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… and leading directly on from how the state uses cameras to mess people around, here is another story (from the same source – top right column again - June 3rd) about a capitalist-supplied camera that helps motorists, and also anyone they might otherwise fail to notice and drive into.

Simply, on the very front of the car, some capitalists have attached a camera that can see sideways in both directions. Inside the car, there is a screen showing the (two) results to the grateful driver.

At the home where I grew up, and where my mum still lives, driving out past those high hedges and that high wall and across that very narrow pavement into the road was and is still a perpetual worry, with much craning of the neck forwards and asking of any front seat passenger to help by doing likewise. I do not use a car now, but when I did, I used constantly to think how handy such a camera would have been. Well, if I ever get another car, I may be able to have just such a camera on it.

Apparently these gadgets are already very big (metaphorically speaking - they are of course literally tiny) in Japan, where they were first devised and have first been made available. Japan is a land, I would guess, with many awkward little corners and hard-to-negotiate exits. As is ours.

The state is not your friend. Business has to be, or it goes out of business.

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Patrick Crozier's Transport Blog has a valuable service at the top right of the blog, in the form of links to transport related articles. (Most of the media do not seem to have a special category for "transport" stories, the way they do for "education" or "arts".) Patrick adds very little in the way of accompanying commentary to these links, but others can comment, and on this story, several people did. I missed this when it first came out, but it seems to me worth making a fuss of, even if belatedly:

A pensioner who warned motorists of a police speed trap was convicted of wilfully obstructing a constable in the execution of his duty, banned from driving and ordered to pay £364 costs yesterday.

Stuart Harding, 71, was attempting to slow motorists down as they approached a Sunday morning car boot sale where many people were crossing the road.

Noticing that police were parked nearby with an officer using a hand-held laser speed camera, he decided that a warning stating "Speed Trap – 300 yards ahead" would be the most effective way of getting drivers to reduce their speed. But as soon as the officers noticed his placard he was cautioned for committing an offence.

And there seems little doubt that it was this sign that was the "offence".

Robert Manley, prosecuting, said: "In displaying this sign the defendant was giving motorists advanced warning of a road safety camera being operated by the police 300 yards further along the road."

The supposed idea of speed cameras is to dissuade people from breaking the speed limit. Mr Harding was also dissuading people from breaking the speed limit. Yet this is something that a prosecutor considers it proper to denounce Mr Harding for doing. And what is more, the court agreed.

I suppose you could just about argue that if we were all allowed to put up signs about speed cameras, we would all be at it, and we would all accordingly only have to obey the speed limit where there was a warning sign, instead of all the time as we should.

But I prefer Andy Wood's explanation, which he links back to in his comment on this story. The income from speed cameras goes to local police forces, and they use cameras, and place their cameras in the first place, to raise revenue rather than to dissuade dangerous driving, the problem with dissuasion being that if it succeeds they get no money out of it.

So, watch out. If someone is committing an offence for which he is liable to be fined, do not, whatever you do, try to dissuade him. You will be "wilfully obstructing" the police in their attempts to fleece us of our money whenever they can.

I suppose the next question is: would it be wrong to encourage people to commit such offences? Would the police have any objections to that? Presumably not.

More seriously, this illustrates the general principle nowadays, that the state would rather tax and torment and generally mess with law-abiding, and even, as in this case, actively law-upholding citizens, rather than go after real criminals. Criminals are just too much bother to deal with. Moral: be a criminal. Seriously. The government is always jabbering away about how this or that measure might "send the wrong message" – usually what they say is that if they do not forbit some harmless and utterly unaggressive thing they might be interpreted as encouraging it. Well, what kind of message does prosecuting Mr Harding send?

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Trade here seems to be rather thin (although since I first put that it has got a bit thicker), just as it seemed to be this time yesterday. And this time yesterday I started concocting a posting (for my Culture Blog and to link to from here) about the strange things to be seen on or from Chelsea Embankment, just to the south of Samizdata HQ (which I was visiting the other day for reasons that need not concern you). This morning I finished it. Thinking about this posting some more, I now consider the ducks to be rather mundane. But the red sailed sailing boats and the bus are quite fun, I think.

Here is one of the red sailed sailing boats.

The point is that you do not see little sailing boats on the river in London very often. I seldom do, anyway. Follow the link above to get to a bigger version of this picture, and for the bus and the ducks, and for further commentary.

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The UKIP has just become a significant force in British politics. Will it last? I have no idea. But the fact is that the UKIP is now a major player in the European Parliament and allegedly gained almost 16% of the vote where they stood.

And yet this appearance of a new political force in Britain seems to be almost a footnote in most of the articles in the press. Oh, it is being covered, but the fact this upstart party is being examined in such muted matter is itself quite worth pondering. Although I am hardly an uncritical admirer of the UKIP in many ways, I do share their antipathy to the EU and I think that their success does show that a deep vein of disaffection is beginning to come to the surface even amongst Britain's typically ovine electorate.

And the fact the sensationalist British press is not treating this into a sensation is itself rather interesting.

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Nick Denton of Gawker, Gizmodo (etc. etc.) fame is perhaps the best known face on the commercial blog scene and certainly the most quoted these days. I also think he is quite incorrect in his understanding of why people read blogs, which means I think his business model is not one I would care to follow myself. Do I think all of what the redoubtable Denton does is wrong? No, not at all, but I do not really think the foremost advocate of blogging-for-business really understand blogs that well and I do not think he understand the blogosphere at all.

Most people do not look at something because they want to have advertisements shoved in front of them. Old style 'interruption marketing' might work when people have few options, say just a few TV channels, and are willing therefore to accept advertising as the 'price' for something else they value, but what Nick Denton seems to be saying is that there are lots of people who actually like reading ad-copy and will read blogs that are just well packaged advertisements (or 'advertainment' if you prefer) when the Internet is awash with places giving content away and doing no such thing. I simply do not believe that is true. Yet I do believe that there is a role for commercial blogging.

People read blogs to get a different perspective, even if they do not always agree with it. If people want to read a blog which is largely advertisement dressed up in well written urban hip and blog-speak rather begs the question, why would such a person not just stick to established media channels which are filled with endless marketing? Are blog readers really so dim as to not pick out the fact they are just being handed the same old interruption marketing message dressed up in a slightly different way?

I think for a commercial blog to succeed, it must do the same thing as a successful non-commercial blog, and that means it must be interesting and credible to its audience. In fact I would say a blog is a 'credibility machine'. To use the words of the Cluetrain Manifesto, a blog must speak with the author's authentic voice if it is to be believed... and it is a rare company indeed who can be authentic if all people hear from them is what their marketing and PR department say.

