Libby Purves writes in The Times about an astonishing piece of micromanagement in the British state education system (to which over 90% of children are subjected from 5 to 16). She rightly picks on the most horrific element.

... Michael Gove, the Shadow Education Secretary, instead of tossing his hat in the air and singing “Let my people go!”, proved that he is well in training to be a modern minister (aka an annoying, bossy pest) by criticising the decision to abandon the compulsory 30-song list. “This Government,” he thundered, “is so paralysed by political correctness and terminally afflicted by dithering that it cannot even decide on a simple thing like the songs children should learn.”

There's a lot of this. Shadow ministers continually criticise the government for "not doing enough" on this or that, or for insufficiently oppressive use of its draconian legislation, rather than offering an alternative policy involving some presumption in favour of liberty.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I do not mistake the public utterances of politicians as a direct expression of their personal beliefs. They are doing this in order to foster the impression that the Government is incompetent in the mind of the public, not as an adumbration of any particular policy of their own. The real horror is that the opposition has done expensive research and hard intellectual work to come up with this approach. They do not offer the public freedom, and not just because the public no longer finds liberty attractive. They know the message would not get through. In fact, for most people in Britain - and a very average most-person is the undecided voter a democratic politician must address - liberty is no longer intelligible.

Does the word "liberty" appear in the national curriculum, I wonder? ...

Not here. But ... a Google site: search at www.curriculumonline.gov.uk brings up just two items.

The first is, a rather icky, PC, citizenship teacher's guide to the internet:

This unique and invaluable resource is a guide to the best of a huge collection of Citizenship resources available on the Internet. Fifty nine sites are included and each site is evaluated in terms of its content, usefulness, links and suitability. Sites included: ActionAid Schools and youth groups anti-slavery Central Bureau for International Education and Training Council for Education in World Citizenship Global Citizenship Global Dimension The Institute for Citizenship Montage Plus QCA Subjects Citizenship Hampshire Citizenship Project United Nations Home Page Knowledge and understanding about becoming informed citizens Campaign for Freedom of Information European Citizens' Rights The Citizenship Foundation Commonwealth Secretariat Council of Europe Education in Human Rights Network Europarl Explore Parliament The Hansard Society ippr Local Government Information Unit Local Government Association WEB SITE: Oxfam's Cool Planet Save the Children's Fund Scottish Human Rights Trust Department for International Development Understanding Global Issues Developing Skills of Enquire and Communication The Bar Human Rights Committee The Commission for Racial Equality : The Council of Europe Portal The British Institute of Human Rights The Runnymede Trust PICT Developing Skills of Participation and Responsible Action Amnesty International UK The Anne Frank Educational Trust UK The British Youth Council The Centre for Alleviating Social Problems Trough Values Education CEDC Community Education and Development Centre Community Learning Scotland Development Education Association Democracy 88 The Global Caf?? Age Concern Centre for Citizenship Studies in Education Human Rights Unit The Institute for Global Ethics NSPCC Kid's Zone : Liberty Peace Child Schools Council The Howard League The Human Rights Centre of The University of Essex Changemakers Windows on the World Worldaware This book comes with a disk that you can run through you web browser so that you just have to point and click to be connected to sites without having to type the address (you will need Internet access on your computer)

Not a huge variety of viewpoint there, though at least the "Liberty" referred to is the organisation of that name, which (in its soft-left way) definitely understands the meaning of the term.

The second is rather more sinister - a published standard lesson product, entitled "Why Obey the State":

Product Details
Description: Information about obedience to the state, with activities, for KS3 and KS4.
Publisher: Pearson Publishing (Publication date-15th Nov 2002)
Covers: Lesson
Teaching subject: Citizenship
Key Stage: Key stage 3 [11-14], Key stage 4 [14-16]
[...] Resource Information
Product type: Drill and practice
[...] Education Information
Covers: Lesson
Who is the resource for? Learner
General keywords: state, obey, democracy, intervention, liberty
National curriculum keywords: Citizenship and PSHE (Responsibilities - general information)

I wish I were making this up.

For those who want us all to live in terror, is that would-be terrorists are seldom very competent, and that doing any very big damage is difficult. An illustration just how difficult has just turned up. The Guardian luridly reports:

Terry Jupp, a scientist with the Ministry of Defence, was engulfed in flames during a joint Anglo-American counter-terrorism project intended to discover more about al-Qaida's bomb-making capacities.

There has been no inquest into his death, as the coroner has been waiting for the MoD to disclose information about the incident. An attempt to prosecute the scientist's manager for manslaughter ended when prosecutors said they were withdrawing the charge, but said the case was too "sensitive" to explain that decision in open court.

The Guardian has established that Jupp was a member of a small team of British and US scientists making bombs from ingredients of the sort that terrorists could obtain. There is also evidence pointing to experiments to discover more about radiological dispersal devices - so-called dirty bombs - which use conventional explosives to scatter radioactive material.

A properly skeptical report probably would not use the magic word "al-Qaida", rather than referring to terrorists in general. Nor would there be the superstitious mention of "radioactive material".

However the salient facts are informative: An expert; no difficulty obtaining the materials and knowing what was wanted; proper care and attention - and he still managed to go horribly wrong. The task is a very difficult one.

Could it be the reason the average would-be terrorist doesn't blow himself up prematurely (as used to happen quite often to old-style IRA/Fatah, etc., bombers equipped with commercial/military explosives), is because he lacks the knowledge to make an explosion at all? The idea that even a real expert could disperse suitably weaponised chemical/radioactive agents, or biological ones using low-explosive paint-tin bombs is just a bit ludicrous. The idea that an inexperienced religious nutter/power fantasist using recipes off the internet could do so is wholly absurd.

Terrorists in Britain are a threat to life comparable with police car-chases. Terror of terrorists is the threat to civilization.

No chance of the government, media, security services, just suggesting we all calm down, I suppose? Nope.

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.

The downfall of Eliot Spitzer has recently been celebrated on this blog, and rightly so. However, I believe the major casualty of the affair will prove to be Hillary Clinton, rather than Spitzer. This juicy scandal will deliver the Democratic nomination to Obama. You could almost - almost - feel sorry for Clinton; the press was only just starting to crack the shiny Obama veneer, when this had to go and happen. Who will pay any attention to Rezko and co. with this circus unfolding over the next few weeks? It will suck the oxygen right out of Hillary's campaign at the critical juncture - just when it was catching fire.

Not that Obama as the Democratic candidate will necessarily be a bad thing for the Republicans; the more I see and read of him, his views and his actions, the more I am convinced that Obama08 is John McCain's smoothest path to the White House.

You are on death row awaiting execution. What would you order for your last meal?

I'm not generally proud to be British. It strikes me as absurd either to claim some sort of credit for an accident of birth, or to assume that the culture one is brought up in is ipso facto the best available to anyone. Nation is usually alien. I've said it before and I'll say it again: when someone says "we", I feel like a "them".

