We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The Sanctuary
Visit the Alton Towers Resort from 16 March and experience The Sanctuary, a terrifying scare maze!
The Sanctuary has been closed to patients for almost 50 years, but appointments are now being taken at the newly opened establishment as a controlling force, known only as the Ministry of Joy launches a series of trials, recruiting advocates for its new 2013 project. What starts out as a rejuvenating check up at The Sanctuary soon takes a turn for the worse.
Will you make it out with a smile on your face?
I like the Festival of Britain style graphics on the first link.
What does it mean that a theme park horror ride takes its inspiration from the visual style of a public information film issued by the Ministry of Information circa 1946?
“The “rise of the four-car family”, as some media outlets are referring to it, exposes the hollowness of young adults’ claims that they can’t afford to move out. For here we have adults who clearly have pretty decent levels of disposable income – cars, after all, are quite expensive to buy and maintain – yet who insist on staying in the rooms they grew up in. So I don’t buy the newspaper claims that the rise of the four-car family is yet more evidence that Britain’s “cash-strapped youngsters cant’ afford to fly the nest”; it isn’t hardship that keeps loads of young adults at home, but cowardice, an unwillingness to do what just about every generation before them did: take a risk, leave home, suffer deprivations, live off Pot Noodles, and in the process gain something that money could never buy – a feeling of genuine moral autonomy.”
- Brendan O’ Neill
He’s got a strong point here (says yours truly who left home to live in student digs at the age of 18 and has never lived with his folks since apart from a period of one month during some professional training course I was on. In fact, when I stay with Dad for more than a few days I get cabin fever, love my father though I do).
I could not wait to leave home not because of any dislike of my parents, but because I just wanted my freedom even if that meant having to go without a few things. For some time I rented, and lived sometimes in shared accommodation with others that wasn’t always ideal, but it did mean that when it came to choosing to buy a house, my now-wife and I had a decent lump of capital saved up. I could have done this sooner in a less affluent part of London had I really wanted to do so, but the property market wasn’t right and renting made more sense. Getting a mortgage wasn’t the big deal for me that it seemed to be for a lot of my peers.
This may be a part of a process whereby people are putting off becoming “grown up” until later in their 20 and even 30s than used to be case. There are many drivers of this; official policy, after all, wants at least 50 per cent of school-leavers to go into higher education, when, arguably, that is too high and more should be getting into vocational training and work a bit sooner, and avoiding the drag of student debt. But O’Neill ought to also realise that affordable rental properties in places such as London, where much of the work is, is scarce, and much of the reason for that are our planning laws. It is a lot easier to boot out these adults from the nest when there is a realistic place for them to go.
In general, though, I think O’Neill is on the money and right to be scornful, although generalisations can be unfair on people who stay with their folks for entirely rational reasons (including looking after parents who might be infirm, etc). Quite what the longer-term impact on our society, even our politics, will be from a generation that did not fly the coop until its 30s is anyone’s guess. In the light of what Brian Micklethwait had to say recently about the ideas of Emmanuel Todd, it might be worth exploring the idea in more detail.
But another story provided a fun distraction from all the hard work campaigning for tax cuts: it is the thirtieth anniversary of the first NOW! That’s What I Call Music album. There’s no bigger ‘Now’ fan than our Political Director Jonathan Isaby who has a complete set of all 86 albums! He spoke to Sky News and other TV stations about his collection.
- Matt Sinclair of the TaxPayers’ Alliance provides a little light relief, in the latest TPA mass email. (Link in the quote added.)
Jim Carver is a libertarian UKIP umbrella-maker from the West Midlands who aims to be elected to the European Parliament in 2014 and then to make himself redundant as soon as possible. ‘If you take liberties with a market trader, you can expect a fight,’ he says, ‘And these buggers aim to take all the liberties we’ve got.’
Nasty things are just nasty. You know where you are with a tetchy shark. It’s the nice ones which give me the heebie-jeebies. Dolls, wide-eyed children, psychopathic blondes and slavering kittens are far scarier than more obviously menacing monsters.
Let me introduce you to a tooth-achingly nice but totally terrifying new document entitled A European Framework National Statute for the Promotion of Tolerance.
It is intended to be enacted as law in every member state of the European Union. It will probably be enshrined in British law. Shudder at the thought. It is such a sweet document. Its purpose is to ‘Promote tolerance within society… condemn all manifestations of intolerance based on bias, bigotry and prejudice…’
So far, so missionary tract, but these are missionaries with power. They will ‘take concrete action to combat intolerance, in particular with a view to eliminating racism, colour bias, ethnic discrimination, religious intolerance, totalitarian ideologies, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-feminism and homophobia.’
There is no attempt to define these enemies.
