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I work for the Police and I for one think this is a fantastic idea along with every other scheme that is or is threatened to be brought in ot fight this insidiuos and invisible fight against terrorism. I can’t wait to change my title from Constable to Stasi… – Robert Pangborn, a commenter on an article Social network sites ‘monitored’ March 25th, 2009 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Does anybody know where the words of this can be copied and pasted? I would hate to have to type it all out – or maybe that should be ‘in’ – myself, but somebody definitely should, and if I or any commenter does find it, I will maybe add it to the bottom of this posting. As Peter Hoskin of the Spectator’s Coffee House blog says, Dan Hannan “absolutely skewers” the PM. (Can you kick someone with a skewer? Never mind.) Guido also piles in. As my fellow scribes here say from time to time: I love the internet. In fact I love it even more than I hate Gordon Brown, and that’s saying something. ADDENDUM Monday morning: Here it is. Thank you commenter Simon Collis, and blogger Stuart Sharpe.
It will be interesting to see what Britain’s mainstream media make of this. My guess is that the blogosphere will be all over this speech not just today but for a longish time, with constant links back, and that many newspapers will also refer to it during the next day or two. But how will the BBC respond? They are in a lose-lose situation, I think. Mention it, eventually, they lose. Ignore it, they look like Soviet-era buffoons, just as Hannan said Brown is. A bit like the US MSM and those tea parties. Presumably, by the time the BBC do mention it, the story will be that the Conservatives are divided. Divided, that is to say, in that some of them think the Prime Minister is mad and evil and believe in saying so, while others merely think it. March 24th, 2009 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
It’s been an open secret for years that Israel possesses nuclear capability. It’s an interesting comment on the genuine – as opposed to rhetorical – threat that the Zionist Entity is deemed to pose that it’s only now, when Iran is on the verge of joining the nuclear club, that other Middle Eastern and Arab countries get concerned about developing their own programs. March 24th, 2009 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
We occasionally get some pretty nutty comments on the threads but I often think that this blog’s comments are models of coolness and restraint compared with what else is out there. In response to a fairly decent article by Niall Ferguson, the historian, at the Daily Telegraph today, is this zinger from some character by the name of King O’Malley. Enjoy:
As far as I know from reading Adam Smith, the great Glasgow professor was in favour of some form of gold-backed currency, although the exact details escape me. But no matter; what this splendidly nutty comment shows is that its author has heard words such as “gold”, “fiat money”, and “fractional reserve banking”, and is convinced that there was some dark conspiracy by the great economist and the UK establishment to obscure or suppress knowledge of these things, or that Mr Smith “lacked the moral and intellectual courage” to talk about them in his “diatribe” (WoN being in fact a calmly-argued piece, the very opposite of a rant). The depressing thing is that is that is a bit of a debate – admittedly on the sidelines of the economics debate – about things such as the proper structure of banks, monetary systems, and the like. The danger is that if a person who has not heard of criticisms of fractional reserve banking, etc, encounters comments like the one before without first understanding a bit about the subject, they’ll be put off for life. “These guys are crazy”, he’ll say, and move on back to the same old complacent, wrong-headed consensus view. All the more reason, then, for such gloriously normal characters like Kevin Dowd to set the pace in arguing for free banking. By the way, I make no apology for keeping banging on about this free banking issue. It is a subject where a steady stream of blogging commentary can make a difference, I hope. March 24th, 2009 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am not exactly a great fan of Richard Curtis’ films – here is a hilarious spoof of the film, Notting Hill – but this looks like a bit of fun to watch. Radio Caroline, the radio station that was based on an old lightship vessel off the Suffolk/Essex coast in the 1960s, embodied that glorious, British two-fingered gesture at overweening authority that, when allied to a bit of entrepreneurial dash, often explains the rise of many a business sector. It is hard to believe that in a world where radio was dominated by the BBC, that listeners to rock and pop music of the time had to resort to listening to stuff broadcast by a bunch of sea-sick DJs on a boat. Radio Caroline, alas, closed in 1967 when the BBC unveiled what was to become its Radio 1 station. On the television last night, the-then government minister who presided over the old monopoly, the “national treasure”, Tony Benn, claimed that shutting the station was necessary since the buccaneering RC station was “messy”. It is an example of the Soviet mindset that lurks beneath the infantile grin of that old man. There are obvious parallels with the current assault on the citadels of the MSM by Internet-based writers and broadcasters. As Patri Friedman, grandson of the great Milton Friedman, prepares to head out East to tell us all about seasteading, the story of how a group of DJs briefly enlivened the airwaves via the North Sea is very timely. Meanwhile, on the whole subject of radio and the rebellion against state-backed monopolists like the BBC, here is a good American perspective from Reason magazine’s Jesse Walker. Recommended. March 24th, 2009 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
I would not recommend spending major chunks of one’s only life helping to clean up the intellectual mess inflicted by post-modernism, but occasionally keeping tabs on the mess, and on those heroic souls who are part of this noble cleansing project, can be fun. In this spirit, I recommend this. To start with I was merely going to do a(n) SQOTD, but the list of bits I found I wanted to recycle here from this conversation soon outgrew that plan. Bit one, from David Thompson, in connection with a response to a posting he did about art bollocks (Thompson’s italics are here emboldened):
Bit two, also from Thompson (the Windschuttle essay he refers to is here):
This reminds me of a very funny bit in this book where John O’Farrell (his subtitle is: “Eighteen Miserable Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter, 1979-1997” – here’s hoping you ain’t seen nothing yet mate), recalled that certain leftwing university radicals of his acquaintance used to regard smiling as rightwing. Since Stephen Hicks is the grandee being interviewed here, let Hicks have bit three:
