(6)

...the more likely possibility is that there will be asymmetric shocks hitting the different countries. That will mean that the only adjustment mechanism they have to meet that with is fiscal and unemployment: pressure on wages, pressure on prices. They have no way out. With a currency board, there is always the ultimate alternative that you can break the currency board. Hong Kong can dismantle its currency board tomorrow if it wants to. It doesn't want to and I don't think it will. But it could. But with the Euro, there is no escape mechanism.

Suppose things go badly and Italy is in trouble, how does Italy get out of the Euro system? It no longer has a lira after whatever it is - 2000 or 2001 - so it's a very big gamble. I wish the Euro area well; it will be in the self-interest of Australia and the United States that the Euro area be successful. But I'm very much concerned that there's a lot of uncertainty in prospect.

Professor Milton Friedman interviewed by Radio Australia, 17 July 1998

(31)

What will happen to the Euro? I am not asking "what should happen", but what will happen. Take this opportunity to put your predictions on the internet, and later be hailed as a true prophet or derided as a false one.

(14)

Yesterday afternoon, I attended the meeting at the House of Commons that I flagged up here a few days earlier. It was a fairly low key affair, attended by about thirty people or more. Not being a regular attender of such events, I can't really be sure what it all amounted to. Things happen at meetings that you don't see. Minds get changed, in silence. Connections are made, afterwards. You do not see everything.

But what I think I saw was this.

The first thing to clarify is that this was the Detlev Schlichter show. Steve Baker MP was a nearly silent chairman. Tim Evans was a brief warm-up act. Schlichter's pessimism about the world economy was the heart of the matter. He did almost all the talking, and I believe he did it very well.

It's not deliberate on his part. Schlichter just talks the way he talks. But his manner is just right for politicians, because he doesn't shout, and because he so obviously knows what he is talking about, what with his considerable City of London experience, and that flawless English vocabulary spoken in perfect English but with that intellectually imposing German accent. He foresees monetary catastrophe, but although he has plenty to say about politics, and about how politics has politicised money, he is not trying to be any sort of politician himself. Basically, he thinks they're boxed in, and when asked for advice about how to change that, he can do nothing beyond repeating that they are boxed in and that monetary catastrophe does indeed loom. But what all this means, for his demeanour at events like this one, is that he doesn't nag the politicians or preach at them or get in any way excited, because he expects nothing of them; he merely answers whatever questions they may want to ask him. He regards them not as stage villains but as fellow victims of an historic upheaval. Despite the horror of what he is saying, they seem to like that. He didn't spend the last two months cajoling his way into the House of Commons. He was simply asked in, and he said yes, I'll do my best.

Present at the meeting were about five MPs, besides Steve Baker MP I mean, which is a lot less than all of them, but a lot more than none.

One, a certain Mark Garnier MP, seemed to be quite disturbed by what he was hearing, as in disturbed because he very much feared that what he was hearing might be true. Mark Garnier MP is a member of the Treasury Select Committee, which I am told is very significant.

Another MP present, John Redwood, was only partially in agreement with Shlichter. He agrees that there is a debt crisis, but doesn't follow Schlichter to the point of seeing this as a currency crisis. In other words, Redwood thinks we have a big problem, but Schlichter thinks the problem is massively bigger than big.

Redwood was also confused by Schlichter's use of the phrase "paper money", by which Redwood thought Schlichter meant, well, paper money. Redwood pointed out, quite correctly, that paper money that has hundred percent honest promises written on it, to swap the paper money in question for actual gold, is very different from the paper money we now have, which promises nothing. Redwood also pointed out that most of the "elastic" (the other and probably better description of junk money that Schlichter supplies in the title of his book) money that we now have is mostly purely virtual additions to electronically stored bank balances. We don't, said Redwood, want to go back to a world without credit cards or internet trading! All of which was immediately conceded by Schlichter, and none of which makes a dime of difference to the rightness or wrongness of what Schlichter is actually saying; these are mere complaints about how he says it. Such complaints may be justified, given how inexactly "paper money" corresponds to the kind of money that Schlichter is actually complaining about. But Redwood seemed to imagine that what he said about what he took "paper money" to mean refuted the substance of what Schlichter said. Odd.

For me, the most interesting person present was James Delingpole. (It was while looking to see if Delingpole had said anything about this meeting himself that earlier today got me noticing this.) The mere possibility that Delingpole might now dig into what Schlichter, and all the other Austrianists before him, have been saying about money and banking was enough to make me highly delighted to see him there, insofar as anything about this deeply scary story can be said to be delightful. But it got better. I introduced myself to Delingpole afterwards, and he immediately told me that he considered this the biggest story now happening in the world. So, following his book and before that his blogging about red greenery, Delingpole's next Big Thing may well prove to be world-wide monetary melt-down. I would love to read a money book by Delingpole as good and as accessible as Watermelons. If Delingpole's red greenery stuff is anything to go by, the consequences in terms of public understanding and public debate of him becoming a money blogger and a money book writer could be considerable. So, no pressure Mr D, but I do hope you will at least consider such a project.

(7)

Never mind that the Libertarian Alliance isn't holding a conference this year because there's another conference to take its place. It's a one-day, less expensive event on Saturday 22 October that's being held in the same venue - the National Liberal Club in London. For £65 you get a day of libertarian speakers and dinner at the club, too.

Among the libertarian figures speaking or chairing sessions are the Austrian economist Dr Adam Martin, who is flying over from New York, Sam Bowman, of the Adam Smith Institute and Cobden Centre, Theodore Dalrymple, columnist and doctor, and Toby Young, who is running a free school.

Half of the tickets are being taken up by young libertarian students, so this will be a conference where the future of the British libertarian movement will be fully in view. To reserve your place, all you have to do is to visit the Liberty League website and enter your details. Hope to see many of you there.

(13)

In front of an admittedly pro-"Austria" crowd at the LSE, it seems that academics defending the free market views of the late F.A. Hayek managed to fairly heavily beat those speaking up for JM Keynes.

This may not amount to much, but what I think these things accomplish is to remind the defenders of people such as Keynes (such as Lord Skidelsky, his biographer), that there are now hundreds, in fact thousands, of smart young economics and politics graduates and undergraduates who regard, say, Keynes and other economic interventionists, as wrong. Some of these people will become teachers and lecturers themselves, or, if they want to make serious money, work in banks and the like. Slowly but surely, all those people teaching stodgy, wrong Keynesian ideas are getting older and greyer and newer people with other ideas are taking over, however slowly at first. This LSE debate is the sort of event that makes me think that while the 2008 financial crash might be seen, in one way, as a supposed setback for "unregulated capitalism" (yeah, right), it has also pushed attention on ideas that got out of focus in the lazy, fat years of the dotcom boom and the early parts of the past decade. (And then of course there are all those tens of thousands of book sales of Atlas Shrugged, etc).

Libertarians and other non-socialists like to moan how our places of Higher Learning have been gradually taken over by people with bad and wrong ideas. We need, I think, to realise that that argument can cut both ways. People with good, insightful ideas can also enter these institutions, however slowly at first, and make a key difference. I think this is happening more than people realise. I know that optimism is deeply out of fashion these days. Wallowing in despair is, in my view, a cop-out.

(27)

What developments favourable to liberty will happen during 2011?

... and a happy new year to all.

(3)

Incoming from Sam Bowman of the Cobden Centre (and also the Research Manager and Blogmeister at the Adam Smith Institute – most recent blog posting here):

This Thursday 28th October, the world's leading economist of the Austrian school - Jésus Huerta de Soto - will be giving the first annual Hayek Lecture on the topic "Financial Crisis and Economic Recession". The lecture is a great chance to hear about the Austrian Business Cycle Theory from its leading living theorist. It's free, no advance tickets are needed. It starts at 6:30pm and full details are available here.

That event has already been flagged up (although somewhat imperfectly!) here. The Cobden Centre head honchos are hoping for a good-to-bursting type turnout, to keep the buzz they are already creating buzzing along and buzzier. So if you can just show up, do. No compelling need to listen to everything that carefully, or not first time around, because unless things go badly wrong the event will be recorded. I will be going, and I expect to learn a lot.

And there's more:

A conference is being put on in London on Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th of November by the Positive Money campaign. The conference is not Austrian - there will be speakers from a range of intellectual viewpoints - but it will focus on the issues of money and banking and will have lectures from several Cobden Centre board members, including Toby Baxendale, James Tyler and Steve Baker MP. Full details are available here.

One of the things I most like about the Cobden Centre is how they cooperate so enthusiastically and helpfully with other groups which have broadly (rather than merely narrowly) similar agendas, that latter event being typical of this mind-fix.

(10)

Well that was not very clever of me, was it? I got the wrong de Soto in the original posting here, which I have taken down to avoid confusion. My apologies for the first poster who told me it was wrong. Ugh. Grovel-grovel.

Here is the event, anyway. I strongly recommend people to go if they get the chance. I will be.

(25)

Today's Times has the headline:

Allies at odds over death of hostage in bungled rescue

Do these people have any idea at all of what life-or-death fighting is actually like? I do not demand that they have actually done any before writing about it; little would ever be reported about war if that were the test. But they could at least have read a few memoirs, or talked to their grandfathers. Reading about the Dieppe Raid might put things in perspective.

Hint: it is not like planning a dinner party. With that sort of thing if you make a careful list of Things To Do and do them all in good time you generally can be reasonably confident that it will work out OK and if it does not work out OK, say the soufflé does not rise or the wine was too sweet, it probably was because someone bungled.

Military small group operations - by which I mean small group killings of people who can also kill you - are not like that. They always hang on a knife edge. The most skilled soldiers in the world frequently die young and frequently fail. A hand is a fraction of a second too slow on the trigger - a human mind is a fraction of a second slower than another, hostile, human mind to make sense of the confusion - and a comrade dies, or a hostage dies, and a lifetime of agonized mental replaying of that moment of failure begins.

Six hours later a headline writer in an office far away expresses his displeasure.

(4)

The invasion by Austrian Economics of the Institute of Economic Affairs continues apace, and at lunchtime today I attended this IEA event on that very timely subject staged by the Cobden Centre. The weather today has been so hot that since this meeting I could hardly stay alive and then when I had staggered home, awake, so don't expect a long and detailed report of what was said. All I really want to say here, now, is that I was greatly impressed by the two speakers, both of whom I photographed in action:

  

These two gentleman are, on the left, Jörg Guido Hülsmann, and on the right, Sean Corrigan. Watch out for those names. I'm fairly sure that quite a bit more is going to be heard of and from both.

The good news is that Cobden Centre Chairman Toby Baxendale asked both these two gentlemen if their performances could later be made available in written form to the Cobden Centre with a view to online publication, and both promised that they would cooperate fully with such plans.

I took other photos, including a couple of Tim Evans, the Cobden Centre's Chief Executive. In one of these snaps, Tim poses next to the IEA's evil monetarist Tim Congdon, who was present only as a picture on the wall.

Tim said that he also thought the speeches by the two gents above to be "superb". He says that about any performances he has had any part in organising no matter how average, but this time I think he meant it. And as I say, I enthusiastically concur. Judging by the response at the end from a gratifyingly crowded room, everyone else present did too.

(5)

A most enjoyable trip was had by yours truly on the Thames yesterday in the company of the Adam Smith Institute. Every year, the think tank invites its members and various assorted free marketeer campaigners to have a glass of bubbly or two on a nice pleasure cruiser. Old age must be setting in as far yours truly is concerned, since the revellers seem to be getting younger. But then again, that is testimony to the cleverness of the ASI's outreach programme to universities and colleges. It is impossible to over-stress how important this is. Anyway, thanks to the ASI for an extremely pleasant evening, blessed by superb weather and great company.

(66)

Indeed, and here he was just before delivering it, earlier this evening, to the assembled friends and supporters of the Libertarian Alliance, at the National Liberal Club:

His subject was Public Goods and Private Action: How Voluntary Action Can Provide Law, Welfare and Infrastructure – and Build a Good Society.

Academics who are supportive of the free market and the free society tend to be economists. Such thinkers might have based an argument like that one on economic theories concerning the alleged possibility and desirability of such arrangements. But Dr. Davies is a historian, with a wealth of knowledge concerning how such arrangements did exist, and accordingly might again. It is hard to argue with any persuasiveness that voluntarily funded policing, or unemployment insurance, or roads or railways cannot exist, if the fact that these things actually did exist is widely known. The current crop of fiscally disastrous and morally destructive social and infrastructural policies depend for their continuation on perpetuating ignorance of how such voluntary alternatives existed in the past. (Hence in particular the importance of voluntarily organised and voluntarily funded education.)

Dr. Davies argued that the current fiscal crisis of the modern state, not just in Britain but everywhere, means that an historic opportunity now exists to revive such ideas as these.

A fellow Samizdatista asked, during the Q&A that followed Dr. Davies's lecture: Will the text of it be published? Answer: yes. I await this text with eagerness, as do many others. All to whom I spoke afterwards agreed that this was an outstandingly effective and informative lecture.

(47)

Of course, when I say that that is what Strathclyde Fire and Rescue ("making our communities safe places to live work and visit") preferred, I do acknowledge it cannot have been pleasant to sit around listening to her desperate cries for the last six hours of her life while rescue equipment that could have brought her out from the mine shaft into which she had fallen stood inactive. But it was that or disregard a memo.

According to the Times,

An injured woman lay for six hours at the foot of a disused mine shaft because safety rules banned firefighters from rescuing her, an inquiry heard yesterday. As Alison Hume was brought to the surface by mountain rescuers she died of a heart attack.

A senior fire officer at the scene admitted that crews could only listen to her cries for help, after she fell down the 60ft shaft, because regulations said their lifting equipment could not be used on the public. A memo had been circulated in Strathclyde Fire and Rescue stations months previously stating that it was for use by firefighters only.

I am a little confused by the fact that the this rope equipment was specified for use by firefighters only. I suppose this restriction is to avoid untrained people being rescued.

(4)

Friday's debate at the RI turned into a soggy mess of a love-in, but it held no comfort for alarmists. The very limited point of discussion was "Has Global Warming increased the toll of disasters?" Audience members repeatedly asked where the points of difference among the three speakers lay, and they were certainly hard to see. Everyone seemed to agree that the answer to the discussion question was a clear and resounding "there is no evidence for that whatever."