Feminism, just to take one example, can be the radical Dworkinesque wing, which considers sex-workers and the sexually active to be traitors (and victims), and all sexual allure to be demeaning. It can also be ‘riot grrrl’ or ‘lipstick’ feminism which reclaims traditional gender symbols and sexuality and respects the rights of women to win autonomy by these means.
The former – being nutters – are the more politically active. They consider the others to be ‘anti-feminist’. They abuse and deride them in a most intolerant manner, yet I warrant that it will be they who impose tolerance by force on their dissenting sisters once this statute has force of law.
Many nominalists doubt that homosexuality as a state of being rather than as an incidental preference actually exists. Many Britons oppose the open-door immigration policy forced upon them by Brussels. They are immediately therefore branded ‘xenophobes’. Will all such heretics find themselves debarred from expressing their views in the name of tolerance?
Here, however, comes good news: All groups will be guaranteed ‘freedom of expression, including freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas… to manifest… religion or belief in worship, observance, rituals, rites, practice and teaching…’
Does this mean, then, that devout Catholics who disapprove of homosexuality (and, more consistently, of all non-procreative sex) will be permitted to express their views?
Er, no. ‘There is no need to be tolerant to the intolerant. This is especially important as far as freedom of expression is concerned: that freedom must not be abused to defame other groups.’
→ Continue reading: Tolerance… or else!
It’s no coincidence the MPs found guilty of fiddling are all Labour, writes Peter Oborne.
The book can at last be closed on The Daily Telegraph investigation into the MPs’ expenses scandal. More than 300 Members of Parliament have paid back wrongly claimed expenses. Several of the worst offenders have stood down from Parliament. Now that the former minister Denis MacShane has at last pleaded guilty to fraud, no further prosecutions are planned, and all criminal investigation is reported to have ceased.
But one puzzling question remains. Why is it that only Labour MPs have been found guilty of expenses fraud as a result of the Telegraph revelations?
His argument that there is “only one chance in 64 that Labour’s score of 6/6 was a coincidence” should be saved as an Awful Example for the probability chapter in a GCSE mathematics textbook, with calculation of the precise odds that he has let the Tories off far too lightly left as an exercise for the student.
This part of his explanation, however, is accurate:
It is especially perplexing because the party in general strongly feels itself to be the embodiment of decency and morality. Indeed Labour has always insisted that the Conservatives are the party of venality, greed and selfishness. How baffling it is, then, that only Labour MPs have been sent to jail as a result of the Telegraph revelations.
Paradoxically, I believe that it is Labour’s belief in its own higher morality – what Bertrand Russell called the “superior virtue of the oppressed” – that has led to its downfall.
Many Labour people cannot believe that anything done by the oppressed classes or their champions can ever really be wrong, not when there are Bullingdon-educated toffs who were in the Eton club out there for comparison. The jailed MPs and their supporters know in their hearts that their very sentences are part of the oppression. They take comfort as the prison gates clang behind them from the thought that when they hear that sound they join the company of heroes.
Stanley Kurtz described a similar persecution envy burning in the breasts of greens and climate change activists in The Wannabe Oppressed:
What do America’s college students want? They want to be oppressed. More precisely, a surprising number of students at America’s finest colleges and universities wish to appear as victims — to themselves, as well as to others — without the discomfort of actually experiencing victimization. Here is where global warming comes in. The secret appeal of campus climate activism lies in its ability to turn otherwise happy, healthy, and prosperous young people into an oppressed class, at least in their own imaginings. Climate activists say to the world, “I’ll save you.” Yet deep down they’re thinking, “Oppress me.”
And deeper yet, “Oppress me a little bit so that I can resist you with visible heroism safe in the knowledge that you will not actually hurt me.”
“Almost half of the UK’s recent graduates are working in non-graduate jobs, demonstrating that pain continues to be felt in the labour market despite the start of economic recovery.”
- The Financial Times, today (behind a paywall). I’d add that this also suggests that some of the degrees that people have acquired – at some cost – are not marketable, and unlikely ever to be so. The whole idea that at least 50 per cent of the school-leaving population should go straight into higher education needs to be re-thought.
By coincidence, over at the Econlog blog, Bryan Caplan has this to say about the issue of “malemployment”. That is a term that deserves to be used more widely.
The governments of the world love to use crimes that produce an understandable emotional revulsion as justification for measure of vastly wider reach.
Child abuse is perhaps the most common of these.
The current moves to make unacceptable sites simply not show up on search engines is actually about getting the infrastructure in place to make whatever is deemed ‘unacceptable’ invisible with the flick of a switch.
I do not believe for a moment that the people pushing for this do not have as their ultimate goal giving the state the ability to control everything you can see online. And if you think the state, any state, can be trusted with that kind of power, then you are either a fool or a totalitarian.