However, I must say I get great pleasure from the fact that nobody does self-parody like 'we' do. There is a great British tradition of highly competent people doing extremely serious things unencumbered by wild eccentricity or a very silly-sounding name. It is therefore a matter of considerable joy to me that 'our' defence forces are led by Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup GCB AFC ADC DSc FRAeS FCMI RAF.

Is capital punishment an acceptable legal sanction?

I have written before of the nationalisation of politics in Great Britain. In short, I think Peter Oborne's thesis in the the Political Class is almost right, but back to front. We are much closer to the authoritarian "no-party state" advocated by Brian Crozier, realised, however by Djilas' New Class sucking up consumerism and the New Left rather than through caudillo-corporatism. But I did not realise it had gone so far: how much the constitution has changed in that particular respect the last decade; how much in public discourse the government and the governing party are now identified.

Peter Hain MP is in trouble. His inexplicably luxuriantly financed campaign for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, turns out not to have counted over £100,000 in donations. It is all over the newspaper and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and the Electoral Commission are both investigating. I'm sorry? Apparently the failure to account is a criminal offence. It what?

Now maybe it couldn't happen to a nicer bloke, Mr Hain (an African by birth) having moved from being the leader of the Anti-Apartheid Campaign in the UK in his twenties to one of the leading advocates of a new pass-law system for his adopted country. But I am outraged on his behalf in this case.

Someone has to be. All Mr Hain has done is to say he was too busy to notice the alleged offences being carried out in his name, not challenge, as the younger man would have done, the ludicrousness of the context. All the media has done is have vapours about the wickedness of using money to send leaflets and not reporting it to officials, and ridicule the poor man's "orange" complexion in a way they would think disgusting and itself borderline criminal if he were an ethnically darker African.

Maybe I have not been paying enough attention, but I have not read anywhere yet the obvious point. ...

This was a Labour Party election. It should be a private matter for that organisation. If Mr Hain has broken his own party's rules then let his own party penalise him in accordance with those rules. It is no business of parliament. It is no business of the official parliament has crazily set over its members' conduct as parliamentarians. It is no business of the Electoral Commission, whose only plausible excuse for existing is to oversee elections to public office.

Deputy Leader of the Labour Party is an office without significant power and responsibility even in the Labour Party; it has no legislative or executive or judicial function in any other British institution. If members of the Labour Party want to decide their leadership by lot, by bribery, or by a contest to see who can piss into Kier Hardy's cap from the greatest distance, then it is nobody else's business. Whether the Labour Party is in government—it is, Rip van Winkel& #0151how it gets there, and what it does there, are matters of public importance for public debate and ought to be governed by constitutional law. How the Labour Party is organised might be interesting (though it isn't), might be contingently important to the conduct of a Labour Government (though as far as I can see it isn't), but the Labour Party is a voluntary organisation. Until joining the Labour Party is compulsory, or Labour connections give preferential treatment in life outside politics (and that it is not itself regarded as improper), then non-members have no legitimate say in the affairs of the Labour Party.

Mr Hain appears to me to have been an effective and loyal member of a consistently vile administration. It is for that he should be condemned, particularly when his antecedents would lead one to expect at least some civil libertarian principle. We have every right to despise and vilify him on those grounds. (But no state official has.) If the voters of Neath think Mr Hain's conduct or character makes him an inadequate representative, then they are sovreign at the ballot-box to remove him, if necessary with a dead dog wearing a red rosette. Welsh voters and local parties aren't passive clients of the party, even though it often treats them like that. Until he commits a real crime, or those voters chuck him out, though, Mr Hain gets my reluctant support in keeping his seat and his office.

He is no more morally guilty than when he was tried for armed robbery. It is vexatiously mistaken identity, with the power of the state prayed in aid of someone-else's fight. The aye-witless demand for security provided by the state even against a the rough and tumble of a private game is the agent provocateur this time, not an eye-witness procured by a foreign Bureau of State Security.

I was talking to a friend this evening who noted that a bank had sent him a letter promoting a loan; confounding the pessimists who think that the days of easy credit are completely dead. He observed that the letter contained the phrase "The mill that produced this paper supports sustainable forestation".

It is hard to believe that the bank really cared that much about the source of their paper, but banks, being creatures of the market, are sensitive to their customers, and make efforts to please them. The small but noisy minority of 'environmentally friendly' customers that would have approved of the bank's effort to be eco-friendly would be appeased, and the rest of the client base would care not a jot.

But we are seeing more and more of these nods to the environment being enforced with the power of national governments. It is rather like what happened to ancient Rome in the Fourth Century. The first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, lifted restrictions on Christianity in 312, and Christianity backed by the power of the state made slow but steady gains at the expense of the old pagan faiths before the Vestal Virgins were disbanded by Imperial order in 394.

I am not sure what will really qualify as comparable milestones in the rise of environmentalism as the official faith of the West, but for those of us of a skeptical nature, I think it does rather have a feel of being like a Pagan in 4th Century Rome.

Sometimes it is worth plagiarising yourself.

I was asked in a pre-interview chat the other day, about 30 seconds from live TV, "Why is the government doing this? 'Terrorism' doesn't seem to make sense; there has to be something more to it." It's hard to be snappy on the point even without crazy pressure, so mumbled something about my interlocutor going to Google and typing "Transformational Government". I do recommend it, but I have a fairly neat explanation for why Transformational Government too. Just not quite neat enough to recall and pitch in 30 seconds on a GMTV sofa at 6:30 in the morning.

I actually wrote it about 3 years ago, in the days when I had time to think, as a comment on Phil Booth's (whatever happened to him) blog, the Infinite Ideas Machine:

My answer arises from a pub conversation a while back with the post-Marxist commentator Joe Kaplinsky. He maintains "they" don't know what they want the information for, they are just collecting it just in case it should ever come in useful, because that's what bureaucrats do. There is much in that, but I think there's slightly more.

The slightly more is a glimpse of bureaucratic fundamentalism to rival the more explicit fundamentalisms of religious and political fanatics. The administrative class ("class" in the cultural not economic sense) in Britain, but also in Europe more generally - and from which New Labour is almost exclusively drawn - holds it as self evident that the life and personality of an individual is a unitary object capable of being better managed if only there is enough information collected and enough "best practice" followed.

It is a fundamentalist faith in that if the world is out of line with the model, the world is wrong; that written rules and established methods are unquestionable from outside the tradition; and that forcing people to live within the categories determined by the faith is justifiable for a general and individual good that is evident to the elect.

It's not that control is sought for its own sake, more that they yearn for the best well-ordered and coherent society, and believe this can be determined and imposed given sufficient expertise and information. Hence joined up government. They really do believe that efficiency is achieved by connecting everything to everything else in a giant bureaucratic system. It is the Soviet illusion, dressed up in "new technology" and market-friendly initiatives that co-opt corporate bureaucracies into the dream rather than setting them up as enemies.

The same people who claimed to have absorbed Hayek's explanation of why 5-year plans can't work during their turn away from Old Labour are too dull (or too intoxicated by the vision of the power to make a good society) to see that replacing some of the clerks with machines and the telegraph with the internet makes no difference to the basic proposition.

