Properties that twenty years ago were inhabited by collectivised Bulgarian peasants can now be purchased by anyone, thanks to the magic of the Internet.
Ideal for, erm, renovators!
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I have been ‘on the road’ again since a few days after the New Year. Travel may seem exciting to some, but it does wear you down when you do it week after week. This is especially true when planning is impossible and you cannot say with any certainty which of several jobs will be next in line. You just adapt and make your arrangements on the fly. That said, constant travel does lead to unexpected adventures and misadventures. I would count losing my glasses going through security in Toronto among the less exciting and more expensive of these. Although there are some weeks more to go on this jaunt, the event which most stands out happened before I even got out of the UK at the start of January. Due to contract signings running late a couple layers up the food chain from myself, travel arrangements for my usual January gig backstage at the big Healthcare investment conference in San Francisco were last minute. Translation: they were so late the flights were almost unaffordable so I was booked on a simply ridiculous connection. I left Belfast on an evening flight which dropped me in Heathrow just as the airport closed up operations for the night. My New York flight was first thing in the morning… so I got to sit up all night in the main terminal. Well, my slogan is “Have Laptop, Will Travel”, so after some help from friendly airport staff to move some seats closer to an electric outlet, I settled in for a long, long night of work. Time crawled by. Over the top of my screen I idly noticed a gaggle of armed police wander by and hassle a couple black teens whom I think were also waiting for a connecting flight. One of the cops walked towards me. I naturally assumed he was going to act as a friendly face to London’s major airport; perhaps commiserate on my bad luck in being stuck there over night; or possibly warn me to beware of this, that or the other. I was wrong. He planted himself in front of me in his best “Clockwork Orange” intimidation posture and proceeded to tell me I was guilty of theft. I looked at him blankly. Theft of services. I was plugged into the airport’s electricity. He quoted a section number I was purportedly violating. As I have lived in Belfast through troubled years, I know how to deal with this sort. You smile and you verbally give them squat to grab hold of. They want to provoke a response that will let them play cop. This fellow was very obviously tired, bored and looking for someone to take it out on. I, being one of the few persons in the terminal was ‘it’. He went on. Not only was I ‘stealing services’. I was in violation of… of…. HEALTH AND SAFETY REGULATIONS! I did not have appropriate authorization from the Airport declaring my laptop was safe for use with their AC sockets, and if I were to get electrocuted they might be liable! I quietly studied the hole in his head. He ranted on that I was still stealing power as he talked. Actually I was concentrating on keeping up a fake smile and non-threatening eye contact so as to avoid serious trouble. I was also dumbfounded, but I snapped out of it and casually reached over and unplugged. Slowly. I was not quite sure of the stability of this character and he was, after all, an armed member of a society in which only his sort are armed. With the offending laptop unplugged and as he had utterly failed to provoke any sort of lese majeste remark from me, there was little more he could do. He sternly told me he would let me off with a warning and then retreated and joined his cohorts. They had remained some distance away throughout. Backup I suppose. I might well have been armed with sharp verbs and poisonous nouns for all they knew. The previously hassled white robed African teen was not far away and as our trooper stormed off we caught each others eyes. I shook my head. He wryly smiled back. Wordless understanding passed between us. Welcome to 21st Century London. February 18th, 2006 | 61 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Mick Hartley yesterday blogged, in response to this, about the slippery slope that the smoking ban is towards the top end of:
Great stuff, but I’m not sure that I entirely agree. If this was indeed the slippery slope involved, I would be with Mick Hartley in wanting us to stay at the top of it. But I don’t think it is. I think the smoking ban is about pollution, and about the way that pollution is seen as not being a property rights issue, but instead as a criminal assault issue. Blowing smoke at someone is now seen as like stabbing them. The result is similar; it just takes a little longer. Next on this slippery slope are not individual behaviours, like being a greedy pig, so much as other smoke-belching activities, like driving cars and airplanes, with the rules of what exactly constitutes “smoke” being ever more tightly written. After all, smoking has been turned from a mere habit into a crime by this ban. And crimes are all about the individual responsibility of the criminals who commit them. I do not hear anyone saying that smoking is an illness, the way they do about drinking alcohol too regularly and too much. You can argue, and I do argue, that “passive smoking”, like smoking itself, is something you do, and consent to doing, by being near smokers rather than keeping away from them, which you can do if property rights are allowed to operate, and to create areas where smoking is forbidden by the property owner. As Mick Hartley says, in circumstances like that,: “you turn around and go elsewhere”. But what about people who are obliged, in various degrees, to consort with smokers? Does the fact that a battered wife “consents” to being abused (by not earlier abandoning the abusive relationship) excuse