK government decreed, in contradiction to the norm of presumption of innocence, that absence of evidence of guilt is not evidence of absence of guilt. They decided to re-write the precautionary principle to say, in effect: “If in doubt about a risk, government must act to prevent it.” Regardless of how much harm, or costs, their action causes to the people they are supposed to be serving. This, again, is tyranny.

Related cultural perversions

As I have outlined above, the precautionary principle has, over time, been subverted and all but inverted. The UN, the EU, the UK government and the globalist and corporate ruling classes have perverted it into a tool for tyranny and predation on us human beings.

But in the process, this perversion has spawned two more cultural perversions, from which we all suffer today. One is a culture of arbitrary, collective, ever tightening targets and limits on what we may do. The other is a culture of “safety at any cost.” Together, these bad cultures make our lives today all but unliveable.

Creeping targets and limits

The culture of arbitrary, collective, ever tightening targets and limits was conceived by the European political élites in the 1980s. It was initially designed to be applied to all kinds of air pollution, as well as to carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Since then, it has been taken on eagerly, both by the UN and its World Health Organization (WHO), and by UK governments of all parties. And in the 2010s, the EU became its policeman across Europe.

The desire to get away from this culture was one of the motivations that led so many of us back in 2016 to vote for Brexit. But despite leaving the EU, this culture has not been weakened. Indeed, the UK government, particularly since 2019, have been pushing it ever harder and harder.

This culture, too, has characteristics that make it very nasty to live under. One, it can never be applied fairly and justly. Collective limits always weigh hardest on the people at the bottom of the political ladder. The arrogant élites, both as individuals and as a group, will simply ignore the limits they themselves promote. They think they only apply to “the little people.” That explains, for example, why so many hypocrites fly in CO₂-spewing helicopters or private jets to conferences about ways to force ordinary people to reduce CO₂ emissions.

Two, a key part of the design is that the goalposts must be kept moving. The job is never done; the problem, whatever it is, is never solved. For example, the CO₂ emissions goalposts have already been moved many times, always in the direction of increasing restrictions. Exactly the same is planned for particulate matter (PM_2.5), and no doubt other kinds of pollution as well. And we have had, for decades, ever tightening speed limits on the roads.

Three, in the end, the targets or limits will always end up becoming unrealistic and unachievable. This has already happened with “nett zero.” It will do so with air pollution too, once the implications of the WHO’s latest guideline for PM_2.5 sink in to people’s minds. And it’s not impossible that government may try to resurrect the 19^th-century law that required every car to be preceded by someone walking, carrying a red flag.

Safety at any cost

We are subjected today to a culture of “safety at any cost.” This culture, applied by political governments, subjects us to ever more and tighter restrictions, while spying on us to catch us out in the smallest violation.

But who is supposed to feel “safe?” And who or what are we supposed to feel safe from? This culture certainly doesn’t make me, for one, feel safe against government overreach.

Moreover, this culture has led to ongoing failures to do objective risk analysis on, or cost-benefit analysis from the point of view of the people affected by, green projects. And in the latter case, to machinations designed to prevent any such cost-benefit analysis being done. In a later article, I will outline how the UK government has again and again plotted to ensure that no objective cost-benefit analysis would ever be done for “nett zero.”

This culture of over-safety, I think, has also been a major force behind the ongoing assaults on our freedom of speech. For such a depraved culture cannot survive the glare of the truth.

The demonization of opponents of the “climate change” meme. The censorship, using Big Tech, of dissident voices who seek to reveal the truth. The efforts to make any chance remark into a potential “hate crime.” All these, I surmise, are different heads of the same hydra.

And this hydra has, if I am not mistaken, many more heads still. The erection, on just about any excuse, of more and more “panopticon” cameras to track and record us as we go about our daily lives. The ever-growing list of situations, in which we are required to confirm who we are; and the prospect of being forced to use a “digital ID,” that will be entirely controlled by government for its own purposes. Projects such as anti-money-laundering laws, the abolition of cash, and central bank digital currencies, whose effects will be to destroy the last shreds of privacy in our financial dealings. And immediate, permanent de-banking of people who cannot provide a bank with ID when asked.

All these, I think, are being driven ultimately by this same perversion, the culture of safety at any cost. Together with the psychopathic nature of many of those in the ruling classes, or in positions of government power today.

