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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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From small acorns do mighty trees grow… Thousands upon thousands of ULEZ cameras have been destroyed by the Bladerunners (way more than 5,000 last year alone)
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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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This is the way. And start egging the home of council employees who take down England or Union Flags.
And refuse service to anyone connected to the establishment political parties, the media or, increasingly, the police.
Know thine enemy.
Why are the United Lezbians putting up cameras in the first place?
I cannot condone illegal acts (he said in a loud carrying voice for all the totalitarian watchers out there) but I observe if people get fed up enough they will start pushing back. Whether it is cutting cameras down or putting flags up.
I drove from East Yorkshire to Sunderland and back today. Lots of England and Union flags on bridges and poles along the way. Politicians and local councillors are determined to misunderstand who the flags are intended to intimidate, not foreigners, but them.
On the subject of the cameras. In the absence of a peaceful non criminal route for their removal, taking them down by force would seem to be the only other option.
May I suggest a low tech option: a 2-3 foot piece of 3/8″ diam rebar! I suspect the camera’s scratch resistant coating won’t stand up to a firm thrust of some iron will!
No batteries required. Easily concealed or just tossed away!
@Stonyground
On the subject of the cameras. In the absence of a peaceful non criminal route for their removal,
I think all these cameras are terrible, but there IS a peaceful non criminal route for their removal. Convince enough people in the country that they are wrong and then vote for politicians that accept the views of the public and act accordingly. The problem is not the cameras, the problem is that it seems an awful lot of British people favor them. And that is the worrying thing: that the people are so compromised.
There are an awful lot of people who hate Amazon for their supposedly terrible working conditions. In the absence of a peaceful non criminal route to shut down such a “slave labour” camp would it be ok to burn the place down? Many lefties are horrified by statues to people they disagree with around in the public realm. But, in the absence of a peaceful, non criminal route to eliminate them is it OK to just have a mob tear them down? It seems hard to say no if you say the camera protesters can do something similar.
Perhaps there is some fundamental right in play here rather than just an administrative action. For example, even if you are in the minority using fair means or foul to defend your right to free speech seems reasonable to me. Objecting to road furniture or the enforcement of special road taxes doesn’t seem to fall into that category. And I don’t think you can argue that it is a privacy issue — after all, by definition, what you do in the public sphere cannot be private.
My heart is with the anarchists, but is seems a very slippery slope indeed.
No doubt not a popular view in these precincts, but there it is.
It is absolutely the same category.
Refusing to buy anything from Amazon is pretty straightforward. voting for politicians that accept the views of the public and act accordingly would be a bit more problematic, you would need to find some first. Genuine question as I actually don’t know, were the Ulez Zones proposed in any kind of manifesto and actually voted on?
@Fraser Orr
Unfortunately the general population has been trained to expect immediate satisfaction. Amazon next day deliveries, internet downloads, politicians announcing new laws (which may or may not be implemented, eventually).
But training the population to expect immediate satisfaction is now clearly a double sided weapon. ‘Satisfaction’ may be a vote winning selling point, but immediate dissatisfaction is also a risk. A risk that appears to be growing.
An AI generated response:
“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is a famous song by the Rolling Stones, released in 1965, known for its iconic guitar riff and lyrics that express themes of sexual frustration and commercialism.”
60 years of dissatisfaction looking for an outlet?
Fraser:
The ULEZ camera revolt is a symbol of the tensions in Britain today. The ULEZ expansion was imposed by Mayor Khan without any mandate. Trying to vote out Mayor Khan is impossible because of demographics. London was only 36.8% white British at the 2021 census. It will be less now. Khan’s racial voting bloc means he cannot be removed. So the only option left is revolt.
The rebellion is based in the outer London boroughs, where white British Londoners are still the majority. The rule of a left wing Pakistani is imposed upon them without their consent. They are behaving in the way colonized people always have.
In the spirit of 1940, is there some route by which those of us far from Albion’s shores can contribute Sawzall blades and cans of black spray paint to the cause?