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose free will.

- Rush.

It is my birthday, so a little personal reminiscence is in order. The man who introduced me to Rush, 29 years ago, subsequently turned down physics fellowships at both Oxford and Cambridge to become a Baptist missionary. I guess he took his instructions from the first part of the verse.

I am a hawk, no doubt about it. If I am going to be taxed by the state, I would much rather my hard earned money be spent dropping bombs on the lackeys of Slobodan Milosevic (Bill Clinton's finest hour, without a doubt) and Saddam Hussain, than on corrosive domestic 'entitlements' and ever more kleptocratic regulatory statism.

So then along comes Ron Paul, the first US presidential candidate since Ronald Regan with any notion whatsoever that the state is way way way too big. Moreover here comes a person who thinks the only way liberty can be preserved is to take a radical axe to Leviathan's tentacles and re-establish constitutional limited government. Cool. Very cool, in fact. So do I really really like Ron Paul? Well I like him but less than you might think as some of his remarks are borderline delusional 'troofer' stuff and that does him no credit at all. Is he actually going to win? Probably not but that is not what this article is about (commenters please note). Do I even want him to win? Well that is what this article is about.

He wants a return to constitutional limited government. What's not to like about that? But then my eye falls on that picture of Murray Rothbard in Ron Paul's office. I am not a fan of Rothbard even though there is indeed much good stuff in The Ethics of Liberty. Although I think he was correct about a great many things, I also think he was often as intellectually dishonest as Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky and perfectly fits Adriana Lukas' definition of a barking moonbat: "someone who sacrifices sanity for the sake of consistency". For Rothbard to have argued that the cold war was a delusion and that the Soviet Union was not really a clear and present danger is so preposterous on so many levels that I am not even going to elaborate why. If you can not figure out that one yourself then this article is not addressed to you. In fact, please stop reading and get lost.

Otherwise, read on...

If this was 1980 and I was going to vote in a US election with a choice not between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter (whom I regard as one of the worst Presidents in US history), but rather between Jimmy Carter and anyone with a picture of Murray Rothbard on his wall, then with heavy heart I would have voted for Jimmy Carter. To have allowed someone who was a transposed version of Ron Paul into the White House circa 1980 would probably have resulted in me writing this article in 2007 from some bunker amidst the post-apocalyptic radioactive ruins of our civilisation.

But it is not 1980 and we did indeed win the Cold War without blowing the planet up in the process. Despite the Mussolini-esque antics of Vladimir Putin, Russia is and will remain a busted flush. Its corrupt and self-destructive political culture and the regrettable views of most Russians make that fact as close to historical inevitability as you will ever find in this uncertain world of ours. We won and there is not going to be a re-match.

So what would happen if Ron Paul really did win the White House in 2008? Well in my opinion, domestically speaking the United States would experience the greatest growth of liberty and (consequently) prosperity since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Monstrous tumours on the American body politic like the abuse of eminent domain, the RICO statutes and the absurdly named Patriot Act would go into the garbage heap of history where the corpses of slavery and the Jim Crow laws rot away. Absurdities like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, something that has done more to export US jobs and capital than almost anything else in the last few years, would vanish like the morning mist. That magnificent pinnacle of the European Enlightenment called the US Bill of Rights would once again be worth the paper it is written on. If these things came to pass it would, in my not so humble opinion, be a very very good thing indeed.

But then how would Ron Paul deal with the two and a half major global security threats that face the world? By this I mean China, Islamic Fundamentalism and Russia (the later being the 'half-a-threat').

He has made no bones about the fact he is a non-interventionist overseas as well as at home. Decode the verbiage and the answer to how he would deal with those security issues is "he would pretty much just ignore them" unless they were trying to march down Pennsylvania Avenue. The United States military would be mostly withdrawn to the continental US and reduced in size. The complex tangle of international security relations in which the USA plays such a leading role would be unravelled. Is this what I personally want to see? No, it is not.

But like I said before, this is not 1980.

Russia is a threat. To whom? To all the states that once made up the former Soviet Union and who are now independent. Yet just how much of a long term threat is a nation with catastrophic demographics and the longest indefensible borders in the world to worry about themselves? "Oh but what about their oil revenues?" Yeah, and even with all of that, their GDP is not quite the size of...Italy. Moreover most of the former Warsaw Pact are now batting for the other side so even the cheese-eating surrender monkeys of the EU ($13.1 trillion GDP) can contain Russia ($1.7 trillion GDP) whilst spending chump change on their military. The USA is simply not needed any more.

China is a threat. To whom? To the USA? No. To Japan, India, Taiwan, South Korea (and in the long run, Russia)? Oh yes. But then look at those countries. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea are highly sophisticated and very wealthy technological societies. India, with its huge population, large military and rapidly growing economy is a formidable nation in its own right. Russia? Well in the short run they see China as a military ally, more fool them.

But my point is I think those nations are perfectly capable of containing China militarily without the USA being involved in any way whatsoever. All they need is the political will to do so.

And that leaves us with Islamic Fundamentalism. A threat? Yes. To whom? Damn near everyone on the planet who is not a Muslim. Yet it is a materially different sort of threat than vast China or sclerotic Russia. There are no huge Islamic armies and in the modern era the ones that do exist have generally proven to be embarrassingly inept. They are dependent on technology their own societies are incapable of producing themselves and they are economically unsophisticated. Culturally the Fundamentalists are primitive and unappealing to people from non-Muslim societies.

So the threat does not primarily come from Islamic states, but rather from supra-national groups of Muslims dispersed around the world. However just because no Muslim horde is ever going to roll through the Balkans and arrive at the Gates of Vienna with tanks and artillery, that does not mean there is no threat. 9/11 was just the most spectacular of a long line of attacks on targets in the USA (not to mention others in Europe, Africa and Asia).

But is the global military involvement of the USA an indispensable element in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism? And by 'indispensable' I mean "is the global victory of Islamic Fundamentalism assured if the USA is not heavily engaged in this fight?" Well personally I am very happy (as in delighted) to see the USA involved in the fight but that was not the question I am asking. No I do not think the USA is indispensable. Would the world be a better place if the Taliban were still in control of Kabul and running Afghanistan? No, there is no upside to that but but it would not be the end of the world, either. Would Iraq and the world generally be better off if Saddam Hussain and his psychopathic sons were still running the show in Baghdad as some absurdly misfiled 'libertarians' claim? No, I do not think so, but again, it would not bring the edifice of global security crashing down either.

As Brian Micklethwait once said regarding non-interventionist foreign policies, just as many risks come from doing nothing as doing something, it will just be different set of risks. If the USA does nothing but line up its army along its borders and pulls up the drawbridge, it will not run many of the same risks it does today. It will run a whole series of different risks.

