Agree. I can believe all of Tadhg’s post, he seems to be hooked on truth and it fits what I have been reading for some time. I also thought it interesting that Local Government HO trots off to meet up with other movers and shakers at Mont Pelerin
economic meetings in USA. No wonder we are dried up, hog-tied from being ourselves; in a cage – rather like the crates for pregnant sows. Except we aren’t very fertile any more!

Background – https://smithsbookshop.co.nz/p/freedom-for-capital-not-people-the-mont-pelerin-society-the-origins-of-the-neoliberal-monetary-order
Freedom for Capital, Not People: The Mont Pelerin Society the Origins of the Neoliberal Monetary Order
Author(s): Matthias Schmelzer Contemporary Non-Fiction
Both a rigorous intellectual history of neoliberalism and an innovative account of the economic transformations that shook the post-war period, Freedom for Capital Not People charts the theoretical developments responsible for reshaping today’s world economy, unleashing capital against democracy. Based on new archival sources, it shows a neoliberal camp marked by ideological divisions as well as consensus, as the Mont Pelerin Society charted its course from fervent support for the gold standard to an embrace of free-floating exchange rates. The resulting debates were not merely of academic interest. By the turn of the 1970s, this controversy found expression at the highest levels of international monetary policy, with world-historical consequences. This is the definitive account of the interests, priorities, and political imperatives driving the intellectual figures whose influence has dominated the past half-century of global capitalism. The excavation of their recent past illuminates and politicizes contemporary debates on currency.

What is it? Mont Pelerin Society – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Mont_Pelerin_Society
Further, the society seeks to discover ways in which the private sector can replace many functions currently provided by government entities. The MPS was established on April 10, 1947, at a conference organized by Friedrich Hayek at the base of Mont Pèlerin on Lake Geneva.
[Note – now headquarters are – ‘at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, United States.’]
In its “Statement of Aims” on April 8, 1947, the scholars were worried about the dangers faced by civilization, stating:
Over large stretches of the Earth’s surface the essential conditions of human dignity and freedom have already disappeared. In others they are under constant menace from the development of current tendencies of policy. The position of the individual and the voluntary group are progressively undermined by extensions of arbitrary power. Even that most precious possession of Western Man, freedom of thought and expression, is threatened by the spread of creeds which, claiming the privilege of tolerance when in the position of a minority, seek only to establish a position of power in which they can suppress and obliterate all views but their own
Seems right for now. How prescient they were these smart-alicks in going off on a path less travelled.!

Well at least he was honest about it compared to today’s lot.

Rest in peace mate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Fpe0B9qVk

@ nathan- . Tim Shadbolt was a remarkable fellow on many levels and you don’t have the right to mention his name you oily little slug.