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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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I have spent the last few days in Geneva – I travel to Switzerland regularly as part of my job – and needless to say, the prospect of the UK leaving the European Union comes up a lot in the Alpine state. For good reason. Switzerland is not in the European Union (that country has more sense), is unlikely ever to want to do so, and has a broadly amicable relationship with its neighbours, apart from when they aggressively seek to break down Swiss bank secrecy laws. (Such laws are, for cross-border purposes, no longer effective, although within Switzerland, the laws remain on the statute book and there are no plans as far as I know for lawmakers in Berne to repeal them.) By and large, Switzerland’s financial services industry is still in good health, although like many other centres, onshore as well as offshore, has had to contend with mass of regulation, some of it home-grown. (Swiss banks operate under unusually severe capital adequacy rules and the country now has negative interest rates, which hits banks’ margins.)
The Swiss trip got me thinking about London’s position in the EU referendum. One regular argument you might read about in the financial pages of pro-EU papers such as the Financial Times, for example, is of how if Britain quits, this will hurt London’s financial sector (aka “The City”), because we will no longer be able to “passport” financial services run from London across the whole of the EU. This seems to be a greatly exaggerated worry. For example, in many cases with the fund management industry, fund structures known as UCITS (the acronym is for a long set of French words), which can be bought and sold across the EU – and beyond – and issued in different currency share classes, are typically registered in Luxembourg and Dublin. There are now Chinese yuan share classes in UCITS funds, and China is not, bless its cotton socks, in the EU. Many of the portfolios held in these pan-European structures are managed by investment whizzes in London, and indeed, Zurich, and Geneva, or Hong Kong. So it seems unlikely, to pick this one example, that leaving the EU means disaster. If the UK leaves the EU, then some non-EU member state banks, wealth managers and insurers might have to set up onshore, representative offices in the EU, which is irksome, but hardly seismic. Similarly, the European Union directive affecting hedge funds and private equity, called AIFMD, applies to the European Union, but non-EU jurisdictions such as Jersey and Guernsey have acquired the ability to be treated as “equivalent” for the purpose of this directive.
And that leads to a broader point about rules, treaties and standards. To trade, transact and interact, one doesn’t need to have centralised, top-down legal rules and a single political entity, such as the EU, but to have – and the is the crucial bit – mutual recognition of another’s standards. If the the UK quits the EU, then German carmakers will need to recognise and honour UK motor manufacture rules (which would be sensible for Germany to do, given it is a net exporter to the UK) and the UK would have to return the favour. And so on and so on. Australia has to acknowledge our rules, and we theirs. We see this sort of mutual recognition in all fields of life. Over time, of course, a wider set of rules can be adopted, rather as languages and standards around computer software do.
To trade with people living and working in the EU, it is not necessary to be married to an undemocratic, clunky structure in Brussels. Ending that misconception will not just help win the case for UK exit, it might also encourage people to think more clearly about the very structures of power that we assume are necessary for economic activity to happen. So regardless of what happens next week, I hope it might galvanise thinking about proper authority, and the role of transnational organisations.
On some specific issues around trade, the City, and so forth, this article by Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister, Peter Lilley, is simply excellent. The Adam Smith Institute has a good piece on the classical liberal case for leave.
There may be some specific consequences that are adverse – but within certain limits. For example, take those strange creatures, “non-doms” – persons who live for a period in the UK and enjoy freedom from UK tax on their worldwide income but who have to pay a levy to enjoy this status. Some of these non-doms live in the UK because it also gives them the freedom to roam around the EU. And there are people buying “investment visas” (a sort of market for passports) who want to get a British visa not because of our marvellous weather, but to roam around the EU. They may choose to get a “golden visa” in Spain or Malta instead.