The speakers were Roger Pielke Jr, of the University of Colorado, Robert Muir-Wood of the consultancy Risk Management Solutions, and Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute at the LSE. The meeting was chaired by the amiable James Randerson of the Guardian (standing in for David Shukman of the BBC). He polled the audience beforehand on whether we believed that global warming had indeed increased the toll of disasters, a question that had apparently been dumped on him by someone else. After a hilarious quarter of an hour of having the question taken apart by stroppy audience members, who wanted to know whether by answering it they were committed to belief in warming, he finally had to force a vote. Most were don't-knows. At the end of the discussion, when the same vote was taken, many of the don't-knows had switched to the 'no increasing cost' position; they could not really do anything else, on the evidence presented.

I gathered that there's just one definitive study of trends in global costs of disasters, produced by Risk Management Solutions. Since Bob Ward had been at RSM before joining the Grantham Institute, he wasn't about to argue with Robert Muir-Wood about that study - hence the lack of grit in the discussion.

The report 'normalized' the various measures of damage due to various types of disaster, weather-related ones and otherwise: normalizing involves correcting for factors such as inflation, changing densities of populations in affected areas, changing property values, improved defences, and so on. The upshot was that there has been no discernible effect of climate change overall in the very wobbly graph of costs since 1950. However, since 1970 there seems to have been a slight but statistically significant rise.

Pielke, by far the clearest and most skilful speaker of the three, thinks that rise means nothing in the long run - there have been similar intervals of rising costs, and the IPCC was unjustified in making a meal of it. Furthermore, he is very angry at the IPCC for attributing opinions to him that he did not hold.

Muir-Wood, who talks like a machine-gun, also declared himself 'irritated' at seeing part of the study seized on by the IPCC (he is also annoyed with the Stern Review's use of the study, but the Stern Review did not get discussed).

Bob Ward was a surprisingly unfocused and ineffective speaker. His PowerPoint presentation seemed to be an all-purpose climate-talk affair; he rambled through much of the same material as Muir-Wood and Pielke, without much in the way of interpretation or challenge. He did not defend the IPCC against the charges. He made the usual pious points about the IPCC having to keep high standards, mistakes needing to be exposed, wrong-doers needing to be held to account and so on - all ending with the importance of not being distracted from the main point: the reality of climate change, the disastrous consequences, etc.

A commenter on my previous post thought the whole thing would be a waste of time, since Pielke and Ward were equally 'warmists'. It is true: Pielke is no 'denier', and at the meeting he was arguing for 'decarbonizing' the economy. But people of Pielke's calibre should be listened to with respect. No sensible person should be a climate-change-denialist in my view: I am an alarmism-denialist, and a "the science is settled" denialist. When the climate-science house has been cleaned up, and there is effective oversight of the researchers, and they publicly archive all their data and methods, and they are prised away from the deep-green wingnuts, it will be interesting to find out what the climate's really doing. And what it was doing back in mediaeval times. Academically interesting; but not justifying interfering with technological progress.

There are notes on the meeting by commenters on Bishop Hill's blog. There is an audio archive at the RI site.
And RPj is claiming a clear defeat for the IPCC in this corner of the battlefield.

(10)

The week resumes after a highly enjoyable and stimulating annual Libertarian Alliance conference, which I attended along with one or two other members of the Samizdata crew, such as Brian Micklethwait. I may put together some more considered thoughts about some of the ideas and issues that arose over the past two days, but for now, let me join in congratulating Antoine Clarke - another occasional Samizdata writer - for picking up a deserved literary prize, and also Tim and Helen Evans and Sean Gabb, for putting this event together. What was encouraging was how we had delegates from all over the globe, with plenty of new, young faces.

One of the best sessions was the final one, in which we were treated to a survey of how the UK public actually thinks about banking and the credit crisis. The results, as Antoine himself suggested, might show that people are far less naive in believing fashionable nonsense about financial affairs than politicians assume. It would be nice to think that whenever some warmed-up Keynesian goes on about "quantitative easing", the response from Joe Public is to roll the eyes.

The conference also featured a highly entertaining post-dinner speech by Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes. As Paul noted, it is galling that the word "freedom" is conspicuously absent from the rhetoric of any of the main party leaders in the UK. The same, for that matter, can be said of those in countries such as the US.

(2)

Here is a story suggesting that employees might use the outbreak of swine flu as an excuse to extend their summer holidays. I guess this is inevitable, given that some people will try anything on, although in a recession, it does seem rather dumb for staff to risk a disciplinary warning or outright sacking to lie about their health in this way.

Talking of holidays, in a few days' time, yours truly is heading off to Normandy, northern France, for a week's holiday with family, including, I am very happy to say, my father, who has recently made a recovery from a serious illness.

There will be lots of Calvados consumed. My blogging is likely to be slow next week.

(0)

It will be tough to follow what was a great event last year, with speakers such as David Friedman - but this year's Libertarian Alliance annual conference, on 24-25 October in London, promises to be a good one. I have just been sent the agenda and list of speakers, including Tibor Machan, the US philosopher (one of my favourites), Richard Wellings of the IEA, Jan Lester and Chris Mounsey (aka The Devil's Kitchen). Book early to avoid disappointment.

(15)

Good on the Libertarian Alliance for publishing this. As it says, Guido Fawkes, aka Paul Staines, is more than able to take care of himself, but given some pathetic attempts by the Daily Telegraph and a few others to sneer at him (what the heck has gone wrong at the Telegraph?), it is nice to have friendly comments.

Paul has probably raised the profile of the LA indirectly, quite a bit. He should get an award at this year's annual LA conference. Even if it is not the whole truth, I think it is very, very good to be able to have it said that a "libertarian blogger has brought down minister X or civil servant Y". The very fact that folk are going around saying this, or hinting at it, is gold-dust to libertarian activitsts such as the LA and its counterparts. In his way, Paul is doing for the free market movement what the Tea Party folks are doing, maybe, in the US. In fact, I'd be willing to state that relatively speaking, Paul's site is now the most influential political blog in the world. I mean, is there a French, German or, heaven help us, an Italian equivalent?

Just askin'.

(72)

Reported by Lucy Bannerman in today's Times:

Fire kills child, 3, and parents as police prevent neighbours from trying to rescue them

A pregnant woman, her husband and their three-year-old son were killed in a house fire early yesterday as police who arrived before the fire brigade prevented neighbours from trying to save them. The woman screamed: “Please save my kids” from a bedroom window and neighbours tried to help but were beaten back by flames and were told by police not to attempt a rescue.

By the time firefighters got into the house in Doncaster, Michelle Colly, 25, her husband, Mark, 29, and son, Louis, 3, were dead. Their daughter, Sophie, 5, was taken to hospital and believed to be critically ill.

Davey Davis, 38, a friend of the family, said: “It was the most harrowing thing I have ever witnessed. Michelle was at the bedroom window yelling, ‘Please save my kids’ and we wanted to help but the police were pushing us back and not allowing us near. We were willing to risk our lives to save those kiddies but the police wouldn’t let us.

“Tempers were running very high, particularly with the women who were there, but the police were just saying we have to wait for the fire brigade because of health and safety.

“There were four or five police officers. They were here before the fire brigade. We heard the sirens and we came across to help but they wouldn’t let us.

“I thought the police were there to protect lives. At one time they would have have gone inside themselves to try and rescue them.

“When a family is burning to death in front of your eyes, rules should go out of the window – especially with kids. Everybody wanted to try and help.”

Seems like the poison has worked its way well in. Note: I do not know whether the Colly family could have been saved had the attempt been made while Mrs Colly was still alive to scream for someone to save her kids. A spokeswoman for the South Yorkshire Police said, “The senior officer in charge is confident we handled this incident as professionally as possible. In a situation like that you could end up with more deceased bodies than you had in the first place.”

One of the lesser known sights of London is the Watts Memorial in Postman's Park. I gather it featured in the film Closer, starring Natalie Portman and Jude Law. No, I am not being funny, suddenly veering off into a travelogue in the middle of a post about the deaths of a family. I wish there were something to laugh about. The memorial was set up by a Victorian artist, George Frederick Watts, to commemorate those who died saving others. It consists of hand made plaques each bearing the name of a person who sacrificed his or her life and a brief citation. Very quaint they are, with their crowded lettering with the extra-large initial capitals and little swirly plant motifs and curlicues in the corners. Even the names are quaint, laboriously given in full. Police Constables Percy Edwin Cook, Edward George Brown Greenoff, Harold Frank Ricketts and George Stephen Funnell are among them. I wonder what PC Percy Edwin Cook, for instance, who perished when he "Voluntarily descended high tension chamber at Kensington to rescue two workmen overcome by poisonous gas" would have made of his successors in the South Yorkshire force.

Perhaps the police spokeswoman was right. Perhaps if health and safety had been less comprehensively assured and the Colly incident handled rather less professionally, we would have ended up with more than the three "deceased bodies" - no, make that four, when you count the child expected to be born in two weeks - that we did end up with. Still, more than four dead bodies is quite a lot and quite unlikely, I cannot help thinking. And I also cannot help thinking that there is more to this than just counting the dead under different scenarios. If the critically injured five year old girl does survive she will be burdened by more than just the fact that her family died. She will eventually have to know that those who might have answered her mother's last desperate appeal were held back on grounds of "health and safety." Not theirs, obviously.

UPDATE: Other accounts give the spelling of the family name as "Colley". They confirm that the police actively prevented rescue attempts.

FURTHER UPDATE: There is a thoughtful discussion in the comments regarding several moral and practical questions, and whether the press accounts are to be trusted. Quite possibly not. Yet I must add that if the South Yorkshire police are trying to convince me that they are not abdicating responsibility in order to follow rote "health and safety" procedure (as commenter "sjv" put it), then best not claim, as they appeared to in the Mail report linked to in the word "other", that the reason they will not tell us exactly how long elapsed between the arrival of the police and the arrival of the firemen is "'data protection' rules."

(5)

There are so many things to do these days, especially in a place like London, that often you make up your mind about what to do of an evening at the very last moment. So, maybe you have the coming Tuesday evening, tomorrow, March 17th, still free. If you do, I strongly recommend the Libertarian Alliance's 2nd Annual Chris R. Tame Memorial Lecture, which this year will be given by Professor Kevin Dowd.

Getting on for a hundred people have already signed up to attend this event, in other words quite a few more than showed up for last year's inaugural Chris Tame lecture given by David Myddleton. But there is room for more still. Attendance is free of charge. All the organisers ask is, if you want to be there, email them beforehand. Follow the link at the top of this for all the details of the event, and for the email to confirm attendance.

What excites me about this lecture is that Dowd is both an unswerving libertarian, and an expert on banking, on the history of banking and on the baleful effects over the decades of state monopoly fiat money and of banking regulation. This is a man who not only believes in the idea of a free market in currencies and in banking, but someone who can actually explain in detail why that would be a better arrangement than anything else now being proposed. He also has firm and positive views about what should immediately be done, right now, to alleviate the crisis. And because he is a Professor, he has some leverage for getting his ideas reported in the mainstream media.

Having been looking forward to this event for several months, I now realise that I have, infuriatingly, a teaching commitment set in concrete for that very same evening. But the good news for me, and for anyone else who won't be able to attend the lecture in person, is that it will be videoed, and video internetted just as soon as that can be contrived. You may depend upon me to have further things to say about this potentially very important lecture just as soon as that video is available and linkable to.

Can we win the ideological war that now swirls about the current financial catastrophes? Personally I remain optimistic about this possibility, but whether we can actually win or not, we should surely try to win. And those of us who conveniently can should surely support those people, like Kevin Dowd, who are making the biggest efforts to this end. Most of Samizdata's readers do not live in London and can't be at this lecture in person, although lots are Londoners and could. But, Londoners or not, I very much hope that a healthy proportion of us will at least give the video our closest attention. Meanwhile, I am sure that almost all of you will join with me in wishing Professor Dowd all the best for tomorrow evening.

(8)

Jonah Goldberg, who writes at the US conservative publication, National Review - and other places - is over in the UK next week talking about his recently-published book, Liberal Fascism. I have not read it but some of the readership might find it interesting. He's in London at venues like the London School of Economics.

Meanwhile, as our own Brian Micklethwait pointed out the other day on his own blog, Kevin Dowd, an economist very much in the free market camp and an authority of monetary economics, is delivering the annual Chris R. Tame memorial lecture of the Libertarian Alliance in March. Kevin Dowd is not just a very nice fellow and a sharp economist, he is also an advocate of free banking and a critic of state monopoly money. He and his colleagues have been doing important research on the topic up in his academic redoubt in Nottingham. I definitely recommend this lecture. It pays to book early.

(10)

During the recent LA/LI Conference, Sean Gabb, half of the two-man team that now runs the Libertarian Alliance (Tim Evans being the other half) sat himself down next to me and asked me to suggest good speakers for next year. My best two suggestions were two Michaels.

Michael Jennings will be well-known to regular readers here as an expert on technological trends and much else besides. He would be exactly the kind of second-tier speaker, and I mean this in no disrespectful way, who maybe isn't a superstar name who would cause dozens more attendees to sign up in the first place, but who would add greatly to the enjoyment and enlightenment of the event for all who did attend. Technology, I am sure you will agree, can be relied upon to keep on supplying interesting trends for someone like Michael to talk about.

And the other Michael I suggested was Michael O'Leary, the boss of Ryanair. Okay, definitely a first-tier speaker, but equally definitely a long shot. But what's the worst he can say? No, too busy running Britain's largest low fares airline, you can afford my air fares but not me but the best of luck anway being what he probably would say, if anything, if asked.

Ryanair press releases are actually fun to read (like some of Sean Gabb's, come to think of it). Here is a typically populist and opportunistic snippet from the latest one:

Ryanair, Britain's largest low fares airline, today (31st Oct) offered to rescue Jonathan Ross after he was 'Sent to Coventry' by the bigwigs at the BBC. Ryanair will help Ross jet off to much more exotic surrounds as it sent him free tickets to escape the media spotlight and sample how those who don’t earn £18million a year live.

Ryanair, called on the black sheep of the BBC, who will lose £1.5million over the next 12 weeks, to make his money go further by escaping the high cost of living in Mayfair and fly on one of Ryanair's over 350 UK routes where he can live cheaper, get a tan and gear himself up for his return to the beeb next year.

Does Coventry have an airport, I wonder?

O'Leary's open contempt for state monopolies of all kinds, but especially in the airline business (on the ground and in the air), is most pleasing. A growing trend in public opinion, especially since this latest wall-of-taxpayer-money bailout of dodgy banks, is the alignment of enthusiasm for free markets with populism, while statist solutions to problems are becoming regarded more and more as elitist manipulations, the rich helping themselves to public money on scale that the poor could never dream of. O'Leary feeds into that current, I think, especially in the way he bangs on about how much more you often have to pay the government, when you fly Ryanair, than you have to pay him.

