The TV chef said it was "fundamentally important" for chefs to provide locally-sourced food. "Fruit and veg should be seasonal," he said. "Chefs should be fined if they haven't got ingredients in season on their menu. I don't want to see asparagus on in the middle of December. I don't want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March. I want to see it home grown."

The 'I am' does not want to see something and so thinks his views should be the force backed law of the land: the psychopathology of the expert that we so often see coming from doctors is at work again. The great unwashed must be forced to follow expert opinion, which means their opinion, naturally.

I like the idea of third world farmers pulling themselves out of poverty and selling me their products whenever I want to buy them and why should a loud mouthed self important chief and a bunch of fascistic green activists get to have a say in that? Their craving to impose their will on others should stop being socially acceptable and they need to be called authoritarian thugs to their faces.

Note, this is not a question on whether capital punishment is effective, but is it just?

Oh well, makes a change from blaming it all on video games, globalisation or George Bush, I suppose.

The trouble with this disgusting arrogance and condescension is that it is widely supported in Koranic texts, and we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam's mediaeval ass?

- Mary Jackson quotes from a Spectator article by London's newly elected mayor Boris Johnson written just after the July 7th attacks on London (but Boris backtracked during the recent campaign)

A question that occurs to me about this book is that Clark seems to have written it with the partial object of satirising reactionary Greenery, religious fundamentalism and technophobia, hoping no doubt that the loathesomeness of the dystopia he presents will remind readers of the dangers of what the Greens/others have in store. My problem, though, is that other dystopian novels have often not had much of a salutary effect. As Perry of this parish remarked some time ago, our capacity for satire has been so sated by real-life lunacy that even a hit TV show called 'Big Brother', taking a line from Orwell's 1984, does not inspire the same intended feelings of loathing that Orwell's attack on totalitarianism was supposed to elicit. Fair enough, there are signs of a fightback against this trend.

But I wonder whether Clark is only really preaching to the converted. I hope not. I hope some stray Guardianista who thinks that John Gray or Bill McKibben are great sages will pick up this great little book and learn something from it. And for undecideds, I would hope that this dystopia warns them off from the anti-Enlightenment trend in which part of our society seems to be moving.

Perhaps a another way to think about winning arguments for technology, capitalism and so on is to portray positive fictional accounts of such things, rather than to portray the opposite. One way to win an argument to is be positive, to give examples of how things are improving, and improving the lives of millions of people. Grumpiness is not really a great sales pitch. Alas, avoiding the error of slipping into grumpiness is difficult when there is so much to be grumpy about, so it takes quite an effort to avoid it.

Or am I missing something? Is there another Boris Johnson blog? Is there one for his currently very neglected constituency (the one linked to above), and another blog (not linked to because I can not find any such thing) about him trying to be and now being the Mayor of London?

If my failure to spot it means that there is indeed no Boris For (Boris Is) Mayor blog, then I think that's rather a telling fact about the limits of internet political campaigning in Britain. The way Boris himself told it when interviewed on the telly at the very end of his campaign, he did his campaigning not via any internet efforts, but by trekking around London making personal appearances and being on local radio stations. You might have thought, what with so much of success in local politics being the art of attracting any attention at all, and what with Boris having done this so very, very well and having got his own vote out so very, very successfully, a blog might have been part of it.

Or is the thing that I am missing that other bloggers, like Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale, made crucial contributions to Boris becoming Mayor by campaigning on his behalf, under the opposing radar so to speak, making points in his favour and claims on his behalf that he himself did not have to worry about and which he was not personally obliged then to, as they say, clarify? Boris would no more have his own campaigning blog than he would set up and run his own radio station. In politics, it seems, either you do it, or you blog, but, you don't do both. This makes sense, I suppose. Blogging works best when you blog your mind, and tell it how you see it. Blogging means having an authentic voice. Politics, on the other hand ... Some bloggers - this one, for instance, in something he said at a gathering I was at - have complained that Boris's authentic voice was also muted, for the duration. Something to do with him not drinking, perhaps? (Bring back the booze I say.)

On the other hand, why didn't any of Boris's mere supporters gang up and run a Boris-is-here-today-and-there-tomorrow Boris-thinks-this-Boris-says-that blog, at least while the campaign itself lasted? Not worth the bother, presumably.