But in the broad scheme of things, losing money from rich overseas investors using the UK as an entrepot doesn’t seem such a massive blow, given the overall balance. If we leave the EU, the City will not have the impost of a pan-European transaction tax (aka “Tobin tax”) on financial transactions that hits London disproportionately hard and which was imposed by qualified majority rule in the EU. The UK financial services sector might be spared the horrors of a massive lump of “investor protection” (sarcasm alert!) regulation due to hit the market, called MiFID II, or at the very least we will be able to haggle around whether we need to respect all of it to sell financial services into the EU. Some of this regulatory crap will still be a part of our lives, but there will be a better chance of getting changes to how the UK is affected via the democratic process, however imperfect that is.
Given how many treaties and transnational pacts are decided at a global, rather than purely European, level, it also worth noting that in or out of the EU, a good deal of what goes on will not change all that much. But one big benefit for me is that however foolish UK politicians continue to be, and however onerous certain rules are, UK lawmakers will not be able to use EU membership as a handy excuse for something they want to do anyway, such as “Dear constituent, I agree this rule is mad but we cannot do anything because it is in EU law number xxxxxx.” Instead, our elected representatives will need to advocate new laws, or advocate repealing laws, by appealing to the merits of a case. It might also improve the calibre of people who choose to go into UK politics in the first place.
I am voting Leave.
Try as I might, I cannot but chuckle at news coming out of Argentina, of a lawmaker, Señor Lopez, from the Kirchnerite movement in Argentina being arrested in the alleged circumstances of hiding between 5-8 millions of dollars worth of cash and a gun in a convent.
An Argentine former secretary of Public Works with the Cristina Fernandez administration, Jose Lopez, and currently a member of the Mercosur parliament, was arrested on Tuesday in the Buenos Aires province locality of General Rodríguez while he was trying to hide bags full of money and an automatic gun in the garden of a convent.
The reason for the formal arrest was possession of a war weapon, a Sig Saguer rifle, loaded with 25 cartridges.
Lopez was arrested with six bags and a suitcase stashed with dollars, Euros, Yuan and Qatar currency as well as very expensive watches (Rolex, Omega). “We found 160 bundles of cash, 108 of dollars, and some of them still thermo-sealed with the stamps from China’s central bank”, revealed Cristian Ritondo, head of Buenos Aires province security. Ritondo said Lopez tried to bribe the police officers and went into shock when they did not accept, and later suffered a deep depression.
At first he told the officers he was planning to donate the funds to the nuns monastery. In effect one of the nuns interviewed said that Lopez had visited them the previous day and “he was quite crazy”, saying he had stolen the money which was to help the monastery, “but today when he turned up and started dumping the bags, police arrested him. I told the officers he was a good man, he came once a year to visit us and would help us with donations of coffee and tea”
Corruption in Argentina is, at least, like a certain beverage, reassuringly expensive. The comments are quite good, especially the one about the nuns needing a good Rolex to time their prayers.
This morning I was joking about how gloriously dotty yet reassuring yesterday’s “naval battle” between rival Leave and Remain flotillas on the Thames outside the Houses of Parliament was. This afternoon I learned that one of those on the Remain boat, Jo Cox, Labour MP for Batley and Spen, was murdered just outside her constituency surgery. She leaves behind a husband and two young children.
I am too depressed to make a post with links. There is no shortage of commentary and speculation on the internet. A man has been arrested and no other suspects are being sought.
May she rest in peace.
This is no flight of rhetoric. It is literally true. British aid money also goes to reward the killer of a British woman. These payments aren’t incidental: their purpose is to reward the killers for the killing.
Ian Austin, Labour MP for Dudley North (undeclared on the Brexit issue, in case you’re interested) has written an article for Labour List about some of what Britain’s foreign aid is actually spent on.
British aid feeds 25 million under-fives. It supports midwives, nurses and doctors so 4.3 million babies can be born safely.
Our aid spending helped tackle Ebola in Africa. It feeds the starving, helps refugees and provides jobs.
It builds stronger economies around the world. It helps the poorest countries tackle the most desperate poverty.
It does all that and so much more. And we should be very proud of it.
But it also funds terrorists. And that obscures and undermines all the good work it does.
That’s why this week Parliament debated whether Britain should have an international aid budget at all. You might not be aware of it, since it was prompted by a petition in the Daily Mail, which is hardly the in-house reading of choice around these parts.