the abuser, when the battered wife finally gives up on the relationship, and calls in the police and presses charges? And what about children raised by smokers? Is that not like beating them every day for no reason? That is the parallel that we now find ourselves arguing about. And if the argument is that cars and airplanes stink up the entire planet, nobody has anywhere to go to escape from that kind of repeated assault, if that is what it is. So there is no consent argument against banning those nozious practices. Collectivists love pollution, because pollution often is collective, that is, hard to avoid. So if you want to apply the “what next?” argument to the smoking ban, think noxious fumes, and also things like evil electrical effects from phones, power stations, heaters, carpets, etc. Actually don’t. Don’t give them ideas. Where neurology arguments might push us down a slope is in those areas and arguments where it is said that this or that crime should actually be less of a crime than it is now. Things like small robberies committed by the unemployed, by ethnic minorities, or by the physically handicapped, etc. Then, I think that Mick Hartley’s argument would be spot on. But smoking is not that kind of issue at all. Not at the moment anyway. February 18th, 2006 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Andrew Sullivan, reminds me why I was a fan of his blog from the off and remain one: Leave aside the issue of mob violence for a moment. No moderate Muslim or “sensitive” Westerner is defending that. What of the non-violent request: that one faith be granted its taboos, that Western culture must abide by them, that the law be reformed to protect religious faiths from blasphemy or offense? It seems to me that we should indeed avoid gratuitous insult of Islam, and Christianity, or any faith. But it is a complete delusion to believe that the major source of our problem today is something called “Islamophobia.” No: the problem is terrorism and tyranny propagated under the banner of Islam. Without that, no Danish cartoon could have been conceived of, let alone published. That is the real and far more blatant blasphemy. If 10,000 angry Muslims had marched in London after the bombing of a major mosque in Iraq, I’d be impressed. But they didn’t. Until they do, the West has nothing to apologize for. The Muslim world needs to take the beam out of its own eye, before it removes the speck from the West’s. February 18th, 2006 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
Reuters reports that the hunting with hounds is more popular than ever despite the move by parliament last year to outlaw the hunting of foxes with hounds. (Incidentally, foxes are increasingly a problem in the cities as they scavenge for food. I used to live in Clapham and the place was full of them). It makes me wonder about whether the vote by MPs this week to ban smoking in public places, including private members’ clubs, will be easily enforced. Let’s hope it meets the same fate as the anti-foxhunting measure. I say this as someone who does not smoke or hunt on horseback (despite being a Suffolk farmer’s son, hunting with hounds never appealed, although I have shot the odd bunny rabbit from time to time). February 18th, 2006 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
I attended the Emergency Event at the London School of Economics which was publicised by Perry earlier this week entitled “Freedom of Speech: Who cares what Muslims think”. There was a very small but vocal contingent of Samizdata supporters, agreeing with Claire Fox’s defence of the freedom of speech. The excellent chairman of the debate between Claire Fox and Sajjid Khan was fair and impartial. Many of the Muslims who commented during the debate stated their pain at the publication of the cartoons. It was clear that, despite the long period in time from the initial publication of the cartoons to the demonstrations, Muslims argued that this was a trespass upon the sacred. It was hard to gauge whether this reaction stemmed from belief or obligation, as the orthodox approach to the cartoons had now been established. Whilst Claire Fox located recent infringements and restrictions on free speech in the developments of left-wing politics from the 1970s, especially political correction and speech codes, Sajjid Khan said that there was a sphere of the sacred surrounding Mohammed. No person should ridicule, publish or draw Mohammed. In the first instance, non-Muslims should practice self-censorship in this regard, but the preferred tool for policing the sacred sphere was the law. He stated that respect for Islam would join other shared goals such as social justice and taking my money to care for the poor. Khan criticised Blair but he was quite clear that he did not want to change the system itself, only those who pulled the levers, so that respect for Islam would become a legitimate objective of a democratic society. Claire Fox argued that it was possible to hold a dialogue between Muslims and those whose default position supported liberty. This was not true in the debate. Our values are incommensurable as many Muslims clearly support using the law, if changed, to coerce my freedom of expression. The law would be used to prevent me from freely expressing myself on the subject of Mohammed, if I chose to do so, and rights of trespass on the sacred space would surely be decided by Muslims themselves, not by me. It is a depressing conclusion, since I had hoped that there could be common ground here on shared notions of liberty. That will not stop me trying, since this is one of the most important issues that we face. What matters is how individuals, whether Muslim or non-Muslim act, not those who would speak for or bind us all into simplified collectives called Islam or the West. UPDATE Adloyada argues that Sajjid Khan is, in fact, a member of Hizb ut Tahrir and presents compelling evidence.
