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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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One of John Major’s policy wonks has a bad nightmare Danny Finklestein has had a nightmare. About Britain becoming a despotic state. This one-time advisor to John Major (oh dear, we all make errors), even says this:
“But I have to admit that the legislation being debated in the Commons this week — the new ID cards, the smoking ban, the measure on the glorification of terror — has tempted me to take up smoking and start attending lectures about Hayek organised by earnest men with pamphlets in carrier bags.”
Nice patronising tone there Danny – I tend not to bother with carrier bags these days. Welcome to the concept of liberty and limited government.
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Comments on One of John Major’s policy wonks has a bad nightmare
And, Jonathan, could you explain a “good” nightmare to speakers of the English language, please?
The Fink was referring to a dearly beloved friend of this blog…
We should be willing to welcome a repentent one.
Three cheers for Danny. I like his columns in The Times. We’ve all made mistakes in the past. Let’s forgive and forget.
Anyhow, how do I become an earnest man with a carrier bag?
No, really.
Sorry, I can’t resist this…
“And, Jonathan, could you explain a “good” nightmare to speakers of the English language, please?”
Well if I may in Jonathan’s stead… there are nightmares, which are bad, and then there are really bad nightmares, aka ‘night terrors’. I happen to have had the misfortune of living with two different people who suffered from the latter, and though it may be terrifying for them, it is damn scary for the person sleeping with them when they suddenly sit up at 4am screaming ‘Blaaaaiiirrrr!’.
So when are all of the libertarians leaving the UK?
mike – So one of them was Cherie, then?
Yes, did she tell you? And was she still having the same nightmares after she left me for you Verity?
Libertarians have already left the UK. There’s three of us here in Phoenix, AZ, but I have no idea where the fourth is.
As to the article where he claims that he’s not an extreme libertarian that means what? He’s ok with just a little theft and maybe acceptable levels of coercion?
Could it mean he’s using libertarian to indicate tendency, direction, not a cast-iron creed. As you would expect from a real-world wonk, he understands policy means compromise and institutional balance. Which is why the thrust of the article is not about particular policy prescriptions but the danger of legislative incontinence.
(Contrast Catherine Fieschi’s New Labour jurisprudential theory in this month’s Prospect Subscription required to read the whole thing)
DF may not suit the rock-ribbed, rootin’ tootin’, US conception of a Libertarian with a capital L, but he’s a good record of taking the libertarian side of most real British political arguments. It is worth noting that if Britain were ruled by a parliament of its newspaper columnists, it would be the free-est country in the world by some margin. We have quite a lot of soft left socialists, and the occasional off-the scale moonbat (usually of an enviro-left sort), but most of our name writers fall in the pluralist, personal and economic freedom quadrant. There are almost no conservative-authoritarians in print.
One suspects, however, that there about as many in the general population as in other western countries, and this is Blair’s secret weapon: 20% or so are impatient with discussion and fair procedure, they want arbitrary, violent, policing, state guidance of private life, and rule by decree. Nobody in British politics has been prepared to pander to them before.
Verity, well, there are nightmares, really bad nightmares, and Tony Blair!
Actually, The Times have been publishing quite a few vigorous anti-statist pieces recently, including this.
I must say I’ve always preferred the BBC remake with Kyle MacLachlan over the original Orson Welles film of The Trial with Antony Perkins.
Has anyone any idea what stage the Anti-Glorification of Terror Bill Thingy is at? It’s just that the BBC news last night ran a talking heads piece in which Blair stated “the law which we have passed tonight …” Now that’s a bit odd, I thought, the Commons doesn’t make law and isn’t the final stage for a Bill, it’s the Lords, before a Her Maj signs it into law. The BBC were also reporting this as if it is now law. It turns out though that this ain’t necessarily so. The Bill now goes to the Lords.
Or was I away the week of the Commons takeover of Parliament?
Might be worth noting that Danny Boy found out about the Bill by reading blogs. Really, not from the massed reporters of News International, but from a blog.
Modesty doesn’t permit me to say which one.
Blair stated “the law which we have passed tonight …”
He also did the other really alarming thing he does, which is to declare that he has won the argument, when actually he has refused to have an argument, just dragooned a majority for the number he first thought of. MInisters have been going around all week retailing the transparent lie that banning ‘glorification’ of terrorism is necessary in order to prosecute straightforward incitements to violence.