Michael Jennings, constant globetrotter that he is, could doubtless tell libertarians about the impact of low fare airlines on the world, even if Michael O'Leary is otherwise engaged.

(2)

I too was at the LA/LI Conference held at the National Liberal Club over this weekend, which was excellent, as Johnathan has just said. The organisation of this now solidly annual event was indeed the best yet.

Not everybody likes the star system, but reality does not care what you think of it. The dumb fact is that certain people, in the libertarian world as in all other human milieus, put bums on seats. Other performers, however excellent, can contribute mightily to the success of an event like this - our own Guy Herbert, who spoke most eloquently on the Sunday afternoon about the Database State, springs to mind – but such lesser luminaries do not each cause another three dozen people to show up in the first place, having booked encouragingly early.

The arrival in our midst of David Friedman (talking about this) was nevertheless a stroke of luck, conferred by Friedman himself, next to whom I sat at the Saturday dinner. I'm afraid he was too tired from travelling and speaking at other events, and I too star-struck, for our conversation to amount to much, but he did tell me that he was at the conference because he had already semi-booked to do another talk nearby, in Germany or some such place, and he would only agree to do that if he could achieve economies of scale by giving a handful of other talks on the same trip. So, he contacted the Libertarian Alliance and asked if they'd like him to speak at this conference. Oh, I imagine we could just about squeeze you in, they replied. All of which reminds me of that remark by the golfer Gary Player, to the effect that the more work he did, the more luck he had.

I hope I will have more to say here about what was actually said at this gathering, but in the meantime, first impressions first: like JP said, it was a good show.

(8)

One of the reasons for slow output on this blog over the weekend was that several of your regular scribes, such as yours truly, Guy Herbert, Brian Micklethwait and Philip Chaston, were at the annual Libertarian Alliance (UK) conference in London. Several of us remarked on how many people turned up for the two days. By my reckoning, we had about 140 folk in total. What was particularly gratifying was the number of younger people in their early 20s whom I had never heard of before. Several of the newbies mentioned that they had come across the LA via the world of blogs. This is encouraging: there is nothing more dispiriting than to observe that the circle of folk who share similar views is static and getting greyer and more wrinkled. Suddenly, that appears to be changing.

There may have been several reasons why the LA conference proved so successful in terms of numbers. First of all, the speaker list was particularly strong: Aubrey de Grey, David Friedman and Hans-Herman Hoppe, to name just three. I thought Professor Friedman (son of Milton Friedman) was terrific when he spoke about how new technologies, such as nanotech, artificial intelligence and new forms of encryption, would throw up all manner of new legal issues. He is an irrepressible speaker and great value. Another reason for the high numbers at the conference is that I wonder whether the credit crunch has produced an unintended result by refocusing attention on the arguments about capitalism and financial markets. People want to know about what defenders of laissez faire think. Quite a few of the attendees were students furiously writing stuff down for assignments. The LA is getting used as a resource for academics.

I came home from the event yesterday feeling enthused and proud of how Tim Evans and Sean Gabb have driven the LA forward after the sad loss of Chris Tame, its founder, more than two years ago. He'd have been very proud, I have no doubt.

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The Left are becoming desperate in their attempts to scaremonger and scapegoat the Big Crunch.

Gordon Brown's stewardship of the Treasury over the past decade is now under scrutiny. He followed Alan Greenspan, worshipper at the feet of Ayn Rand, a free marketeer whose extreme and influential libertarianism let markets rip, kept interest rates too low and failed to regulate the banks' wild lending. Britain, says the OECD, is in a worse position to weather the storm than most due to its dependence on an uncontrolled property boom. Many - including this paper - warned often of the madness of letting prices rise by £50 a day with a mortgage-based debt bonanza. Slashing capital gains tax, on the advice of private equity leaders who had Brown's ear, set off a huge expansion in borrowing to snap up public companies. The buy-to-let market was allowed full rein, too, inflaming house prices. The Treasury heeded no warnings about the culture of 125% mortgages.

We must hang objectivists, ban 'We The Living' and jail all libertarians. Immediately. Or perhaps Polly Toynbee is wrong.

Rand must be laughing in her grave.

(3)

Here is a tribute to the firefighters who lost their lives on this day, seven years ago, trying to rescue those attacked by mass murderers in New York City.

May they all rest in peace.

(4)

Along with these fine people, I will be one of the speakers at the Libertarian International conference in Warsaw on June 28-29. I will be speaking about how government regulation of radio spectrum flows through into such things as excessive roaming charges on your mobile phone, and leads to absurd states of affairs such as having a continent wide 3G mobile broadband network that is too expensive for anyone travelling outside their own country to actually use. This is course creates a vicious circle in which regulators feel they have to correct "market failures". I will be addressing the question of how much regulation (if any) is necessary in the first place.

It would be splendid to see any readers who feel like joining us at the conference and in Warsaw and an associated trip to Krakow on the following days. I know from experience that Warsaw is a fun and stimulating city, and I promise to mount an expedition to seek out vodka in bars with far too much chrome on Saturday night with anyone who cares to join me.

(4)

On March 18th, it will be two years since the untimely death from cancer of Chris Tame, founder of the Libertarian Alliance, bibiophile, and sceptic about many things, including the time spent (wasted?) on party politics. There is a plan to commemorate the academic approach which Chris always thought was a key to winning the battle of ideas against collectivism of all shades, with the Inaugural Chris R. Tame Memorial Lecture, at the National Liberal Club, in London on Tuesday at 6.30pm.

The speaker is Professor David Myddelton, from Cranfield University. The title of the lecture is: "How to Cure Government Obesity," which sounds like the sort of obesity we really ought to panic about.

Admission is free BUT ONLY if you contact Tim Evans, the LA's president, by email: tim [at] libertarian [dot] co [dot] uk. Numbers are limited and there are some drinks afterwards. I expect a recording will be made and linked to on either the LA blog or website. I shall certainly be there.

I especially miss the wicked sense of humour and the fact that my office is above an Amnesty International second-hand bookshop. It's the sort of place Chris would have spent five minutes scanning ALL the shelves - even sport, in case a Tae-Kwondo manual showed up! Then he would have chatted for an hour with the Socialist or Liberal volunteers in the shop, discussing what he termed "the rape of the libraries" and (sincerely) pushing against climate change on progressive humanist grounds.

(5)

On Saturday various Samizdata team members and associates descended upon HQ for copious amounts of wine, chilli and cheese.

The party commences.

The goddess Elena holds fort.

Samizdata's infamous bar.

Tomas Kohl drops in on us from the Czech Republic.

China's hottest export.

There's something important on the computer.

Readers of Brian's blog are surging.

The Briffas - Peter Briffa is the purveyor of the fine Public Interest blog.

By 3:30am, everyone had fallen asleep apart from the guardian hippo.

(2)

...or should I say Ron Paul. The previous post makes the case against Ron Paul as a champion of the libertarian faction of the US Republican party.

However, I shall be speaking about the US primary system and what Congressman Paul's campaign means at the Putney Debates tonight. I shall try to get a summary up over the weekend, either on Samizdata or here. The title of my talk is ‘Change at the Top: How the US Election Process Works and What are the Opportunities for Ron Paul?’ Details from here.

I shall also be continuing to cover the US primaries on my election blog.

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The Times yesterday reported on how well the Bible is now doing in China, both for Chinese readers and as yet another manufactured-in-China export:

One book a second glides off the production line at this joint venture between a Chinese Christian charity and the United Bible Societies, a Protestant organisation. Amity has been printing Bibles since 1986. The new factory will have a capacity of one million Bibles a month, increasing the current output by one third.

... Authorities at the officially approved Protestant and Catholic churches put the size of China’s Christian population at about 30 million. But that does not include the tens of millions more who worship in private at underground churches loyal to the Vatican or to various Protestant churches.

Of the 50 million Bibles Amity has printed, 41 million were for the faithful in Chinese and eight minority languages. The rest have been for export to Russia and Africa. Sales surged from 505,000 in 1988 to a high of 6.5 million in 2005. Output last year was 3.5 million and is expected to rise in 2007.

Does this mean that China will behave more nicely in the future than it is behaving now? An American commenter on the above piece reminds us that Christianity and niceness do not always go hand in hand:

After several visits to China I became concinced that if China ever turned ti the God of the Bible, God would bles that nation. It apears that China is turning and God is blessing. Will China become God's instrument in brnging destruction to a Western Civilization that is becoming increasigly athiest, immoral and blastphemus toward the God of the Bible?

And its spelling has not been improving lately, either.

God will not long toledrate a society that has denigrated His word and His Christ in ways that are so filthy that it is beyond imagining. God is going to judge America and China just might be that instrument. ...

Charming.

Speaking as one of the "athiest" and "blastphemus" ones, I do nevertheless concede that Christian congregations scattered around the landscape can do dramatically good things economically. Small groups of mostly decent people, constantly urged to refrain from frivolous consumer spending and to treat each other with kindly and thoughtful reciprocity, can become hugely productive. This in its turn causes others to join in, perhaps for rather less spiritual reasons than those which animated the prime movers, but in ways which also end up improving the newcomers morally, to the general betterment of economic life, among much else. So this process will surely strengthen the Chinese economy, provided only that it is allowed to take root.

But what will then be done with China's economic strength? Unlike Islam (which positively encourages it), Christianity offers little justification for war making. But by contributing mightily, in the indirect and rather surprising ways described above, to the making of the means to fight wars, it nevertheless does encourage warfare, indirectly. Christian powers have fought wars because they did become, almost in spite of themselves, Christian powers. They fought, in other words, and fight still, because they can.

If a somewhat Christianised China veers away from the warlike pattern set by the West, it will be because the weaponry of all-out war has recently become so much more destructive than was the case when the Christians were fighting most of their wars, rather than because Christianity has become any more persuasive at making people nicer to foreigners of whom they know little.

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Many of the Samizdatistas attended the Stockholm Network's Golden Umbrella Awards last night, an event that was described to me as the 'Free Market Oscars'. The intention is to encourage the people working in the varied pro-market think-tanks and advocacy groups around the world by acknowledging their contributions to the cause of liberty.

In truth I attended with moderate expectations as I have struggled to say awake through all too many award ceremonies, but was surprised at how well the event was managed and produced and although it may damage my credentials as a cynic, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Helen Disney, the Stockholm Network's CEO, is one of the most focused and appealing people on the free market scene and her team, such as Tim Evans (who as many of you know, also wears a Libertarian Alliance hat), should be congratulated on managing such a great event. The Master (Mistress, surely?) of Ceremonies was Dr. Karen Horn of the Cologne Institute for Economic Research and former economics editor for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She was an outstanding choice, attractive, witty and very engaging, thus setting a wonderful tone for the evening.

The after-dinner speech was delivered by C. Boyden Gray, the imposing US Ambassador to the EU. He is a terrific speaker and I found his less than flattering remarks about the US legal profession most endearing. There was very little to disagree with in his advocacy of reducing limits to free trade and he was frank about how this needs to happen on both sides of the Atlantic.

Another notably good speaker was Ján Čarnogurský, the former Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic. In fact the only speaker who hit the wrong note was Iain Duncan Smith MP, who launched into a defence of his own think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, although by the time he had finished speaking I still had no idea who he was defending it from or what the hell it actually does.

For details of who won what, see here, but the big winner of the evening was the Bulgarian think tank, the Institute for Market Economics, who walked away with two well deserved prizes. I was also delighted to see the very worthy UK based Taxpayers Alliance come away with an award. The TPA are like a fact-checking 'urban guerilla' organisation of thorn-in-the-side activists who have achieved results out of all proportion to the resources at their disposal.

I was quite struck by how young most of the think-tank and activist people in attendance were and that is surely a good thing.

The US Ambassador is an excellent speaker...



...and he towered over everyone! Seen here with Tural Veliyev of the Free Minds Association of Azerbaijan



Karen Horn and Cécile Phillipe, presenting an award to Richard Durana of the Institute of Economic and Social Studies in Slovakia



The delightful Cécile Phillipe, Director of the Molinari Economic Institute



Ján Čarnogurský is also an excellent speaker



Janet Daly is not someone I often agree with but I found little to disagree with last night



No, I am not going to put up any pictures of Iain Duncan Smith speaking



Big Pharma! Eye Catching Dresses!

(3)

Not much bloggage today because the Samizdatistas are... otherwise engaged tonight. We are at the Golden Umbrella Awards.

(6)

As we like to remind you every 5th of November, Guy Fawkes was the only man to ever enter Parliament with honest intentions...

(0)

Phone conversation just now with Alex Singleton:

Me: "I hear that yesterday was your birthday."

Alex: "Yes. I found out about it on Facebook."

Alex will be the main speaker at the Libertarian Alliance Conference dinner tomorrow evening at the National Liberal Club, in other words the star speaker of the entire event. An excellent choice for this task stroke honour, I think, and I am looking forward to hearing him very much.

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This year's Libertarian Alliance conference (London, Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 October) is exciting because it is the first one of a new era. In 2005, LA founder Chris Tame was looking frail, and in 2006, the conference included a memorial to him. In essence, they were times to remember past successes and remember the work of a great campaigner.

But now in 2007, it is time to look to the future. Thanks to initiatives like FreedomWeek and the rise of the blogosphere and Charlie Groome’s libertarian Facebook group, the movement is growing. Many people self-identify themselves on social networking sites as libertarian who in past times would have gone unnoticed and unconnected. Thriving student groups at Oxford and the LSE are bringing in youthful fresh blood. And new energy at the top of the LA from Tim Evans and Sean Gabb is having a huge effect in building up the membership.

So the conference this year will have lots of new faces, new enthusiasm and new talents. It's a place for the established hands to harness the new talent. And it’s a place for new ideas to be developed – and dare I say it, new plotting for the promotion of liberty.

Those of us who believe in freedom have seen many victories, from the collapse of exchange controls to the selling off of British industries to the smashing of the Berlin Wall. But there is so much more to achieve. The conference this year is a new day for the libertarian movement in the UK. Anyone who cares about liberty in the UK needs to be there. I have already committed to it – how about you? Click here for a booking form. And with limited places, send in your form now to avoid disappointment.

(2)

There is a very good week-long student conference happening again this year the Cambridge University. Called Freedom Week, and run by John-Paul Floru, it is:

An exciting one week free seminar where you will discuss, question and debate with some of the most renowned lecturers in free market thought. A unique opportunity to increase your knowledge on topics such as globalization, the environment, individual liberty and economic freedom, both philosophical and practical. A chance to build up a network with fellow students, think tanks and professors in an open and pleasant environment.

