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This is one of the classic signs of a cult

· Aus/NZ affairs · Health & medical · Media & Journalism · Totalitarianism

“Dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth.“

– Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand

When I first clicked on the video of Jacinda Ardern saying those words that is embedded in this tweet from “Darren of Plymouth” via Not the Bee, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. All of us sometimes say things that “come out wrong”. By “single source of truth” I thought she might have meant no more than “convenient one-stop place you can go to get truthful information”. Apparently there is a concept in information systems design that goes by the name “Single Source of Truth (SSoT)”; perhaps she had picked up this piece of jargon somewhere.

However I only had to wait until 1:02 in the video to see Ms Ardern demonstrate that she meant it exactly the way it sounded:

“When you see those messages, remember that unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.“

Edit: I assume the “Not the Bee” link got Darren’s tweet enough engagement to alert Twitter’s censorship team. When I first made this post two and a half hours ago the link to the tweet worked, but commenter ‘Dyspeptic Curmudgeon’ has pointed out that it has now disappeared. Here is a YouTube clip of the same speech filmed from a different angle and here is another YouTube clip that seems to be the same one I saw.

A couple of points to note:

– The speech is older than I thought, from May 2020.

– The silence of the press. This all takes place at a press conference. The room is full of cameras and microphones wielded by journalists, news providers. Yet not one of them protests when the prime minister of their country says that they should not be trusted as a source of news. Have they no pride in their profession?

October 8th, 2021 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· Economics, Business & Globalization · Slogans & Quotations · UK affairs

The Prime Minister’s rhetoric was bombastic but vacuous and economically illiterate. This was an agenda for levelling down to a centrally-planned, high-tax, low-productivity economy.

– Adam Smith Institute review of the Prime Minister’s speech at the Tory conference.

October 7th, 2021 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)

The Welsh Senedd just voted for Covid passports because of a Zoom glitch

· Health & medical · Internet · Science & Technology · UK affairs

“Covid pass plans agreed in knife-edge Senedd vote”, the BBC reports:

Mandatory Covid passes in nightclubs and large events will be introduced in Wales as planned on 11 October after Welsh ministers won a knife-edge Senedd vote.

The measures were agreed with 28 politicians voting for and 27 voting against.

It came despite politicians in the opposition uniting against the plans.

The public will be expected to show evidence of being fully vaccinated or having a recent negative Covid test.

Conservative Vale of Clwyd Member of the Senedd (MS) Gareth Davies did not take part in the vote, with the Tories citing “technical difficulties” for what happened.

[…]

Ahead of the vote, Conservative MS Darren Millar could be heard telling Presiding Officer Elin Jones: “I’m sorry we still have a member who is desperately trying to get into Zoom.”

Ms Jones replied that she would still hold the vote: “We have made every opportunity possible for that named member to get in, including sharing my personal phone.”

I was not without sympathy for Elin Jones, the presiding officer. It has happened many times in many assemblies that a vote passed or failed because a member could not physically reach the chamber in time. One cannot spin things out forever. There has to be a cut-off point.

I can also see the reasoning behind the Labour-controlled Senedd’s refusal to re-run the vote.

Asked about holding a re-run of the vote, Eluned Morgan [Baroness Morgan of Ely, Minister for Health and Social Services in the Welsh Government] told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast with Claire Summers that that is “not how democratic processes work”.

“You don’t keep on having a vote until you get the answer that you want,” she said.

I do see her point, though I also note that both Elin Jones and Eluned Morgan were entirely in favour of re-running a vote until they got the answer they wanted when it came to the popular vote to leave the European Union.

I digress. Though this vote imposing Covid passports on Wales will stand, a bad smell hangs over the manner of its passing. Enough people have shared the experience of struggling to log into Zoom meetings since this pandemic began to ensure that sympathy with Gareth Davies will be widespread. Another thing… I tried to think of a way of saying “some people will think this looks suspicious” without sounding like a conspiracist myself but there isn’t one. All I can do is state for the record that I think this incident was a cock-up, not a conspiracy. But the trouble with every combination of voting and technology is that the process is opaque. If Gareth Davies had failed to reach the chamber in time because his car had got stuck in traffic, he and we could all be reasonably sure that was all that had happened. There is no such instinctive assurance that no one’s thumb was on the scale with Zoom. The Senedd should dump this “hybrid model” or whatever they call it where some members meet in person and others clock in, or fail to clock in, via Zoom. Stop mucking around, earn your pay, go back to meeting in person.

Astonishingly, Broness Morgan actually boasted of Welsh Labour’s mandate to pass this law:

“What we know is that the people of Wales want to be protected.”

“We had a huge mandate as a result of the election because of our cautious approach.”

Baroness, your mandate for this is about one electron thick.

