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Samizdata quote of the day And anyway I wanted to see what it would feel like ordering a three hundred quid starter
– Giles Coren, reviewing the St James’-Ukrainian restaurant Divo for The Times.
The capacity at will to do something improbable (and quite possibly stupid) in order to find out what it feels like is to my mind the measure of a society worth living in. Mr Coren did not have to consult religious authorities about that starter, and no government inspector determined for him whether it was fair or appropriate fo him to do so, or insisted on him having counselling first, or afterwards. He is not confined in a fixed universe of approved experiences. For how long? The vigilantes are abroad, though they are coming for the poor first. And everyone ought to be free to be daft, not just oligarchs.
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A pity Coren did not inherit his father’s wit. (Rest in peace, Alan)
Well said Guy. Of course, starting with the poor is not a new approach for the current batch of control freaks.
I well recall (though I’m too lazy to look up the exact quote in Hansard) an incident during the debate on the smoking ban. A government minister, opposing the exemption of private clubs from the ban, said words to the effect of “Well, it would be OK if it was just the Garrick and the like, those clubs have intelligent, educated members. But the exception would extend to working mens’ clubs, which are full of stupid poor people, who need the government to do their thinking for them.”
Lord Lester of Herne Hill, here the context is not quite as you describe, but in pursuit of the even odder point that exempting private clubs would create “unfair competition” with pubs to the benefit of Working Men’s Clubs.
Thanks Guy. Actually, that wasn’t the one I was thinking of, it’s even odder, as you say. So I got off my butt and looked it up.
It turned out to be Chris Bryant, in the Commons, (Link) and, while I might have exaggerated a little, I think it’s closer to what I remembered. With an explicit mention of “the poor”!
He’s allowed it, because he was a curate. A very odd cv to go with some very odd views. Most famous for an embarrassing appearance on Gaydar, he has ascended at the age of 45 to the dizzy heights of bag-carrier to Harriet Harman. I can see how he is qualified for this by a long career as a labour movement hack, but can anyone enlighten me as to his qualifications for having become Head of European Affairs at the BBC (assuming that’s not a weird Wikipedia mistake – the Guardian’s Aristotle agrees)?
I would love to have heard the Home Office bureaucrat trying to reason with an apparently somewhat hysterical Mr Monbiot demanding HO statistics to prove his latest whimsy. His post reeks of barking moonbat rebuked by various authorities along the lines of ‘go home George and take your tablets, you’ll feel much better then’.
He has also failed to grasp that the Home Office, more even than other departments, only collects statistics that buttress departmental policy. If it is ever proposed that individual diet or weight could be subject to inspection by police or the BIA, the Home Office will have several ongoing studies into the relationship of food and crime, the findings of which might even be released if they show one.
Aaahhhhh George… the very first Moonbat, and from whom the term got its currency.
We need the occasional reminder of just how batshit crazy these people are, and George seldom fails to provide one.
Guy, where is the quote from?
I am seriously tempted to begin believing that the demise of Homo Sapiens may be the failure by its leaders and power brokers to comprehend a rather simple statistical truism: that correlation does not necessarily imply causality.
Idiots like Monbiot swoon at the sight of two graphs rising or falling in unison, and it is somehow completely beyond them to imagine there may be more graphs not plotted there.
“Why should a link between diet and behaviour be surprising?” – but it’s not a causal link, you bunghole, it’s a correlational link. If you knew how to run a simple SPSS scenario, you’d likely find out that both of these variables have much higher correlation with education than with each other.
There is supposed to be some evidence of a link between diet and behaviour in prisons (specifically that additives and so on tend to make it harder to resist certain forms of bad behaviour).
However, although I once worked in the Prison Service (indeed it was the fatal error of my life to leave it) I am ashamed to say that I do not know much about these studies – so I can not say whether they are true or false.
On the general question of treating poor people as if they were convicted criminals in prison (i.e. deciding what they are not allowed to have to eat – in a prison there is a power of deciding what the prisoners eat, so it might as well be healthy stuff) my opinion is the same as Guy’s.
There is a long tradition of treating the poor as either criminals or children (for example the economist Alfred Marshall was in favour of the Prussian practice of sending inspectors to the houses of poor people demanding that the houses, and the people themselves, be clean), but I do not support this tradition (I support the alternative tradtion of freedom – even if people use their freedom to shorten their lives).
“That is just because you are poor yourself”.
Perhaps – but I would like to think that I would not support such statism even if I was not poor.
Wow, three hundred quid for a starter? The last time I needed one, I got a rebuild for $39.95 plus tax.
Things are pricey over there. And why would you buy auto parts in a restaurant?
I think I’d be more impressed if i knew with certainty that Coren had paid for the meal out of his own pocket.
As it is, all he knows about is what it’s like to have a fat expenses account.
If I recall correctly, that wonderful quote was from Gulliver’s Travels.
It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but it sure sounds Swift.
Three hundred quid for a Ukrainian starter? He should have got a $250 flight to Simferopol back in July, jumped a taxi to Yalta, and bought some local stuff from the change. I’ll be the view would have been better.
At least judging by the review the cuisine and service is authentic.