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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Self-parody Just when I thought e-government couldn’t get any sillier, I happened upon this site.
“Anti-social behaviour practitioner” is a particularly glorious piece of tin-eared bureaucratic jargon. “Tackling alcohol disorder” is alternative to “Taking a Stand Awards”, suggests to me that many of those approaching this site are expected to be unable to stand.
But apart from being stupid and unintentionally funny, it is another scary glimpse into how unlimited is the appetite to regulate and manage social life in Britain.
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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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“practitioners working to tackle anti-social behaviour”.
I am a practitioner working to tackle anti-social behaviour, which is why I am working to get the BBC off the public teat.
They call this website Together. Seriously, I am at the end of my tether.
No doubt a subtle effort by the Government to keep the Guardian on side by ensuring their public appointments pages are kept busy…
No room at The Guardian any more, James. The other heavyweight papers also have weekly public sector job supplements – in addition to the wodges of government jobs in the specialist law, media, technology, usw supplements, and the specialist weeklies. And don’t look at the back of any local newspaper if you are at all prone to apoplexy.
Verity,
That’s like a crossword clue: Near end of tether? Go back to Moodysson’s commune. (8)
I could swear the Guardian section had a slightly more technocratic slant… 😛
I don’t even bother looking at the adverts they stick in the back of my local paper. I rarely have the energy these days to decipher the pseudocryptic adverts they place.
Have you seen application forms for places like the DWP? Wow. I thought I’d seen it all, but they really are something else…
It has to be admitted, however, that ZaNuLabour has mined a very rich seam in the English – the alacrity with which we revert to maypole and mincepie banning.
It was public disgust at the army of jobsworths, forever demanding people’s ‘papers’ during and just after the last war, that made Churchill scrap the scheme.
Sadly, it seems there is a little milk monitor on every street corner, just waiting to turn us in for some breach of the regulations. If one were feeling charitable, one might even compliment Bliar and co for capitalising on this hideous quality.
Just hang on for another couple of years and this will all seem like a horrible nightmare.
With the UK economy now limping along at 1.5% a year, debt to GDP now above Germany’s at 44% and rising (it was 36% when New Lab first came to power) and Gordy about to be PM (i.e taxes cannot conceivably be raised), the government must finally rein in spending. This will, hopefully, mean an end to the bonkers jobs of recent years.
pommygranate writes:
“This will, hopefully, mean an end to the bonkers jobs of recent years.”
But experience of Labour governments teaches us it will not. Instead, taxation levels will continue to rise, useful public services (road repairs, frontline medical services etc) will be cut, until the GBP finally regains its senses and kicks this lot of arrogant incompetents back into the polytechnics and chambers whence they came.
At which point, one can only hope the Not-The-Conservative Party under the idiots Maude and Cameron will have realised the error it has made and be electable again.
Though I’m not holding my breath.
Is this why you got out, Pommygranate? Because you knew the government would have to rein in spending and there will be an end to a million bonkers jobs?
As I am quite anti-social most of the time, I guess that makes me an anti-social behavior practitioner.
Hmmmm. I like the “Step-by-step guides”, they give me some ideas for being ever more anti-social. Public littering, graffiti, random fireworks misuse (have I mentioned that most fireworks are legal here in New Hampshire?). I’m not sure how information sharing improves anti-social behavior, unless they believe that anti-socialists like me can give each other tips. Instructions on publicizing anti-social behavior orders…
Ooh, now this is particularly interesting:
“Categories of information that that can be shared (de-personalised and personalised information)
Legislation that relates to the sharing of personalised information”
Ah, see, the real reason for the NIDA is to make y’all more anti-social…
GCooper – continue to breath out. Nothing will change.
It pains me to say this, but between Tory Bliar with a twizzly wind turbine on his roof and a condescending attitude to 60m people he has never met in his life, and the real Tony Bliar, I would choose the real Tony Bliar, because he knows what he is doing and he has to watch his ass.
Tory Bliar was a PR man for a TV company. Salaryman. Meetings. Coffee. Dear God, does it get worse?
Tony Bliar was a “public service” barrister. Dear God, does it get any worse?
Gordon Brown thinks acceptance of his deep-last-century-long-discredited-socialism will be OK if he has his teeth whitened, smiles more (oh, pleeease, noooo!) and suddenly develops an interest in marriage and family, the British public, who are stupid but not that stupid, will – inexplicably – win him the office of the PM.
Cameron must really be persuaded to shut his fat (he eats too much; he’s greedy), twittery, self-congratulatory, silly little face up because he is not going anywhere. Ever.
Back into media salesman/car salesman (probably in the US now that he’s got a wee profile) – my guess, three years before he’s doing commercials in the US.