Governments and their hangers-on like to make out that they want us to be safe. This very excuse is used to “justify” campaigns like “road safety.” But in my cynical moods, I think that it is the denizens of this depraved culture that want to make themselves safe. Safe from “climate change,” safe from air pollution, safe from the truth coming out, safe from all possible resistance by the human beings they are oppressing. Safe from us.

To sum up

The perversion of the precautionary principle into a tool for tyranny and predation lies at the heart of many of the problems we suffer today. This perversion, in effect, inverts the burden of proof, denies the presumption of innocence, and requires the accused – that’s us – to prove a negative. The perversion was originally sparked by German environmentalists, but it was taken on and broadened by the UN, and acted on by the EU, governments – particularly the UK, and the globalist and corporate ruling classes and their hangers-on.

This perversion has led to two related cultural perversions. One, of arbitrary, collective, ever tightening targets and limits on what we may do. The other, a culture of “safety at any cost,” which throws out all consideration of objective cost-benefit or risk-benefit analysis.

It is my view that all good people, including Reform UK supporters, should recognize these cultural perversions for what they are. And should start to push back not only against the perversions themselves, but also against those that are responsible for them, or have used them to harm innocent people.

---

[[1]] https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n3059

[[2]] https://igsd.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/How-Montreal-Protocol-Applied-Precautionary-Principle.pdf

[[3]] https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_CONF.151_26_Vol.I_Declaration.pdf

[[4]] https://www.sehn.org/sehn/wingspread-conference-on-the-precautionary-principle 

[[5]] https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20190701152341/https://www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/meetings/committees/ilgra/pppa.htm

Our Enemy, the UN

Today, I’m going to identify, and try to help you understand, the organization that is the primary enemy of humanity and our freedoms today. I refer to the United Nations.

This is the headpost of a series of essays, which will address the many perversions of our political environment, that have been brought about by the UN, its agencies and its cronies. Those cronies include the EU, multi-national companies, various international organizations including the World Economic Forum (WEF), and many, if not most, national governments. Including the UK.

Regardless of which party has been in power, the UK government has been among the most active in helping along the UN’s mischiefs. And all four mainstream parties – Tories, Labour, Lib Dems and Greens – have had their fingers in these pies for decades now.

The genesis of the UN

The United Nations is generally held to have been instituted in 1945. But its roots lie several years earlier. An “Atlantic Charter,” a 1941 joint statement between US president Franklin Roosevelt and UK prime minister Winston Churchill, set out a plan for policies to be implemented once the nazis had been defeated. These included “the fullest collaboration in the economic field between all nations,” “economic advancement and social security,” and that everyone “may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.”

At the beginning of 1942, 26 governments, all of which had declared war on the nazis and their Axis allies, signed up to a “Declaration of United Nations,” affirming their support for the Atlantic Charter. The USA and the UK were joined by the Chinese, who had been fighting against Japanese invaders since 1931. They were joined also by the Russians, as soon as Hitler had reneged on the Ribbentrop non-aggression pact. These were the “Big Four,” to which France was added after its liberation in 1944.

The UN Charter

The United Nations formally began in 1945, after the UN Charter [[1]] was agreed.

The preamble to the Charter stated its three main goals affecting ordinary people as follows. “To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” “To regain faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” And “To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.” (What “in larger freedom” actually means is rather unclear). And one way it was to achieve those goals was “to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples.”

The four stated Purposes of the United Nations, in Article 1, can be summarized as follows. To maintain international peace and security. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all. And to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

Article 7 established the principal organs of the UN. The General Assembly. The Security Council, comprising five permanent members – the “Big Four” plus France – and six non-permanent ones, since increased to ten. The Economic and Social Council. The Trusteeship Council. The International Court of Justice (ICJ). And the Secretariat. Subsequent articles put some “flesh” on what each of these organs was to do.

For an overview of the UN’s history, and how the beast looks these days, Wikipedia is as good a place as any: [[2]].

ECOSOC

It is worth saying a little here about ECOSOC, the UN Economic and Social Council. The acronym surely has an Orwellian ring to it. Fullthinkers unbellyfeel ECOSOC! And the organization is responsible, in one way or another, for many of our woes today.

ECOSOC is “responsible for coordinating the economic and social fields” of the UN. It provides means for thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including many activist ones, to influence what the UN does. In 2011, it produced a highly activist report called “The Great Green Technological Transformation.” Additionally, it oversees the implementation of the UN’s “sustainable development” agendas.