Jonathan – No argument from me!
Pete_London – It boils down to the fact that Blair is ignorant of how the government works and has never bothered to learn because it’s all about HIM! L’état c’est lui!
It’s not just DF and me. Getting neurotic about this one, I’m glad to say.
There’s a letter in today’s Times about it whose signatories are:
PROFESSOR J. R. SPENCER, QC
PROFESSOR SIR JOHN BAKER, QC
PROFESSOR DAVID FELDMAN
PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER FORSYTH
PROFESSOR DAVID IBBETSON
PROFESSOR SIR DAVID WILLIAMS, QC
Law Faculty,
University of Cambridge
(Nice to see mention of Magna Carta by someone other than a nutcase litigant-in-person.)
It seems the mood on this blog is pretty resigned… Sort of, “I disagree with the Bill, but I can’t be bothered to get angry about it and would rather nit pick your use of English. Isn’t semantics fun!”.
Have you all given up?
So Simon, what do you suggest we do? Don’t be shy: give us some ideas. I have had enough of folk berating bloggers for not “doing anything” when the folk who make that point either fail to suggest anything constructive.
To the extent I berated anybody I didn’t do it because they weren’t “”doing anything”” (a pair of words I did not use), but your question rather proves my point. Which was mostly an observation of the prevailing mood of resignation.
As for ideas, I would expect only for Samizdata to serve its stated aims by criticising the Bill. If you have no criticisms to add, that is one thing, but I hadn’t expected defeatism here.
The patronising tone does indicate the problem.
Even people who do not accept the leftist domination of Britian (what I sometimes think of as “the wall” – after the wall of leftist books one sees in British book stores), are careful to make clear that they do not take libertarian ideas very seriously.
In the United States people in politics and academic life who take liberty seriously are a small minority (people like Ron Paul in Congress, or Hillsdale college in academia), in Britain such forces are virtually nonexistant.
In academic life the University of Buckingham is not really the same sort of thing as Hillsdale or Grove City College (or even Auburn in Alabama which is a government university).
And in the House of Commons even Conservative members of Parliament who make little secret of how much they despise “Dave” Cameron (now off on “Paternity leave” – which will give him more time to see “progressive” Hollywood films like “Breakback Mountain”, or whatever it was called) are still very keen to say how much they support “social justice”.
In short they either do not know that “social justice” means taking wealthy people’s money and giving it to poor people (in order to produce a more egalitarian “distribution” of income and wealth) or they think that other people do not know what the term means – or they really believe in this doctrine.
In short they are either ignorant, or they are conmen, or they are leftists.
What is the point of associated with any of the above?
Ditto with “antidiscrimination” – none of the members of the House of Commons will come out against any of the “antidiscrimination” laws.
At least Mr Cameron is honest on this issue – he does not pretend to be against political correctness, quota’s and the rest of it (of course the only way one can prove that one is not “discriminating” is to have a quota system).
Sometimes the desire to be leftist among Conservative members of Parliament is amusing.
For example, the same people will attack the increase in temperature widely claimed to be caused by the emisssion of C02 and then ALSO attack atomic power (the only way to really reduce C02 emissions).
You see “global warming” is a bad thing to be denouced (in the pathetic hope of getting a few Guardian reader votes – not out of real concern for the matter), but atomic power (in any form) is also a bad thing to be denouced (for the same reason).
Men like James Lovelock are ingnored by Mr Cameron and his comrades (and I notice that Mr Lovelock new book is not very common in British bookshops either – although he is the famous “Gaia” man, “Gaia’s Revenge” would not fit in “the wall” very well because it is pro atomic power).
In the face of “the wall” (the almost total control of British life by the left) what would Simon have us do?
It is not “defeatism” it is realism.
I remember when people asked me (some years ago) why I had taken my destruction by academics at the University of York so calmly.
I honestly replied that I had considered killing them (indeed I had worked out various ways by which this task could be achieved), but then it had come to me that the men in question would simply have been replaced by people exactly like themselves (or even worse) – so killing them was pointless.
In case Simon accuses me of “defeatism” let him consider the following.
I took the University of York to the Lord Chancellor of England and Wales (I was not allowed to take them to the Common Law courts) – a case that took years (Lord Irvine judgement was that they could do anything they felt like doing – indeed he almost used those words).