Will that make for a safer world? Probably not. Will it make for a safer USA? Probably not. Am I sure about that? No, but I think I am right which is why I am a hawk. But as I keep saying, it is not 1980. The downside of me being right and Ron Paul being wrong is nowhere near what it was given the same choices during the Cold War. China is a regional threat, Russia is a dead man walking and Islamic Fundamentalism is more akin to a very dangerous disease. The downside of Ron Paul being wrong could be serious but it is not going to result in a global thermonuclear war.

And that, quite simply, is why I hope he wins.

John Louis Swaine wrote in with an interesting piece about his own 'road to Damascus'. "It took approximately 8 years to move from being a Labourite teenager to a Libertarian at the age of 23. I used to blog quite a lot so I felt the urge to write something about it. Since the Samizdata weblog has been one of the most important contributing factors for this change, I thought I would submit it to you."

Most people have a "Summer of '69" they can relate to; a magic period of youthful exuberance, tempered by important life experiences and left to bake softly in the warmth of the July sun. Mine was in 2001, I was 16 and beginning to ask the bigger questions about society and life.

I had opinions, I suddenly cared about issues. Like virtually every young person I came to the conclusion that equality was of paramount importance and that the only means by which to achieve it was through the prescription of schemes and initiatives by Government. After all, is that not what my generation had been taught? The importance of civil duty, of taking part in the organs of governance and through them making life better for your fellow man?

I dutifully signed up to the Observer brigade. Things could change, things could be fixed and crucially, the fix was always within the grasp of Government.

I did have the benefit of a decent grounding in knowledge of markets. I rather suspect you cannot have spent a significant amount of time growing up in Hong Kong without absorbing it - capitalism and free markets are in the air there, mixed in amongst the toxic levels of pollutants and exhaust fumes. Your chances of developing lung cancer or respiratory disorders may be high but you will also assimilate at least some understanding of how a financial system works.

Tony Blair's governing ideology therefore seemed intoxicating - using the state to care for one's fellow man whilst reforming the public sector and embracing free markets. Everything fitted nicely into place.

The first cracks in my political viewpoint began to appear on the 11th of September, 2001...

Following the terrorist attacks in New York and subsequent UNSC Resolutions authorizing the use of force to depose the Taliban in Afghanistan, I read daily in my newspapers of the horrors of warfare in Afghanistan. The US, it seems, were doomed. If the might of the Soviet Empire could not conquer the nation, then surely the US would be bogged down into a quagmire of small arms fire and disappearing assailants.

Within a month of beginning their assault the US had demolished the Taliban's standing army, on November 12th the Taliban fled Kabul and a military victory was imminent. The emperor had no clothes.

I read the Observer and the Guardian less and less and instead migrated to the Times. However I retained my same staunch belief in the struggle for an egalitarian society through Government. I wrote a political blog and had quite a bit of traffic. I moved to London to read Law and joined the Labour party. I was ultimately quite satisfied with the way in which the United Kingdom was being run and governed.

During my study for my degree I took a particular interest in Constitutional Law and received a 1st for the module, my lecturer asked me to perform some extra research for one of his upcoming books on Civil Liberties and I happily accepted. The history of the British 'constitution' was enthralling and I began to get a real sense for what it meant to be British.

We were a people who lived under the Magna Carta, whose parliament established the ground rules for modern day governance, and who time and time again, took up arms in defence of liberty. We had little time for despots, deposing one and then giving up on the other's ridiculous dictatorship the moment he passed on. Through all of this, a current of individual liberty ran strong. The Common Law is a marvellous thing and leafing through its enormity was like gazing up at the shadowed spires of a Cathedral from the inside.

I watched the Labour party's reforms shudder to a halt. Where there were steps taken towards decentralization in Foundation Hospitals, the Government took several back in other areas of public life. Government began to balloon. I grimaced as grown men and women on the Labour back benches complained that businessmen from the private healthcare sector had been given posts within the NHS - heavens forbid those who have proven themselves in competitive healthcare markets should be given the reigns of a Hospital.

I had the good fortune of attending a Grammar school for two years after passing the 11+. As a young adult, the 'debate' surrounding Grammars disgusted me. My school (Colchester Grammar) had certainly not been a haven for rich boys whose family could afford "tutors". Amongst all my classmates I was unquestionably the most affluent, being the son of a successful barrister. My friends were almost universally drawn from the working class, with one or two hailing from the lower middle classes. I do not think I knew of one boy at that school who was 'privileged'.

What people objected to, it seems, was not that this 'free' schooling system existed, but rather that it meant someone, somewhere out there was getting a better education than someone else. This was not a cry for equality of opportunity, this was a demand that no child aspire to or achieve better than anyone else his age. The gifted should remain amongst the rest, to be held back to ensure that they did not get too far ahead or somehow to drag their classmates towards better academic achievement. Anyone who has attended a school in which they have exceeded the academic capability of their classmates knows that this is a patent fallacy. Roald Dahl's "Matilda" has special significance for those of us who have, we know what it feels like to be kept in a system for arbitrary reasons, which limits your liberty and traps you within the confines of what is deemed to be 'average'.

I drifted towards the centre of the political spectrum and no longer called myself "centre-left" or "Blairite". However it was not until about 3 weeks ago that I came to my final realization. The writers with whom I agree most tacitly: Hemlock, Glenn Reynolds, the contributors to Samizdata are libertarian to a man.

They are not simulacra of Ebineezer Scrooge, they all believe that society should be fair, they just disagree vehemently with the notion that such a task should be left to the state, or indeed that the state is in any way capable of achieving this goal. Charities and NGOs perform consistently better than public initiatives designed to carry out analogous tasks.

It was this realization that was the final catalyst: caring about your fellow man and opposing the works of the state in achieving that goal are NOT mutually exclusive political creeds.

I've lived in a society in which there is no capital gains tax, no tax on dividends, an extremely low income rate (16%) and a streamlined civil service under the full protection of British Jurisprudence. Guess what? It was a great society! Crime was low, the streets were well kept and the tasks, which Government is necessary to perform were carried out perfectly adequately. The Government did not need to pick up Inland Revenue like a dust-buster and hoover up half my money each year to achieve it! It had followed a Laissez-Faire industrial policy for generations and had been a free-market economy since its creation.

I speak of Hong Kong pre-1997 and I can not believe it took so long for me to see how competent such a system was.

Sure it had an ID card system, but it was across the border from a billion people doing their damnedest to escape a barbaric communist dictatorship and had an immigration crisis on its hands. The card is now tied into the Drivers License so it's not an arbitrary extra bit of identification you need to carry around and works as a passport for HK immigration. Most importantly since the state is not hell-bent on interfering with every single facet of your life, it generally does not seem so odious.

One of the arguments made for ID cards in the United Kingdom is that the state is not some malign force as in other countries so it can be trusted with an extra means of keeping tabs on its populace but this is akin to saying that the pit bull about to ravage your arm is not in fact a carrier of rabies like the one across the street, so it's all right to put down your handgun. If the state wants an ID card from me, it can bloody well start behaving a lot more like its former colonial charge.