For a companies and other institutions to blog successfully, and people like Macromedia, The Adam Smith Institute, Microsoft and others do indeed blog successfully, then they actually have to speak in ways that are a long way from a press release that has been carefully worded by the PR department, and a million miles away from copy produced by an advertising agency. No one actually believes that crap any more and sticking it on a blog just makes it stand out like poop on a pool table.

No, if a company wants to blog, it needs to decide that it wants to be forthright and talk to people like human beings... if you have desirable or difficult or complex products and have interesting things to say about them, people might actually be interested in hearing what you have to say if you can convince them you are not just parroting the same old sales pitches served up for the Google Generation.

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It will be very interesting to see what happens in the election in Britain today... As I have written before I would like to see the UKIP cut into the Tory vote in the hope of that moving them in a more Eurosceptic direction.

But part of me would be just as happy to see a nice low turn out as people find a better use of their time than voting for which group of control obsessed kleptos get to exercise their looting rights. Sadly the use of postal ballots looks like it might actually increase 'turn out'. Too bad.

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My recent posting on Slovakia contained a scoop and I missed it. The leader of the Slovak governing party's campaign for the European elections tomorrow is former ice hockey player Peter Stastny.

I knew the name (one of the few names in ice hockey I ever knew of), but failed to connect it to the poster boy of the Slovak Democratic Coalition.

From the comments to my last posting, my description of SKDU as conservative-libertarian is controversial. Considering that the new Libertarian Party candidate in the USA was selected because he campaigns on sticking to the Founding Fathers' intentions (nationalized Post Office and all), I stand by my description for now.

What is amusing is the contrast between the Slovak and the Austrian election: the posters in Austria oppose reform, the Slovaks put a celebrity on the poster and bring in massive tax reforms in the right direction. American show-biz versus Austrian corporatism. I know which I prefer.

[Thanks to Tim Evans at CNE for providing the tip-off about Peter Stasny.]

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This article in the Independent by Pamela Schlatterer, described as "UK correspondent for German TV" (what - all of it?), is an amazing combination of illogical muddle and patronising sneering at all those British people who do not want to put up with illogical muddle such as hers. Above all there is her sheer refusal to concede that there might be any rational basis for British loathing, not of Europe itself, but of being ruled by EUrope.

For example, she says this:

Having said that, the last time I met my German and Dutch colleagues for an election meeting – we regularly team up to exchange ideas about the UK and its weird and wonderful ways – there was bafflement at the amount of anti-Europeanism in all parties' election pamphlets. The attitude seems to be that it will not hurt to include a few sentences against Brussels in propaganda, no matter which party you are from.

Yes, and ask yourself why that might be.

We shook our heads at a country that seems intent on denying it is already governed by Brussels in lots of areas. The deep-seated sentiment against being "not independent" has crystallised into Euro-hatred, and even though the Prime Minister prides himself on being pro-Europe, under his leadership, things have got worse.

These mysterious British with their absurd desire to be independent! You silly woman, we British are not denying that we are "already governed by Brussels in lots of areas". We are now well aware of this fact. It is merely that a lot of us do not like it and would like the process reversed. We have had it up to here with that it-will-never-happen-it's-not-happening-it's-happened EUro-rigmarole.

One of the things I personally most hate about the EUropean Union is that, by dumping itself down on top of Britain (with the enthusiastic support of lots of British people) it has caused other British people, understandably disinclined to make subtle distinctions between Europe and EUrope, to hate Europe. But such hatred is caused by EUrope. It is an article of faith among EUro-enthusiasts that EUrope makes for peace and fellow feeling. But a central government – any central government – is just as likely to stir up hostilities between different provinces (each blaming the others for the combined mess) as it is to make everyone like one another.

This paragraph I find especially annoying, because you hear this kind of tosh so often, and because it has been exposed as tosh a thousand times, yet still it comes back. It almost makes me hate Europe myself, if it contains International TV correspondents as stupid as this woman. Have a read of this:

I was raving the other day about a new central London café, which I see as a triumph of European food culture over sad English cafés. I got a bit carried away and exclaimed: "This island could be paradise: with better public services and more European influence on the food."

Here we go again, the relentless confusion between doing something the way some other people do it, and having to be ruled by the same political apparatus as those other people. We do not have to be ruled by EUrope in order to have European style cafés in London, any more than we have to be ruled by China to have Chinese Restaurants. If we want European-style public services, we can install them whenever we want, insofar as we are capable of running them. And if we are not capable of running them, us being a province of EUrope will not change that. Raving is right.

With luck people like Pamela Schlatterer may eventually decide that we British are all so disgustingly anti-European and irrationally hostile to foreigners that we are all of us without exception complete scum who must be completely ejected from EUrope. At which point those of us who want to can get back to liking Europe without having to make those subtle distinctions can do so.

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"Well, maybe he was a lot smarter than most people thought."

George P. Shultz, in his introduction to Reagan In His Own Hand

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Britain goes to the polls tomorrow to elect a round of representatives for the European Parliament, for UK Local Authorities and the office of Mayor of London.

Or, more accurately, about one-third of Britain goes to the polls. The other two-thirds cannot be bothered and, while I entirely sympathise with their attitude of non-engagement, it is my intention to buck the trend and cast my vote. I will explain.

I have never even attempted to conceal my contempt for the 'democratic process' as presently configured. In modern parlance, 'democracy' has become a euphamism for the perpetuance of a permanent political class, devoted to conducting their mischief without hindrance, objection or opposition. When all political candidates are required to sign up to a rigidly conformist and hegemonic agenda, the process of voting becomes a waste of time. At best, it is endorsement of the status quo, a rubber-stamped approval for 'business as usual'.

However, I am not averse to using existing mechanisms to achieve ends of which I approve and I would be churlish to deny that there are times when a convergence of circumstances gives rise to interesting opportunities to give that boring, monochromatic old status quo a damned good kicking.

Tomorrow is just such a time for there appears to be something of a headwind building up behind the UK Independence Party. If various well-publicised opinion polls are to be believed, then it is entirely possible that UKIP could shove the execrable Liberal Democrats into third place and possibly even nip the buttocks of the milquetoast Conservative opposition. That makes them a cause worth voting for.

A number of people have been quick to point out that some of UKIP's policies may be regarded as highly illiberal (e.g. they favour immigration controls) and quite inconsistent with a free society. That may well all be true but, that fact is that I simply do not care because their flagship, numero uno policy, nay their raisons d'etre is British withdrawal from the shoddy, cankerous mess of the European Union. The rest does not matter (and, besides, UKIP are probably no more hostile to immigration than is our current Labour Home Secretary).