Like other Labour MPs, I’ll be speaking up in support of our aid budget, but I’ll also be calling for our money to be used to promote peace, not reward terrorism.
Last week four people were murdered when terrorists opened fire in a Tel Aviv cafe.
People in Britain will be horrified by the deliberate, indiscriminate murder of civilians. There can be no justification. But they will be appalled that the two murderers could now be eligible for government salaries – paid for by international aid money from Britain.
Mary Gardner, a Scottish visitor to Israel, died five years ago when terrorists bombed a bus stop. Hassin Qawasme, who led the attack, has been paid almost £14,000 since his arrest.
Amjad and Hakim Awad, killed Ehud and Ruth Fogel and their three children aged 11, four and just three months in 2011. Since then it’s estimated that Amjad alone has been paid up to £16,000 from PA funds.
Emphasis added. A Guardian article by Edwin Black from November 2013 has more about these payments:
When a Palestinian is convicted of an act of terror against the Israeli government or innocent civilians, such as a bombing or a murder, that convicted terrorist automatically receives a generous salary from the Palestinian Authority.
Robert Liston was a nineteenth century Scottish surgeon known as “the fastest knife in the West End … at a time when speed was essential to reduce pain and improve the odds of survival of a patient; he is said to have been able to perform the removal of a limb in an amputation in 28 seconds.” A man of strong character and ethics, who did not hesitate to help render his own rare skill obsolete by performing the first operation under anaesthesia in Europe, over his entire career he saved many lives. But sometimes things didn’t work out so well. As recorded by the deadpan Richard Gordon in Great Medical Disasters:
Amputated the leg in under 2 1⁄2 minutes (the patient died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene; they usually did in those pre-Listerian days). He amputated in addition the fingers of his young assistant (who died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene). He also slashed through the coat tails of a distinguished surgical spectator, who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals he dropped dead from fright. That was the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality.
Now to our own times. Whatever the result of the EU referendum, George Osborne has in one swift operation destroyed his own career, made the split in his own Conservative party irrevocable, and stuck a knife in the vitals of the Labour party and left it there for anyone to twist.
One down:
Osborne warns of Brexit budget cuts
George Osborne says he will have to slash public spending and increase taxes in an emergency Budget to tackle a £30bn “black hole” if the UK votes to leave the European Union.
The chancellor will say this could include raising income and inheritance taxes and cutting the NHS budget.
Two down:
Tory MPs threaten to block Osborne’s post-Brexit budget
George Osborne is facing an extraordinary challenge to his authority as chancellor from 57 Conservative MPs, who are threatening to block his emergency budget of tax rises and spending cuts if Britain votes to leave the EU.
Three down:
The Labour Party, officially for Remain, will be asked to state whether it will support or oppose George Osbourne’s proposed austerity-plus budget. How will it answer?
Over his entire career Liston did far more good than harm. Desperate people camped out in his waiting room because however great the danger of going under his knife it was safer than going under anyone else’s. I wonder what will be said of Osbourne.
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Update: According to Guido, Corbyn will oppose Osbourne’s proposed post-Brexit austerity budget. Labour has kept its anti-austerity credibility at the cost of effectively making a public statement that Brexit wouldn’t be so bad. With opposition from Labour plus the 57 Tory MPs plus those in other parties who would also oppose, Osborne’s budget is stillborn. As you were, folks. Which for both parties means bitterly divided. To have made a threat and have it shown to be empty within hours will not help the Remain campaign – or the Conservative Party.
Present reality is that science is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. That’s the not-so-tongue-in-cheek message in Science on the Verge, a new book by European scientist Andrea Saltelli and seven other contributors. Science on the Verge is a 200-page indictment of what to the lay reader appears to be a monumental deterioration across all fields, from climate science to health research to economics. The mere idea that “most published research results are false” should be cause for alarm. But it is worse than that.