Why, when all the evidence available points to the same facts - Free Markets perform better than regulated ones, US States with more lax gun control laws have lower rates of violent crime that ones which do not, Charities and NGOs are more efficient than public sector bodies etc - do we insist on following the ideas which have proven, in the past 100 years, to be complete and utter hogwash?

Banal though it may be, I remember playing SimCity 2000 as a teenager on my computer. Every time I tried to set up a high-tax, high-service economy within my city, my economy, followed by the city itself, stagnated. The answers have been staring me in the face for years.

Yesterday I cut up my Labour party membership card and cancelled my standing order to the party. When asked about my political affiliation a few days ago, I answered "libertarian" and somehow the world made a great deal more sense.

As I pondered this matter and resolved to write this piece, I concluded that I had taken far too long to realize what was in front of my nose, yet the sobering reality is that this left-to-liberty transition is typically played out over the course of a lifetime. How many 40 year old Labourites are there still in this world? I believe I've been remarkably fortunate, I have the means to concentrate my personal wealth under a low tax regime and now have the intention of doing so. I can still make the world a better place like my 16 year old self wanted and more importantly I can do it without stuffing the paycheck of 40 inefficient public sector bureaucrats. All that at age 23? I have got a bright future to look forward to and perhaps with the growth of libertarianism, my children will too.

Today is 17th November, the day when the Velvet Revolution began 18 years ago. Since then there have been years when I did not 'commemorate' the event and there were years when I did. A couple of weeks ago I was visiting Eastern Europe and despite the trickle of bandwidth available where I was staying, I found myself watching old clips from the communist era on YouTube. The most surreal was not the absurdity of their content, the ridiculous gravitas of the communist propaganda but the memory of this rubbish being taken seriously and accepted as the norm.

I have written about 17th November 1989 already and what it meant to me. This year I prefer to share some images, which as usual, speak a thousand words. To those, let me add music and words of Karel Kryl whose songs used to be a constant companion in the years before the revolution. I was old enough to understand his bitter humour and lyrical cynicism. There is nothing soft or simple about Kryl's songs, they are hard hitting, harsh and without hope.

When armies of Warsaw Pact occupied Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968 to suppress the democratization movement of Prague Spring, Karel Kryl released album Bratříčku zavírej vrátka (Close the Gate, Little Brother), full of songs describing his disgust over the occupation, life under the communist rule, and rude inhumanity and stupidity of the regime. The album was released in early 1969 and was banned and removed from shelves shortly thereafter. This work became an icon of the anti-communist movement for years to come — when he returned from exile in 1989 during the Velvet Revolution, almost every little child in Czechoslovakia knew the lyrics of these songs by heart.

One of his most famous songs has been superimposed on video clips of the two historical events in Czechoslovakia - August 1968 and November 1989.

1968

1989

[Quick and dirty translation]
Little brother, don't sob, it is not a banshee
Don't be frightened, it is only soldiers,
Who arrived in sharp-edged metal caravans

Through tears caught on eyelashes we look at each other
Come with me little brother, I fear for you
On the uneven roads, little brother, in children's shoes

It rains and it is getting dark
This night will not be short
The wolf has a yen for the lamb
Little brother, have you closed the gate?

Little brother, please do not sob
Do not waste your tears
Hold back the curses and save your strength
You mustn't blame me if we do not make it

Learn the song, it is not so hard
Lean on me, little brother, the road is rough
We will stumble forth, we cannot turn back

It rains and it is getting dark
This night will not be short
The wolf has a yen for the lamb
Little brother, do close the gate!
Please close the gate!

Good luck, Mr Dodge. Andrew's recent diagnosis has reminded me - I am 41 - to get a health check done once a year and catch these gremlins early (I have been remarkably lucky with my health, but no point in taking it for granted).

What a way to mark Guy Fawke's night.

A rant warning! Last night Hugh and I were talking, amongst other things, about hierarchies and their impact on individual's autonomy, or sovereignty as he calls it. And, predictably, how the internet has changed what has been long accepted as the balance of power between the individual and institutions. These things never far from my mind, a few thoughts struck me as I watched a couple of episodes of the series Rome.

• Vorenus, the prefect of 13th legion runs into Pompey Magnus who is fleeing with his family to Egypt. He decides to let him go after Pompey begs for mercy for his wife and children. Upon return to the camp, he explains to Caesar that he didn't feel the need to apprehend Pompey as he was abandoned, weak and dirty and bring him to punishment. Caesar gets angry and says "Remember I am the only one who dispenses mercy around here".

• Pompey Magnus is treacherously assassinated by a Roman soldier who serves an Egyptian master as he moors on the Egyptian beach and his head offered to Caesar as a welcoming gift. To the Egyptian's shock, Caesar is appalled and storms out in anger at their barbarism and Pompey undignified death. (Talk about cultural clash.) When they protest: But he was your enemy? He angrily replies: He was a consul of Rome!

• Vorenus is instructed by Caesar to find and free Cleopatra. He takes the opportunity to apologise for his 'lapse of judgement' regarding capturing Pompey. He says, if only I did my duty...

These are examples of how power, rules and resulting hierarchies create environments where individuals have no real autonomy by default. In the first one, Vorenus has his ability to make moral decisions (i.e. based on what he considers right and wrong) denied to him. In the second, Caesar's outrage at the death of his enemy is not about Pompey but about the disrespect to the office that lent this particular wretch significance above other human beings.

The third is about duty. Duty is important, often deeply embedded in people to follow a particular rule that usually makes sense on some level - either evolutionary or social. It is however designed to protect the system, rarely the individual. I am not attacking the sense of duty that comes from individuals themselves but the kind of duty often invoked to subdue them, namely duty to follow orders. Without autonomy, that kind of 'virtue' is just another tool in the tyrant's toolbox. It took a collectivist horror for the European societies to realise that it is morally inadmissible even for the armed forces to follow orders, abrogating humanity.

Hierarchical systems and institutions take over people and hollow out anything that is individual to replace it with their own trinkets - position, status, power, money, influence, resources. People are defined by what position they hold, by the family they are born into, by people with greater power than them and finally, if they are lucky, by their decisions. Such systems with centralised or unchecked power attract people who wield it enthusiastically and ruthlessly. Using that power, in exchange for perpetuating the system, they shape others to its rules. Nasty things become possible in the name of the system… It’s one of the ways power corrupts.

Institutions and systems go through life cycles, often imploding by themselves or getting overthrown by new, more eager ones. If they survive it is by striking a precarious balance, by giving people just enough freedom to prevent rebellion. Judging from history, it doesn't seem that much is needed. Fortunately, there are always individuals who push for more autonomy and so the struggle continues.

Top down hierarchies are mechanisms for implementing centralised power. Their rules are a shorthand for the power structure and a substitute for knowledge of how things work, understanding of consequences of people's actions and impact of their decisions. How many times have you heard - well, if I let you do this, then everyone would want to do that and where would that lead? This is an admission of suppressed individuality. It is disguised as respect for others, when it fact it is merely 'respect' for the ways things are within the system.