The conference runs from 16th to 20th July 2007 and includes full board free of charge. To apply for the seminar, send in an application as soon as possible containing: your CV (2 pages maximum); a statement as to why you would like to participate in the seminar of 200 words or less; a statement of 200 words or less about you career interests; other supporting evidence as to why you would be suitable to be included in the programme to John-Paul Floru.

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Nikki Giovanni found one of her Creative Writing students a trial.

"And every class I'm saying, 'Mr. Cho, take off your (sun)-glasses please, take your hat off please. Mr. Cho, that's not a poem. Can you work on it please,'" Giovanni recalled. "And then I finally realized that something is not wrong with me, something is wrong with him, and I said to him, 'I'm not a good teacher for you.'"

One day, she arrived and found her class of about 70 students had dwindled to fewer than 10. When she asked a student after class about it, he confessed that "everybody's scared of (Cho)." Giovanni later had him removed from her class after she threatened to resign.

In reality his memories of school were of humiliation, but imagine if, from the age of twelve onwards, or from even earlier if your imagination can stretch that far, school had been an option he could choose if he wanted it.

What if Cho's concepts of "school" and "college" had been formed by classes like the Karate class described by Brian Micklethwait?

What struck me, so to speak, about these "martial arts" classes was that although the children present may have supposed that all there were learning was how to be more violent, what they were really learning was no less than civilisation itself.

The children were all told to get changed into their Karate kit in an orderly fashion, and to put their regular clothes in sensible little heaps. They all lined up the way he said. They all turned up on time. They left the place impeccably clean when they'd finished, all helping to make sure that all was ship-shape and properly closed-up when they left.

Were these children being "coerced"? Certainly not. They didn't have to be there, any more than The Man had to teach them Karate if he didn't want to. If they wanted out, then out they could go, with no blots on their copybooks or markings-down on their CVs.

Having reached the age of twenty-three, Cho was no longer forced to be taught - but his teachers were still forced to teach him and his fellow students to associate with him. True, there were a few last ways out from his menacing presence; the students could jeopardise their education by skipping class and the teacher could jeopardise her career by threatening to resign. Unfortunately by the time these sanctions were employed Cho had already got away with too much.

I sometimes think that practically every problem, inefficiency and cruelty of our education system has at its root compulsion. People who are forced into each other's society tend not to behave well to each other. Wherever the doors are locked, be the locks visible or invisible, those inside seem to revert to the hierarchy of the baboon troop. There is still room for free will: most do no worse than learn a few habits of obsequiousness or sullenness that can be shaken off. Cho was not forced to become a mass-murderer. (In fact I see his own claim to the contrary in his video as a sort of twisted acknowledgement of this fact; the thought that "I don't have to do this" had to be actively denied.) No, he was not forced to pull the trigger - but force did play too large a part in his life. Imagine if the doors had been open for the bullied Cho Seung-hui to walk away, or if the adult Cho Seung-hui had been shown the door at the first sign of discourtesy. Imagine this was the case not just for Cho Seung-hui on certain pivotal occasions but for everyone on all occasions. Then, I think, he would have learned differently.

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"The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom."

He forced back force by the power of argument. His epitaph might be: the pen is mightier than the sword.

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Perry's posting on the Libertarian Alliance conference reminds me to tell you about two events, one indoors and one outdoors, that may appeal to those of a libertarian temperament or tendency.

First up: less an event, more of an individualist free-speech happening. Monthly mass lone demonstrations. You can not just go along though; you have to fill in a form first. Mark Thomas explains. [Overseas readers: do follow the link, you may be astonished to discover how speech is regulated in New Britain.]

The next occasion is next Wednesday.

Second: a plug for The Battle of Ideas run by the Institute of Ideas in Kensington on the weekend of the 28th/29th October, under the slogan "Free speech is allowed". I shall be taking part in what they are calling a Salon Debate ['salon' = 'small'?] on The Surveillance Society, but there are many other attacks on state control and the tyranny of received wisdom to be enjoyed.

After we conceived the festival, Prime Minister Tony Blair was calling for a ‘battle of ideas’ in response to the London bombings on 7/7. He knows a good slogan when he sees it, but unfortunately, many of the government’s policy proposals since then seem more about closing down debate than opening it up. Laws curtailing free expression, and a general climate of inoffensive conformism, are anathema to the IoI’s aim of creating a space in which issues can be openly argued over. The recent cartoons controversy shows what a live issue free speech is: free speech is not an abstract principle but is crucial for tackling the problems society faces. It is free speech that enables different interpretations of the world to be debated on their merits.

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This year's Libertarian Alliance Conference will be on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th November 2006, at the rather splendid National Liberal Club in London. Details and on-line booking can be found here, but a word of warning... the event is filling up quite quickly this year and the number of tickets is finite so if you want to come, book soon to avoid disappointment.

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Monday's Globalisation Institute event had Andrew Mitchell MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, speaking about trying to get African countries to be more open to trade, not just with the developed world (he said sub-Saharan Africa's share of world trade was only 2%, or a mere 0.6% if you do not count South Africa), but also to trade more between African nations. Currently African trade tariffs are amongst the highest in the world, leading to such absurdities as African countries imposing tariffs on Tanzanian-made anti-malarial bed nets. Mitchell described these correctly as quite literally 'killer tariffs'. So far so good.

Yet strangely the Right Honorable Member for Sutton Coldfield was also very keen to point out that taking an interest in African development is a cross party 'British' thing, not just a Tory thing and that his party fully supports increasing the amount of British taxpayers money the state wishes to generously give away in foreign aid to 0.7% of GDP. Why are Tories so desperate to make it clear that they represent continuity with Labour policies and sensibilities, even when addressing a room with a very high proportion of free marketeers? Mitchell was positively effervescent with enthusiasm about the stream of new and creative ideas being generated by Tory thinkers on the subject of international aid and yet I came away with the sense that this was just tantamount to saying "we have new and innovative ways to give away your tax-money and 'engage' with NGOs because we are just as clever as new Labour at thinking up ways to do that!". Be still my beating heart.

In short the event did little to change my thinking about the pointlessness of Andrew Mitchell's party. But like all GI events, the company was congenial, the champagne delightfully cold and the venue most agreeable...

(5)

Last night, I snapped photos at the Globalisation Institute gathering at the Foreign Press Association, Carlton House Terrace, just off Trafalgar Square. Alex Singleton used a few of the snaps I took at the GI Blog, and several more of my snaps have also already appeared at Guido Fawkes.

Said Guido:

The totty quotient was high . . .

Indeed it was. Here are some further snaps that Guido might have used, but didn't.

It was an impressive gathering, high both in quantity and quality of attendees, all chatting away merrily and sipping pink champagne.

Also. a bloke spoke:

The bloke, a Conservative Shadow Minister, spoke about how free trade in Africa would be a good thing. NGO persons and other enemies prowled about, gnashing their fangs and wondering how to denounce this well-disposed and well-organised event. Potential donors also mingled, impressed. The GI is definitely going places.

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For information on the public meeting on Regulation of Investigative Powers Act consultations, check out Blogzilla.

(44)

I attended the Emergency Event at the London School of Economics which was publicised by Perry earlier this week entitled "Freedom of Speech: Who cares what Muslims think". There was a very small but vocal contingent of Samizdata supporters, agreeing with Claire Fox's defence of the freedom of speech. The excellent chairman of the debate between Claire Fox and Sajjid Khan was fair and impartial.

Many of the Muslims who commented during the debate stated their pain at the publication of the cartoons. It was clear that, despite the long period in time from the initial publication of the cartoons to the demonstrations, Muslims argued that this was a trespass upon the sacred. It was hard to gauge whether this reaction stemmed from belief or obligation, as the orthodox approach to the cartoons had now been established.

Whilst Claire Fox located recent infringements and restrictions on free speech in the developments of left-wing politics from the 1970s, especially political correction and speech codes, Sajjid Khan said that there was a sphere of the sacred surrounding Mohammed. No person should ridicule, publish or draw Mohammed. In the first instance, non-Muslims should practice self-censorship in this regard, but the preferred tool for policing the sacred sphere was the law. He stated that respect for Islam would join other shared goals such as social justice and taking my money to care for the poor. Khan criticised Blair but he was quite clear that he did not want to change the system itself, only those who pulled the levers, so that respect for Islam would become a legitimate objective of a democratic society.

Claire Fox argued that it was possible to hold a dialogue between Muslims and those whose default position supported liberty. This was not true in the debate. Our values are incommensurable as many Muslims clearly support using the law, if changed, to coerce my freedom of expression. The law would be used to prevent me from freely expressing myself on the subject of Mohammed, if I chose to do so, and rights of trespass on the sacred space would surely be decided by Muslims themselves, not by me.

It is a depressing conclusion, since I had hoped that there could be common ground here on shared notions of liberty. That will not stop me trying, since this is one of the most important issues that we face. What matters is how individuals, whether Muslim or non-Muslim act, not those who would speak for or bind us all into simplified collectives called Islam or the West.

UPDATE

Adloyada argues that Sajjid Khan is, in fact, a member of Hizb ut Tahrir and presents compelling evidence.

Sajjad Khan, a prominent member of Hizb who runs classes on the group's ideology and has delivered speeches at the group's congresses, said: 'Most of our members are graduates who work and pay taxes. Very few of them are unemployed or rely on state benefits.' A finance and IT specialist, he said he had worked for a number of large companies, including Tesco.

Khan certainly did not declare this affiliation.

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This looks like it could be interesting!

London School of Economics
6pm Friday 17th February 2006
Room D702

Head-to-Head
"Freedom of speech: Who cares what Muslims think?"
Sajjad Khan vs. Claire Fox

Sajjad Khan
Editor of New Civilisation Magazine - A quarterly publication providing a unique perspective on Islamic political thinking to the western world, initiated as a unique forum to debate and discuss issues relating to Islamic political discourse seeking to do away with the tired labels of fundamentalist or moderate and instead engage with people holding a concerted rational opinion on these matters from all shades of the political spectrum: left, right and centre.

vs.

Claire Fox
Director of The Institute of Ideas. Its mission is to expand the boundaries of public debate. It is committed to scientific and social experimentation, intellectual ambition and curiosity. Embracing change and making history. Art for art's sake, knowledge for its own sake, and education as an end in itself. Freedom. To think, to act, to say what needs saying - even if it offends others. Challenging irrational social panics. Open and robust debate, in which ideas can be interrogated, argued for and fought over. Civil liberties, with no ifs or buts.

(8)

If you are free tomorrow evening and wish to sing carols in aid of Iraqi children and enjoy a spontaneous demonstration of faith, hope, joy and/or religious tolerance in defiance of Section 132 of the Serious and Organised Crimes and Police Act 2005, please check out Bloggerheads.

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Like Brian Micklethwait, I have been at the annual conference of the Libertarian Alliance , held at the National Liberal Club, a glorious Victorian building erected at a time when Britain's ruling Liberal Party (formerly the Whigs) was genuinely liberal in the classical sense of that word. Among the topics to fuel the mind: libertarian approaches to the environment, a debate about whether limited-liability companies were a good thing; the contribution to libertarian thought of Ayn Rand and reflections on private enterprise and defence. An excellent collection of subjects.

As some regular readers will know, the founder and director of the L.A., Chris R. Tame, has been fighting cancer and made a great effort to be present throughout the entire conference. Anyone who knows and admires this clever, generous and tenacious man will not be surprised at his determination not only to set up this conference but also to set in train plans for future events. He received a surprise award celebrating his achievements on Saturday night's banquet, and no-one deserved it more. Without Chris, it is probable that Britain's present libertarian movement would not exist, and I don't think I am writing out of turn in doubting whether Samizdata would be quite what it is now, either.

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I have just spent the day at Liberty 2005, the Libertarian Alliance run conference being held over this weekend at the magnificent National Liberal Club. As well as listening attentively, I snapped photos.

Here is speaker number three today, Syed Kamall MEP, in action:

And here is Gabriel Calzada who will be first up tomorrow morning:

Syed was most impressive, and I am confident Gabriel will be too. No time to elaborate now on what is actually being said at this gathering, but I hope I will manage to later.

These two pictures, and another eighteen, at my place.

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As already reported here, there are two conferences of possible interest to Samizdata readers this coming weekend, Novermber 19th-20th, in London.

There is this one about the theory and practice of Rational Selfishness. And (as already reported here) there is the one I will rationally and selfishly be attending myself: Liberty 2005: The Annual London Conference of the Libertarian Alliance and the Libertarian International.

The reason that I mention this latter gathering in particular today is that now is just about the last moment for booking yourself in to the banquet on the Saturday night. Sean Gabb needs to know by Wednesday at the very latest (so best to make that this evening) so that the National Liberal Club (a fantastic, must see before you die building, by the way) can be told the number of guests to cater for. If past versions of it are anything at all to go by, this banquet will be an excellent occasion, and a splendid opportunity to socialise with libertarians from all over the planet, so if you want to be there, email Sean Gabb now.

Turning up on the day on the day to hear all the speakers, waving banknotes, is okay, and you will be made very welcome if you do that. But for the banquet, if you have not already booked, it is now or never.

Sean tells me that the Conference is already sure to break even, but the more the merrier. It is a big place, as well as a great looking one.

By the way, unless I am much mistaken, the relevant stretch of the Circle and District Underground line will not be in action (see para 5) over this weekend. Watch out for that.

(9)

We may be wandering through a vast desert of stupidity, monstrosity and petty tyranny but never forget that there are some oases of sanity still to be found.

One of them will blossom into life next month when the Libertarian Alliance Conference opens in London. True to tradition, the Conference features an impressive array of brilliant speakers who will deliver their pearls of wisdom to an audience of the enlightened. It is bound to be a uplifting experience.

Book now and book with gusto. Your salvation may depend on it.

(7)

At last! A how-to seminar for friends of freedom and limited government: the Cato Institute's October 20-23 seminar on "How to Win Arguments, Win Allies, and Win Friends".

A free republic rests on an informed citizenry, but more important, it rests on a citizenry willing to resort to persuasion rather than force. And for freedom to persist, freedom's advocates must acquire the skills of advocacy.

October's Cato University is a weekend long intellectual feast where you can make new friends, renew your commitment to freedom, and hone your skills as an exponent for liberty.

Speakers include Reason's Nick Gillespie, the Objectivist Center's David Kelley, Don Boudreaux of George Mason University, the Cato Institute's David Boaz, Gene Healy, and Tom Palmer, among others.