The setting is North End Road in Fulham, London, near a large street side food and fresh produce market. There is a stand with a whole roasting hog covered in fennel, described as ‘Italian Roast Pig’ by a large sign. It is in fact run by a couple Bulgarian guys who I know. The food tastes… exquisite. I eat there every Friday.
A man walked up to them, obviously a Muslim. He peers at the roasting pig, sniffs and look at the man inside the stand.
(Muslim bloke, pointing a large bowl of sauce. Good english with an East London accent) “Hmmm… what’s that?”
(Bulgarian proprietor. Good english with a South London accent) “Apple sauce. We make it ourselves from English apples.”
(Muslim bloke, pointing at the roasting pig) “Is that halal?”
(Bulgarian proprietor, looking perplexed) “Er… not really.”
(Muslim bloke, winking) “Oh, right. I’ll have mine with the apple sauce then.”
Sometimes the Guardian justifies its name. This is worth knowing about:
Police tried to spy on Cambridge students, secret footage shows
Officer is filmed attempting to persuade activist in his 20s to become informant targeting ‘student-union type stuff’
Of this sort of thing is not new. A friend of mine was asked to spy on far-left groups back in the ’70s. Perhaps it is inevitable; among the innumerable sects that split and reformed and split again to become the RCPBML and CPGB(ML) we all know and love this week, there were a few that really did need spying on, as do some of the Muslims who have replaced them. But “student-union type stuff”? Yup, MI5 really needs a deep cover mole in the the SUTS. And were they always such cheapskates?
The officer also suggested the man he hoped to recruit would be paid expenses or other sums. “You might go to a UK Uncut or Unite Against Fascism meeting one evening, you might get say £30 just for your time and effort for doing that. That’s the sort of thing you are looking at.”
The latest addition to my family takes up more room in the car than expected, and the old car is dying more quickly than expected, so I want to buy a new car sooner than expected. To do this I took out a small loan, and shopping around for loans I found Zopa. The feature of their loans that attracted me was the ability to repay early without penalty.
But there is more to it than that. They are a peer to peer lender. Savers can save money with Zopa, and the money is divided into £10 chunks and spread between a large number of borrowers. I can visit a web page that shows a list of the people who have lent me money. For instance, I owe £20 to John Owen in Brighton. I get a cheaper loan, and they get higher returns on their savings than could be had from a conventional savings account.
Of course, though the credit reference checks are quite stringent, there are risks. The web site Money Saving Expert points out:
With normal UK savings, the Government-backed Financial Services Compensation Scheme promises it’d pay the first £85,000 per person, per financial institution if the institution goes kaput. Peer-to-peer lenders don’t have this.
Well, good! Peer to peer lending is about as Samizdata as it gets. Individuals are voluntarily lending their money to each other for mutual benefit, bearing the costs of their own risks. There is not even any fractional reserve banking to worry those who worry about such things. The interest rates are properly Austrian, being set by a market and not by the government. And the company called Zopa is making a profit doing the very valuable middleman job of dividing the labour by taking care of the paperwork and matching borrowers to lenders.
Zopa is a founder member of the Peer-to-Peer Financial Association, “a UK trade body set up primarily to ensure this innovative and fast growing sector maintains high minimum standards of protection for consumers and business customers”. A worthy idea: a voluntary membership organisation that enforces high standards among members thereby helping consumers decide who to trust.
On 24th October the Peer-to-Peer Financial Association issued a press release.
Christine Farnish, Chair of the Peer-to-Peer Financial Association (P2PFA) said:
“We welcome today’s consultation by the FCA on the new regulatory regime for peer to peer lending and crowd funding.”
“Peer-to-peer lenders have been pressing for regulation for some time and believe it is important that all firms entering this important new market behave responsibly, treat their customers fairly and manage their risks.”
So now they want to take all this beautiful voluntary activity and introduce state backed violence. And they think this is a good idea. I give up.
The Guardian is nothing if not dependably incoherent. They rightly decry their freedom of the press being threatened by politicians…
… and then support the asinine Royal Charter that creates the tools for politicians, and anyone else, who wants the Press to STFU by making it harder for the Press to actually do their job.
I really hope many publication tell the state where to stick their ‘Royal Charter’. But then the history of these isles has many chapters featuring the struggle against state control of the media.
It was a breezy night last night in England, and because such times are rather rare in these islands we aren’t really organised for it. When the wind does blow a bit, there is damage. There are even deaths. Not funny.
But, this is funny. It’s a wind turbine in Devon, looking somewhat the worse for …. wind:
My thanks to commenter number one, on this posting at Bishop Hill today.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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