While Fraser Orr champions the righteous democratic course to remove these excrescences, I’m personally minded of the solutions which the Dutch populace employed when the PTB tried to impose a system of journey monitoring (“traject controle”) using number-plate cameras. The hardware was so completely and comprehensively vandalized that there was no way to keep it working, and I believe it was quietly shelved. Sometimes the democratic will can be expressed by more-direct action than voting in the next election 4 years from now.
Regarding Amazon work – is something different in their European operations? I know several Amazon delivery drivers by their first names, and they all love their jobs – hate the Rivian EV vans, but love their jobs. When I was still working, the Amazon distribution centre along Ecorse Road was a continual draw for our lower-skilled employees, and the company had to raise rates to counteract its attractions – clean, bright, modern working conditions, good pay and benefits, boring but predictable work, they never had any problems getting workers. The best money was driving deliveries, but you had to work up to that and it doesn’t suit everyone. I suspect that most people who condemn Amazon work as ‘slave labour’ are either a) union organizers or b) limousine liberals who wouldn’t care to do that sort of work themselves and so believe they should deny its obvious benefits to everyone else.
llater,
llamas
Fraser:
People ARE compromised, at least a majority of voters. And so is the ballot box.
Voting for change is no longer an option and that is NOT the fault of those of us who would prefer that route.
Those “voters” will soon vote to come after me (you). And once I’m gone, you (me)!
@Perry de Havilland (Prague)
It is absolutely the same category.
I’m sure the people pulling down statues thought the same thing.
If every government intrusion into life is a fundamental principle, every one a hill to die on, then nothing is.
It seems to me that that which is truly fundamental — the right to free speech — is falling apart in Britain. Would that the objections to this be so vehement. And based on the other comments it seems that the British political system has become totally ineffective at representing the will of the people — and that is something to be vehement about, that is something worthy of some civil disobedience.
But there is something about traffic laws that drives people nuts. I wish people cared as much as rape gangs in Rochdale as they do about average speed cameras. Something about cars gets under people’s skin. Someone cuts you off and you’ll follow them for twenty miles to yell at them, or, here in the Land Of the Free, shoot them. I’m sure all of us drivers have suffered that irrational, utterly disproportionate rage that seems to consume us when some slight happens in traffic. I think maybe it is because the car represents individual freedom in our lives in a way that few other things do, along with the anonymity they represent allowing us to, to some degree, escape the social opprobrium of our poor behavior — much like commenting on the internet — another place people behave absolutely terribly. Or perhaps it is because it is the main place most of us interact with the police as the law breaker that makes the state’s power so much more in-your-face.
These vandals are destroying equipment paid for out of their taxes which will be replaced be more equipment paid for out of their taxes. If you don’t like LTNs vote the councillors who approved them out of office. That’s democracy.
We’re so far past that stage, Vat Smith. The state has delegitimised itself, so more and more people are deciding to become ungovernable & we don’t care if that annoys you.
Stonyground:
Perhaps you are right: politicians believe in their own propaganda; but i suspect that they don’t. I suspect that only their useful idiots believe the politicians’ propaganda.
Unfortunately would never happen in the prison colony of Australia.
The response of the Mayor of the Greater London Authority is that he is democratically elected – that the people who voted for him knew that “ULEZ” is the sort of thing he supports.
The Chinese authorities in Tibet make the same claim – now they have made, or are close to making, the Tibetan people a minority in their own country.
As John Cleese (Monty Python – and a lifelong Liberal Party person) pointed out, London is not an English city any more.
As for vandalism – were the people who tore down statues in Bristol and other English cities punished?
Mr “Ricky” Jones, a Labour Party Councillor, crossed London (he went a different area of the place – far from where he lived) to make a speech to an angry mob – telling them to “cut the throats” of their political opponents.
Mr Jones was not punished – a jury of his fellow leftists thought it was just fine to cut the throats of their political opponents.
Message received and understood. The leftists want us dead – the leftists want to kill us.