Sessions will be held in the F. A. Hayek Auditorium of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., as well as at the historic home of George and Martha Washington, Mount Vernon, just across the river from Washington in Alexandria.

(8)

Samizdata editor Adriana is going to be in New York and is looking for hook up with some of the Big Apple's blognoscenti for a 'geek dinner' along the lines of previous successful geekfests.

Does that sound interesting to you? Well then take a look at this wiki which has just been set up and invite yourself!

(9)

I attended the GI launch last night, and Alex Singleton turned me loose as the kind of semi-official photographer of the event, and has used some crowd shots I took, and also pictures I did of Bill Emmott and Alan Beattie (who is also quoted here).

Glad to be of use. But what really got my attention last night was the number of nice looking women who were present. Johnathan Pearce is fond of mentioning P. J. O'Rourke's Law of Babes, or whatever it is called, which goes something like: Wheresoever the Babes are, there shall also the Action be. Tom Wolfe's description of how the Babes managed to track down the men test flying jets in the top secret desert of western USA in the early 1950s, in The Right Stuff, is an earlier exposition of the same law.

Judged by this standard, the GI Institute is doing pretty well. Here are eight nice looking ladies, and one genuine baby type babe just for good luck, and because he/she was there. (Cranking out more of those being a lot of what this is all about, after all.)

   

   

   

   

And those are only the ones I got reasonably good photos of. I can recall at least two more ladies who only missed the cut because I did not get good photos of them. So if you are a fully certified Gorgeous Babe and you were there, please do not be offended. You just came out all blurry in all my photos, on account of my chin hanging down and hitting the focussing nob.

Click to get bigger pictures, some of which include extraneous males of the species. Cropping such photos is always a controversial matter.

(4)

Today's reason for light blogging is that the Samizdata editors are in Paris(!) attending a blogging conference Les Blogs. Blogging is making some waves in France and this conference is truly international, bloggers from 20 countries are present. We have met many a blogger we have known virtually and putting faces to blogs is always an interesting experience.

For those who are interested in the blog trends and biz, head over to the Big Blog Company blog for some furious blogging of the conference.

(17)

While driving down Virginia's crowded Route 28 this afternoon, I heard a radio spot from our good friends at UNICEF that almost caused me to drive right off the road. The announcer solemnly intoned that with your help, UNICEF would create "a tsunami of love, a tsunami of hope" for children affected by the Dec. 26th disaster in the east Indies.

A "tsunami of love?" Even if these people have their hearts in the right places, just how tone-deaf is this organization? Apart from the fact that "tsunami of love" sounds like it could be the title of a song by Def Leppard, who actually thought that this was clever? Somehow, I cannot imagine soldiers liberating the German death camps of WWII telling prisoners, "We are going to build you a concentration camp of compassion!" or Amnesty International offering "a gulag of love" to political prisoners.

UNICEF must have gotten complaints about this, because the downloadable version of the ad available on their website now says "a wave of love." Which isn't a huge improvement, actually.

Of course, that still is not as bad as this Seattle Times column, from Saturday which dismisses tsunami victims as "clutter" apparently worthy of a tsunami of scorn for deigning to develop beaches into tourist attractions.

(A tip o' the hat to Jesse Walker of Reason Online for the Seattle Times link.)

(7)

Identity cards are a cause of much controversy here in the UK, and are especially hated by Samizdata writers. Next week, on Tuesday 18 January, there will be a roundtable discussion on identity cards, held at the Adam Smith Institute in London. Speakers will include Peter Lilley MP (former Secretary of State for Social Security), Sarah Arnott (journalist at the IT industry newspaper, Computing), Seamus Heffernan (Civitas) and others to be confirmed. The event will start at 6:15pm for 6:30pm, at 23 Great Smith Street, London SW1, and will be followed by a champagne reception. If you would like to reserve a place, please e-mail events@adamsmith.org.

(6)

The Adam Smith Institute will be hosting an event called Democracy & the Blogosphere next Tuesday 16th November. The speakers will be Stephen Pollard, William Heath, Sandy Starr and yours truly.

The event is 'jacket and tie' at 6:15pm and will be followed by a reception at the ASI at 23 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BL

Anyone who would like to come along should send an e-mail for an invitation.

(0)

The Adam Smith Institute is hosting an evening seminar on the subject of 'Democracy and the Blogosphere' on Tuesday 16 November in London. Speakers will include Samizdata.net's Perry de Havilland, New Labour journo Stephen Pollard, Spiked's Sandy Starr, and William Heath (chaiman of Kable, the publishers of Government Computing). There will be a champagne reception at the end of the formal proceedings - an opportunity to mingle with the great and the good of the British blogging world. But space is limited, so book early to avoid disappointment.

(19)

Tonight I attended a very interesting event hosted by the Adam Smith Institute which commemorated the 25th anniversary of the abolition of exchange controls. Speaking at this dinner were Lord Howe and Lord Lawson, the people actually responsible for the action which set off a cascade of events not just in Britain but across the world. This in no small measure led to the second age of globalisation in which we live today. The third speaker, acting as the warm up act and comic relief, was yours truly.

(1)

Last evening I enjoyed a pleasant evening chatting to old friends at a reception held at the Institute of Economic Affairs in honour of great Victorian author, Samuel Smiles. His most famous work, Self Help, became a best seller, not just in Britain but also around the world.

It is, in fact, probably the great grandaddy of self help books. Go into any bookshop today and you will see shelves crammed with books showing you how to get rich, be healthier, happier, deal with relationships, and so forth. In fact, the spread of liberal ideas will be limited unless people also take the opportunity to liberate their own potential. Reading Smiles is a reminder that there is more, much more to ideas than the pure political realm.

After a long period of neglect, I hope this great book will win back the respect it deserves.

(9)

David Carr may have given up cigarettes but he still likes a good cigar.

Here he is, pictured at my place on Friday night, pondering the enigma wrapped in a mystery smothered in something else which I have forgotten that is Russia. This was the subject spoken about by Helen Szamuely (co-author of this blog � here is her latest, posted this morning).

Click on David if you want him to be bigger.

(24)

Last night many Samizdatistas heading for Aldwych as the 2004 Big Brother Awards were held at the London School of Economics. The list of winners, who are in fact losers, can be found here1.

Simon Davies of Privacy International is the driving force behind the Big Brother Awards...

The stout lads from No2ID were out in force...

About 450 people turned up to heckle cheer...

This was probably the best propaganda shirt I saw!
The left has always been good at that sort of thing

1 = Update: The link to the Big Brother Award details has been changed, which is not very clever. Link updated to a somewhat less informative page.

(66)

The annual London Gay Pride march took place earlier today.

Typically, I pay no heed to the occasion. This is partly due to the fact that I have no strong feelings about it one way or the other but also because it has now become just another piece in the cultural jigsaw of London life. A part of the social furniture really.

However, now into my 3rd year as a blogger, I find that I have a heightened sense of curiosity so I wandered over to have a look at the promotional website.

I rather regret bothering to do so as it makes excrutiating reading. Apparently as much devoted to disabled and asylum-seeker 'rights' as homosexual ones, every page drips with exquisitely pitched right-on-ness. In fact such is the extent of the dogmatically po-faced sincerity that some of it is unintentionally hilarious. For example, the line up of guest speakers includes:

Ida Barr, artificial hip hop from Music Hall Veteran and Rally Compere.

Now that means that Ms Barr plays hip hop music that is not genuine or does it mean that she merely hops around on an artificial hip? If the latter, then that is not what I call entertainment.

Julie Felix, singing against inequality, injustice and war for the last 40 years.

Clearly the number one choice when you really need to get the party swinging.

Wesley Gryk, Solicitor for the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group Gay Asylum seeker.

If I made up a group called 'Gay Asylum seeker' (and I consider myself somewhat remiss for not having done so) then not only would I not be believed but I would also be pilloried for exaggeration and hate speech.

There is no mention anywhere of any stop-the-war or anti-globo ranters but given their leech-like ability to latch themselves onto any passing warm-blooded creatures it would not surprise me in the least to find out that a whole sackload of them had tagged along for the ride as well.

There is nothing here about pride, much less freedom of association or individual sovereignty. This is all about group-think and the fostering of grievance cultures. What was once an understandable public protest against unjustifiable persecution has become a portmanteau of victimologies. It is as if the organisers are seeking to stitch together some coalition of alleged unfortunates with the thread of an earnestly cultivated sense of self-pity.

There was a time (and not all that long ago either) when homosexual men in this country were unfairly treated by the state so I fail to understand what is so attractive about revelling in an alleged pariah status that is demonstrably no longer the case. If homosexuals who are inclined to buy into this sophistry could learn to chuck it off and just live their lives, then that really would be a liberation.

(33)

One reason for the limited output of bloggage from some of us tonight was that several of us went to an extremely well attended party. This was hosted by the Adam Smith Institute in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the start of the Thatcher Revolution. The event at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London.

It is easy today to look back and scoff at what went wrong in those days, but those of us who lived through the steady economic and social collapse wrought by the likes of Jim Callaghan, Harold Wilson and Ted Heath, I have no hesitation describing what Thatcher presided over, which was nothing less than turning the tide of socialism, as a glorious revolution.

We are older and wiser now and all too aware of the missed opportunities and wrong turns of that era, but credit where credit is due. The future could have been very much darker indeed without Margaret Thatcher.

Update: More pictures on the Adam Smith Institute blog

(6)

I am in my kitchen, reporting on one of my last-Friday-of-the-month meetings. It is still in full swing. Most of the London events you read about on Samizdata are booze-ups at Perry's, and at my meetings, there is also booze. From 9.30 pm until around midnight the drink flows and the conversation bubbles merrily, and I can hear it bubbling now. But there is also, always, an agenda. Starting at 8 pm, and proceeding until 9.30 pm, there is a speaker lead discussion.

I have been hosting these things since the late 1980s, and there a moment, a few years back, when I was finding them something of a drag to organise. Only the enormous inconvenience that would necessarily have continued, every last Friday of the month, even if I had stopped holding these meetings, in the form of regulars knocking on my door and demanding entry to a non-existent event and then having to be diverted (which might not be much fun) or told to go away (which might not be wise or kind), persuaded me to persist with these events. But then along came email, to the point where even I had it, and now they pretty much run themselves. I fix a speaker, email everyone on the list on about the Tuesday telling them of exactly who will say approximately what on the Friday, and of any other future meetings that have already been fixed. (Speakers for July and November are now settled, but nothing else is certain as yet, other than that someone will speak.)

Tonight, Sean Gabb spoke about "Demography and History". He is the second from the right in the picture, with our own David Carr lending an ear in the foreground. The guy in the corner is Bruce, a real photographer, who would have done a far better picture, but with him as with me, you get what you pay for, photographically speaking.

When Sean speaks about current affairs, he is always interesting, but so are most of us. We all have worthwhile opinions about what is happening now. But when it comes to speaking about the whys and wherefores of the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in the Sixth Century or for that matter about the history of Eastern Europe in the years before the outbreak of the First World War, Sean is, in the London libertarian scene, in a class of his own. Not being burdened with false modesty, Sean was recording his talk, on his laptop computer, and I understand that it will be available on the Internet. He had to leave promptly at 9.30 pm to catch his train down to the South Coast where he now lives, so I can not be sure of the details of this, but I will supply a link to his talk as soon as I can, and maybe some more comment on it.

The most interesting thing I learned this evening was the existence of an entire class of historical event such as I had never previous known existed. I refer to the plague induced toppling of a culturally distinct poltical elite. The Eastern Roman empire was presided over by a Greek speaking elite. Every city and town of the Empire was run by this tiny handful of Greek speakers. But the plagues of the 540s and onwards destroyed the influence of these elites. Whereas they had previously sustained themselves by recruiting a constant flow of new recruits from among the ranks of the upwardly mobile barbarians, the plague put a stop to that. Suddenly, there were no Greek teachers to train up these new recruits. The elites were both halved in size, and unable to replenish their ranks. Thus the Greek Empire disintegrated. I think I have that about right. (By the way, many moons ago I posted here a rather fanciful speculation about what caused these plagues.)

I feel no great shame at not knowing this stuff about the Eastern Roman Empire, but just before Sean had to leave to catch his train, I had the extreme good fortune to ask about another famous plague, namely the Black Death, the great mid-fourteenth-century plague that killed about a third of the population of Europe, including about a third of the population of England. And it turned out that something rather similar happened here. The "Empire" didn't collapse, exactly, but the English elite, as a result of the Black Death, abruptly ceased to speak French, and switched to English. The same cultural conveyor belt that had suddenly stopped working throughout the Eastern Roman Empire, did the same in England. Again, I think I have that about right, and what I want to say here is: (a) I never knew that, and (b) how extremely interesting. I have read quite a lot about the economic, and hence political, impact of the Black Death on England, in terms of the relative power of the elites and the masses. But I never knew that about the elite talking French, and then suddenly stopping.

As he said himself, Sean did not say much that was distinctively libertarian, distinctively pro-liberty. He concentrated on how an understanding of population trends illuminates our understanding of history. But on the other hand, nor did he say anything un-libertarian. I was a little nervous that the title, including as it did the word "Demography", might entice here all manner of political creepy-crawlies, but I only spotted one, and he was not actually that bad, although that may have been because he was so heavily outnumbered.

(20)

I have been to a marvelous party and now I am back.

The marvelous party was the CNE Capitalist Ball, held at the Belgian Stock Exchange in central Brussels.

Now before I go any further here, I have a confession to make. Two confessions, in fact. Last Thursday, I referred to Brussels as the 'Heart of Darkness'. Well, I was wrong about that. I also suspected that I was going to find myself in Brussels amid a room full of musty, fusty academics plus a few corporate types and policy wonks. I was wrong about that too.

In fact, my travelling companion and fellow Samizdatista Antoine Clarke and I found ourselves in sumptuous surroundings with hundreds of European, British and American glitterati and illuminati from the worlds of business, finance, politics, journalism and academia. In other words, lots of clever, interesting men and lots of clever, interesting and head-turningly lovely women. They were smart, young, chic, funny and sexy.

The belles are ringing for capitalism

Imagine how much fun you could have with those kind of people mixed with lashings of the finest food, alcohol and tobacco that money can buy and a sixteen-piece swing band? Well, it was even more fun than that. If you don't believe me then see the pictures below.

But the pictures can only convey a part of the whole. What they cannot really convey is the atmosphere. Yes, it was sexy but it was something more than sexy too. It was mingled with that kind of giddy excitement that comes from being in the company of winners.