With all the other political candidates offering a choice between spending squinty-million-billion on the public sector or spending squinty-million-billion-zillion on the public sector, the heretical bad-boys of UKIP shine with the enticing lustre of a semi-buried precious gem. Having endured the slings, arrows, barbs and whale-harpoons of sustained media hostility, they are the ones who are truly up for a scrap. Phooey to all this dull 'consensus', UKIP are riding into town looking for trouble. Even their list of '5 Essential Freedoms' includes 'Freedom from Political Correctness'. I have no idea what they mean by this and, possibly, neither do they but it's fighting-talk and refreshing as a shower of lemon zest.

I doubt very much whether they will ever form a government but this bunch of quarellsome bruisers is squaring up to the effete political establishment and I love them for it. A good result for them tomorrow will have the scions of the media/political nomenklatura running around sqauwking like a load of indignant hens ("abolish UKIP", "abolish voting", "abolish Britain"..."waaaahhhhhh") and for that spectacle alone it would be worth voting for them.

But it is worth voting for them for other reasons too. A solid UKIP vote tomorrow will not herald any revolutions. Nor will it prove the catalyst for any material change either in the short term or possibly at all. It will not even reverse or slow down the disastrous process of political integration in Europe. But what it will do is to puncture the smug confidence of the ruling guard and remind them that they may not always have things quite so under control. It will send a ripple of fear through the corridors of comfortably assumed power and make their cherished orthodoxies look just a little vulnerable. In the words of Jack Nicholson in 'Batman': "This town needs an enema".

Tomorrow we have an opportunity to light a candle instead of just cursing the darkness. I have impotently cursed the darkness for far too long. Now is the time to light candles. Many, many candles.

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Here, a story on how refusing to medicate your child can be deemed child abuse.

So Taylor took Daniel off Ritalin, against his doctor's wishes. And though Taylor noticed Daniel was sleeping better and his appetite had returned, his teachers complained about the return of his disruptive behavior. Daniel seemed unable to sit still and was inattentive. His teachers ultimately learned that he was no longer taking Ritalin.

School officials reported Daniel's parents to New Mexico's Department of Children, Youth and Families.Then a detective and social worker made a home visit.

"The detective told me if I did not medicate my son, I would be arrested for child abuse and neglect," Taylor said.

One hardly knows where to begin. The bogus "medicalization" of behavior? The all-too-common abdication of parental and teacher responsibility in favor of the easy fix of medication? The heavy hand of the state telling a man he has to drug his child for the convenience of public employees, even though the drugs are causing sleep and appetite problems.

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Today I did something I do not normally do, but ought to do more often. I bought the latest issue of Viz, which looks like this:

What a fine British institution this is! Dirty jokes. Merciless send-ups of political and any other sort of correctness, attacks on the high and mighty (especially God), and lurking under its lewd surface is a fiercely freedom-loving political agenda, not unlike that pushed in a similarly subversive manner by the creators of South Park.

I have been feasting in particular on the wonderful Viz letters pages, where, in this issue, there is to be found a thoughtful exchange of views on the nature of the terrorist menace, and the concomitant threat to civil liberties posed by the various state measures that are allegedly being taken to curb it.

T. Harris of Leeds starts the ball rolling:

So the Home Secretary plans to force us to carry identity cards with our iris patterns encoded onto them. That's rich. How dare David Blunkett judge people on their eyes when his don't even work. It would be like the head of the DVLC not having a number plate on his car.

Les Barnsley of Barnsley pursues the theme of iris patterns:

Could the Home Secretary explain to me how biometric checks on iris patterns and fingerprints are going to help keep tabs on muslim cleric Abu Hamsa.

Good points both, I think we would all here agree.

Londoner Charles Nylon has this reflection to offer concerning the nature of terrorism:

These suicide bombers really get my goat. What an evil way to kill innocent people, running screaming into a crowded place like madmen, blowing themselves and everyone else to bits. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned gentlemen terrorists like the IRA, who'd quietly pop a nail bomb under a pub table and leave without making a song and dance about it.

But Bamber Ross of Ross ripostes:

Mr Nylon (above letter) does not know what he is talking about. Gentlemen terrorists, indeed. When you get stang off a wasp, it just flies off to sting again and again in the style of the IRA bombers that Mr Nylon so admires. However, when a bee stings, it pulls its arse inside out and, like a suicide bomber, dies. And I think we' all agree that bees are much nicer than wasps.

But Prof. J. Shiels of the Dept of Entomology, Maudling College, Oxford, rejects this bee/wasp metaphor in no uncertain terms:

I'm afraid Mr Ross's insect/terrorist analogy (above letter) doesn't hold water. The reason that we agree that bees are nicer than wasps is nothing at all to do with their stringing ability. It is because bees are furry, like little black and orange flying teddy bears that make jam. Wasps on the other hand are all hard and have them Darth Vader faces. And they chase you when you run off.

Good to see the academic classes contributing to the debate there.

And the profundities just keep coming. Says Tracey Cusick of Cumbria:

The NSPCC keeps going on TV and saying that unless I send them three quid a month, a baby called William won't be so lucky next time. I suggest that we don't give in to these extortionists and blackmailers, or they'll be back with a threat to top him if we don't send them a fiver.

Wise words indeed.

Viz. Gentlemen intellectual terrorists. At all good newsagents now. And I have not even mentioned the Fat Slags.

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Tory leader Michael Howard is now loudly stressing his Eurosceptic credentials' as the Euro elections come closer and it looks like the UKIP will be seriously cutting into the Tory vote.

Of course talk is cheap and the only way the Tory Party is ever going to actually become a genuine (rather than a tactical) Eurosceptic party is if the party's very survival and the jobs and pay checks of its professional politicos is actually put in real, rather than potential, jeopardy... and there is only one way to do that.

Do not reward a decade of duplicity with a mindlessly tribal vote for the Conservatives. If you are going to vote at all, vote UKIP tomorrow.

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It is strangely comforting to see that the 'class war' instincts of old Labour are not entirely dead yet:

John Reid, the Health Secretary, yesterday dismissed the demand for a blanket ban on smoking as "an obsession of the learned middle class".

Speaking at a Labour Party event, he said he was reluctant to use compulsion to outlaw something that was a source of pleasure, particularly to working class people.

That Mr. Reid has to fight the corner of working-class people at a Labour Party event speaks volumes about the evolutionary path of the modern left.

Earlier, Mr Reid expressed his views even more bluntly when he took part in a round-table discussion with some of those invited to contribute to the consultation.

Told that they were discussing a smoking ban, Mr Reid said: "Let me play devil's advocate. What enjoyment does a 21-year-old mother of three living on a sink estate get? The only enjoyment sometimes they get is having a cigarette."

One participant objected quite strongly, telling Mr Reid her mother died of lung cancer.

But Mr Reid, a former chain smoker who has now given up, said it was best to provide people with information and let them decide what to do for themselves.