October 6th, 2021 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· Environment · Slogans & Quotations

By the time some of the environmentalists realised who they had sold their soul to, it was too late. But what, in any case, had the alternative been? The small-is-beautiful crowd, with their patchouli-scented jumpers and their 1970s talk about limits and sovereignty, had been cancelled as eco-fascists long ago, exiled to distant smallholdings and housing co-ops with their well-thumbed copies of Tools for Conviviality and other yellowing tomes by dead white men. Now that an actual eco-fascism was on the horizon — a global merger of state and corporate power in pursuit of progress that would have made Mussolini weep like a proud grandfather — there was nothing to stand in its way.

– Paul Kingsnorth

October 5th, 2021 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)

—————————

· Chinese affairs · Deleted by the Woke Media · Health & medical · International affairs · North American affairs · Totalitarianism · UK affairs

Ian Birrell in the Mail on Sunday asks,

What are they hiding? At the start of Covid many scientists believed it likely leaked from Wuhan lab – until a conference call with Patrick Vallance changed their minds. We asked for his emails about the call. This is what we got . . .

Redacted letters

October 3rd, 2021 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)

There was a time when Scottish universities were havens of free thought

· Culture Wars · Education & Academia · Historical views · Opinions on liberty · Religion · UK affairs

Then:

After the Uniformity Act 1662, for about two centuries, it was difficult for any but practising members of the Church of England to gain degrees from the old English universities, at Cambridge and Oxford. The University of Oxford, in particular, required – until the Oxford University Act 1854 – a religious test on admission that was comparable to that for joining the Church. The situation at the University of Cambridge was that a statutory test was required to take a bachelor’s degree.

English Dissenters in this context were Nonconformist Protestants who could not in good conscience subscribe (i.e. conform) to the beliefs of the Church of England. As they were debarred from taking degrees in the only two English universities, many of them attended the dissenting academies. If they could afford it, they completed their education at the universities of Leyden, Utrecht, Glasgow or Edinburgh, the last, particularly, those who were studying medicine or law.

Now:

After making their grades and unpacking their bags, new students may be forgiven for thinking they are ready to launch themselves into university life.

But at one of Britain’s leading institutions, they must now clear one more hurdle before beginning their studies: they must accept “personal guilt”.

St Andrews has introduced compulsory modules on sustainability, diversity, consent and good academic practice and will not allow students to matriculate if they do not “pass” by agreeing with certain statements. The university is one of a growing number insisting that students undertake training on subjects including anti-bullying and climate change.

[…]

At St Andrews, the induction asks students to agree with statements including: “Acknowledging your personal guilt is a useful start point in overcoming unconscious bias.” Those who tick “disagree” are marked incorrect and too many wrong answers mean they have failed the module and must retake it.

Another question from the course asks: “Does equality mean treating everyone the same?” Those who respond yes are told: “That’s not right, in fact equality may mean treating people differently and in a way that is appropriate to their needs so that they have fair outcomes and equal opportunity.”

Students are also asked to agree with the statement: “It is important to think about and understand our own prejudices and stereotypes so we don’t treat someone else unfairly or inappropriately.”

October 2nd, 2021 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)

Berlin dreams big

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Economics, Business & Globalization · European affairs · German affairs · Political Economy · Totalitarianism

“Berlin’s vote to take properties from big landlords could be a watershed moment”, writes Alexander Vasudevan in the Guardian.

Judging by the history of such schemes it could be. But not in the way he thinks.

The vote in Berlin is not legally binding, but it does show the popularity of such a measure (the popular appeal of taking their stuff and giving it to us is eternal), and as the Guardian says it will “serve as a template and inspiration for activists in Europe and elsewhere”.

Professor Vasudevan (he is an associate professor in human geography at Oxford) continues,

Smaller landlords and state-owned social housing have been aggressively targeted by large institutional players for whom housing has become a vehicle for the management of global capital funds.

I have little doubt that the large scale institutional landlords such as the property company Deutsche Wohnen that the initiative targets have transformed the Berlin housing market, and not for the better. But it is worth asking why it paid them to to go on a speculative property buying spree in the last few years when it did not pay them to do this earlier? I would guess it is because they have taken advantage of artificially low interest rates created by government.

What about compensation? For obvious historical reasons, German law frowns on confiscation without compensation. The article says,

Efforts to enact the socialisation process will undoubtedly face legal challenges, not to mention the problem of compensation of the property corporations. Campaigners are adamant that their model would balance a commitment to fair compensation with “budget-neutral” socialisation.

When fair compensation is “balanced” with something else, it means unfair compensation.

When the normal operation of law is suspended we are always told that it will apply only to people or groups that few would leap to defend. It never stops there.

October 1st, 2021 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
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