That is the impression I am left with. These clever, dynamic people are in the process of straightening out an entire continent and I cannot imagine any obstacle being enough to deter them or get in their way for long enough to even slow them down. If history possesses even a modicum of common sense then it will get on their side. Quickly.

I want to go again. In fact, I want to go again right now. Sadly, I am going to have to wait another year.

I will let you go to the photo-fest now but, before you rush off, I just want to say a few words about my hosts, the Centre for New Europe. Not only did they organise this weekends event (and for that alone they would deserve global plaudits) but it is the CNE that is networking all these brilliant free-market campaigners, writers, doers and thinkers and bringing into together so that they get to know each other and trade their ideas and strategies. That is real progress. Bloggers like me may talk a lot about changing things but the crew at the CNE are out there actually changing things.

No-one, least of all me, is going to even try to pretend that Europe does not have its serious and structural problems but if that continent is going to be saved at all from terminal and ruinous decline, then it is the CNE that is most likely to save it.

A couple of interns

A terrific French band playing American swing music in front of a
New York skyline backdrop! French anti-Americanism? Pah!

Tall, glamourous Texan woman with short, drunk, unglamourous British man

Gawain Towler (editor of The Sprout) and his wife Joslin

Stephen Pollard and friend.

Plenty of bright, young things in attendance

A very charming Phd student from California

And now for a few words about Brussels. I was unjustified in referring to it as the 'Heart of Darkness' but not entirely off the mark. Anywhere that hosts the European Commission and a clutch of similar toxic bureaucratic monoliths deserves a bit of a battering. But there is more to Brussels than that.

The Grand Platz of Brussels

Away from the soulless, modernist horror blocks are towering and inspirational monuments to the old Flemish mercantile traditions upon which the city was built. It is still a very prosperous place. Walking around the city centre, I lost count of the number and choice of high-quality retail outlets, restaurants, cafes and bars. There is also a bustling, commercial quality to the atmosphere that gives Brussels quite a buzz.

Of course, two days is nowhere near long enough to get an accurate impression of what it would be like to live in a place. But it is long enough to dispel this caricature notion of Europe being a socialist hell-hole as compared to the English-speaking world. If only thing were that cut and dried. They are not. Certainly we do some things better in Britain but there are also very many areas in which I think the Belgians are doing things better than we are. I hope we can learn the good things from each other and I hope to be taking another trip to Brussels quite soon.

(15)

Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist gave a lecture this evening (this was posted after midnight but still that same evening - ed) at the Adam Smith Institute in London. A number of the Samizdatistas were there. Lomborg's arguments are familiar to those who have read his book, but it was a rapid, powerful, to the point speech in which he demolished many of the arguments of the "The world is facing impending environmental collapse" school of Greenery with ruthless efficiency. His ten minute demolition of the case for the Kyoto accord was particularly impressive.

Lomborg walked on stage wearing a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, and looked just like the thirtysomething Greenpeace member and quintissential Nordic person of more traditional environmentalist views he once apparently was. He spoke with a rapid intensity, clearly wanted to get a lot out in the relatively short time he had for the lecture. And perhaps the rapidity of speech was covering up a certain natural shyness, but if so this was mixed in with what was clearly a burning desire to get his message out.

Lomborg told the familiar story of how he found himself in this position.

In 1997 he found an article in Wired magazine profiling the American economist Julian Simon, who argued that in most ways the Earth's environment was improving and not (as conventional wisdon suggested) getting worse. It explained that Simon had studied a great many environmental trends, and observed that in most instances things were getting better and not worse. Pollution was a much less serious problem than was the case 100 years ago, for instance. While we were using mineral resources, our technological abilities to extract the same resources were advancing at a faster rate than our resource use, so that the level of untapped resources available to us was increasing, rather than us running out. And many other similar things.

Oddly enough, I read the same article myself in 1997, and it helped me to clarify these kinds of issues in my mind too. My response was to buy and read some of Simon's books, particularly his impressively researched and argued The State of Humanity, which addressed many of the most important trends in great detail.

Whereas I merely used the article to clarify my own views, Lomborg went further. He initially thought that Simon's work was "right wing crap" but was sufficiently moved by it to make an honest attempt to disprove it. As it happened, though, the opposite happened, and he ended up becoming a convert instead. Simon was in most instances right. Lomborg set his students on the problem, studying monumental amounts of environmental data and ending up with broadly the same conclusions himself. Environmental trends were generally positive. And having done this, Lomborg felt the need to tell the whole world, so he wrote his own book, covering many of the same issues as Simon's earlier works, but more up to date and covering even more ground.

Lomborg has been attacked by many people since then. The perception that the world is going to hell in a handbasket is widespread in people's minds and in the media, and this perception is very hard to shake, regardless of how well you argue the point. Lomborg has been criticised, mocked, physically attacked, denounced by the slightly Orwellian sounding "Danish Committee for Scientific Dishonesty" (in a decision later overturned by a higher Danish authority) and more, but what his opponents have singularly failed to do is to engage him in any kind of serious argument. In many cases he has simply been treated as being beyond the pale, which has of course simply meant that his opponents have then felt no need to argue with him.

Which in a way is curious, because what Lomborg argues is actually extremely moderate. For one thing, he only uses data from widely accepted sources, often the UN and generally the same data used by environmentalists themselves. He does not argue that there are no environmental problems and that we should rape and pillage the environment with impunity, but instead argues simply that we should apply intelligent cost and benefit analysis before spending money on environmental issues. We should not assume that technology will remain static. It will continue to improve, and our ability to solve environmental policies, and to find and exploit resources, will improve with this.

Much environmental policy is based on the idea that (as Lomborg puts it) there is a metaphorical gun to our heads. The environmental situation is perceived as being so bad that we must do anything and everything that we possibly can immediately and that this is too important to even think about the costs of our actions before doing them. This would be fine if we had an infitite amount of money, but we do not. If we spend them in one place, we then don't have them to spend somewhere else. Like with almost anything else, our resources are finite and we shoud spend them where spening them will do the most good.

The aforementioned arguments on Kyoto are of this form. Lomborg does not attempt to argue that global warming is not real, or that it is not caused by mankind's carbon emissions. However, rather than going from there to assuming worst case scenarios, he then looks at the foundation of those worst case scenarios. These are based on the assumption that we will continue to use fossil fuels for almost all our energy needs. However, this is not likely, as technology is evolving. Relatively modest technological improvements in the efficiency and cost of other energy sources (principally solar cells) will ultimately lead to substitution and the result will be a worst case increase in temperature of perhaps 2 degrees Celcius (before temperature begins to decline again) rather than the five to ten degree increase that comes from cruder assumptions, and which is often quoted. The net effects of this on humanity will be moderate, as there will be benefits of increased temperatures in temperate parts of the world as well as negatives in hotter parts of the world. And the effects of these negatives on agricultural production for instance are likely to be small compared with dramatically improved agricultural production due to better agricultural technology.

As a response to this, the Kyoto Protocol is incredibly expensive in the short term, but relatively ineffective. Rather than prevent global warming, all it is likely to do is to delay what global warming will occur slightly rather than prevent it. And very slightly. By 2100, all that will be achieved is to delay global warming by six years.

If Kyoto was completely implemented, the costs of this in the short term will be around $150bn to $350bn per year. For one year of this, we could provide clean drinking water for everyone in the world, which would save millions of lives per year. Then we could solve another problem the next year, and another the next. For instance, we could instead spend the money on better research into renewable energy sources. A relatively small increase in such spending would likely reduce global warming in the long run by far more than the simple cut in energy consumption dictated by Kyoto. The point is that our technology level is not stable. Technology improves, and this dramatically improves our ability to deal with environmental issues. And before we do such a thing as implement Kyoto, we should at least consider these issues. What are the costs? What are the benefits? How much does each likely life saved cost? Is it possible to save lives somewhere else more cheaply? Rather than panic, this sort of analysis is surely necessary.

But ultimately this is not the place to exhaustively discuss Lomborg's arguments directly. If you haven't read his book, do so. The point is simply that Lomborg is arguing that this kind of cost and benefit analysis argument is necessary to best solve our environmental problems. Sound economic analysis should be applied to environmental policy, as it should be applied to many other things. When you do this, even with the possibly pessimistic data provided by environmentalists, handling our environmental problems appears well within our capabilities.

As Lomborg explained in the question and answer session after the lecture, his opponents have singularly failed to address what he as said on its merits. The report of the 'Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty' simply declared him to be guilty, without providng any reasons. Nobody has been willing at all to go through his arguments point by point and attempt to refute them, either because they know they can not, or because they are already so certain of their sense of environmental doom and gloom that they consider it unnecessary to try. In short, none of his opponents have been willing to attempt to do to Lomborg what he himself attempted to do to the arguments of Julian Simon. They do at least owe him that, although they do not seem to realise this at all.

Lomborg seemed actually quite encouraged by this. He was asked whether he thought he could win the argument, and he said that he thought that the shrill quality of his opponents, and their unwillingness to argue facts was beginning to show. I hope he is right. Certainly he has been more successful than Julian Simon ever was at getting his argument out. And when you see him, you can tell why. Lomborg is not a 'scary right wing American', but has precisely the quality of sincerity and genuine concern that a lot of his opponents like to believe that they have a monopoly on. And this, more than anything is why I think they find him so threatening.

(12)

I'm hoping to enter the Hastings Weekend Chess Congress at the first weekend after the New Year. I have never previously been to the entry point to the UK of Perry de Havilland's marauding ancestors. They were among the (so far) most successful gang of 11th century "asylum seekers".

In order of Anglosphere fame I suppose Hastings ranks as:

1. The place where the Norman Conquest happened. And since I spent much of yesterday enduring endless processions of fairweather English rugby fans parading around central London, pretending they know what a three-quarter line is, and I lost money on France to win the rugby world cup, I remind Anglo-Saxons that the battle was the most decisive result between the two countries.
   [I feel better already!]
   
2. Captain Hastings, the nice but dim sidekick of Agatha Christie's fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The main problem being that most Belgians I have met are either extremely racist (so would not live in London), or have not got as many grey cells as Hastings between them. Or both.
   
3. The site of the most famous chess tournament ever - the 1895 Hastings Christmas Tournament, and the scene of one of the all-time classic matches: former world champion Wolfgang Wilhelm Steinitz versus Curt von Bardeleben. On Black's 25th move, von Bardeleben, in Prussian fashion, realising that the situation was lost, is said to have got up without a word, put on his hat and walked back to his hotel, leaving his clock to run down and lose on time default. I enclose this link from a Brazilian web site still raving about the game over 100 years later. I googled 295 references to this one game.
   My immediate concern is to get my entry in before the late entry penalty and to find a bed and breakfast to stay in Hastings on the two nights of January 2nd and 3rd. Any advice gratefully accepted.

After that it will be time to prepare some tactical plays for the tournament itself: and exhausting schedule of one match ending on Friday night at 11pm, then three matches on Saturday running from 9.30am to 11pm pm, and another two matches on Sunday that I haven't even begun to worry about.

No kidding: I shall be doing some weight training over the next few weeks just to help with my stamina. (I can hear Adriana sniggering already) I shall also be re-freshing my familiarity with a few opening sequences. My nightmare would be a repeat of a 1995 match in Mill Hill against the then London under 8 year old champion, a certain David Ho. My favourite win posted online to date is this one, a tough positional game against a Minnesota amateur.

(11)

The conference of the Libertarian Alliance and Libertarian International will be in London starts tomorrow and it is not too late to come if you wish. It last from Saturday 22nd to Sunday 23rd November 2003. It is possible to register and pay on-line.

The speakers include fellow Samizdatista David Carr and serial Samizdata commenter Paul Coulam.

I hope to meet up with a few of you there.

(7)

The European Conference of the Libertarian Alliance and Libertarian International will be in London from Saturday 22nd to Sunday 23rd November 2003.

The speakers include fellow Samizdatista David Carr and serial Samizdata commenter Paul Coulam.

(6)

Tonight many of the Samizdata.net, White Rose and the Big Blog Company bloggers will be attending a seminar about blogging being hosted at the Houses of Parliament in London.

It will be interesting to meet fellow members of the Blogerati in such a different context.

In case some of the people attending did not get the message, the time has been changed to slightly later (now 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm), and the venue is now the Grand Committee Room in order accommodate the larger than expected demand for seats. Entry as before will be via St Stephens Entrance, Houses of Parliament.

(13)

Q: What is the difference between a social democrat and a socialist?

A: A social democrat is a socialist who has realised the socialism doesn't actually work.

A perfect illustration is provided by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, the very model of a modern social democrat, who has announced that things must change:

If we want to generate growth and jobs, we must lower those costs that eat into take-home pay.

Financial constraints are not the only driving force behind our reform programme. The reform of the welfare state is also a precondition for the success of future generations. In the past, the main topic of welfare politics was the redistribution of wealth. First, we must remember that wealth can only be redistributed once it has been generated. Second, we should note that redistribution has limits, beyond which mere monetary transfers encourage dependence. Third, elaborate systems of redistribution tend to produce "side-effects" in opposition to the desired results.

Do my eyes deceive me or is this doyen of the 'Third Way' demanding tax cuts and warning of the dangers of a dependence culture and unintended consequences? No, I think I am reading it right and if Herr Schroder keeps this up he might find himself being invited to write for the Samizdata one of these days.

And neither is this manful attempt to grapple with common sense a breaking of the ranks or a solo frolic in the fields of sanity because I could not help but notice that it follows hot on the heels of this rather more nebulous and ill-defined attempt from Peter Mandelson to say something along similar lines.

Coincidence? No, I don't think so. Nor is it due to mere fickle fate that both of these portentious editorials appear in the pages of the Daily Social Worker where messages like this are about as common as gay bars in Riyadh. Now, I'm taking a calculated guess here but I'd say this is all part of a cunning plan to prepare the ground ahead of a big summit on 'Progressive Governance' (subtitled: 'Oh Christ, we've been rumbled. What do we do now?) to be held here in London this coming weekend.

Could all these ominous warnings and pleas for an open-mind from the likes of Herr Schroder and Mr.Mandelson be a means of softening the ground for heavy blows ahead? Because to the extent that anything at all emerges from this gathering of professional pick-pockets and incurable busybodies, it is bound to be triumphal, shiny 'reform' and 'new deal' initiatives of the kind that pretty much herald an end to the welfare-state settlement.

If I am right (and that remains to be seen) then it is obvious that some of the brighter stars in the left-wing firmament have seen the writing on the wall and they know only too well that carrying the 20th Century state-socialist models into the 21st Century is a guaranteed one-way ticket to palookaville.