I wasted a lot of money on lawyers (although I did have the satisfaction of defeating these lawyers in a legal dispute over demands for more money from them).
I tried to take out adverts in the Univerisity of York strudent newspapers (to warn other Post Graduate students of what could happen) my money was turned down.
I put up posters (for the same purpose)……….
And so on.
The whole thing reminded me of some of the incidents of my father’s life (not that I am claiming to be like my father – he was a much harder working person than I am).
For example, after the failure of the Labour governement’s “ground nuts” scheme in Africa (the sort of thing that Mr Cameron and his unshaven friend “Bob” would support for the “third world”) my father bought some of the rail equipment from the scheme and sold it to a company in Brazil.
However, the British government (which controlled the African country) would not grant an “export license” for the equipment – they would rather it rusted where it was.
Many years later my father was running a small service station (I will not tax you by going through all the back stabs he had to endure in the years after the one I mention above), and the government brought in a law banning slot machines (apart from Working Men’s Clubs of course) – just a Harold Wilson stunt but there you go, enough to make the service station uneconomic.
Give me a chance to win Simon and then you will see me fight (lazy man though I am), but do not say “why do you not fight” when I happen to know there is no chance to win.
“It is better to have faught and lost, then not to have faught at all”.
Not when it is a rigged contest it is not.
“You can not fight city hall” has nothing on Britain. This place is a hell hole. No I do not “love modern Britain” Mr Cameron and co, I hate what has been done to this country and see no way to roll it back.
Nothing can be done here without the right “friends” – if you have them you can get anything (subsidies, special government linked jobs and contracts [of course all financed with stolen money “tax does not have to be taxing” as the government’s radio advertisments put it], “planning persmission” for building on your own property and so on), if you have not got “friends” you are doomed (no matter how much work you do).
Some regulation or other can always be found to hit your business (even if it contradicts another regulation – in which case you are breaking a regulation whatever you do).
You will be taxed and taxed till you have to sell your property for next to nothing (and magically the person or organization you sell it to will get “planning permission” to develop the property).
And so and so on. Get the picture?
Some people have a problem with “talking the language of modern Britian” or “fitting in to the modern world” – as Mr Cameron and Mr Blair would say.
The sort of person who turns on the radio in the morning hears something particularly vile on B.B.C. Radio 4’s “Today” programme and smashes the radio against the wall (thinking of another “the wall” of course), is not likely to be a soft cowardly “defeatist”.
But he knows he is not going to achieve anything either – it just means you have to buy a new radio.
It is like smashing a man’s head in. You serve time in prison and what do you achieve?
As for politics – I have been active in politics since 1979. Even after Mrs Thatcher was backstabbed in 1990 I carried on year after year.
But even I have to accept that I am banging my head against a brick wall (“the wall”) again.
Twenty years ago I might have said “Mr Cameron is just a piece of shit, I will work on to see what we can get done in spite of him”.
But after all these years I think I am entitled to say that he is one piece of shit too many.
One Blair we can fight – but two Blair’s leading both the major parties?
Simon Gibbs: “It seems the mood on this blog is pretty resigned… Sort of, “I disagree with the Bill, but I can’t be bothered to get angry about it and would rather nit pick your use of English. Isn’t semantics fun!”.
Have you all given up?”
Good question. I guess the peak years for libbos were the mid-1980s between the Falklands War and Maggie’s fit of crazy hubris over the poll tax. Back then when Milton Friedman was almost cool and old Karl definitely wasn’t any more, it really seemed as if the BBC might be sold to the highest bidders, heroin legalised, Britain turned into the de facto 51st state and every yuppie in red braces would fly his own spaceship. Blimey, even the Revolutionary Communist Party dissolved itself and became sharp-suited apostles of individual freedom.
Alas, Ayn Rand never worked out how to stop the pendulum swinging. These are dark days for those who, without subscribing to anything like the full Transhumanised monty, prefer not to be so drilled, inspected, lectured and generally buggered about by Nanny in drag or uniform.
But until the enrages of Samizdata accept that it is grotesquely illogical of them to moan while continuing to back the one thing that destroys freedom fastest for all– indiscriminate warfare against unoffending foreigners– they will remain frozen and unheeded in their small corner.
