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In May 2020, I wrote a piece called ‘Britain’s Covid Reich’. I commented:
One of the most remarkable aspects of the creation of Britain’s Covid Reich was that even in the middle of the Government’s witless, confused and ambivalent approach to the crisis it was able to rustle up overnight many of the key ingredients of totalitarianism. The ideology and the slogans, and the continual repetition of the message with the supine assistance of broadcast media all fell into place with frightening speed. The speed with which the Great British Public acquiesced was even more alarming.
One possibility I anticipated was:
In one direction lies the complete end of everything we have ever held dear and a life literally not worth living, a mere spectral existence in a paralysed and terrified surveillance state of agoraphobics queuing up like mendicant friars for government handouts.
I thought I was going over the top when I wrote that. But that’s exactly what’s happened – hasn’t it? Back then I thought there was a more optimistic possible alternative, but I was wrong.
Few politicians, few scientists and even worse few in the so-called free press seemed to be able to understand that the measures the Government was imposing were going to leave a legacy that would, and has, set Britain back by half a century and perhaps change it permanently. Anyone who dared to stray from the state propaganda line was shot down in flames.
So it is almost beyond belief to see that the confused and contradictory Covid Inquiry has continued to ignore the impact of lockdown…
– Guy de la Bédoyère
I remember him announcing this on YouTube. It was, frankly, appalling. Classic police overreach and the school complaining was typical of the thin skinned using lawfare to shut down critical voices. Yet it all came to nothing as the case was dropped. As any reasonable person would expect it to be. The correct approach to the initial complaint would have been to warn the complainant of the penalties for wasting police time.
Bryn Harris, chief legal counsel at the Free Speech Union, said the force, as well as others across the country, should “never repeat this mistake.”
But they will, because it wasn’t a mistake. Until there are personal consequences, this will continue to happen.
– Longrider
We must take over the whole of Birmingham, the whole of the West Midlands, the whole of the UK… we will not be taken for granted, and we will win.
– Iqbal Mohamed MP, Jezbollah Party er, I mean “Your Party”
Kruger’s presentation began with the announcement of Reform’s intention to develop a far more detailed agenda for government than any incoming administration in recent memory, including a range of pre-written legislation to give them a running start to their first term in office. In addition, the party will have candidates lined up for key appointments, bringing in ‘expertise, advice and executive capacity’ from outside Whitehall, to both civil service leadership and ministerial roles. The intention, according to Kruger, is to ensure that a Reform Government is positioned to give a clear list of priorities to civil servants upon entering Downing Street — not the other way around.
– Pimlico Journal newsletter
Across all these laws, the pattern is the same: more data collection, more sharing between agencies, and more pressure on companies to watch what users do. The justification is usually ‘national security or ‘protecting the public,’ but once these systems are in place, they rarely stay limited to their original goals. The Parliament Act was passed to limit the powers of the Lords in cases of ‘vital national emergency.; Tony Blair used it to force through a ban on fox-hunting.
From intercepting letters centuries ago to scanning emails and social media today, governments have always found reasons to pry. The technology has changed, but the instinct remains the same, and so does the question: how much surveillance is too much?
– Madsen Pirie
The next time someone asks what we mean when we say ‘Islamo-left’, I’m going to show them footage from yesterday’s protest in Whitechapel in East London. What a morally suicidal schlep that was. What an unholy union of witless leftists and menacing Islamists. ‘Refugees welcome here!’, cried the granola-fed grads of the limp-wristed left. ‘Allahu Akbar!’, barked the masked mob of religious hotheads. Rarely has the lethal idiocy of the left’s bed-hopping with Islamism been so starkly exposed.
– Brendan O’Neill
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
– William Shakespeare
Asked for his own judgement on Britain’s prospects, Cummings claimed there is a “black pill” in the fact that few societies escape the dynamics of decline that the country now appears trapped in; the “white pill”, on the other hand, is that Britain’s system has proven surprisingly resilient and adaptable in the past. He then implored the Looking for Growth membership to put aside their start-ups and to help rejuvenate the establishment. Whether and how they respond to this call will be of some consequence to the country’s future.
– Wessie du Toit
Engaging with the Great Reform Bill 2029 idea, it’s a masterstroke. In an era of short-termism, Lee’s proposal for a omnibus bill echoes the 1832 Act’s transformative power, bundling fixes to overwhelm opposition and deliver systemic reset. It’s not pie-in-the-sky; it’s pragmatic radicalism, recognising that piecemeal tweaks won’t cut it against the “malign web.”
– Gawain Towler
There is no offence of blasphemy in our law. Burning a Koran may be an act that many Muslims find desperately upsetting and offensive. The criminal law, however, is not a mechanism that seeks to avoid people being upset, even grievously upset. The right to freedom of expression, if it is a right worth having, must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb.
We live in a liberal democracy. One of the precious rights that affords us is to express our own views and read, hear and consider ideas without the state intervening to stop us doing so. The price we pay for that is having to allow others to exercise the same rights, even if that upsets, offends or shocks us.
– Justice Bennathan
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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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