Now, perhaps, Mr. Reid can take the next logical step and denounce the levels of tax that working people have to pony up in order to enjoy their smoking habit. Then the bien-pensant can safely re-classify him as a 'right-winger'.

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Ronald Reagan was, as we know, dubbed among other things as "The Great Communicator". Through his speeches, radio broadcasts and writings, Reagan had a wonderful knack of communicating important truths in clear-cut ways.

What intrigues me is wondering what he would have made of this new field of blogging. I reckon he would have loved it and could easily imagine the old fella writing one. As a talk-radio host, he had a lot to say that would have fitted in perfectly with the weblog format. I have recently been reading a collection of his radio show broadcast transcripts and it blasts the idea of him being a dope. Anything but, in fact.

Reagan was eager to make full use of the modern technologies of his time in spreading his views about the role of government, capitalism, the evils of communism and the like. I don't think it impertinent to imagine that this great man would have loved our medium and enjoyed the fact of its challenge to Big Media. I wonder what he'd have called his weblog. How about "Shining City on a Hill"?

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Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth
Heidi Postlewait, Kenneth Cain and Andrew Thomson
(Miramax Books, 2004)

It is a shame that many readers will dismiss this book as outlandish or flippant simply because of its, uh, provocative title. Much of the press the book has received has been related to the "expose" angle of the book, with its promise of seamy tales of corruption, incompetence, sexual license and even drug abuse by UN officials. This is also a shame, because the book is so much more than an expose. If you have already made up your mind that the UN is hopeless, this is NOT the book to pick up in the hopes of gloating over UN policy failures in Rwanda, Bosnia and Haiti. Instead, Emergency Sex is an incredibly moving book and an addictive read, documenting tragedy, love, heartbreak, adventure and the friendship of the three co-authors.

The authors take turns telling the narrative, but their gifted writing meshes together so seamlessly that one often forgets whose turn it is to develop the story further. The authors met in Cambodia in the early '90s, as part of a team that was monitoring the election there. Heidi joined the UN after leaving her husband, a successful Manhattan modeling agent, in search of adventure. Ken, youngest of the trio, hires into the UN as an attorney after graduating from Harvard Law School - he is the book's most intriguing character, vacillating between cynicism and naivete, at times brutally critical of the UN but at the same time remaining on board with the program. And finally there is Andrew, the New Zealand-born doctor who went to work at a Red Cross hospital in Phnom Penh after meeting a survivor of the Khmer Rouge holocaust while in med school.

As it turns out, the Cambodian election is cake - the work is easy and uneventful, the election successful - and the trio, emboldened by the experience, move on to other peacekeeping assignments, where their fortunes change dramatically. Heidi and Ken go to Somalia and come under siege, Andrew goes to Haiti where he is a helpless and frustrated observer in the face of Haitian macoute warlords. When Heidi and Ken lose a colleague in Mogadishu, their disenchantment grows.

The authors, especially Ken, offer critiques of UN policy along the way. At times this is a matter of expressing subtle frustrations over bureaucratic pettiness, but at times much more substantive:

On April 6, 1994, one week after US forces withdrew from Somalia, a plane carrying the president of Rwanda was shot down over Kigali and massacres of Tutsis and moderate Hutus began within half an hour. UN peacekeepers withdrew while a radical Hutu militia, the interahamwe, engaged in an orgy of killing over ninety days at a rate three times that of the Holocaust ... when it was over, 800,000 had been slaughtered. Having failed to intervene in genocide on the ground for the second time in two years, the UN again choose to prosecute it in court instead, creating the second war crimes tribunal since Nuremberg.

In Bosnia, where the UN enabled genocide by declaring Srebrenica a "safe zone" for Bosnian muslims and then refusing to defend the city once Milosevic called their bluff, soft-spoken and taciturn Andrew makes perhaps the most vitriolic indictment of UN policy in the whole book:

One day someone at UNHQ will commission an official report about this disaster, replete with mea culpas and lessons learned. But for me there's only one lesson and it's staring right at me every day as I eat lunch: If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs. I learned that the day we were evacuated from Haiti.

But the book is challenging and heartrending more than it is overtly political. The most challenging moments in the book come as Dr. Andrew exhumes a mass grave in Rwanda, serving as the head of a UN team that is examining the site for forensic evidence to be used at the upcoming genocide trial. At this site, several thousand Tutsi women and children had crammed into a church, having been promised safe haven there by the local Hutu governor. Once the church was full, the Hutu militants locked the door, killing the entire congregation over the course of several days and burying their remains in a mass grave outside.

The sight of the church trashed and splattered with blood finally shakes the once-indefatigable Andrew, a deeply religious man:

After many hours I decide God was here, maybe not far above where I'm sitting now, watching and listening. He heard all the desperate prayers, from the kids and the half-dead women, from the believers, the doubters and the nonbelievers. Because everyone was praying for something, if only a quick death, facing a machete through the head.

And God just pissed all those prayers back down to earch, leaving everyone to die. This can't be the God I prayed to as a missionary kid, or at the communion rail as a medical student. This was a pitiless stranger and to pray to him up here in this bell tower would be absurd.

Meanwhile, Andrew must cope with a cynical local priest, who has been left in charge of what is left of the church grounds. The priest, seeing UN presence and UN money, is desperately trying to turn a profit from the examiners' presence, first insisting that the UN crew pay rent (in cash, to the priest himself, of course) then conjuring up an elaborate idea to turn the church itself into an extravagant memorial. Then, finally, the doctor has seen enough:

From near the bottom of the grave, we pull out the body of a young male dressed in full priest's regalia. If this is the man we've heard about, he was with the people in the church, comforting the soon to be dead and refusing offers to be evacuated by boat at night to safety across [Lake Kivu.] Instead he chose to stay until the end. We treat him tenderly as we strip the body, wash the brilliantly colored robes, and dry them in the sun. Two priests, same church. One pays with his life, the other wants to be paid for the exhumation. The wrong man is in that body bag.

But throughout it all, while they face mortal peril, unearth the most horrifying of atrocities and do a slow burn over UN blundering, they remain focused, hopeful, and loyal to each other. And the book has more than its share of uplifting, tender and even humorous moments. A group of Somalian teens ask Heidi whether she knows Bob Marley, the one cassette tape in the whole town. When she claims jokingly that she does, they ask whether she has, you know, made love to Bob Marley.

In the end, all three return to private life, all with mixed emotions about how they spent their youths. Andrew returns to Cambodia and builds a home on the Mekong River; Heidi takes an office job at the UN headquarters; and Cain is now a writer / scholar.

This is a brilliant book, one of the best you will read this year. That Kofi Annan apparently wanted the book suppressed is disappointing -- and really, apart from the drug and sex revelations, there is little in this book apart from routine criticism of UN policy. Peacekeeping missions failed in the Balkans and in Somalia? We already knew that. The UN would not stand up to even the most amateurish militants in Rwanda, standing by while slaughter raged? We already knew that. Heck, even Kofi Annan has admitted these things.