In other local election news, my brother Toby Micklethwait (UKIP) came a decent (but to him I daresay deeply disappointing) second to the Conservatives in Englefield Green west, very near to where we were raised and where our Mum still lives. He too accomplished what he accomplished not with any fancy blogging or internetting, but with lots of posters stuck up in people's gardens, with a ton of leaflets and other printed material, and with all the associated personal chit-chat. Maybe the truth is that the more local the politics (and Toby's latest burst of politics was about as local as it is possible for British politics to get), the less relevant blogging is to the campaigning politician. The blogging USP, its ability to send your message whizzing around the entire planet in seconds, does everything but solve your actual problem, and tells everyone in the world all about you except the exact people you are trying to reach, so blogging is of little use to you. Maybe it is time for me to revive that notion I once had about becoming the Supreme Ruler of the World.

As for poor Pol, where to start? Imagine the despair, so raw you can almost taste it. Imagine the sense of crushing disappointment. For years now, she has waited for her prince to come - her dashing Norse warrior, who will sweep away all the effete detritus of the Blair years and unload a torrent of resources into child poverty and public services. Night after night she has left the red light on for him; lying in the bed in her Agent Provocateur lingerie, maybe some crotchless pants and a peephole bra, striking an uncomfortable pose lest he come charging through the door at any moment to sweep her up in his powerful arms.

Oh my god.

I was reminded of all this by this excellent piece in the Daily Telegraph today. Like the author of that piece, I played cricket at a state school; cricket is being taught and played less in the public sector education system, to the detriment of the national game. Personally, as an advocate of private schooling and of reducing, not raising, the school-leaving age, I would not want to moan if the sport is taught less if that is what the parents, and just as importantly, the pupils, want (some kids hate team sports so much it has scarred their memories of schooling for life). But I would like to think that in a genuine private sector school system, where parents can use their consumer power to drive up standards, that the Greatest Game Known to Man would flourish a bit more.

I would be interested to know what fellow cricket nuts and Samizdata conspirators, Brian Micklethwait and Michael Jennings, have to think about this. Brian recently linked to this book, which looks very much worth a read.

On the subject of rare musical instruments, and as a sign of how desperate some investors are to make money away from the standard stock and bond markets, you can even invest in violins. I can see the jokes coming: "So, what do you invest in?" "Violins". "Hmm, I've been on the fiddle myself".

Groan.

... 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? ...

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.

Jansen Versfeld, the solicitor who conducted the fruitless search for a barrister, said: “Because of the very low rate of pay for these hearings, £175.25 per day, and the amount of work and complexity involved, with no payment for preparation, none could undertake to do it.”

Mr Versfeld, who is with Morgan Rose solicitors, said that there were 6,586 pages of documents and a total of 4,548 transactions that would require arranging into a manageable form by experienced senior counsel for an estimated six-week hearing.

[...]

"So although this defendant was convicted of offences only involving a few hundred pounds’ worth of cannabis, he found himself at risk of losing £4.5 million worth of assets – with the burden on him to prove that they were not ill-gotten gains. On top of that, he was prohibited from using those assets for his own defence.”

I predict that the law will be changed. It is plainly intolerable to the state that people's property should not be seized merely because the unfair procedure is inadequately funded.

- Fraser Nelson, over the Spectator's Coffee House blog. His quote makes a fair bit of sense, even if you, like yours truly, wonder about the free market credentials of David Cameron's Conservative Party.

"After five years in government, I now have the same respect for politicians that the pigeons of Rome have for statues."

Which, I think you will agree, nicely sums up the Samizdata attitude towards politicians, whether we have been "in government" on not. Usually, just having a particularly governmental bit of government done to us is sufficient, and it does not require five years of it to happen before such enlightenment is arrived at. And you certainly do not have to be a politician for half a decade to find out how nasty politics is.

This was said by Antonio Martino, Italy's Defence Minister from 2001 until 2006, at the 2006 meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Guatemala. It was quoted by Charles Murray at the start of this speech, which was given in Washington just after that MPS meeting.

I came across this speech by Murray because I was looking for a picture of him to use in a posting at my education blog, about this article by Murray entitled The age of educational romanticism.

I suspect the answer to the question "Why Haven't We Heard About This" is to be found in the lack of blood and bodies.

No bleed, no lead.