Wouldn't it be fun to watch them emerge from their smoke-free rooms next week and jointly announce to their tax-consuming constituents that the booze has all run out, the snacks have all been eaten, the guests are all tapped out and that the party is definitely over.

(11)

I don't know whether the annual Glastonbury Music Festival is the world's longest running or the world's most famous music festival or whatever but it always attracts great heaving mobs of students and twenty-somethings.

For our enemies, this is a target-rich environment:

Bands play above a huge Greenpeace banner on the main stage, there are notices about Third World water supplies inside the toilets and organisers want every single person to sign a petition for fairer international trade laws.

On top of that, Tony Benn got a rock star's welcome, a Palestinian group has brought an inflatable tank, Columbian trade unionists are planning to stage mock kidnappings of comedian Mark Thomas and singer Billy Bragg, and the Drop the Debt double decker bus is offering its bath to a lucky competition winner.

Depressing, isn't it. Mind you, there's always the risk of overkill:

"You notice it a lot but I don't really take much interest it," said Lisa Rush, 28, from Colchester.

Come the day we see a 'Hayek Stall' at a rock festival, we will truly know that we have turned a corner.

(10)

And that is about how long I had to get just a little bit of classical liberal thinking out into the more mainstream airways last night.

Though, actually, rather less in view of the fact that I was sharing a platform on the 'Richard Littlejohn Show' with two other protagonists. One was a chap named Jay Lee who is an activist in the British National Party (and who has been expelled by his Trade Union because of it) and the other was Kevin McGuire a journalist with the Guardian.

I was placed in the middle in the 'Mr.Reasonable' seat which, as it turned out, was not ill-judged. Mr.Lee insisted that the Union had no right to expel him just because of his political views and Mr.McGuire insisted that the Union had an obligation to expel him because of his political views. Applying the voluntarist principle I maintained that Mr.Lee was perfectly entitled to his views, regardless of how stupid and vile they may be, but that the Union, as a voluntary organisation, were free to make any rules about membership that they damn well please and it was nobody else's business.

Perry, who was watching from home, tells me that the BNP guy actually made a pretty decent fist out of casting himself as the persecuted victim (with just the right degree of indignant self-pity) and that Kevin McGuire came across as an intolerant ranter. I like to think my libertarian message got across as well but it is always so difficult to know for sure amidst the soundbitten and somewhat chaotic nature of TV debates. I think it fair to say that I hit the right chord with Richard Littlejohn but then, as he quietly admitted to me afterwards, he is rather sympathetic to our ideas. It certainly helped that he clearly wanted my voice to be heard. I think we have an ally out there.

So that was that. No resolution of course but these things are seldom solvable and I was content that, aside from nearly melting in the stifling heat of the TV studio, I had managed to emerge unscathed. I was a little frustrated at being unable to get in a plug for the Samizdata so that will have to wait until next time (assuming, of course, that there is a next time).

(13)

It looks as if I am going to be a 'talking head' on UK satellite TV tonight. I have been asked to appear on the 'Richard Littlejohn Show' to discuss the case of a train driver who has been expelled from his Trade Union because of his membership of the British National Party.

In other words, it's 'freedom of association' stuff.

The show will be broadcast live at 8.00pm UK time on the Sky News Channel.

(5)

Simon Davies of Privacy International organised an event this evening here in London in order to honour George Orwell and hoist a drink or three to one of England's greatest writers on the occasion of his birthday.

Now I know a lot of you have read Orwell's sundry works... 1984... Animal Farm... etc... but how many of you have drunk a 'Black and Tan' at Orwell's favorite pub, the Newman Arms on 23 Rathbone Street...

...followed by walk to the Elysee Restaurant, around the corner at 13 Percy Street, which was one of Orwell's favorite eating places? The default dish here has to be Moussaka, as Orwell ate it on nearly every occasion that he visited this place.

A splendid evening was had by Gabriel Syme and myself (the wicked and iniquitous Johnathan Pearce was a no-show) amidst an impressive collection of privacy and civil liberties activists from across a .. ahem... wide range of the political spectrum.

(24)

An update regarding tonight's 'Undercurrents debate' on BBC Radio 3 Night Waves, 9:30 pm UK time (also via Internet).

The topic is:

Is Democracy Dead - superceded by the power of the markets and the media?

Participating will be George Monbiot, John Lloyd, John Kay and me.

(19)

Tomorrow night my disembodied voice shall be appearing on BBC Radio 3, on the programme Night Waves at 9:30 pm UK time (also via Internet).

Along with George Monbiot, John Lloyd, the eminent journalist and former editor of New Stateman, and possibly one other person, we shall be discussing democracy, globalization and politics.

(6)

I have just got back to London after spending the night in more northern parts, where I gave a talk about blogs and blogging at Liverpool's rather swanky new downtown FACT (Film, Art & Creative Technology) centre.

Many people are looking for the FACTs about blogging in Liverpool

It is good to proselytize the joys of blogging to a wider audience. Although though the audience was rather technology savvy, blogging was a completely concept to many of the people there. Also interesting was to see a couple people in the media lounge where I turned up to give my talk reading Salam Pax's blog.

On a day in which an article in The Times notes the power of blogging to scare the living daylights out of some sections of the established media and quotes blogger Mickey Kaus, it is interesting to see our blogger-in-arms in Iraq helping to raise the profile of blogging generally in places like Liverpool.

I even managed to meet a new potential client for my latest business endeavor, a blogging consultancy that will show companies how blogs can greatly assist their businesses. Together with two fellow Samizdatistas David Carr and Adriana Cronin, who was the one who thought up and elaborated the idea, we have started a new venture called the Big Blog Company.

Blogs are increasingly starting to enter the public consciousness ... we are spreading like a virus but are much more fun that SARS

(12)

Is this the first 'blogger-marriage', I wonder?

Regardless of whether it is or not, many congratulations to Andrew Dodge and Sasha Castel who are now Mr. and Mrs. Castel-Dodge.

(10)

Having managed to wangle a couple of front-row seats, my fellow reviewer Perry de Havilland and I made our way eagerly to Central London to witness the latest production of Lefties Labour's Lost presented by the Stop The War Theatre Company.

I always enjoy open-air theatre, especially when it's high farce. But, from the opening curtain, I had the uncomfortable feeling that this effort was not going to live up to my expectations.

I was impressed by the large, ensemble cast made up of a motley collection of old communists, new communists, greens, Islamists, socialists, peaceniks, beatniks, trade unionists, padres, cadres and a troupe of folk dancers from Somerset. As the drama unfolded, I thought I recognised some of the faces in the Chorus and, indeed, upon checking my notes, I was pleased to be able to confirm that much of the cast had been recruited from the highly successful 'Anti-Globalisation World Tour'.

Doubtless bonded by that experience, the director must have hoped that this cameraderie would add an extra dynamism to this production but, if that was the intention, then I regret to report that it was not achieved. The cast ambled through their paces determinedly but without much in the way of conviction leaving the audience with a sense of spectacle but nothing memorable.

The script was a total let-down. Directors of future productions should take note that drearily familiar lines such 'No war for oil' and 'Drop Bush not bombs' have to be delivered with pep and brio in order to have any impact at all. As it was, the cast opted for mere dismal repetition. This will not do. I was left with the impression that, perhaps, the best of their energies had been left in rehearsal.

Kudos must be accorded to the costume designer for splendid authenticity. Everywhere we looked there were muddy browns, washed-out blacks, dull greens and quite the most dizzying array of woolly caps imaginable. Many of the costumes were so profoundly soiled that , I do declare, they stood up and marched about on their own. An eye for this kind of detail is always appreciated.

Alas, it was not enough to rescue the piece which from terminal mediocrity. A flat and pedestrian rendition from an institutional cast lacked the oh-so important quality of spine-tingling zest necessary to truly move an audience. The kindest thing I can say about the direction is that is was formulaic; utterly devoid of anything approaching a radical innovation.

By the interval, both Mr.de Havilland and I were hard put to stay awake and, indeed, we both slipped out quietly before the final curtain.

Notwithstanding the plethora of pre-publicity, this performance fails to live up to its billing. There is some sound, surprisingly little fury and, in the final analysis, it signified nothing. I predict a short run.

(1)

NASA has set up this FTP site here for the public to use to upload photos, videos and documentary commentary of found debris. It may be the first use of the Net to assist in disaster evidence collection on such a massive scale.

REMEMBER not to touch anything. And FORGET about trying to profit from this tragedy.

(6)

I want to know what happened to 'going overland to India' to seek spiritual fulfilment and alternative lifestyles? Perhaps the Indians have decided to put a stop to all that. Can't say as I blame them.

However, that means that the Anti-Everything Brigade has been unleashed in droves all over the rest of the planet like deranged locusts. The Swarm du jour has now descended upon Porto Alegre in Brazil where this hotch-potch of losers, whiners, nutjobs and assorted marxoids, and which now dubs itself the (snigger) 'World Social Forum' is in a gigantic snit about not being taken seriously.

Mercifully, they are not taken seriously. Except by the BBC (sorry, the 'World Media Forum') which has published a glowing full-page tribute:

"As soon as you arrive your senses are overloaded with colourful causes and campaigns all competing for attention."

Especially your sense of smell.

"It does not aim to promote one view but celebrate diversity."

Great can we come along to sing the praises of capitalism, then?

"If the businessmen and political heavyweights from Davos were transported to Porto Alegre - slogan "another world is possible" - they really would believe they were on a different planet."

Yup.

"Where else would a gay rights march be followed moments afterwards by a pro-Palestinian protest?"

Not in Palestine that's for sure.

"Or landless people's movements from Latin American, Asia and Africa be able to sit round a table and compare notes?"

Landless but not flightless apparently. Exactly where do these starving peons get their travel money? And precisely what 'notes' do they compare?

"Hey, Miguel, do you have any land"?
"No"
"Neither do I. Okay, meeting adjourned."

"Of course, conflict and disagreement are inevitable but that is half the fun."

What's the other half of the fun?

"On the first day of the Forum the people took to the streets for an anti-war march.

As Brazilian government ministers walked with protesters there was an air of great hope spreading to campaigners from all across the globe."

Another feature of the reporting of all these events is this kind of semi-messianic euphoria. They're forever telling the world how excited and happy they are. Is it jet-lag, I wonder?

(4)

Another Brian, the Rev. Brian Chapin, calls this collection of 174 newspaper front pages from 26 countries around the world "the coolest thing I've ever seen on the internet". That may be an exaggeration, but it is a nice thing to be able to see.

You can't actually read the text on these front pages, although of course you can read the headlines. The images aren't detailed enough for that. But you can go from each front page to the website of each newspaper featured.

I'm not sure if the front pages that appear are updated each day. I'm guessing yes. Perhaps a commenter can clarify.

STOP PRESS: I went back, when checking that the link worked, and yes it is today's front pages. The clue was in the title of the webpage, which, I now note, is: "Today's Front Pages." We Samizdatistas don't miss a thing, do we? (Don't answer that.)

(6)

In response to rioting by Muslims in Nigeria which has left over a 100 people dead, the organisers of Miss World have hastily arranged for the whole competition to be moved to Britain.

Rumour has it that the international beauty pageant will resume in Finsbury Park

LIBERTY 2002: the European conference of The Libertarian International and Libertarian Alliance

Saturday 9 November - Sunday 10 November, 2002
10.00am-6.00pm
The National Liberal Club
Whitehall Place
London
SW1A 2HE
England

Speakers:

• Professor Norman Barry - Business ethics and regulation: A libertarian view
  
• Stefan Blankertz - Nature or Nurture: A libertarian perspective on the Debate on Intelligence
  
• Professor John Burton - Why libertarianism is losing out
  
• Dr. Eamon Butler - 'Third Way' interventionism in the UK and its lessons
  
• Professor Antony Flew - A critique of welfare rights
  
• Alan Forester - Why libertarians should take children seriously
  
• Professor Terence Kealey - Science is not a public good - and requires no public support
  
• Sarah Lawrence - The semblance of consent: how tyrants use the illusion of freedom
  
• Professor Tibor Machan - Are political principles stable?
  
• Richard Miniter - The reality of the Middle East and libertarian policy dilemmas
  
• Dr. Ken Minogue - The chameleon servility and its contemporary camouflage
  
• Robin Ramsay - In defence of paranoia: myths and realities of "conspiracy theory"
  
• Francois-Rene Rideau - Government as the rule of "Black Magic": On Human Sacrifice and Other Modern Superstitions
  
• Panel Discussion: Libertarian Iinternational and Libertarian Alliance Representatives - Liberty and Strategy in International Context, Chaired by Hubert Jongen, Chairman of The Libertarian International.
  
• Panel Discussion: Mark Littlewood, Dr. Sean Gabb & Dr. Chris R. Tame - The Destruction of Civil Liberties in the UK and its lessons
  

The £75 conference fee covers conference attendance, morning and afternoon tea and coffee, and the closing Banquet (but not accommodation - see below for a suggestion on this).

Are you going to attend the LIBERTY 2002 conference? Several members of the Samizdata Team will be there, so ask around and I am sure you will be able to find us.

Accommodation: The cost of accommodation is NOT included in the price of this conference. The Libertarian Alliance recommend Central Conference Reservations who offer discounted booking for a wide price-range of hotel accommodation in London. They can be contacted at:

Central Conference Reservations
10 Dudley Court,
Upper Berkeley Street,
London, W1H 7PH;
Tel: (+44) 020 7724 4470
Fax: (+44) 020 7706 4244
Email: centralreserve@aol.com

Alternatively, you are of course free to make your own bookings directly or via a travel agency.

HOW TO BOOK FOR THE CONFERENCE:

Please cut and paste the form below into a word processor, fill it in and print and return to one of the addresses below:

BOOKING FORM

I/We wish to book ..... places at the Liberty 2002 Conference at £75 ($111 US) (115 €uros) per place.

Note: The Libertarian International can accept all three currencies if you book via them, the Libertarian Alliance can accept only Pounds Sterling or US Dollars. See below for how to book with either group.

Name: ...............................................................

Address: ............................................................

..........................................................................

..........................................................................

Country: .............................................................

Tel: ....................................................................

Fax: ...................................................................

Email: ................................................................

I enclose a cheque, payable to "The Libertarian Alliance", in pounds sterling for ..... or in US dollars for .....

Please note that the Libertarian Alliance can accept only cheques in pounds sterling or in US dollars.