Emergency Sex is a tremendously challenging, but hugely rewarding book, and one that people of all ideological persuasions will be able to appreciate, because it is funny, sincere, and brutally, devastatingly honest. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.

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The folks in Iowa have got their market up and running for the 2004 Presidential election. Each contract pays a dollar; as of yesterday, you can spend just over 58 cents on a Bush contract, and around 43 cents on a Kerry contract. As you can see, the futures market is bullish for Bush (hmm, there's a slogan in there somewhere, possibly with an R rated logo) as compared to the opinion polls (right hand column, scroll down a little for a summary/average of current polling - very handy for the political junky).

The Iowa market is worth keeping an eye on - over the last several elections, it has half the forecast error of the opinion polls.

Update: For those hankering to put their money where there mouth is, and perhaps fleece a few rubes, the main page for the Iowa Electronic Futures Market is here. Sadly, there is a $500 cap on positions.

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Whoever came up with all this tosh about the world being a 'global village'? Seems to me that different parts of the world have a very different way of going about things.

In Saudi Arabia, a BBC reporter gets gunned down and lies bleeding in the street:

Police said Mr Gardner tried to get bystanders to help him as he lay wounded in the street by crying out that he was a Muslim.

Now I like to think that here in dear old Blighty, we would rush to the aid of a badly wounded human being regardless of his religion.

Oh, unless the police are around to stop us:

A police force was accused yesterday of waiting too long to act after a shooting at a family barbecue left two sisters dead. One witness claimed that their lives could have been saved.

Roy Gibson, 70, said he spent an hour waiting for help to arrive as he tried to save one of the women. Paramedics were prevented from entering until Thames Valley Police had completed a one-hour assessment of any further risk to life.

By which time, there was definitely no risk to life because the victims were no longer alive.

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That poor man in the straightjacket is having nightmares again. He is crying out in his sleep and banging his head off the walls: [note: link to article in UK Times may not be available to readers outside of UK]

EUROPEAN governments are to scrap dozens of "unnecessary" and "patronising" EU laws and directives under a plan to make the Union less bureaucratic and more in touch with the lives of its citizens.

The "bonfire of the diktats" will put an end to Europe-wide rules on the length of ladders that window cleaners can use, and laws on the materials that have to be used for children’s playgrounds.

The ambitious plan to roll back the rules made by the European Commission, which is being championed by the Dutch Government and supported by Britain, is a response to the growing concern that Brussels interferes too much in daily life, and that more decisions should be left to national governments.

About half of all laws in Britain are drawn up in Brussels and then adopted by Westminster. For environmental legislation, nearly 90 per cent of laws are made in Brussels, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs threatened with fines if it does not put them into effect. There are 2,500 EU directives in force, with hundreds added every year.

A bit of 'nice-guy' PR for the run-up to the European Parliament elections to get us in a positive frame of mind. It is just a tease really. Seldom have I seen a proposal that is going nowhere on so many levels.

For every regulation they manage to scrap, two more will pop up to replace it. And even if they somehow manage to stop Brussels producing more laws, they will simply be minted at national level instead. That is what governments do. They have no other skills to offer the marketplace.

Persuading government not to enact new laws is like trying to persuade birds not to fly. You cannot change the nature of the beast. You have to clip its wings.

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When I am not lurking and posting here in Samizdata.net, I earn my daily crust selling blogging expertise to companies via The Big Blog Company. Business seems to be picking up as increasing numbers of people in boardrooms are getting more clueful about what a blog (or blogs) can do for them, and so... we are looking for a couple people who might be interested in helping out on an independent, project by project basis.

London location would be ideal - face-to-face just has so much higher bandwidth - but we would certainly consider working virtually with someone more or less anywhere provided they have broadband. Our tech guru Henry spells out here what he would like.

1. Efficient in HTML/XHTML and CSS in order to work out advanced mock-ups that we will provide, understand them quickly and 'translate' them into actual code - in the most effective and accurate way (under our guidance and with the help of our specifications of course).
2. Ideally, we're looking for somebody who can look at the mock-up, and perceive the most efficient underlying HTML/CSS structure, with as little explanation as possible - although we will provide instructions. However, it will just make things much easier if he/she can look at the mock-up and have a feel for how the code should be structured.

3. He/she should also be able to manage gracefully - again, with our input if needed and under our supervision - the slight inevitable differences that exist between the graphical mockup and the final display in the browser(s) window, in compliance with the original design.

   In any case, we will handle and provide each and every graphic element to be part of the design, and we will manage as needed any subsequent editing or addition of graphics all along the development process. Therefore, he/she doesn't really need to be a Photoshop guru, as we will spare him/her image editing work.

4. A reasonable understanding of PHP and Javascript, in order to painlessly implement scripting within the (X)HTML code he/she will produce. We're open to any kind of proposition as far as scripted features and solutions are concerned, but this is not something he/she should have to worry about on a regular basis, as we will provide the said scripts, and the instructions to implement them.
5. A swift understanding of the CMS(s) we will be using and coding for. His/her expertise on both points 1 and 2 should be enough for him/her to learn quickly whatever software we are (or will be) using, but any preliminary knowledge of the way most CMS templates are usually structured will be a definite plus.
6. Flexible enough to adapt and produce code according to our guidelines and conventions (for the most part, we’re following XHTML recommendations: all tags and attributes in lowercase, quotes around attributes’ values, closing tags, etc.).

   Ideally, we would favor somebody who codes 'by hand' (the 'Notepad School' as opposed to the Dreamweaver one) but ultimately, we'll leave it to him/her, as far as he/she can provide us with clean and optimized code, that complies with our specifications (and mind you ladies and gentlemen, someone will be watching).

   Also, I think Firefox and Web (would-be) standards are cool. No, really.

   Having said that, I know that (somewhere between) 80 to 90% of the people out there surf the web with various flavors of Internet Explorer. I have no intention to lecture them, snub them or Javascript-Alert them to change their browser (and face it: unless you're a sleazy authoritarian, you can't shoot them either) even if I could, even if they would (when asked politely)… and even if I didn't thought IE is a great browser anyway. Consequently, my policy is fairly simple: I'll stick to the aforementioned standards up to the point where it makes no sense to stick to them, and I expect the same from our code assistant.

   Producing code that fully validates is brilliant, congratulations and kiss the bride for me, but if it breaks up in 80% of the people's browsers, then as far as I am concerned it does not validate. Sorry.

   We have a job to do, and the last thing we need is a techno-bigot Code Evangelist that yells 'Vade Retro Microsoft' every other sentence. We're looking for a pragmatic professional with a solid sense of reality and who understands that between 'standards' for a happy few percent of users and Word crippled HatcheTML there is a quite wide and acceptable margin of operation.