Specialized UN agencies, which report to it, include the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The International Monetary Fund (IMF). UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The World Bank Group. The World Health Organization (WHO). And the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

UNESCO and UNEP

UNESCO started the green agenda rolling in the first place, with a “Man and the Biosphere” project, started way back in 1971, and still going today.

Since its establishment in 1972, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has taken a leading role. It describes itself as “the United Nations’ leading global authority on the environment, driving transformational change on the triple planetary crisis: the crisis of climate change, the crisis of nature, land and biodiversity loss, and the crisis of pollution and waste.”

UNEP and its director Maurice Strong were responsible, back in 1982, for the “World Charter for Nature.” A UN resolution (I wrote about it here: [[3]]) which said, in essence, that “nature” and wildlife were more important than us human beings. And 111 countries, including the UK, passed it! Is there any successful non-symbiotic species on this planet that regards other species as more important than its own? And aren’t governments supposed to be for the benefit of the people who pay for them – not for anyone, or anything, else?

Moreover, I know there isn’t a climate crisis today. And I’ve written essays to prove it. I am still waiting for an answer to the question I have often asked environmentalists: name one species to whose extinction I have contributed, and tell me what I did, and approximately when, to contribute to that extinction. And I know about the huge reductions in pollution of many different kinds, which have been made over the last 70 years. As to waste, the problem I see is not one of physical waste, but governments wasting taxpayers’ resources on insane agendas like “nett zero.” So, where the heck is the evidence for a “triple planetary crisis?”

The WHO

The WHO is perhaps the most actively destructive of our rights and freedoms among all the UN’s agencies.

It has perverted the science of air pollution toxicology, and so been a major driver (no pun intended) of the anti-car policies we are subjected to. It has instituted an insatiable, never-ending drive to cut air pollution to levels so low they can never be met in a free economy. It is also responsible for the ever-tightening speed limits and regulations with which we are being bound, because of its unachievable wet dream of reducing road deaths to zero [[4]].

Moreover, the WHO’s performance over the COVID-19 pandemic was atrocious. In particular, it was late to recognize human-to-human transmissibility of COVID-19, and wrongly deferred to the Chinese political stance of “lockdown at any cost.” And it seems over-keen to get countries to commit to a common pandemic strategy, regardless of individual countries’ cultures and situations. Indeed, its attitude seems all but dictatorial.

UNECE

ECOSOC includes, as one of its regional commissions, the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). This has been extremely active in providing “collective policy direction in the area of environment and sustainable development” in Europe. It also promotes so-called “smart cities.”

Wikipedia describes the smart city as “an urban model that leverages technology, human capital, and governance to enhance sustainability, efficiency, and social inclusion, considered goals for the cities of the future.” A smart city uses digital technology to collect data from “citizens, devices, buildings, or cameras,” and to operate services. Further, as early as 1992 in “Agenda 21,” the UN painted a picture of us all crammed into cities, using “high-occupancy public transport” and ruled over by a “culture of safety.”

Yet no-one ever even asked for our consent to these things. If I had been asked, my response would have been along the lines of “bugger off.”

No wonder the UK establishment are so intent on forcing digital ID on to us all! In their eyes, our status is no higher than cameras or technological devices, or even numbers in a database.

I remember, back in 2005, being told that the databases they were then proposing would be a “single source of truth.” Otherwise said, “the computer is always right.” Now think what was the effect on hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters, who on exactly that premise were wrongly prosecuted for fraud by the Post Office.

And if you think the UN doesn’t take a positive view of digital ID, try this: [[5]]. Isn’t that a far cry from the UN Declaration on Human Rights’ recognition of “the inherent dignity of all members of the human family” and “the dignity and worth of the human person?”

Political status of the UN

The UN has taken for itself many of the moral privileges of a sovereign political state. Its property is immune from search or confiscation by any of its member states. It is exempt from taxes, customs duties and import/export restrictions. It has diplomatic immunity, and its officials also have “functional immunity” from prosecution when carrying out their duties. Its employees, in effect, pay what taxes they pay to the UN itself. It even issues its own passports.

The UN is like a state, yet beyond all other states. Those that reach high positions in it are undemocratic, powerful and unaccountable. The UN looks like a perfect vehicle for psychopaths to take over the world, and make it into a Big Brother nightmare for us all.