When people exercise their autonomy more freely they start seeing consequences of their actions and/or indifference to them. In centralised power systems, you cannot have an action without the system being involved. The action has to be assessed and judged to see if it follows or breaks the existing rules. And an appropriate action as mandated by those rules is then taken.

In a distributed environment that is not possible. Or desirable. A network is such an environment. What is so wonderful about the internet, amongst other things, is that it is demonstrating how a greater autonomy, freedom and fewer restrictions on individuals lead to a more connected and increasingly social place. The old collectivist chestnut that with greater emphasis on the individual comes atomisation of society is just that. It certainly does not stand comparison with the explosion of connectivity, innovation and creativity fuelled by individuals having access to technology and tools that were until recently in the domain of businesses and governments.

And for the likes of me Chris Locke's memorable outburst from 1995 still reverberates:

And I sit here and some of what I’m hearing is how to work in the system. Well I say fuck the system — it’s dead it’s stupid it’s non-responsive it’s counter productive it’s fucking socially evil and if we put any more of our goddamn time into propping up these dead-ass morons we deserve what we fucking get.... We’re not going to work in the system because THE SYSTEM DOES NOT WANT US.

cross-posted from Media Influencer

It looks like those advising and supporting Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, are determined to blackguard his prospective Tory opponent Boris Johnson by any means necessary.

First we had Doreen Lawrence (who has been cultivated by race-activists over the last decade to the point of co-option) wheeled out in The Guardian, to wave her son's shroud and say:

Boris Johnson is not an appropriate person to run a multi-cultural city like London. Think of London, the richness of London, and having someone like him as mayor would destroy the city's unity. He is definitely not the right person to even be thinking to put his name forward.

Those people that think he is a lovable rogue need to take a good look at themselves, and look at him. I just find his remarks very offensive. I think once people read his views, there is no way he is going to get the support of any people in the black community.

A classic piece of noughties argumentation: a champion victim finds him offensive. He should not be considered. But note also the visual metaphor: "look at themselves... look at him".

This morning The Voice carried the news that: "London's mayor Ken Livingstone will next week issue a formal apology for his city's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade".

When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,

It may just be coincidence, but I prophesy that Ken will not be shy of inviting other mayoral candidates to do the same, hinting that they if they will not, it is because they are racists who secretly approve of slavery. We know where Boris stands. In the logical, historical, position. Nonetheless, officials from such organisations as Blink (the 1990 trust), and Operation Black Vote (which is supposed to be a non-partisan organisation encouraging electoral participation), have already described him as "a hardcore racist" and "bigoted".

I suppose that we should not expect much better of professional agitators and their stooges. Boris is presented as a cartoon racist - using racial and class stereotypes. "Look! he's blond, blue-eyed, with an Etonian accent" they are saying. "He's cavalier about things right-on people feel strongly about, wickedly western, rational and white."

That is a narrative calculated to appeal to their fellow quangocrats and positive-discriminators, beneficiaries of the Crimson Newt's largesse, and to buttress them in their self-righteousness. But it also projects contemptuously low expectations of London's black people in general, treating them as an ignorant client class who will lap up the most shameless propaganda. It is to be hoped London's general public, black and white, will take the man as they find him, not as he is painted by an overt attempt to organise 'racial loyalty' at the polls worthy of the BNP.

If Londoners are urged vote for Boris or against him on the basis of the colour of their skins rather than their individual consciences, it isn't Boris dividing London on racial grounds, it is those doing the urging. I do not know if they are, but the thought that a significant number Londoners might be sufficiently ghettoised to follow the call is thoroughly depressing.

Fresh from his humbling at the hands of Hillary Clinton and following on from a statement indicating his willingness to invade Pakistan, Barack Obama ladles on credence to the increasingly ubiquitous assertion that he's inexperienced:

I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance...involving civilians. Let me scratch that. There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table.

Desperately wrong answer to (what should be) a deal-breaking question, Mr Obama. Sure, waving the threat of one's nuclear weapons capacity around like a pair of chopsticks in a cheap Chinese restaurant is not sensible, because it ultimately reduces that capacity's deterrent value - which is the only practical reason why a sane nation would field a nuclear arsenal in this world of other nations who also possess The Bomb. A wise leader does not even refer to his country's nuclear weapons capacity, because the widespread knowledge of that capacity speaks for itself more effectively than any politician could ever hope to.

Conversely, it is sheer lunacy for a US President (or hopeful) to declare that he will never press the button, because such statements completely undermine the deterrent value of these weapons. Mr Obama, if you are not running on a platform of nuclear disarmament, you never take the nuclear option off the table. Ever. You made a most elementary strategic blunder - you are not a suitable candidate for the role of U.S. Commander-in-Chief.

For those here determined to hate the BBC and all its works, here is a reminder that it does do some useful things. That it isn't quite in the mould of the fawning state broadcaster found almost everywhere in the world. Along with a reminder that some would like it to be.

This week File on 4 did the first really serious, probing investigation into HM Government's National Identity Scheme that there has been in any media yet. You can listen to it here, and it is full of fascinating things for the attentive listener.

The most extraordinary is this testimony from IT consultant Peter Tomlinson:

The meetings were called by people in the Cabinet Office. There were topics on the agenda that were set by people in the Cabinet Office and we kept on thinking: why are we not seeing people from the Home Office.

Why are we not seeing technical people from the Home Office, or people involved in technical management? Eventually they began to come along but they never produced anyone who had any technical understanding of large-scale systems. We were just completely puzzled.

This is the first really solid public evidence I have seen that the scheme really is [or was?] intended by strategists at the highest level as a complete population management system and revolution in the nature of government, rather than being one by accident. That it is the emanation of a philosophy of government. It is it is not always good to have one's analysis confirmed. In this case I would prefer not to have been vindicated.

Remember Philip Gould? He's one of those high-level strategists.

This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords' views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.

The philosophy is probably best summed up by a word from Foucault: governmentalism. Christopher Booker to the contrary, it is not a 'mental' creed of "The Mad Officals" but a pervasive pragmatism - using the natural history of humanity the better to shepherd it. The better shepherd is a member of the new innominate politico-bureaucratic class: maybe a civil 'servant', maybe a politician, maybe officially neither.

And just today a new example of the sage. A strategy memo has leaked to the Daily Mirror's sharp political editor Kevin Maguire. Lord Gould allegedly writes:

No-one in Britain should have any doubt about what you stand for, what you want to achieve. You should position yourself as a powerful, muscular modernisation politician with the power and the determination to change Britain. You should aim to be a great reforming PM.

You have to meet this mood for change. You have to exemplify renewal and a fresh start.

Your Premiership has to have a dynamism and an energy that pulls people along in its slipstream. You must become the change that Britain needs.

There is a name for this, too. It is one of the most widely used populist techniques in world politics: Strong Man government, tribal leadership, caudillismo. A national security state, presided over by a Big Man - has "a nation of freemen, a polite and commercial people" (Blackstone), really come to that? When exactly did liberty become such a minority taste in Britain that it were possible?