   Life is about compromises and stuff, or so they say.

7. Any delivered code has to be rigorously and intelligibly commented, as our code assistant shall always keep in mind that somebody may have to (will) work on the code he/she produces in the future, and should be able to do so as painlessly and quickly as possible.

   In the same spirit, strict naming conventions will be used consistently for files, directories/site structure, templates and CSS selectors. We'll expect him/her to follow them conscientiously.

   If not, we'll feed him/her to the most aggressive member of the staff (no names, you know who you are anyway) for the lasting entertainment of the others and the benefit of peanut and popcorn sellers.

8. In a more general way, we're truly looking for an assistant. He/She will specifically code what we will design, and therefore will only have to care about his/her code. He/she will be spared the tribulations of decision making and will sleep blissfully at night, ye lucky son/daughter of a lady-of-negotiable-virtue.

   To that end, he/she will have to work in close collaboration with the Head of the Design Department, (who incidentally doesn't live in a jar filled with formaldehyde solution and happens to own the rest of a body), who really is a nice and easy going guy and a great bloke to get drunk with, while being someone you would definitely introduce to your Mom.

   However, like the rest of you fallible humans, he is afflicted with a limited patience, a well established (albeit fairly adaptable) conception of How Things Should Be Done in his own field (that might appear a bit 'rigid' sometimes), and in the specific context of this Call for a Coder, a strong understanding of Who Runs The Show and gets to say the last word on design/code wide issues (namely him).

   And bear in mind I should know about him, because it's me.

1. Ideally, we're looking for somebody who would be able to manage both design and coding aspects of a project, albeit with a stronger emphasis (and expertise) on coding. Let's say two third web developer, one third web designer.

   He/she can code (X)HTML/CSS in his/her sleep and is at an advanced level at least in PHP/Javascript (any extra competencies/mastered languages are of course welcome). A strong understanding of the Dark Mysteries of MySQL wouldn't hurt as well.

2. On design considerations: It's definitely okay if he/she is not the Next Big Thing on the art/graphic design field as far as he/she is able to produce good looking, elegant and professional blog/website designs -- with our input when or if needed. Maybe not a graphic design pro (remember that’s just one third) but at least an 'enlightened amateur'.

   On the technical side of graphics, my policy is: When it comes to graphics optimization, broadband doesn’t exist. If we can gain that extra 0.2 Kb on a .gif or a .jpg simply by moving the cursor one notch down while maintaining top visual quality, then go for it. There’s no such thing as a small gain.

   He/she should therefore have that sense of balance and quality demanding spirit. The first and authoritative judgment is that of the eye, as we will always be aiming at top quality graphics. We don’t want fuzzy gifs and grubby jpegs (and I mean we f****** don't), but the more we can reduce file sizes, the better.

   Having said that, the 'graphics intensive' projects will be (usually) the prerogative of the Easy Going Guy Who Doesn't Live in a Jar.

3. Although he/she will regularly answer to both the Design and the Sales department and get their validation all along the development process, he/she should be able to manage the project(s) in a fairly independent way. He/she will have to conceive and design, make structural and aesthetical decisions and create the final product. No blissfully sleep at night, but there are other rewards anyway.
4. Independent doesn’t mean 'loner', so he/she should be able to work with the other members of the Design Dept. whenever a project requests it - and in full awareness of #6, par. 2nd and 3rd of course. Ahem.
5. He/she will be a 'self-maintained cutting edge pro' in his/her field. Additionally, we do hope he/she’ll never hesitate to share the relevant part of the knowledge he/she'll gain that way, in order for all of us to move forward and stay ahead of the curve.
6. Generally speaking, we're indeed looking for a web developer with a strong emphasis on design, able to work in parallel with me on separate projects, or complementarily on common projects where both our strong points would marvel and leave the competition flabbergasted, in disarray and ultimately deeply demoralized.

   And then we would live happily ever after.

We would and we will.

Still wanna work with us? Serious enquiries and CVs/résumés should be e-mailed to pdeh at bigblog dot net.

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When told once too often that President Reagan was 'just rhetoric' ("he did not reduce governement spending, either in California or with the Federal government, he did not get rid of X regulation, he did not...") the late M.A. Bradford replied "You will miss that rhetoric when he is gone".

Ronald Reagan has gone, and I do miss the rhetoric - and I miss him.

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"Even our dogs and cats are fat ... and it's not because they're watching too much advertising."

and

There's lots of things government can do, but I don't think government can prevent children from nagging their parents.
-Timothy Muris, head of the US Federal Trade Commission

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This is oh so typical. Support Marxism and Islamo-fascism, and you get French police protection... support the USA and you get arrested.

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In what may one day give people a way to keep even GCHQ and the NSA out of their private affairs without them makes a huge effort, quantum cryptography is starting to finally emerge as a useable technology.

I look forward to the day the entire global communications network is a less friendly place for systems like Echelon and Carnivore.

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While elections for the British national government are not due until 2006, there are lots of less important elections. This week, we get to vote for the mayor of London, various other local government positions, and for the European parliament. As television and radio political advertising is illegal in Britain (yes, really) we are not bombarded with media political campaigning the way people are in the US or in my native Australia. But one gets to see bits of campaigning just the same.

As it happens, I was today having lunch in a cafe in Tottenham Court Road in central London. As I was doing so, a large open topped double decker bus with lots of balloons on it, and various people standing on top came down the street. Yes, it was the RESPECT coalition, George Galloway's bunch of anti-war anti-American anti-Blair pro-Saddam Hussein idiotarians. And there was George himself standing on top.

Delightful. I was sitting in the sun, having a pleasant lunch, and I was given the added opportunity to make rude gestures at George Galloway, which I proceeded to do. I would have also liked to have shouted something along the lines of "Go to prison you treasonous money grubbing genocidal dictator loving scumbag" or something like that. However, I was sitting with an Arab friend of mine with whom political discussions are sometimes interesting and who had been nice enough to pay for my mushroom ravioli, and I really didn't want to cause a scene.

Sadly, the belt buckle on my digital camera's case recently broke, and as a consequence I did not have the camera with me and I thus did not manage to get a photograph of this tremendous piece of political action. Remind me to get the strap fixed.

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A year ago, the student union at the University of St Andrews denounced the Royal Bank of Scotland, along with a plethora of other companies and products, for being unethical. The arguments were generally spurious. In the case of RBS, it involved the fact that they had invested in or given bank accounts - or something - to biotech companies, if I remember correctly. RBS was the most unethical banking choice students chould make, the union claimed.