Verity – it would be more accurate to say that i was ‘pulled out’ rather than ‘got out’. Like all Australians i have ever met, my wife has a homing device for Oz. Thirteen English winters and she could take no more.
I was rather surprised to read the Heritage Foundation/Wall St Journal’s Economic Freedom Index. The UK does surprisingly well, better in fact than Australia and the US. And they report that the trend is towards more freedom since 1997…
“Anti-social behaviour practitioner”?
Aren’t they usually just called criminals?
pommygranate writes:
“The UK does surprisingly well, better in fact than Australia and the US. And they report that the trend is towards more freedom since 1997…”
Lies, damned lies and…..
James,
Sad to take a humourless line from a joke, but it is a key point that in Blair’s Britain “Anti-Social Behaviour” is a technical term for things that aren’t yet illegal, but the government wants to stop you doing anyway.
GCooper, pommygranate,
I always get the impression that the Heritage reports are written from the point of view of a rich, American-based, overseas investor. Things look different from the point of view of the small-business or ordinary individual in the country in question. And they are always a bit behind.
Guy: I wasn’t aware, thanks for clearing that up! Our government hasn’t quite gone down that road (yet) – although Blair has plenty of admirers in Australia who would no doubt like to ape his “social reforms”.
I have been an anti social behaviour practitioner all my life.
Piss me off and I can do 20 minutes of verbals without using the same expletive twice.
I am also a cynical optimist (well it saves time) and a freelance conceptual worker (I often think about working but do as little as possible)
This is the worst Government in my living memory.
What are the real estate prices like down your way Verity?
James,
For your further information, a full explanation.
Cripes. Modern Britain never fails to surprise.
Following a fun read of this article, I followed the direction to the Anti Soc behaviour website that proudly proclaims, inter alia, the official name of the jobs-worth of choice is to be “convenor”, the manette of choice to stem the rising tide of street scruffs and other riff raff. Gor luv a duk, are we supposed to take this stuff and nonsense seriously? Guess we must.
Am I dreaming, or don’t I recall “fondly” that most Marxist Soc Soc folks were controlled by CONVENORS, in those bad old days of 1968? Those misty moments back in the fantasy CCCP at uni with the bending of LSE gates by students raving ’bout injustiz and other bovinian fertilizer products of those ersatz intellectuals. Now some of these jerks are governing us it seems. No accident that the word convenor is starring centre stage here. Funny how language hallmarks the mind set of the Zeitgeist.
The exhortation to be more social, or socialist, just gets my goat. Must we have to put up with this sort of trite pious printed snot and grot from our 1960s masters? Them, the heirs and assigns of shadowy Marxists that de constructed our society into the vicious morass it now is. So now the best they can do is print this drivel and seriously expect to stem the flood of antisocial behaviour they and their ilk have engendered. Why am I reminded of the poor sod with the red flag in front of Stephenson’s Rocket stemming the tide of progress? Never a task more absurd.
This trivial pursuit of order and law is simply risible. Time for another glass of Guinness and sharpen one’s goose quills of dissent for future duty. We had junk bonds, so now I suppose we must have more junk law.
Over on this side of the pond, an “anti-social behavior practictioner” is just a polite name for a rude ass.
In a nation under tyranny, anti-social behavior is the first necessary step in the revolutionary struggle to creating urban LIC.
Samuel Adams is my model of the “anti-social behavior practitioner”….
Guy, from the website you linked.
For once, I’m speechless. I can’t think of any comment equal to the magnitude of this.
Midwestener,
Then you begin to understand the mortal danger to rule of law and liberal institutions that we live under.
Just keeping track of the erosions of liberty in the UK would be a full-time job for more than one person. Government announcements or half-announcements of new oppressions are daily.
Here’s one of yesterday’s.
‘If you are wrongly convicted, and have caused the Home Office trouble and time by proving it, there’s no reason you should be compensated fully as well. If you have been locked up before, you should just get used to helping with our clear-up rate, because we’ll make sure you have even less right to compensation because we know you’re a wrong ‘un. Oh, and by the way, we are going to change the court rules so that you won’t be able to claim you were wrongly convicted just because you had an unfair trial.”
So I went to that site and clicked that I was an Anti Social Behaviour type and the site that took me to had a crawl of news items dealing with antisocial activities. I would have thought they would have wanted to psychobabble me out of my antisocial naughtiness, but they just presented a series of news articles telling how “drunken YOBS” were taking over various business districts and driving citizens away and the police did nothing. A collection of news articles like that would only seem to encourage more antisocial behavior (or behaviour), wouldn’t it?
And what the hell is “hare coursing”? I’m picturing gangs of drunken yobs from the inner cities coming out to the countryside to chase rabbits, but that doesn’t make any sense.