[Just a footnote on the BBC below the fold.]

And the BBC? Well. it remains independent, but since 1st January 2007, it too has fundamentally changed, though fundamental changes work slowly through large flabby organisations.

It is now defined by its duties (where have I heard that before? - oh yes...): They are headed by: "sustaining citizenship and civil society," and include, "representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities". Its previous objects were to provide broadcasting as a public service, as it saw fit, subject to certain restrictions, impartiality being the most prominent requirement. "Impartiality" is not to be found in the new charter. It is relegated to the supplementary "Agreement" between the BBC Trust and Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for
Culture, Media and Sport.

I have no doubt the BBC will retain its capacity to irritate me. (Some other recent Files on 4 have been predicated on some classic lefty axioms.) The question is, will "sustaining citizenship and civil society," and "representing the UK," allow it to continue to irritate the Government of the day?

I am currently in Beijing, which is up there amongst the most polluted cities in the world. Beijing's summer days are characterised by heavy cloud cover, which traps the unsightly gaseous consequences of China's lightning-fast growth. The sun usually becomes discernable at around 4pm, when a golden-brown orb peers timidly through the haze. Being more acquainted with the brilliant Australian sun, for a split-second I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking at when I first saw its rather diminished Chinese incarnation.

In such circumstances, I have been thinking a lot about the "carbon footprint" of countries in the economic vanguard of the developing world - countries like China and India. Like most who contribute and comment here, l classify myself as a "global warming skeptic", due to the evangelical, anti-science and frequently absurd rhetoric that typifies global warming activists of all stripes. I am not a complete denialist - I have not written off the theory of anthropogenic global warming entirely. I simply believe there is an awful lot we do not yet know, and it is rash to be making grand predictions about impending weather-related catastrophes, and demanding action based on such flawed predictions. If, however, I was to reconsider my position and embrace the concept of AGW, I would still not champion the Kyoto Protocol or any other effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The fact is that if AGW is a genuine phenomenon, it is inevitable. There is absolutely no point in the rich world winding back its CO2 output, because China, India and the rest of the developing world will replace any first world CO2 reductions several times over. Despite the occasionally placatory noises about limiting CO2 emissions heard from the likes of the Chinese central government, the fact is that the Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, the Brazilians, nor anyone else from the developing world will ever stymy their nations' opportunity to develop by hobbling their industrial output via significant CO2 emissions controls. Nor are the leaders of these countries likely to do anything to incur the wrath of their citizens by curtailing their perfectly reasonable aspirations to own motorcars, motorcycles, air conditioners and enjoy the convenience of air travel - all enormous direct or indirect sources of CO2 emissions. If significant CO2 reduction could be achieved with minimal economic and social cost, then perhaps the developing world would cooperate. However, large-scale CO2 reduction is an extremely expensive and socially disruptive exercise, and this reality will persist for several decades.

And it is too late to roll back the clock - too many people in the developing world have tasted the fruits of development, and quite legitimately demand more. Those governing the aspirational billions are far more likely to be influenced by them than An Inconvenient Truth. Global CO2 emissions are going to continue to grow for many years, there is no doubt about it. The "global warmenists", as the mighty Tim Blair calls them, need to re-evaluate their positions, because what they propose at present is simply an exercise in developed-world wealth destruction on an epic scale. Those insisting on such a state of affairs appear little short of anti-human luddites, as detractors of the green movement have long asserted. Bjørn Lomborg is spot on - any resources allocated towards the AGW issue should be directed towards researching crisis management and developing an appropriate disaster-relief capacity under the circumstances of rapid climate change, even if only as an insurance policy. And the absolute last thing we in the developed world should be doing is hampering the wealth-creating organs of our societies in a futile effort to cut CO2 emissions. If AGW is truly the looming catastrophe that many predict, we need to be as wealthy as possible to plan and make provisions for its impending consequences, and thus deal with them when they start to unfold.

Two little bits of green craziness from yesterday's Ethical Living section of the Guardian. Interesting that it is no longer Environment Guardian, which I think is a hint that greenery is more a system of morals than a mode of scientific policy formation.

First, can't add. Bibi van der Zee addresses a reader's ethical dilemma:

Well, yes, cotton hankies, obviously. It's not like disposable nappies versus reusables, where the disposable bunch can defend themselves on the grounds of the powere used to launder reusables. Because, really, how much electricity does it take to wash a handkerchief?

If Ms van der Zee could take some time off from expostulation - really - to think, she might spot that if you use a machine rather than bashing it on rocks at the riverside, laundering a piece of cloth takes pretty much the same amount of energy until it is too big to get in the machine, and the likelihood is greater that a handkerchief gets more energy (water, detergent...) used on it than strictly necessary than for any other item you might launder, precisely because it is smaller.

Second, won't add. Caroline Lucas MEP answers the question, "Do you know your carbon footprint?"

Yes. It's about seven tonnes of carbon a year, at least three times the global average but a little below the UK mean. That doesn't include the essential travel in my work as an MEP - or the other carbon costs associated with running busy offices in Brussels and London. Measuring one's carbon footprint is difficult, because differing systems calculate it differently. Mine includes an estimate for the carbon dioxide embedded in the clothes I wear, the food I eat and the goods I buy, for which I am responsible. So policy on reducing emissions can be based on actual or worst case figures, rather than the wishful thinking engendered by those who consider only travel and household fuel.

... but cosily ignoring the wishful thinking involved in excluding from consideration that MEPs spend more time on jets than many people who own one.

Oh Caroline! (She was a friend of mine, though I have not seen her for years.) What was wrong with saying the European government is insanely wasteful and you are trying to reduce that at the same time as contributing? Frightened of losing the moral high ground? Or such a believer in the value of more "essential" government that you exempt it from a calculation that purports to weigh every other human activity?

Those greens who favour carbon allowances tracked and enforced by government - very many of them - usually fall into the won't add category. I have yet to see any of them attempt to quantify, or even acknowledge the existence of, the "carbon footprint" of the fabs and server farms, the bureaucrats and analysts, the data infrastructure and policing, needed to monitor and control everyone else's lifestyle. Your personal carbon is a sooty sin consumed of private desire. That expended by the good state managing you is essential, virtuous, too cheap to meter. The divine Ms Lucas has internalised that distinction, it seems.

I am quite fond of the Scots Nats, but then, I am English. The BBC has/had a headline today (which, because of the unique way the BBC is ... interpreting web conventions... may disappear without warning) that for a moment made me love them:

SNP planning to cut down cabinet

Wouldn't that make politics a bit more exciting? Sad to say, it is an administrative detail in Holyrood, not a plot to draw claymores in Whitehall.

Steven Baker of Blogspotting writes about his experience of casino backstage:

They have banks and banks of TV screens looking at the tables and the traffic of people. They have fixed cameras over every table, and tracking cameras operating within what look like black cantaloupe-sized half domes on the ceilings.