Khan certainly did not declare this affiliation. February 18th, 2006 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)
Those who have a superstitious aversion to nuclear power on the grounds that “the waste will be radioactive for thousands of years, man!” really ought to learn to ask, ‘what?’ and, ‘how much?’ Medical (and industrial) use of radioisotopes is happily accepted (or at least ignored) by the same people. Medicine is good. Industry is hidden in a black shade of ignorance. But power stations are bad. Like the Bomb. This rather misses that medical materials can be very dangerous. Those “thousands of years” for power waste also indicate lower specific activity. Is a long period of mild, static, buried, danger really a thing to have nightmares about, when really fearful stuff is to be found loose at the end of the street? Perhaps this story will lead to better public understanding:
Even discounting the doom-mongering approache of HSE prosecutors, this is a pretty alarming incident. But the chance of its changing public attitudes, or even inspiring curiosity about risk, is close to zero. We may get a small addition to the towering mass of safty-anxiety, but a sense of proportion? Never. PS. Remarkable don’t you think, that the BBC story I cite is illustrated with, not a picture of a container lorry or a piece of radiotherapy equipment, but a glowering shot of Sellafield. The place where the danger was discovered and made safe is made the villain. The ‘Sellafield baa-d’ habit of mind – look, it even has the capitalist word “sell” embedded in it, what could be more damning? – cannot be eradicated by what RCD calls “pesky facts”. February 18th, 2006 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Harry Hutton speaks for many, I am sure, when he says this:
Personally I have never really bought in to this Blair-is-evil meme. Perhaps if I met him face to face I would feel differently, but to me he merely seems desperately eager to do good, but somewhat dim about how to actually contrive goodness, like a trendy vicar. Good at winning elections though, and making speeches, and doing Hugh Grant impersonations. The man knows his rhetoric, and if, at any time during the twenty first century, Blair were to step down from being the Prime Minister, I think his rhetoric will be sorely missed by the next government, assuming it’s Labour. Slippery, yes. But a villain? Not really. I don’t think so, anyway. But whatever his motives may be, and however little he may have any deliberate plans to screw the non-smoking, non-terrorism glorifying, pro-ID card tendency, Blair, or the processes he has now set in motion, will still do this. But, he meant and he means no harm. But feel free to disagree. While you are still allowed to. February 17th, 2006 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
From the ever informative Dave Barry blog, I learn that a Hollywood type superhero is joining in the fight against al-Qaeda:
So how many Batman movies have there been so far? Is it four? What’s the betting that the next one does not feature al-Qaeda as the villains? February 17th, 2006 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Mark Holland is on a blogging roll just now, and one of the more interesting things to be found on his blog earlier in the week was a link to and a big chunk of a speech made by Winston Churchill, on June 4th 1945, which I assume Mark to have found here. (Mark himself offers no link.) Quote:
Now I am not trying to say or even to suggest that what governs Britain now is what was meant in 1945 by “Socialism”. That hard-line root-and-branch government control of everyone and everything is a horror story has by now been well understood by all but a tiny few lunatics, if only because the promised economic benefits of such a system have all turned to dust and rust, in Britain and everywhere else where such Socialism has been attempted. Churchill’s team won that argument, even if this took rather longer than Churchill had hoped in 1945. But the book which prompted Churchill to say these things, Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom, paints a more complicated picture than just simple tyranny. Hayek also foresaw chaos, and an ever more desperate governmental effort to correct chaos, with even more chaos. And at the moment, governmentally induced chaos probably looms larger in our lives than governmental tyranny. But the means of inflicting a more self-conscious and deliberate tyranny at some future date are now pretty much all in place. And, once again, the traitor in our midst is war. In 1945, it was the recently concluded war against Nazi Germany, and the warm glow of team spiritedness which that war gave off, for those who had good wars like formerly poor soldiers who had lived through victories (rather than those who had died during defeats), and like behind the lines enthusiasts for central planning. Now, it is the so-called War on Terror, which creates an atmosphere in which the Government does not demand or expect to know everything, but does insist upon its absolute right to know anything in particular that strikes it as important. And, now as in 1945, the British people, on the whole, do not object. Rather do they expect this, and complain only when the Government fails to keep an eye on things enthusiastically enough. February 17th, 2006 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Andrew Keen, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and blogger, recently argued that the roots of the Web 2.0 movement creepily echoed the concept of self-realisation underlying Marxist philosophy. Keen describes Web 2.0 as a utopian project to construct new technologies which allow individuals to publish and promote their creative endeavours in music, art, or other forms of print media. The reduction of barriers to entry that this entails has had a radical effect on the traditional media. Keen portrays the movement as ideologically driven by a broad grouping of Silicon Valley veterans, fusing the dynamics of the 60s counter-culture with the techno-utopianism of the 1990s. It is an awkward fit as the New Left is shoehorned with libertarianism and the diversity of the figures cited lends doubt to the utility of the argument beyond a straw man network effect:
Keen is aware of his own leanings. Web 2.0 is drawn as an ideology and a political endeavour in order to level the playing field and allow his cultural conservatism to come into play. With arguments that echo those hurled at the development of mass media at the beginning of the twentieth century, Keen laments the passing of a common culture, the rise of mediocrity and the destruction of the existing elite. The future is drowned by dross. With the rise of more enthusiasts and more voices, Keen laments that the role of the media is lost and that personalised media will reflect individual preferences, losing sense of a wider world.
It must be such a chore to be one voice amongst many. February 16th, 2006 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Heh. Who was that speaker again? From an email circular promoting think-tank events around Europe:
February 16th, 2006 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
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