Return to: Dr. Chris R. Tame, Director, The Libertarian Alliance, 25 Chapter Chambers, Esterbrooke Street, London, SW1P 4NN
Tel: 020-7821-5502 Fax: 020-7834-2031 E-mail: admin@libertarian.co.uk

ALTERNATIVELY, if you wish to pay by cheques in Euros or in any other European currency, you may send your currency's equivalent of 115 €uros,
payable to "The Libertarian International", to:

The Libertarian International
P.O.Box 21,
B-2910,
Essen,
Belgium.
Fax:+31-165-348035
E-mail: info@libertarian.to

BANK: RaboBank acc. 17.43.35.350.

E-GOLD account nr. 102265 (Libertarian International).

Note: If you chose to pay via The Libertarian International, you must send a copy of this booking form to BOTH the Libertarian Alliance and to The Libertarian International.

(2)

Paul Marks laments the timing and cost of upcoming events

The Mont Pelerin Society is holding its conference in London next week. Rumour has it that the price of actually attending the conference is quite absurd (over eight hundred pounds) [Editor: fortunately the Liberty 2002 Conference is only a mere £75].

However, there are fringe meetings and I have asked, and been allowed, to attend two of them (the panel discussion on the future of freedom at the Institute of Economic Affairs at 18:30 on Monday and the debate on a good and free society between Roger Scruton and Stephen Davis at the Travellers Club, 106 Pall Mall at 18:00 Tuesday).

Contrary to what is sometimes said there are still people in the Conservative party who are interested in liberty - but many Conservative activist types will be down on the south coast (perhaps listening to John Redwood and Co, at�a Selsdon Group fringe meeting, explaining why Conservatives should "Stand up for Capitalism").

To have the Mont Pelerin Society conference clashing with the Conservative Party conference is unfortunate.

Paul Marks

(4)

LIBERTY 2002: The European Conference of the Libertarian International and the Libertarian Alliance. This event will take place Saturday/Sunday November 9th/10th 2002 - 10.00am-6.00pm, at the National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE, England.

It costs £75 for the entire weekend, and if you've got that sort of cash to spare and you want to meet a throng of like-minded people including a truly excellent slate of speakers, face-to-face (remember that idea), then it's a bargain.

It is especially attractive when you consider that the event is taking place in one of London's most splendid buildings. And it's our building, for it dates back to the time when liberal meant liberal. We can't permanently reclaim it, but we can at least occupy it for one weekend. The staircase alone is worth the entrance money.

Follow the link above for booking and payment details, and to see the excellent list of speakers, and to find further links to their websites.

(10)

I think I might have a civil claim against the BBC. I was watching the news from the Labour Party Conference this afternoon whilst eating a sandwich and nearly choked when the BBC Political Correspondent Andrew Marr concocted this radiant gem:

"The important thing for the world right now is the continued dialogue between Washington and Blackpool"

My apologies to non-UK readers because you really do have to be British to fully appreciate just how pant-wettingly hilarious that statement is.

(10)

There was special guest appearance today at the Labour Party Annual Conference in Blackpool in the shape of former US President Bill Clinton.

At least we were spared Hilary. Bill's sidekick and trusty companion for the day was film-actor Kevin Spacey who managed to muscle his way into every photo-op like Zelig.

Clinton was on top form, pressing flesh and distributing his effortless charm. One could have been forgiven for forgetting which of the two men was the movie-star. And, boy, were the BBC impressed. The commentators could barely contain their hormonal surges as Clinton glided through the throng. I've heard of politicians making love to the camera before but never have I seen the cameras making love to a politician.

He made a speech to the Conference. A long speech. The text of it may be available somewhere out there in cyberspace but if I was you I wouldn't waste valuable time hunting it down because a) it was dull and b) it's of limited significance. However, perchance you are interested, here is the gist:

"Mah friends, I am so pleased to be here with you today because we all share a common vision; one of peace, one of hope, one of children. Children, children, children, children. That's what we're about: children. And that's what the Third Way is all about; it's about you, me, us all joining together to strive for a better world for children. Children anywhere, children everywhere. Not like those knuckle-dragging right-wing loons who don't care about children. In fact, they eat children. We must not be like them. But we must also help them. We must help them to find a better way; the Third Way. So stay focussed and strong because I know that if we all work together and believe in ourselves we can make socialism work. Oh yeah, and Saddam is a real bad guy and he has to go. Thankyou. I love you lots."

He got a standing ovation

(2)

That sounds like the name of some old British movie... but what I am referring to is the Libertarian Alliance meeting held every last Friday of the month at Brian Micklethwait's place in Pimlico, London.

The speaker was samizdata.net contributor David Carr, delivering his views on the Middle East, specifically the Israel-Palestine troubles. It was possibly the most heavily attended Last Friday at Brian's I have ever seen, literally standing room only... which made the final standing ovations for David's outstanding talk all the easier

Standing room only for David's talk!



Paul Coulam and Adriana Cronin: the intellectual hardcore



Judith Hatton and Amoy Ing: libertarian thought across the generations

My speaker at my fast approaching last-Friday-of-the-month discussion evening for this May (the 31st) will be Gerald Hartup (who has just started something called Liberty and Law - no website as yet - which sounds interesting). The subject, a tricky one, will be "How to Talk About Race, Culture, Immigration, Asylum, etc.". I don't want the evening to degenerate into a nitpick about the current British government's current asylum policies, from the point of the view of the current British government, and with the assumptions that underpin the current British debate about these matters. What I want us to think about is: What should those assumptions be? I want us to think about meta-context, to coin a phrase. We've had plenty of discussion along such lines here, as you may have noticed.

I think I already know one of the rules for such discussion, which is that you should always talk about these matters with the mind-fix in place that maybe there's an actual, honest-to-God asylum seeker listening to what you're saying. This is one of the big facts behind Political Correctness. "Now we have to worry about the feelings of Afghans and Somalis and Slovaks." Damn right we do, and a good thing too. Part of the `right wing' thing is that you don't have to do this and shouldn't have to do this. But you do now. One of the things I most like about writing for something like Samizdata is that, what with all these hundreds of hits we have every day, this mind-fix isn't entirely artificial. Such people really might be reading in, such is the potential reach of the blogosphere. And someone might definitely be reading in on this who falls into the category of those who can say in all honesty: "Some of my best friends are asylum seekers." I really like that.

Example. Another speaker I've already fixed is the estimable David Carr, who'll be doing September of this year (the 27th), giving us an update on what's happening in the Middle East. One of the reasons I fixed this event with such enthusiasm was that David's talk last year on the same subject was good in particular in the exact way I've just referred to.

David's sympathy � his "bias" you could say - is with the Israelis, but there is bias and there is bias. There's the kind which causes you to be blind to facts or to conceal facts or even to just make up non-facts, and to be blind to the feelings of anyone except your own folks. And then there's the kind of bias which consists of admitting that yes, this is where your "bias" is, but nevertheless managing to describe things accurately and fairly. I recall with particular pleasure that present at that meeting which David addressed was another British guy who had spent quite some time in the West Bank, among the Arabs there. His "bias" was a very different thing to David's. Yet when it came to the facts of the matter - who did what when, what all the biases of the various actors in the drama were, and so on � this Arab-friendly man and David were in complete accord. I can't say we managed to actually solve anything Middle-East-wise that night, but that particular degree of agreement I found very pleasing.

If this coming Friday is as good, I'll have no complaints. Email us if you are interested in learning more about these meetings. The London SWPosh area has just had a mysterious power cut lasting a quarter of a second (a phenomenon I've never experienced before). I'm all okay, but Perry's phone connection has temporarily collapsed, so send emails to me at if you want to be sure of getting through.

I imagine at least a few have noted my near absence from these pages over the last few weeks. This is the difference between those who earn their keep from their words and those who do so by other means. As I live by consultancy, I at times have very few hours left to myself. When there are other projects at hand, time allocation can get very dicey. One very big "free time" project is nearing completion and as it is part of a public event I thought I'd invite you all to come. I'm running a track on Novel Propulsion Systems at the National Space Society's 2002 International Space Development Conference in Denver in a few weeks.

Here's what I've put together for my little corner of it:

NPS track, Sat May 25, 2002
---------------------------
Morning Session
====================================
0900-0925 Energy, Economics, and Space Transport: Evaluating
Alternative Space Launch Systems
Keith Lofstrom, www.launchloop.com

0930-1025 Nuclear Propulsion Systems Panel
Tony Rusi, Bigelow Aerospace
Dr. Steven D. Howe, Hbar Technologies, LLC
1030-1100 Future Spacecraft Propulsion Systems
Richard Westfall, Galactic Mining Industries, Inc
Afternoon Session
====================================
1400-1425 The Ultimate Exploration: Approaches to Interstellar Flight
Dr. Geoffrey A. Landis, NASA Glenn Research Center

1430-1455 Magnetic Sail Flight Experiment
Dr. Robert Zubrin, Mars Society
1500-1525 The Launch Loop: People and Machines to Orbit and Beyond
Keith Lofstrom, www.launchloop.com

1530-1555 Cost Performance of the Hydrogen Rocket Launcher
Dr. John Hunter, Starbridge, Inc
Herb Chelner, President of Micron Instruments Inc.
1600-1625 Tether Launch Assist
Dr. Robert P Hoyt, President, CEO,
& Chief Scientist, Tethers Unlimited, Inc.
1630-1655 Breakthrough Propulsion Physics
Dr. Geoffrey A. Landis, NASA Glenn Research Center
(presenting for
Marc Millis, NASA Glenn Research Center)
====================================

See you there!

Christmas 1914. On the Western front, British and German soldiers face each other off across the barbed wire and the frozen, blood-caked mud and stiff, decomposing bodies of dead comrades. This was warfare as Europe had not witnessed it before: grim, static, total, hellish.

For reasons nobody has ever adequately explained, on this Christmas Day, 1914, a truce was felt necessary and soldiers from each side rose from their positions and enemy met enemy between the trenches in No-Man's Land and played a game of football.

For a few euphoric hours, soldiers became laughing, playing, carousing men and war was forgotten. But peace had not broken out and fences had not been mended. The game over, the officers led their troops back to their respective lines and the carnage went on and on and on.

There was a faint echo of this legend last night at the 'Big Brother Awards' hosted by Privacy International and to which I had been invited by fellow blogger Tom Burroughes. I did not know quite what to expect, but I am customarily on hand to lend such support as I can muster in the battle against Big Brother.

However, as I entered the debating chamber in the London School of Economics, my internal geiger-counter screamed off the scale. It was being bombarded with reds. My hackles never let me down and, boy, were they up. The place was wall-to-wall dreadlocks, canvas knapsacks and sandals complimented by a troop of students in 'Boycott Esso Oil' T-shirts and George Bush rubber face-masks.

I was being choked by Chomsky, I could feel the Fisk and smell the Sontag. If I stayed one minute longer I would be pickled in Pilger. I broke out in a feverish sweat and panic set in but, before I could leave a Tom-and-Jerry style hole in the LSE wall, I spotted Tom and, then, to my further bug-eyed surprise, fellow arch-capitalist Tim Evans. And not only was he attending but he was actually reading the nominations!! Just what on earth was going on here?

Further staggering revelations followed when I found out that yet another Libertarian, Malcolm Hutty was there and, in fact, it was his company, Internet Vision, which was co-sponsoring the event together with, wait for it, GreenNet.org!! This was Matter vs. Anti-Matter. Why hadn't the Universe evaporated in a great, cosmic bang?

Before I could splutter further, the ceremony began and we all settled, a little uneasily, into our seats. We could sense their force and they could sense ours. Somehow, though, the Universe remained stable and the evening was conducted amidst an atmosphere that was appreciative and cordial though far from joyous.

My worst fears were allayed when it became clear that the agenda was being steadfastly adhered to. Privacy was the issue and the sole issue and just about every 'golden boot' for its grievous infringement went to HM Government and its agencies. Even I could not suppress a loud whoop when a special 'boot' went to the Department of Education and Skills for its ghoulish plans to draw up a clandestine national database for every schoolchild in the country.

Undoubtedly the strangest moment in the evening came when the committee announced that it had been unanimous in wishing to bestow its 'Freedom Fighter' award on The Daily Telegraph for its 'Free Country' campaign. It was like watching Mullah Omar step up to accept a gong from the B'nai Brith. A crackle of electricity went round the room but, despite some isolated heckles, the recipients were warmly applauded.

When the ceremony was over they all drifted away a little dazed and light-headed. They felt like an audience who had just seen a dazzling magic show and they know that the magic isn't real but just how did he make that tiger disappear? The Bush-baiters, now unmasked, trooped out again a little sheepishly. It was not the anti-globo ruckus that they (or I) had been expecting.

You know for sure you are living in interesting times when the kind of people whose most prized possession is a bust of Lenin gather together with the followers of Adam Smith and all agree that privacy is important and the state is the biggest threat to it. Interesting and also significant because if my otherwise trenchant ideological foes think that privacy is important then it is to be hoped that they have asked themselves why privacy is important. And if they have, could they possibly come to any conclusion other than the ownership of self and the sovereignty of the individual? It takes questions like that to configure the circuit-boards of the mind into just the right order necessary to illuminate a line of flashing bulbs that light the way to freedom.

If that happens than last night's ceremony was a mini-milestone in the evolution of political ideas.

On the other hand, it may just have been a Christmas truce between the trenches in No-Man's Land.

Yours truly and fellow blogger David Carr attended an awards ceremony hosted by Privacy International for its annual Big Brother Awards at the London School of Economics. When we got there my heart sank. Ok, one or two mates from the Libertarian Alliance were in the room, but my worst fears were aroused when I saw a bunch of twerps sporting George W. Bush face masks. Oh God, I thought, we've got the usual mix of muddle-headed Blame-America-First lefties, peaceniks and other delusional types.

But, I have to report that the evening turned out better than I, or I am sure Mr Carr, could have expected. As well as handing out these "awards" to such bodies as the Department of Education (UK) for various infringements of privacy, Privacy International also handed out genuinely positive awards to those who have protected or advanced the course of liberty over the past 12 months, including the right-leaning Daily Telegraph.

It was a genuinely wonderful moment as various lefties hissed and cringed as Telegraph reporter Stephen Robinson went up on stage to pick up the award for the paper's A Free Country campaign. The Telegraph has opposed state ID cards, supported decriminalisation of some drugs, opposed threats to trial by jury, and also opposed the ongoing encroachments on British liberty from Brussels.

I think something very important happened last night. What we saw were a bunch of peaceniks forced to acknowledge, through gritted teeth, that there is such a thing as a non-left libertarian movement that is passionate about freedom, determined to protect it, but also savours capitalism. I think this is a meme that is going to continue infecting the body politic.

Tom.Burroughes@reuters.com

When the state watches you,
dare to stare back