One thing the United Nations has not done, though, is take anything away from the sovereignty of its member states. Would you not have expected that an organization, formed to prevent war, ought to have done its very best to lessen the war-making powers of nation-states, that by their design are empowered to make wars in the first place? Should they not have sought agreement on the idea that “states may no longer make aggressive wars?” Or, at the least, could they not have persuaded their member states to cap military spending at, say, 1 per cent of GDP? But no. Political states still commit aggressions, and can get away with them if their military strength is sufficient.

The UN’s record

What about the UN’s successes and failures on its stated goals?

Peacekeeping

As a peacekeeper, the UN’s performance has been mixed. There is a basic problem; how can the UN be an effective peacekeeper, when so often individual member states have their own agendas on one side of a conflict or another? This was a particular issue during the cold war.

Beyond this, the UN has not been able to counter political de-stabilization of other countries by powerful world states, such as US meddling in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba or Panama.

As to its stated goals: Has the UN managed “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war?” Nyet. One condemnatory resolution apart, it has done nothing to halt or to cut short the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As to Palestine versus Israel, the UN’s intervention in 1947 not only failed, but led to a civil war. And they are still peddling their failed solution today!

Human rights

The UN’s record on human rights began reasonably well, with the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, billed as “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” Though, particularly from article 22 onwards, some of the claimed rights reflect a collectivist view of the world, and a few are simply misguided.

Within the UN framework, the Declaration has been carried forward into the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Both came into force in 1976. But since then, very little progress has been made. Indeed, the UN Commission on Human Rights, after years of internal squabbles and lack of effectiveness, had to be replaced in 2006.

Since then, the UN has set out to advance groups to whom it is over-sympathetic, notably women. But how does the UN’s desire for preferential treatment of women over men tally with “the equal rights of men and women?”

Has the UN, overall, helped us “to regain faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small?” Not at all. Our rights and dignity are being violated on many fronts, for example by Starmer’s scheme to kill our privacy with compulsory digital ID.

The ICJ climate change opinion

The recent advisory opinion of the ICJ on climate change, discussed here [[6]], leads to some interesting considerations.

The opinion says that “the adverse effects of climate change may impair the effective enjoyment of a wide range of human rights.” Yet it does not seem to address the human rights aspects of government policies that are imposed in the name of “protecting the climate system.” Does not the “nett zero” policy, for example, go against the claimed right to “freedom from want,” by making it unaffordable for poor people to heat their homes?

Further, the idea that human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases cause bad consequences to “the climate system” is not a proven fact, despite incessant claims to the contrary from the UN itself and its hangers-on. If it was proven beyond doubt, they could point to such a proof, based on facts alone, without any political influence. But there is no such proof.

Have not those of us, who refuse to accept such a statement without proof, been denied our right to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty? And have we not been denied “a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal?” Particularly since our voices – including those of our experts – have been suppressed for decades by organizations like the BBC?

Social progress

And what has become of the UN’s goals “to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom” and “economic advancement and social security?”

Our freedoms are being trashed. In large part, by policies that have been driven by the UN. As to what “larger freedom” means, I am reminded of George Orwell’s “Freedom is slavery.”

As to better standards of life, food bank usage in the UK has almost trebled in the last 10 years. That is economic advancement? That is social progress? Pull the other one.

To sum up

To sum up the UN’s sad story. Far from delivering world peace, economic advancement and human rights, the UN has, bit by bit, taken on and promoted agendas that both hold back our economy, and violate our rights and freedoms. I call “fail” on the UN. And “foul,” too.

Today, like moths around a candle, political parasites that seek gain for themselves, and pests that want to rule over people harshly and against their wills, seek to join together to use UN programs to further their aims. As I listed some of them above: the UN and its agencies, the EU, multi-national companies, various international organizations, and many, if not most, national governments.

When, back in 2016, we the people residing in the UK set about the process of throwing off the chains of the EU, few of us understood then that the EU was only one part of the problem.

The EU was, in effect, acting as policeman for agendas, that were ultimately being driven by the UN and its supporting cabals – including successive UK governments. With hindsight, we can now understand why we have never enjoyed the fruits of the Brexit we sought, like lower taxes, a “bonfire of the regulations,” and a government that benefits the people of the UK rather than globalist élites and their cronies.

It is high time, in my view, that people come to understand that the UN today does not deliver, or even support, the high-minded goals that were initially touted for it. Instead, it is a major driver behind agendas that are destroying democracy, prosperity and our human rights and freedoms.