They zoom on one woman's behaviour:

Then he saw it. She had her cards, a black jack, and with one quick movement she upped her bet by adding another $5 chip. We watched again and again in slow motion.

This is still fine by me. The casino is private property, in a business where some people are highly motivated to cheat. It is what happened afterwards that I find interesting.

They decided she was no pro. Still, they sent a security person to talk to her as she was leaving the table. We watched. She was surprised, confused, then grave. Then he said something that put her at ease. She relaxed, smiled, joked, and then went along her tipsy way.

I share Steven's unease and his realisation that these casinos are giving us a preview of life in the coming age of surveillance.

Increasingly our movements and gestures, online and off, will be open to scrutiny by companies and governments alike. It will be up to them to decide what to crack down on, what to let pass. In making these decisions, they'll be weighing not only our innocence or guilt, but also our happiness as customers, our ability to stir up a fuss, the cost of the public perception that they're snoops. The upshot: We won't have much privacy, but crafty governments and companies will give us the illusion we do.

In other words, technology in an environment that has not evolved to match it, i.e. does not have respect for the individual as a fundamental principle, eventually leads to a dystopia. In a society without openness and individual autonomy, technology amplifies and entrenches the power of the centralised system, however benign the original intention. I am reminded of The Difference Engine, a novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. The story is set in Victorian times, in a society with all the pathologies of an authoritarian system, i.e. one lacking proper checks and balances. It is taken to the point of grotesqueness and shown as ultimately fragile - its strength rests on the technology to the exclusion of individual freedom. Innovation is institutionalised, variety killed, leading to vulnerability to outside innovation and to inherent flaws within the system.

The difference between the impact of technology online and offline could not be more stark. Offline we have the modern Panopticon, surveillance cameras of increasing sophistication and intrusiveness. Online we still have the ability to protect ourselves or can find those who can help us do so rather than have our 'protection' imposed by a centralised institution. Yes, the internet is an anarchy and a sewer - as Ben Laurie who ought to know describes it :). But it is also a space where new ways of doing things can emerge and more importantly where individuals can flourish without depending on organisational resources. Offline we are defenceless against somebody building the aforementioned Panopticon, online there are ways to design against it.

So simply put, I would rather have the anarchy and the sewer with individual sovereignty than a Big Brother in whatever disguise.

cross-posted from Media Influencer

I do not have a link, but David Brooks was speaking on Meet the Press this morning about the Don Imus affair in the USA.

He says shock-jock popularity is not about racism. It is about cruelty. Institutionalized culturally based cruelty. Indiscriminate cruelty for its own sake.

On hearing the case (allegedly put forth by Snoop Dog in defense of his own misogynistic lyrics) that these particular women, the basketball players should not have been spoken about that way, Brooks said with sad derision, "We can only step on the down trodden."

Brooks also points out that Imus was very heavily watched and listened to by the power elite. After an appearance on Imus' show he, Brooks, received a remarkable amount of feedback from the power elite that make made up a disproportionate part of Imus' audience. So now I ask, what does this say about the souls of those who demand the power and authority to be our masters? What does it mean that the powerful should be so enamoured of deliberate and systematic cruelty that they listen to it for entertainment? Somehow, I am not as surprised as I would like to be.

I think this path to cruelty is one that has been travelled farther in the UK than here, but we appear to be following closely behind you. My personal opinion is that cruelty is a/the clear marker for both the decadence and impotence of a society. Celebrated cruelty is the symptom of a society that has reoriented from protecting its weakest members to baiting them for entertainment. It is historically clear that cruelty, a cultural coldness in the extremities of society, is one of the final signs of its imminent death.

On a positive note, watching this exposure of the internal tensions in the power cabal has provided some interesting moments. For me, the most interesting of all was hearing the market place being praised from the left for having removed Imus from the air (referring to the actions of sponsors). I will take all such statements/concessions as a sign of our strength.

"Whenever I heard the word culture, I reach for my gun".

That is a phrase that I had always attributed to Nazi grand fromage Hermann Goering. I have no idea when he said it or under what circumstances but, somehow, it seems to suit him. I can just imagine his pudgy hand fumbling around for a Walther while some petrified underling who realises that he has just put his foot in it urgently seeks a window to jump out of. However, according to this wiki, the quote was actually penned by a pro-Nazi playwright in the 1930's.

But whatever the distasteful provenance, it should not blind anyone to value of the quote as an expression of inveterate grouchiness. In fact, as far as I am concerned, it succinctly and perfectly conveys my own sentiments in response to hearing or reading certain words or phrases. Examples are:

• Sustainable development
• Social justice
• Fairtrade
• Ethical anything
• Eco-friendly
• The anything community
• Ken Livingstone

Of course, the above list is nowhere near exhaustive and is subject to constant updating and review.

Now the problem here is that I have to make do with reaching for my metaphorical gun because I live in the UK where having any sort of real, actual gun is pretty much prohibited, thanks largely to the indefatigable efforts of the same people who conjured up the words and phrases that appear in my list. I suppose that they must have known in advance the effect they would have on me and so combined their lexical work with a programme of self-preservation. A pox on them.

I suppose it is not very noble of me to share this wee story with you, but the sun is shining and I am still feeling a warm glow after hearing this from my brother:

Brother: "Hey, you know that guy Mark who used to bully you at school a bit, you know, the one that went off to run a music shop?"

Me: "Er, yes, but it is a long time ago".

Brother: "I bankrupted him this morning."

My brother is a civil litigator.

I suggest that you read this before you sit down to eat breakfast and not afterwards, lest you spend the rest of your morning mopping semi-digested coco-pops off the kitchen floor. Here are a few tasters:

I'm in tune with the 'I can' generation

Wow! Is that anything like the Pepsi Generation? Like, totally kewwwwllll. Not to mention hot, hip, happening, in the groove and sexeeeeeee.

That is why social and economic change today require government leadership and profes sional innovation, as well as mass mobilisation.

Certainly, sir. Corporal Tremayne reporting for duty, sir (salutes).

In public services, an "I can" service will continually ask: how can we devolve power, funding and control to the lowest appropriate level, while maintaining high national minimum standards? Can teachers and children inject more creativity into what is learnt, where and how?

Well, 'I can' tell him what the 'lowest appropriate level' is for funding and power.

This is not a zero-sum game between government power and citizen power; it is a genuine partnership that breaks down the divide between producer and consumer.

Eh?

It doesn't get any better than that. This man has penned a whole mainstream editorial vision every single syllable of which is complete bollocks. I have to ask myself whether he actually believes this horse-manure or is he just saying these things because he thinks that this is what the public wants to hear? What world does he see through his eyes? Does he actually see hordes of shiny, happy, clappy 'I can' people exalting at his feet and begging him to lead them to the Promised Environment? Is he so twisted by lies that he can open wine bottles with his fingers or he is so spaced-out on his own propoganda that he has drifted hopelessly away from anything that could reasonably be described as the real world?

Perhaps one of you 'I can' types out there can tell me.