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]
Michael Mosbacher, the Telegraph‘s Deputy Comment Editor, is going for the rage-clicks, but he has a point:
There are under 1,000 ponies left on Dartmoor and over 145,000 sheep. Since the 1950s, the moor’s pony population has fallen by close to 90 per cent, whilst ovine numbers have more than trebled. These divergent trajectories have much to do with one simple fact – lamb is a Sunday roast staple and we don’t eat ponies. Easter dining tables groan under legs of lamb, but pony tenderloins are only notable by their absence.
Overgrazing is the environmental sin du jour and the regulators are demanding that something be done. We indeed live on a sheep-sodden island. According to Defra figures, the ovine population of the UK was 30.5 million in June last year. Wales alone is home to over 8.5 million sheep whilst there are only around 5 million in the entire United States.
On Dartmoor, Natural England is calling for a radical reduction in stocking numbers, and that for the first time includes the semi-wild ponies. The problem for the ponies is that they are of very little commercial value and there is an abundant market for lamb. If a farmer is ordered to reduce their livestock numbers – the ponies are actually all owned – they will cull the ponies rather than have fewer of the animals from which they actually draw their living.
Can a man whose legacy will be full-term abortion, censorship, digital surveillance, and the abolition of trial by jury really claim to have rescued Britain from the moral abyss? Can a man who gave us soaring youth unemployment, who shrugged at farm suicides, who thinks nothing of bankrupting schools for disabled children and religious minorities, really boast of returning to Britain a sense of pride?
“Change”, currently on sale at the Labour Party online shop for a mere £12.50. One has to admire the way that Sir Keir Starmer allowed himself to be photographed with his sleeves rolled up, but loosening his tie was a step too far.
Well, in the nine years since the slaughter at Manchester Arena, our elites have continued to “choose love” by leaving our borders wide open, which has continued to allow some people who prefer to ‘choose hate’ to come here and attack us. The Belfast-based writer and podcaster Jenny Holland quite aptly and wittily remarked in last week’s episode of her highly recommended podcast that instead of an anti-racist demonstration, perhaps an anti-beheading rally would be the more fitting response to an attempted public beheading. We live in such demented times that coming out publicly as beheadophobic is probably a cancellable offence in much of the public sector and creative industries that are dominated by open borders fanatics.
An unlicensed Buddhist temple operating out of a former pub in Walthamstow has been ordered to close by Waltham Forest Council.
The Confucius and Tao Association (CTA) bought the Lord Brooke, in Shernhall Street, in 2014 but was refused planning permission to convert the building into a place of worship the following year.
Contemporary reports described its purpose as promoting the teachings of Buddhism, Confucius and the Great Tao through public seminars, while working to tackle poverty and racial tension.
The council’s planning committee refused the charity’s application in early 2015, saying the use of the building as a pub was a “valued part of the social infrastructure of the area”.
No doubt many residents of Walthamstow did value the Lord Brooke being a pub, but it’s not as if they would have continued to have it as their local if only the Buddhists had not taken it over. In 2014 the pub was branded a “drug haven” by the Metropolitan Police and was “shuttered after evidence of drug use was found all over the venue.” No one has been found willing to reopen it as a pub, not surprisingly given the pub trade has been declining for years, mostly due to government actions like the smoking ban, “sin taxes” and increases in the minimum wage.
Faced with the choice between the abandoned building falling into dereliction and having it used by a group known for their harmlessness, one would think the council would jump at the chance to allow the change of use, but no, they preferred to wait for their “prince” in the form of a new landlord to come some day.
So those naughty Buddhists snuck in anyway, and started worshipping in the building so quietly that no one in authority noticed for years. They also opened a vegetarian cafe, the bastards. The Waltham Forest Echo continues:
Despite the town hall’s decision, the TCA [this is a typo for “CTA”, which stands for “Confucius and Tao Association”] appears to have gone ahead with the conversion.
It is unclear when the venue began being used as a place of worship. There is no formal signage for the temple, only for the associated Lotus Bloom Café, and historic remnants of the Lord Brooke are still in place more than a decade on.
Waltham Forest lodged a planning enforcement notice in late April, demanding the charity stops the “unauthorised use of the land and buildings as a place of worship, associated community centre, and ancillary café” and ceases “all gatherings, events and educational classes”.
So the state compulsorily closed down a pub due to it being a drug haven. The state said that the building could only be reopened as a pub. The state made reopening it as a pub a losing proposition. Then the state said that the people who had quietly reopened the building as a place of worship for Buddhists and a cafe open to all had to close it down and restore it to its previous state.
The Confucius and Tao Association ought to scatter the ground with needles and syringes for authenticity, but they are probably too nice.
Europe has spent decades believing that you can regulate prosperity, tax innovation, and distrust entrepreneurship, while Silicon Valley and Shenzhen built the future.
Now, European Commissioner Virkkunen “Spuit11” warns that Europe is dependent on American and Chinese AI for digital security. As if that were a natural disaster. It’s not a natural disaster. It’s policy.
The EU produces rules. The US produces companies. China produces scale. Europe produces commissions that explain why we’re falling behind.
No end to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s government, no end to Iran’s missile programme, no handover of enriched uranium, yes to ending US sanctions and thus forgoing any political leverage, yes to accepting Iranian (and Omani, for what it’s worth) control over Hormuz, no end to the IRGC proxy forces in Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon… and, er, an Iranian promise to be nice in the future and not make nukes?
That government can be scarcely deemed to be free where the rights of property are left solely dependent upon the will of a legislative body without any restraint.
No Government has the right, whether to flatter fanatics or in mere vagueness of mind, to forge an instrument of tyranny and say that it will never be used.
– William Butler Yeats, written in 1928 in opposition to censorship legislation in the Irish Free State
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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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