Yeah, if it wasn’t for the war in Iraq, they’s have never banned smoking in privately owned clubs and restaurants in Britain… actually I back discriminate warfare against offending foreigners, but don’t let me get between you and your weird declaiming.
I’m puzzled, Matt, if ‘libbos’ are so dated and marginal, that you are prepared to put effort into abusing them. It’s a odd, too, that you can read this site and cast it in such an off-target caricature.
Are you one of those people who feed off their own self-righteous anger? We seem to have a few of those already. And very tiring they are.
(On that point, any bets where the anti-smoking lobby – or the Government, come to that – will focus its indignant fury next?)
Matt O’Halloran, if I recall, wrote in thinly-disguised admiration for the eugenics policies of the Chinese communist party in a comment thread on one of my posts a few weeks ago, so I tend to treat his comments with fairly large amounts of salt. While he is not quite as vile as Luniversal or some of the other characters recently booted off this blog, he is sailing in similar waters.
Johnathan
Simon has a point. There is no point to blogging unless it can achieve something concrete. The tired argument of “we raise awareness of the issues” is a marginal achievement at best as most readers of blogs are already aware of the issues.
A more plausible achievement is that blogs can influence people of influence, for example the BBC (who do now read the main blogs) or commentators of major newspapers.
Genuine blog victories, such as Scott Burgess’ dogged hounding of a Guardian journalist leading to Albert Scardino’s resignation, are rare.
Just because Simon has produced no action plan does not mean he is wrong to highlight the ‘bitch and moan’ ethos of many bloggers.
The Left’s great strength is its ability to organise, to mobilise an army of supporters and demonstrators. Bloggers have a lot to learn from them.
Well pommy, just to gently point out that if you can’t occasionally bitch and moan on a blog, when can you? I try, btw, to be positive on a lot of things, and not just focus on the sort of “The World Is Going Down the Tubes” sort of wailing that makes Melanie Phillips’ blog, say, so depressing and wearying. I have not, for instance, written much on the cartoons issue for that reason.
So being positive is a good thing. Interestingly, some of the rudest comments and strongest criticisms have come when I have sounded an optimistic note on a topic. Optimism seems to drive some people nuts. Why is that?
There is no point to blogging unless it can achieve something concrete
Well, that is your point of view. Some of us just do this for enjoyment of discussing our views with others, rather than fashioning a particular outcome. Not every pastime has to have a “point”. There is no “point” to playing a game or a good conversation. Some things are just ends in themselves.
Johnathan
I couldn’t agree more about Melanie Philip’s blog (worthy and well researched though i’m sure it is). It makes me want to set fire to myself.
Being positive is a great thing and your comments tend to be more upbeat than most. Nothing is more depressing than the “this country’s going to hell in a handbasket” crowd. This is what makes the Daily Mail such excrutiating reading.
However, i thought Samizdata had more ambitious aims than just a gentle conversation amongst like minded friends. I hope it does.
pommygranate: the left’s ability to organize is all but useless to them. It’s easy to ignore a marching rabble – they’re their own straw man. What have they achieved since the USSR? The advances in socialism have been led by individuals with big (mistaken) ideas, and built upon popular support deriving from the same ideas in unconsidered, ambient, normative form. So that’s the role of blogs, editorials, etc in this memetic war: spread the right ideas!
What have they achieved since the USSR
Julian
Post Berlin Wall, if the Left had crawled under a rock, reappeared three days later with white flags bearing the message “ok. we fucked up. anyone can make a mistake. go easy on us”, then all would be fine and dandy.
But they didn’t.
Realising the economic argument was buried under a pile of grafittied rubble, they re-emerged with a new angle to force their doctrine of equality on the ‘people’.
This was called political correctness.
Fast forward 16 years and its dominance is total – in our public institutions, in our schools and universities, in our media, in the arts and sciences, and in our politicians.
Not bad going i think, and just as destructive.
pommy, although we are drifting off topic a bit, I’d agree that there should have been more gloating at the utter humiliation of the left when the B.Wall came down, and more grinding of faces in the dust. But there wasn’t. The desire to control people simply shifted from state planning and centralised socialism towards the Green movement, towards the post-modernist guff nicely summed up by New Labour, etc.
In the meantime, I intend to keep using my perch here as a place to spread whatever ideas I can and have a bit of fun at the same time. Actually, having fun is partly what libertarianism is about, anyway.