It is time, I feel, to recognize that Brexit, in the eyes of those who supported it, must be regarded as failed, or at best incomplete. We the people of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (not to mention the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands) need to get away from the malign influence of the scheming globalist élites. The élites, foreign and domestic, that have brought us “nett zero,” anti-car policies, and an environment in which we are treated like objects or data, not as human beings.

We may have got away from the ECJ, for a time at least. But in order to get us back on track and moving forward again, we need to go further. We need to get away from the ICJ, and from all the other UN agencies and hangers-on. What we now need is UNexit.

We must re-claim our independence and self-determination, our economy and our human rights and freedoms. Does Reform UK have what it takes to spearhead that movement?

---

[[1]] https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/ctc/uncharter.pdf

[[2]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations

[[3]] https://reformpartygodalmingash.uk/a-brief-history-of-the-green-agenda-part-one-1968-to-1992-by-neil-lock/

[[4]] https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/it-s-time-to-end-deaths-on-our-roads

[[5]] https://untoday.org/one-un-one-id-how-digital-id-is-uniting-the-un/

[[6]] https://opiniojuris.org/2025/08/04/the-icj-advisory-opinion-on-climate-change-a-business-and-human-rights-perspective/

Community, Society and Justice

Definitions from Oxford Languages

A month ago, I wrote about my views on ethical philosophy. Today, I’ll look at the other side of the coin – my political philosophy.

At the outset, I feel a need to issue a Radical Ideas Warning. Some of the ideas I offer here, indeed, are far more than radical. I make no apologies for this. For the future, even the survival, of human civilization, and of our human species as a whole, is at stake.

Politics versus Organize

When I first started thinking about ethics and politics, I found it hard to discern a clear dividing line between the two. Eventually, I asked myself: what question is each of these branches of knowledge trying to answer? For ethics, it is: What is right and wrong for a human being to do? For politics, I identified the question as: How should we human beings organize ourselves for maximum benefit to all?

Over time, I have come to feel more and more negative about using the word “politics.” In its place, the name I use for the part of my philosophy, which governs relations between people in societies and communities, is Organize.

Community versus society

The first key idea in my political (organizational) philosophy is that I make a very important distinction between a community and a society.

Community

A community is a group of people, bound together by some shared characteristic; but not necessarily by anything more. A community has no “general will.” It is merely a group of individuals.

Examples of communities are: The people who live or work in a particular town. The community of left-handed Italian grandmothers. The people who reside in a particular geographical area. And what I called in my ethical essay the “convivial community.” That is, the community of people, who make every effort to obey the natural law of humanity. And so, to make themselves convivial, or fit to be lived with.

Society

A society, on the other hand, is a group of people who have agreed to join in a common cause. A society has a “general will,” a will shared by the members as a whole. Namely, the objectives for which the society aims. Provided, of course, that those, who cease to agree with the objectives or the conduct of the society, can freely leave the society.

Examples of societies are a football club, a musical ensemble, or a political party.

Society in the singular

I am aware that many use the word “society” in the singular, in a meaning such as “the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.” In this meaning, it is often dignified with a capital S. I regard this usage as collectivist and misleading. My view is, there is no such thing as Society, only societies.

Those that use the word in this way seem to think that people owe a loyalty to, and should be prepared to make sacrifices for, this “Society.” (Or for something they call “the community,” with a definite article – essentially the same thing.) Further, in the minds of the political class and their hangers-on, this loyalty is owed, not to their fellow human beings, but to the political state that rules over them.

The voluntary society principle

My second key organizational idea, I call the voluntary society principle. It is: All societies must be voluntary.

This principle is explicitly supported by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 20(2): “No one may be compelled to belong to an association.” When this right was first mooted, it was probably intended to apply to organizations like the Hitler Youth. But in my view, it is equally valid in regard to any society, including political and religious ones.

Thus, no-one is a member of any society, unless they have voluntarily chosen to become a member, and have not in the meantime countermanded that choice.

This is the reason why I do not accept the word “society” in its meaning of all the people in a geographical area. The people who live in that area are only a community. And because they are not a voluntary society, there is no common cause in which they can be considered to have all agreed to join. So, they cannot be assumed to support or to accept any particular political ideology or set of policies. Therefore, they cannot reasonably be expected to keep to rules or policies imposed by any political or religious ideology or faction.