Just about everything we take for granted in modern science, from the use of big data to computer models of major parts of our social, economic and natural environment and on to the often absurd uses of statistical methods to fish for predetermined conclusions.
– Terence Corcoran
“It’s not the despair, Laura. I can stand the despair. It’s the hope.”
– said by John Cleese playing stressed headmaster Brian Stimpson trying to get to an important conference while the fates conspire against him in the film Clockwise.
This morning’s Guardian reports, “poll leads and Sun backing for Brexit prompt Remain ‘panic'”. However polls in referenda tend to overstate the vote for change and there often is a late surge for the status quo.
With nine days to go, which way do you think the referendum will go?
I am horrified but not exactly shocked. This is the Leitmotif of our lives. It is the continuous grinding pressure that makes our lives a slow misery. And all because of the deranged rantings of a goat-botherer nigh on a Millennium and a half ago.
Our culture has put Neil and Buzz on the moon. Our culture has created computers, our culture has made it affordable for me, as a student, to see the Applachians. Our culture enables boys to wear skirts to school. I am 42 and the largest social change I have seen in my time is the increasing acceptance of homosexuality. I’m straight but I’ll happily have a pint on Canal Street* in Manchester so this could of been me. It quite possibly could have been you.
I have a short message to jihadis. If you want to live in the Dark Ages many countries are available. We have gay marriage (a boon to florists – especially if Sir Elton John is involved). Shoddy Absurdia executes people for “crimes” such as “sorcery”. That is the difference.
– Nick M
These comments were all taken from posts to the Orlando shooting megathread on https://www.reddit.com/r/news/:
– Dear Moderators:
You are not journalists. You are not editors. You are not arbiters of good taste or what constitutes “newsworthiness”. Stay in your lane.
Your actions today have failed the Reddit community.
– You know whats crazy? I live in Orlando and I had no idea this was going on. I depend on reddit for my news 100% since it can rapidly deliver news from many sources that I can validate or discard. I have literally been up all night on Reddit and due to the apparent thread lockings and deletions, this story took 9 hours to make it to me — I probably live within thirty minutes of this place.
Unbelievable.
– To me the funny thing about the censorship here is that the people who do it think somehow that they are helping the situation by deleting anything they don’t like or anything they think might offend somebody.
What they are really doing is creating more repressed anger and outrage. If you think that deleting comments about Islam will decrease animosity towards Islam then you’re sadly mistaken my friends. You’re simply creating more hatred by many who feel that any criticism of one particular group with one particular ideology is forbidden while it is open season on the rest of us. Let us remember a simple fact. Islam is an ideology like belief in Donald Trump or believe in magic pixie is forbidden while it is open season on the rest of us. Let us remember a simple fact. Islam is an ideology like belief in Donald Trump or believe in ghosts. It is not a race, or people, or color,. If you attack Islam you were simply attacking an ideology. Nothing more nothing less.
Please stop deleting comments– you are increasing anger not decreasing it
– Wtf? 50 people are killed and I have to look around for 5 minutes? Wtf reddit, don’t make me go back to getting my news from the fucking TV, alright? Just get your shit together.
– Its not even on the front page. This is going to be a monumental shooting event and its NOT EVEN ON THE FRONT PAGE.
– As soon as my boyfriend told me, the first place I came for information was Reddit. Not CNN, not CBS, not NBC. Reddit. Not a goddamn thing about it on the front page. Unacceptable.
– reddit is normally my first port of call for this sort of thing
It needs to stop being your first source. Reddit is about information control. You’re not getting the full picture
– I’ve been on reddit for 7 years (this is not my first acct) and I’ve seen its gradual shift from the pure, raw immediate news that put CNN to shame, to a useless, slow-moving organization that is more concerned with affiliate clicks, admin control and promoting ideology.
reddit used to be a serious option for people seeking help in the wake of some catastrophe. now it suppresses useful information
– You know it’s sad when r/the_donald is covering this more than the fucking main news subreddit. The amount of blatant censorship on here is ridiculous.