At around the same time, the Left, led by the One World Society, ran a referendum campaign on whether the union should only invest ethically. The union had already decided to only follow the ideas of ethical investment, but they wanted the student body to vote on it in a referendum so that it would get more publicity. Over 90% of voting students were in favour.

A year later, the union has evaluated its financial position, and has decided to move its money into an "ethical fund".

With the Royal Bank of Scotland.

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"Don't become a novelist; be a statistician, much more scope for the imagination."

-a cartoon man drawn and given a voice by Mel Calman in How to Lie with Statistics

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“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the Air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
- Memo composed by General Eisenhower, 5 June 1944.

Today, we commemorate one the most glorious chapters of German arms: the lightning-fast response of 21 Panzer Division to Eisenhower's overconfident thrust, a response that rolled up the British left flank and culminated in the annihilation of the British and American invaders.

How appropriate it is that, lacking the the confidence in race-destiny that comes so naturally to the Germanic peoples the Allied commander had actually composed his memo taking responsibility for failure beforehand!

Despite the somewhat tense international situation, the commemorative ceremonies have proceeded with our customary German precision. It is certainly a sign of how the bitter memories associated with the dawning of the atomic age over Hamburg, Smolensk and Manchester all those years ago have faded that for the first time we have welcomed to our remembrance the President of France, speaking from Vichy by audio-visual link, and the General Secretary of the British Communist party speaking from London. Many have seen in this technical and political triumph a sign of a possible convergence between the two great systems, National Socialism and Communism, that currently dominate our world.

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There is now an NSS Chapters blog online. It is just in its infancy but could become a very useful source of information for the whole space community.

I had several chats with George Whitesides, the new NSS Executive Director, about the need for such a beast and am pleased to see it happen.

I will be reporting on my six weeks on the airways as soon as I have my film developed.

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This is the question exercising the chancelleries of the European Union, as well as the larger horizons of the Beltway. However, one position concerns the elected leader of the free world; the other is the appointed non-entity of the slow-motion car crash vacuuming the vestiges of freedom in Europe.

Who should be the next president of the European Commission? You could argue that the whole enterprise is irredeemably corrupt, and should instill an appropriate reflex: fight or flee. Nevertheless, in the real world, what would be the preferred qualities of any candidate?

Dennis MacShane, Britain's Minister for Europe, has outlined a few:

MacShane said the successor to Commission President Romano Prodi, who EU leaders hope to name at a summit in Brussels later this month, need not be a former EU leader. "He has to be able to communicate a vision of Europe, he has to see himself not as Europe's king but as its servant, and he does not necessarily have to be a prime minister," MacShane said.

"A strong commissioner or a strong minister would probably be the best choice," MacShane said. "A Commission President must also not be seen as anti-American," he added.

The candidate should have strong political experience and international influence; the ability to communicate well; and the desire to draw the United States of America and Europe closer together. As a libertarian, I would prefer to see a political and economic liberal who shows an understanding of and a willingness to argue for free trade and welfare reform, two areas where the EU has failed to progress, with deadly consequences for Africa and Asia.

Do the current candidates fit the Bill? If any reader has ever heard of and thinks that Guy Verhofstadt, Jean-Claude Junckers, Wolfgang Schuessel or Chris Patten are promising candidates, stop reading now and go seek professional help.

The European Union has an opportunity to demonstrate that it will choose the next President of the Commission on merit. That is why these obscure clones from the European parasitical classes should be ignored. They should appoint an American, one person who is more liberal and more right than the current crop: Step forward:

William Jefferson Clinton

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Four people were bragging about how smart their cats are. The first was an Engineer, the second an Accountant, the third was a chemist, the fourth was a Government Worker.

To show off, The Engineer called to his cat, T-square, do your stuff. T Square pranced over to a desk, took out some paper and pen and drew a circle, a square, and a triangle.

Everyone agreed that was a pretty smart cat, but the Accountant said his cat could do better. He called his cat and said, Spreadsheet, do your stuff. Spreadsheet went out into the kitchen and returned with a dozen cookies. He divided them into 4 equal piles of 3 cookies each.

Everyone agreed that was really good, but the Chemist said his cat could do better. He called his cat and said, Measure do your stuff. Measure got up, picked up a 500ml graduated cylinder, walked over to the fridge, took out a litre of milk, got a 300 ml glass from the cupboard, measured and poured exactly 275 ml of milk into the glass without spilling a drop.

Everyone agreed that was good too. Then the three men turned to the Government Worker and said, "What can your cat do"?

The Government worker called to his cat and said, Coffee Break, do your stuff. Coffee Break jumped to his feet, ate the cookies, drank the milk, pooped on the paper, screwed the other three cats, claimed he injured his back while doing so, filed a grievance report for unsafe working conditions, put in for compensation, and went home on sick leave.

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One of the better ways to learn about policy trends, in any policy area, in any country, is to read something by someone who disapproves.

This article, about what its author thinks is wrong with all the various directions which Indian education is heading in, reads to me like a catalogue of all that is right about it.

Two trends in particular struck me as especially encouraging. First this:

A self reliant India needs very different intellectual support from the kind of intellectual labour envisaged by a government that in its enthusiasm for selling out to multinationals could only dream of bringing some outsourced functions of these multinationals into our country. …

"Self reliant" reads to me like "futureless backwater". So, what I take this to mean is that Indian education is now turning out people who are very employable indeed, and on the world market where the real money is to be made and where so much of India's economic future will be created.

And second, there is this:

A self reliant and democratic India also needs its citizens prepared for the globalised world not as cogs in the wheel, fulfilling some technical function, but as thinking beings able to defend and safeguard democracy. …

... which the guy put in italics of his own, meaning that this was his biggest point. "Preparing for the globalised world not as cogs in the wheel" sounds to me like preparing them against the globalised world. So what this all says like to me is: "The education system isn't turning out enough political mischief-makers."

There is also much complaint in this article about "para-education", which sounds to me like free enterprise education, rather than the state-provided shambles which most Indians were stuck with until recently.

So, then: India doing really well. This has been one of the decade's great Global Stories. Long may the story continue.

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During the last few days, the British media, all of them, have been making much of D-Day, and quite properly so. The survivors from among those who fought that day who still remain with us now will mostly be gone ten years hence, so now is the last big moment of public thanks and public acknowledgement for these gents. And today will surely not pass without further mentions here of the sacrifices made on June 6th 1944, and the great purposes for which those sacrifices were made.

But the bit of the story that I keep thinking about is … the weather. How pleasing that one of our great national obsessions should have proved so extremely pertinent, at that time of all times.

The story is well known. The weather during the first few days of June 1944 was vile, and Group Captain Stagg, the man whose job was to analyse and present the weather news to those in charge of Operation Overlord, was the bearer of these bad tidings. On June 4th, D-Day, ready to happen on June 5th, was postponed, because of the weather, by one day.