To look at it another way. If you are opposed to some political philosophy – such as socialism, fascism or deep green environmentalism – then no-one has the right to force you to join, or to obey the rules of, any society that operates, or favours, that philosophy. And you must be able freely to leave any society that adopts any such philosophy into its tenets. The same is true for religious movements, for example militant Islam or Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Moreover, no-one has any right to treat you as if you were part of some collective that you have not voluntarily joined. You do not, by lawfully residing in an island called Britain, automatically become a member of a political society called “Britain.” You do not even become a member of such a society merely because you approve of the British culture of the past – the culture which seeded the Enlightenment, and nurtured the Industrial Revolution. To identify with, or not to identify with, such a political collective is your choice. And to cease to do so, if you desire, is also your choice.

Rejecting the political state

The voluntary society principle leads me to reject altogether the idea of Society in the singular. And thus, to reject also the idea that I should feel or show loyalty to any political state. In this, I go some way beyond most adherents of Reform UK.

I also reject all derived ideas like “social justice.” And I reject all political ideologies that depend on the idea. Such as socialism, where Society is supposed to own the means of economic production. Communism, where Society owns everything, and all resources are controlled and allocated by the political state. And fascism, which subordinates the interests of individuals to Society and to the nation.

Further, far from feeling loyalty towards the state, I see it for what it is – an outdated, failed political structure, that supports a tyrannical gang of inhuman, psychopathic criminals. And I reject it, and all those that use it for their own gain or to push other agendas. I simply want to be rid of all political states. And of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,” in particular.

My support for Reform UK

Myself, I only feel loyalty to a society as long as I agree with its principles and its direction. This is so, indeed, even for Reform UK. I voluntarily chose to become a member of the Brexit party, and voluntarily chose to allow my membership to flow over when Brexit morphed into Reform.

Right now, I choose to remain and be active in the party, because it seems to me to be “the only game in town.” Reform is the only movement in the UK with the potential to blow away the current ruling classes and their failed political system, right the wrongs they have done to us, and make life worth living again. But if, at some point, I lose confidence in the party’s principles, leadership and direction, then I will feel compelled to resign from the party.

The social contract

Those that make out that each of us is part of some geographically or politically based “society,” even if we do not wish to be, seek to base it on an idea that we have entered into what they call a “social contract.” My third key idea of political philosophy is that this social contract idea is invalid.

Two forms of the social contract idea have been suggested. The Hobbesian version, dating from 1651 and enshrined in Thomas Hobbes’s “Leviathan.” And the Lockean version, published in 1690 in chapters 8 and 9 (§95 to §131) of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government.

The Hobbesian social contract

According to the Hobbesian narrative, at some time in the past, a group of people (or, at least, a majority of them) made a contract with each other. They consented to be ruled over despotically by an absolute sovereign, and by so doing authorized and approved whatever the sovereign chose to do. Moreover, once the system has been set up, there is no possibility of changing it, or of escape from it. And we, today, are still bound by their agreement.

But I find this narrative absurd. Even if my ancestors might have subscribed to such a thing (and, as far as I know, they didn’t), I as an individual have never agreed to any social contract! Where is my signature on any such damn thing? Moreover, where are the statements of the benefits I am supposed to get from it, and the procedures for me to get justice and redress if the government party fails to deliver? They do not exist.

This social contract narrative is not only absurd, but has been foisted on us human beings fraudulently, by those that do not have our interests at heart.

The Lockean social contract

There is an alternative form of the social contract idea, put forward by John Locke. He says that a group of people may choose to form a “political society.” This they do “by agreeing to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe and peaceable living.” But he is very clear about the purposes of the agreement: The objectives are the preservation of their property, and the preservation and enlargement of their freedoms.

Of course, even this Lockean form of the social contract suffers from many of the problems of the Hobbesian version. Where is this contract? What is in it? Where is my signature on it? What procedures should I follow when the government party fails to deliver on its end of the bargain? Fortunately, unlike Hobbes, Locke does offer some answers to this last question.

As I related back in June in the first essay of this set, Locke cautions that any government in such a political society must always act for the “public good.” That is, the good of every individual in that society, as far as that can be achieved by setting common rules for all. Indeed, anyone in government that acts against the interests of the people, or fails at least to strive to deliver services that the people value positively, is failing to act for this public good.