– I’m sorry, but this whole thing has been ridiculous. This situation has been unfolding for hours, it’s the deadliest mass shooting in US history, and the only evidence of it on the front page is stuff from /r/the_donald?
Mods you really dropped the ball here. In a (poorly executed) attempt to be unbiased, you ended up letting a completely biased source take over the flow of information. What the hell were you thinking?
– More than anything else, the actions of the mods this morning have fostered anger and resentment and suspicion. They have made the discussion about this site’s cowardice and emboldened those who accuse it of pandering to the PC left. The mods here have failed and permanently damaged the site’s credibility.
Shooter was Muslim. Stop hiding posts you fucking idiot mods. Who cares what nationality the shooter is, this is a tragic event you fucking cunts.
– There was a time I relied on r/news for up to date /recent news. I had to learn about this shooting through a fucking iheart radio notification. …seriously mods, get your shit together.
– Is it true that you’re banning users for mentioning that the shooter was a radical islamist?
People are right to be upset at those defending islam. It’s the only unreformed abrahamic religion–forever stuck in the 10th century. Fuck islamists and anyone who defends them.
This is absolutely abhorrent censorship. 50 dead and you’ve prevented discussion because something about it goes against your identitarian political agenda. I guess more people will finally realize what a shithole this place truly is. You fucked up.
– How is this not front page? I found out about this from facebook… so much for getting my news from reddit!
– They deleted EVERY other thread about the shooting. I woke up this morning and got the information from Drudge, not one r/news post made it to my front page. Unfuckingbeleivelable.
– Why isnt this on the front page? I cant find anything to do with the shooting in Florida besides from /r/the_donald
Most of the above Reddit posts had disappeared in the quarter of an hour it took me to write this Samizdata post. This was the leading new post:
– The actions of the moderators today have failed reddit. They have failed the LGBT community and humanity as well! Clearly, their need to protect their narrative is greater than their need to protect REAL human lives. A REAL tragedy just took place, and people can’t get off their high horse for two seconds to discuss something far greater than their stupid pride. We need to let it be understood that we as human beings will not tolerate such action, and will stand up against terrorism.
Related post: Politically correct evasiveness fails on its own terms. I have added the tag “deleted by the Guardian” to this post because it deals with a similar phenomenon to the PC deletions of reader comments for which that newspaper is well known, but wish to state that in this case the Guardian‘s coverage included the lead hypothesis that this mass murder was an Islamist terror attack from early on.
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Added later: I note that the name of the “deleted” tag has now been broadened to cover the PC media generally. It is indeed done by the PC media generally and it has been going on a long time. Ten years less a month ago I wrote this post for Biased BBC: But… you talk like war crimes are a bad thing:
yet when bombers murdered your own countrymen in London a year ago you were so anxious to avoid being judgemental that you had someone go through what your reporters had written in the heat and pity of the moment, carefully replacing the word “terrorist” with the word “bomber.”
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Further update: The Daily Caller reports, Reddit Bans Users, Deletes Comments That Say Orlando Terrorist Was Muslim. The article contains several screenshots, including one of the front page of Reddit with /r/The_Donald filtered out. It showed “not a single mention of the worst US terror attack since 9/11, worst shooting ever”.
Ziff-Davis has announced to investors “we hate money” and has decided to flush $100 million down the toilet by purchasing the poison brand “Gawker“.
What I love about capitalism is that it eventually punishes stupidity, unless said ‘capitalists’ have some sweetheart deal with a government, that is 😀
There have been objections made to the claim made by the Leave campaign that “we send the EU £350 million a week”. Apparently, depending on how one makes the calculation, the net sum we actually send the European Union each week is £248m or even as little as £136m. So that’s all right then.
Even I, a Leave supporter, agree that the claim is deceptive and unjustified. We may send that amount to the EU but you have to allow that the EU sends some of it back. Gross is different from net.
But isn’t that the same lie told by every one of those thousands of compulsory European Union “gratitude” plaques?
Project Part-Financed by the European Union
European Regional Development Fund
Which since Britain is a Net Contributor to the EU
Actually Means Financed by You
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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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