It’s tempting to dismiss postmodernism as being such obvious and such obviously self-destructive intellectual junk as not to be worth bothering with. Just hold your nose and walk on by, don’t complain about it, it only encourages them, etc. But postmodernism has had, and continues to have, a hideously destructive effect on the study of the humanities in universities (somewhat less so on anything with pretensions towards being in any way scientific), and it will only go away if the next few generations of scholars can be persuaded to treat it with the contempt that it deserves. So keep it up, Hicks, and thank you, Thompson, for talking with him so interestingly. March 23rd, 2009 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
David Cameron, Tory leader, appears determined that it will not be just the current government that comes out with serious errors on policy. This refusal to not state that a new, higher tax band of 45 per cent “on the rich” will be repealed is a serious error. The error is to ignore the history of what happens when marginal tax rates are cut – these cuts lead to more, not less, revenue. Now of course, as small-government folk, we support tax cuts because we want taxes to fall, and not because we want higher revenues. But if it is revenues you are worried about, then raising taxes is dumb. The UK and many other economies are falling down the wrong side of the Laffer Curve. It is profoundly depressing that the lessons I thought had been learned have been so totally lost. It makes me wonder whether any senior politician has a clue about economics whatever. On an earlier Samizdata discussion thread following on from my post about the Kevin Dowd lecture, was a long and very involved debate about the issue of fractional reserve banking, for example. You commenters are a smart bunch and I say, without false modesty, that we rate consistently above many other UK blogs in that respect. I wonder whether there is now a single major politician who has a clue about FRB, the arguments for or against, etc. Seriously, does anyone in the major parties understand even the most basic concepts of economics? Maybe the most gloomy answer is that some do understand but are too frightened or cynical to do anything about it. Maybe someone should put this on Mr Cameron’s summer reading list. March 23rd, 2009 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Jacqui Smith on “The Politics Show” turned in another performance in evasion and Newspeak that I was unsure what she actually said. Not as bad as Simon Sion about the Further Education Councils but a mirror of distortion nonetheless. She is being interviewed prior to the publication of the government’s updated counter-terrorist strategy. Part of this agitprop approach allows Gordon Brown to write his hyperbole in The Observer, claiming credit for the success of others. Part of the problem on counter-terrorism strategy is assessing its context, its capabilities and its outcomes. If you read Brown’s article, his assessment of the threat from Al-Qaida is straightforward: who would disagree that they are our primary threat. Zero in on his statements and we become more sceptical of the claims and the results.
They are an ideology; they are a religion: their beliefs are more widely shared than Brown states, especially amongst the British Muslim population. Jacqui Smith identified the rise of extremism as a root problem but was unwilling to define an extremist. First, know your enemy. When we read Brown state that our defence is the duty of every individual, we heartily agree. In practice, this is piety shrouding inaction:
But accept that our arbitrary laws on hate speech may leave you open to arrest and detention. Who arrested the Islamic extremists in Luton? This doublespeak permeates the entire article with faint aroma of Brownie beans: expenditure, exaggerated claims and comparisons, and the image of Britain as a world-beater. When was Brown ever misperceived as humble?
In the world of Jacquistan, the words on the page protect us; in reality, their attempt to make political capital of this duty leaves me suspecting that policy is subject to increased political meddling and control. The more we move into the world of Jacquistan, the more I fear another attack. March 22nd, 2009 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
People used to hand me the hymnbook and insist on finding me the place. – Rt Hon David Blunkett PC MP, on Radio 4’s Sunday programme today, recalls being at church in Sheffield as a blind boy… and provides a perfect metaphor for his party’s philosophy of government. He went on to explain that he would play along with the pointless drama – pretending to sing from the book. Compliance is not approval; nor is it evidence that the ‘enabling’ state is doing good. March 22nd, 2009 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
This sounds horribly familiar:
Which sounds exactly like Britain’s Labour government from 1997 until now. The difference being that in 1997 the British economy was in fairly good shape, which meant that the then British government had a decade during which to learn how to govern. It never did, but it might have. Now the world economy is in a terrible state, and Obama has no time at all. Does the USA as a whole already have a bad feeling about Obama? Or is it just the people in the USA who detest him already, telling each other that they have a bad feeling about him? From over here, it’s a bit hard to tell. March 22nd, 2009 | 48 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is no stated national consensus that as a country we should substantially reduce overall masturbation, but such a reduction would benefit the health of many who wank – and those affected by passive wanking- the concept I invented a few sentences ago and am now treating as a genuine problem. In 2006, 180,000 people died from pornographic-related causes. Wanking has a major impact on individual wanker’s health: it causes cancers of the liver, bowel, breast, throat, mouth, larynx and oesophagus; it causes blindness, hairy palms, a pale pallor and insanity … Some point to the potential benefits of self-pleasuring, but these tend to be greatly overstated. Despite its known harms, one-quarter of the adult population – about 10 million people – now wank above the recommended low-risk levels. I made this figure up but as the Chief Medical Officer I can cite myself because I am in a position of authority. Here is a graph to illustrate how many people are killed by masturbation. It actually represents something completely different, possibly cat food sales, but I’m guessing that most of you are actually too stupid to actually look at the graph in any detail … – some Unenlightened Commentary sadly not actually supplied by Sir Liam Donaldson (with thanks to Obnoxio the Clown) March 21st, 2009 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
…and Carla Howell has just the song to put you in the mood! March 20th, 2009 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
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