If a government departs from or goes beyond this, or seeks to “impoverish, harass or subdue” the people it is supposed to be serving, then it has become a tyranny, and is no longer legitimate. It is no more than a criminal gang. Its laws should not be obeyed, except for those entirely compatible with the natural law of humanity.

How to deal with a government that fails to deliver its side of the bargain? Locke gave us three options. One, put new people in charge. Two, dismantle and replace the system. Or three, abandon the whole idea of government. But we’ve tried the first of these on several occasions before, haven’t we – like 1642 and 1688? Without any recent successes at all.

Quite clearly, even if the Lockean version of the contract is to be believed, UK governments of the last several decades have persistently failed to act for the public good of all the people. In most cases, as with Labour today, the new gang in power has proven itself to be even worse than the old.

Indeed, since I have been old enough to think about these things, with just three exceptions (and two of those were very short-lived), every UK government has been worse than its predecessor. The three exceptions, in my view, were: Margaret Thatcher’s first term, 1979 to 1983. The first few months of the Coalition in 2010, when David Cameron and Nick Clegg, briefly, each served to restrain the other from their worst excesses. And Liz Truss’s 2022 government of 49 days, which, while showing good – if naïve – intentions, was suppressed by the usual establishment suspects.

Isn’t it high time we gave the dismantle-and-replace idea a go? Let’s get rid of the political state, and in its place build a system of governance that works for human beings.

Justice and freedom

Having explored at length the ramifications of the voluntary society principle, I will be content with far briefer introductions to my remaining two key ideas in organizational philosophy: common-sense justice, and the maximum freedom principle.

Common-sense justice

The fourth, and perhaps the most important, of my key ideas of organizational philosophy is the principle I call common-sense justice. I state it as follows: Every individual deserves to be treated, over the long run, in the round and as far as practicable, as he or she treats others. Thus, common-sense justice is individual justice. Put another way, if properly implemented, common-sense justice is the part of the system which turns David Hume’s “ought” into “is.”

The principle implies that if you don’t do, or seek to do, harm to innocent people, you don’t deserve to suffer any harms being done to you. On the other side, if you do harm to others, or seek to do harm to others, or impose on others unreasonable risks that lead to actual harm, you should be required to compensate those whose lives you damaged, and if appropriate to be punished in proportion to the seriousness of what you did.

In essence, common-sense justice is Charles Kingsley’s “Be done by as you did.” It is a hard taskmaster; but it is a fair one.

This kind of justice also teams up with the judgement by behaviour idea I discussed in my essay on ethics, rights and obligations. Together, they provide an ideal of justice, in which what matters is not who an individual is, but only how they behave (and, on some occasions, their motives for doing what they do).

It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter what colour someone’s skin is. Or where they were born. Or what religion they were brought up in. Or what their gender or their sexual preferences may be. All that matters are their actions and their intent towards others. Thus, under common-sense justice, everyone is truly “equal before the law.”

Moreover, when an ideal of common-sense justice is in place, I expect it to lead to a far better tone of life than we have today. For, if you want to be treated better by others, all you have to do is find a way to treat others better!

Maximum freedom principle

My final key idea is the maximum freedom principle. I like to put this as “maximum freedom for everyone, consistent with living in a civilized community.” And maximum freedom for an individual is, of course, conditional on that individual respecting the equal rights of others.

There will also be a general presumption of freedom. Anything not prohibited will be allowed, unless it violates others’ rights, or causes or is intended to cause unjust harm to others, or imposes unreasonable risks on others.

To sum up

To the eight key ideas I listed at the end of my ethical paper, I will add five more, which are the keys of my political or organizational philosophy.

9.     Community versus society. A community is a group of people, bound together by some shared characteristic; but not necessarily by anything more. A society, on the other hand, is a group of people who have agreed to join in a common cause. The two are not the same.

10.  Voluntary society principle. All societies must be voluntary.

11.  Falsity of the social contract idea. The Hobbesian version of the social contract is false, and has been foisted on us human beings fraudulently, by those that do not have our interests at heart. In the Lockean version, as soon as government fails to act for the good of the people, it loses its legitimacy. It must be reformed, or dismantled and replaced.

12.  Common-sense justice principle. Every individual deserves to be treated, over the long run, in the round and as far as practicable, as he or she treats others.

13.  Maximum freedom principle. Except where countermanded by common-sense justice or the natural law of humanity, every individual is free to choose and act as he or she wishes.