Some people say the government has abandoned us.
I know what they mean – our governments have abandoned their primary function of defending us and our borders.
But in every other area, they are suffocating rather deserting us!
|
|||||
|
This is not good enough, says Ofcom. It wants, it seems, pre-emptive powers to block access to sites operating anywhere in the world, should they be deemed harmful to people in the UK. This is authoritarian nonsense on any number of levels. For one thing, it moves noticeably towards a Great British Firewall, like that used in China. We should also worry that an unelected agency is spending its time digging around the internet looking for material it would like to stop us seeing. Admittedly, we are told that the issue here is material that’s harmful to children and sites such as suicide forums. But it is a racing certainty that any such powers, if given, will be invoked to go well beyond suicide forums. Equally, it’s not clear whether Ofcom wants these powers to extend to blocking sites to users across the globe. A recent Ofcom update on a suicide site clearly suggests it sees a UK geoblock as insufficient. This really would bring us into cloud-cuckoo-land. No national regulator, whether it comes from the UK, China or Burkina Faso, has any business censoring the global internet. July 29th, 2026 | 12 comments
 All things grow, bacteria, blue whales, businesses and bureaucracies. The difference for the latter is, that the first three must wrench a living from a cold, uncaring world, whereas the latter merely needs to increase taxes. The bureaucracy grows like a cancer, stealing resources and threatening the viability of its host. Eventually the host, us, starts to ask whether it shouldn’t be reduced to something taxpayers can actually afford. The bureaucracy responds by doing everything in its power to prevent its dismemberment. Join the EU, there’s safety in numbers, import millions of voters to block the right, all while continuing to drain the lifeblood from the economy. It can’t win, of course, either it gets dismantled or the economy collapses. It’s just a matter of what is left afterwards. July 22nd, 2026 | 10 comments
The Americans are gaining healthy life years while we are losing them. Hmm, that is interesting, no? Thus the UK requires more red in tooth and claw capitalism, more neoliberalism, obviously. Sell the NHS for scrap and go private! And, well, but that’s not quite how American health care works, not for those over 65. That’s Medicare. Which is paid for by the government. But not supplied by the government. Which is a reasonable guide to what the problem is with the NHS. Tax paid health care is fine. It’s government supplied that is not. At which point we gain our prescription – sell the NHS for scrap and have more neoliberalism. We’ll gain longer and healthier retirements by doing so. July 1st, 2026 | 26 comments
And, btw, when it comes to words, Trump made one of his most astonishing public lies recently about how Putin did not help Iran in the recent war. Speaking at the G7, Trump went out of his way to praise Putin for being “neutral” in the Iran War. Here is what he said.
Of course, Russia was anything but neutral in the war, and provided key support to Iran, support that seems to have helped the Iranians win the war and defeat US forces (and defeat Trump). This Russian help went from vital drone components, targeting intelligence to help the Iranians hit US bases, sanctions evasion help and the delivery of finished munitions. So Trump has recently gone to great lengths to lie and protect Putin and to loosen sanctions on the Russian economy. But hey, he did not insult Ukraine. People are such rubes. June 28th, 2026 | 59 comments
That government can be scarcely deemed to be free where the rights of property are left solely dependent upon the will of a legislative body without any restraint. June 18th, 2026 | 15 comments
The huge influxes of research funding for compliant scientists have made it difficult to oppose the fable of a threatened planet. Any scientist who speaks up against the cacophony of nonsense about a climate threat is treated like Dr Thomas Stockmann in Ibsen’s play, An Enemy of the People. Rather than being thanked for discovering that the water of his town’s popular spa is contaminated with deadly disease organisms, Dr Stockman and his family are viciously ostracised by most of the town’s citizens, who are making a good living by promoting the supposed health benefits of the spa. Climate nonsense will eventually end and will be dumped onto the ash heap of history where it belongs. But the longer the cult goes on, the more damage is done. We should all do what we can to stop the madness as soon as possible. June 13th, 2026 | 12 comments
The simple fact is that the Ofcom Fees Duties are expressed to be binding, they are a functional burden on American speech, and they are imposed for the purpose of funding an official censor. The Ofcom Fees Duties are a British censorship tax on American speech, no matter what language Ofcom chooses to dress it up in. In the United States, those are unconstitutional. See Grosjean v. American Press Co. or Minneapolis Star v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue. May 9th, 2026 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Basically my philosophy is Austrian School economics” – at 21:12 in this interview between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Rupert Lowe. How refreshing to see a media interview in which neither participant is an idiot. What do we think? Is there hope for Britain? April 25th, 2026 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yes, but what do you do about it? Here are some possibilities: 1. Tell them not to. But how are you going to know if they are complying? A Reform government is not going to have the personnel it can trust to do this. 2. Make them fully independent. End grants, abolish student loans. You could even remove their Royal Charters. There’s going to be a hell of a backlash. But if you can get through that they should get back to education again. 3. Make university education less attractive. I’ve heard it said that people need degrees because IQ tests are illegal. Is that true? 4. Declare all universities “indoctrination centres” and remove all funding until proved otherwise. If they bleat about “independence” then you can say they’ve got what they wanted. The proof could be in the form of each member of academic staff being asked for their opinions on communism and DEI. Could produce some interesting results. … @Patrick Crozier Of course we have that technology, it is called the internet. For the most part (outside of some specific professions) universities provide students with four things: an education (Which is now no longer relevant since you can learn anything 1% of the cost by other means), a certification, which surely we can legally circumvent by setting up a skills based certification system (though see below), networking opportunities which only really matter at very high end and lower end universities — the majority in the middle do not provide value here, and a fourth, letting the kids PARTY. Presumably kids can have a really good time elsewhere too. The certification is the big issue, but surely there are other ways to prove one’s skills? Certainly in my area of expertise I’d rather have someone as a Certified AWS architect than a poncey degree from Harvard. That is a cultural change though, and I think it is coming. But in truth AI and robotics is going to largely eliminate jobs in this middle part anyway. I say let them die their natural death. One easy fix? Eliminate student loans and payments and let students bear the full cost of their education while keeping the government out of the “student loan” business. That’d shake things up PDQ. As I said there are exceptions, people with highly specialized training like Medical doctors and lawyers. April 15th, 2026 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Due to waves of (mostly) Russian spam hitting our server, the Samizdata SmiteBot is has been grumpy for several days now beyond my ability to manually intervene every time. This means it has been shooting on sight (or maybe on site) & asking questions later. If your comment vanished, now you know why. Do not take it personally unless you are a Russian spammer, in which case take it personally.
March 13th, 2026 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
March 8th, 2026 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