But it could not be postponed for much longer than that. Too many men were revved up to go. A serious postponement would do dreadful things to that most crucial of military variables, morale.

Then, the miracle. Stagg discerned a magical moment of calmness in the middle of the weather system that was causing all the headaches, and through the eye of this meteorological needle Supreme Commander Eisenhower was able to thread the Normandy Landings. And they were all the more of a success for the fact that the Germans knew for certain that they just could not be done when they actually were done. As it turned out, the weather for D-Day was perfect, and all the more perfect for having seemed to be so imperfect.

My main purpose here is not to salute those ageing D-Day survivors, although I do salute them in passing, of course I do. No, the point I want to make here is that weather forecasting is one nationalised industry that really does seem to work, and to have been working well for some time now.

All of my life I have been aware of how good weather forecasts tend to be. People complain about them, in the everyone-else-does-so-I-will-too way that they also complain about airline food, yet the truth is that weather forecasts are, on the whole, amazingly accurate. Time and again I have organised my entire day, even my entire week, around the belief that those clever weather men were telling the truth, and I have never, never regretted it. I only regret it when I do not know what they have prophesied and foolishly did not trouble to find out. Think of the economic benefits that result from accurate weather forecasts. Think of the food that is grown better because of them, the marine and aerial journeys that are better planned better because of them, the surprising pleasures identified, the disasters avoided.

In England, everyone still jokes about the time when much loved weather man Michael Fish said that a hurricane would definitely not smash the living daylights out of the South of England, at which point it did exactly that. But this was the exception that proves the rule, the rule being that, as a rule, weather forecasts these days are amazingly accurate. Fish saw that hurricane coming. He just got its exact location of maximum drama wrong. It did a wholly unpredictable left turn, northwards, from the Channel to Southern England, or some such thing. It could have happened to anyone.

No, the rule is that weather forecasting is right up there with dentistry as one of those great reasons to prefer being modern to being ancient.

Yet, excellent thought it is, in Britain as in most places, it is a nationalised industry. Anything that crucial to the fighting of wars (as that D-Day story illustrates so vividly), and that dependent upon gizmos of the sort used to fight wars, like satellites, ships and airplanes, is bound to be heavily political, and perhaps even globally political. Only world peace of a profoundly peaceful sort will persuade governments to slacken their grip on this activity.

Nevertheless, it is done extremely well, I think.

Statists do not need an explanation for state competence. They have to explain (away) state incompetence. But as a libertarian, who takes state incompetence for granted, I am puzzled by this outburst of state organised excellence. How come?

Partly, I think it is that weather forecasting errors are very public, and are revealed as eroneous very quickly. Poor old Michael Fish knew within a few hours when he made that hurricane blunder. The comedians started in on him immediately, as he must have known they would.

Then, there is the fact that bad weather forecasts affect almost all of us. If a hospital gives an illness to all its patients, or if the welfare system twiddles one of its knobs and turns a tranch of the more indolent populous into even more parasitical parasites than before, not everyone notices, and if they do, they may not know why it happened. But bad weather forecasts are an inconvenience to literally millions, and there is no doubt in anyone's mind who to blame when they go wrong.

And then – I come back to it – there is that warfare angle. Less that excellent weather forecasts do not just cause vexation to farmers and fishermen, or to misinformed commuters who stew in winter clothes in superheated trains when the weather is actually warm. The state hurts itself with bad weather forecasts. With bad weather forecasts its own plans might go horribly wrong. So, it needs a permanent regiment of weather people who really know their business. And when times are more peaceful, these weather persons keep themselves occupied by sharing their wisdom with the rest of us, in a way that is enough to make foolish onlookers imagine that all nationalised industries might be made to work well if only a bit more effort was applied to them.

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Compared to the length of time it took to hike up the taxes on tobacco, alcohol and petroleum, the great 'junk food' shakedown has been completed in remarkably quick time. HMG is clearly honing its modus operandi down to a fine art: [note: link to UK Times may not be available to readers based outside the UK]

BRITAIN’S biggest food companies are to be told by the government to pay an “anti-obesity” levy to fund new sports centres or face punitive laws restricting advertising, marketing and labelling.

Firms such as McDonald’s, Walkers and Cadbury Schweppes are to be asked to contribute tens of millions of pounds towards the sports facilities. The government is set to provide £1m for the scheme for every £3m pledged by the food industry. It will be used to build sports centres, gyms, football pitches and tennis courts.

The food industry confirmed this weekend that it was preparing to co-operate with ministers and could provide hundreds of millions of pounds to fend off regulation.

Of course, I knew this was coming but not even I was prepared for the ugly truth to be revealed quite this rapidly. The Treasury must be desperate for the cash.

Yes, it really was only a few short weeks ago that I noticed the wave of 'shock, horror' articles about an 'obesity crisis' ripple right through the Fourth Estate like an electro-magnetic pulse. From out of the blue, every single news organ in the land was suddenly brimming with distraught editorials about how fat all 'our children' were becoming and what could be done about it. Some blamed the food industry, some blamed the public, some blamed advertising, some blamed George Bush, everyone blamed 'rampant capitalism' (as if we have even a faint prospect of such a thing) and former Tory cabinet minister, Norman Tebbit, brought a twitch to everyone's jowls by blaming it on homosexuals.

It all felt far too co-ordinated to be either genuine or the mere manifestation of some form of mass hysteria. In fact, it was neither. It was a deliberate, well-planned and professionally executed 'softening up' operation designed to smooth the political path for the pay-off of a 'junk food' levy.

There is no 'obesity crisis'. It is, and always has been, a fictional hobgoblin to be exploited for maximum fiscal effect and now that endgame has been achieved, press coverage of the 'obesity crisis will suddenly vanish as quickly and mysteriously as it appeared. Job done (at least until such time as an increase in the tax is required).

But even if 'our children' were as dumpy as has been so mischieviously claimed, they are going to get thinner now for sure. The tax on the profits of food producers will be passed onto consumers who will now have to pay significantly higher prices for their weekly shopping. As with all such extortions, it is those on fixed or low incomes who will be hit the hardest.

Nor are they to be compensated by the appearance of any brand, spanking new sports facilities which, I predict, will never materialise. A few crumbs of the cash will go to the appointment of some Real Sports Advisers as a Potemkin show, but the lion's share of the money will simply be poured into the great, sucking black-hole of the public sector and lost. That is how it goes in Britain.

So now that our wonderful, caring government has finally solved the 'obesity crisis', all that remains is for us to speculate as to what private sector industry is next on the list for a shakedown. At a rough guess, I'd say telecommunications. There is an awful lot of money sloshing around in that sector right now and that makes it a very tempting target. I do not yet know what pretext will be employed but I am in no doubt whatsoever that it will somehow involve 'our children'.