We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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There is a pull-out supplement in the latest Spectator, entitled “The Connoisseur’s Guide to the Cricket World Cup 2007”. Peter Oborne is very gung-ho about cricket just now (no link because the bit I am about to quote is stuck behind a registration wall – I read it on paper):
Never have there been so many outstanding international teams. Go back to the previous ‘golden age’ before the first world war and there were just three Test-playing nations: England, Australia and South Africa.
So far so routine, this being from a piece by Oborne entitled “A new golden age”, which he does explain. Basically, not only are there more good national teams now, and more excellent players, but they also play cricket that is entertaining to watch, unlike what was played a generation ago. But then comes this kicker, and in brackets if you please:
(Actually there should have been four: until 1914 the United States was well capable of competing at the highest level, and a cricket tour of the United States formed the background to Psmith Journalist, one of P. G. Wodehouse’s best novels. Unfortunately, the Imperial Cricket Conference, which governed international cricket, excluded America because it was not part of the British empire, so it went off and played baseball instead. This snub to the US at such a promising stage of its cricketing development, is one of the tragedies of history.)
I did not know that (more about this sad story here). I am not used to feeling spasms of hatred toward those who presided over the British Empire, although I often learn about things that make others understandably angry about these people. But I did when I read that. We have talked here before about cricket in the USA, but I do not recall this particular circumstance being mentioned by anyone. Apologies if someone did and I missed it. For while I would not put this particular tragedy of history down there with the Slave Trade and the Holocaust and the depredations of King Leopold, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the rest of them, this certainly does seem like a definite pity to me.
Talking of cricket, and what with cricket’s World Cup fast approaching, Samizdata’s travel correspondent Michael Jennings has been, well, talking of cricket. He has done a podcast with Patrick Crozier, about Australian sport in general, and Australian cricket in particular, what with cricket being the biggest sport in Australia. Did you know that Aussie pace ace Brett Lee (who will sadly be missing the World Cup because of injury) does commercials on Indian telly, and has had a pop hit in India? You do now.
And for more about how sport and politics intersect, do not miss this sports report by Guido Fawkes.
As in: creative accounting:
We’ve had experience in the past – the New York City subways come to mind – with businesses that began as conventional, for-profit corporations, and, for one reason or another, were later rendered unprofitable while still being viewed as essential services. It’s time to apply some creative thinking to newspapers and, for that matter, to serious journalism in other media. Then we need to convince Americans that they should pay attention to it – and pay for it.
Convince as in force people who do not want newspapers to pay for them nevertheless.
I do not know who Steven Rattner is (here are a few clues. His wife is apparently a fundraiser for the Democrats). Nor do I know what the Quadrangle Group, LLC is, of which he is managing principal, whatever that may mean (again, some clues here). But he seems like a fool. The entire essay of which the above recommendation for plunder is the concluding paragraph is about how Americans are becoming less interested in “the news”, and more interested in other things. Which is why, actually, they are less willing to pay for the news than they used to be.
It is also about why tradesmen do not need newspapers any longer to reach potential customers, which is why tradesmen are less willing to pay for newspaper readerships.
That ought to lead to a simple recommendation to potential investors in newspapers. Do not invest in newspapers. Let people tell each other the news for free, for instance by people writing and reading blogs. If some still want the news, then let them read news blogs, which gather together what various different bloggers think is the news.
But Mr Rattner seems to love newspapers. So, seeing no profit in newspapers as a business, he switches to the second-last resort of the scoundrel, a bare-faced claim that the taxpayer owes him and his friends a living. Having ceased to be attractive to mere readers, newspapers must be transformed, by some kind of political hocus pocus, into “essential services”. Like the BBC, if you please. And when all that falls on deaf ears, he will presumably go with the cosmeticised version of the same claim, about how taxpayers should pay for newspapers despite not wanting to read them anymore, because this is their patriotic duty.
Having spent £13,000 on installing a wind turbine at his home, John Large is disappointed at the return on his investment, which amounts to 9p a week.
At this rate, it is calculated, it will take 2,768 years for the electricity generated by the turbine to pay for itself, by which time he will be past caring about global warming.
The wind turbine was installed at the engineer’s home in Woolwich, southeast London, four weeks ago and has so far generated four kilowatts of electricity. An average household needs 23kw every day to power its lights and appliances.
Mr Large said that his difficulties highlighted the problems faced by consumers who wanted to buy wind turbines to save money and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
– from the Times today (hat tip Bishop Hill)
If you think that lower class yobbery is a problem in this country, as most seem to think it is, then is electing an upper class yob to be the Prime Minister the best next step in the right direction?
Perhaps it is. Perhaps a man who can look louts in the eye and say: “I know exactly what you are because I used to be exactly like you, the only difference being that I at least paid some of the bills for the havoc and misery I caused, and, being rich and lucky, I had the chance to learn a few manners, turn over a new leaf, get a job and make something of myself. You are not so lucky. Shape up now or face a future of utter misery, which I and my rich and well-connected friends will now do our considerable best to make worse for you.” It takes one to catch one, in other words. And perhaps something similar applies to dealing with foreign despots and thugs.
As with everything involving what sort of Prime Minister Mr Cameron may choose to be, we shall just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, the fact that he is now thought by millions to be the best we can now do as our nation’s senior politician is hideous proof of the failure of mass state education. Could not the great middle/working class come up with anybody? Well, John Major I suppose, and now Gordon Brown. As a long lost friend from my better-spent youth used to say: Dear oh lor!
My thanks to Clive Davis, who writes about Cameron’s Bullingdon Club past, and who links to this description of Bullingdon Club yobbery by Libby Purves, and to this diary item (scroll down a bit) by Christina Odone, who says:
They were excessive (dinners routinely ended with the trashing of the restaurant in which they were held) and exclusive – no grammar school or state school boys, no Jews were allowed (though a rather dashing Iranian did squeak through the election process in my time).
My first impression of this preposterous club was when, as an Oxford undergraduate, I was accosted in the middle of Tom Quad, in Christ Church, by a third year in his cups. He tried to grope me and then, when I shoved him away, he doubled up and was sick in the ancient fountain.
This poor impression was little improved when I grew more familiar with the all-male club: initiation rites climaxed with drunken carousing that spilt over in the street and college quad; humiliation of “outsiders” was encouraged; acts of vandalism routine.
It was more Bacchanalian feast than Brideshead Revisited, and I wondered what kind of a future lay in store for 20-year-olds who thought nothing of wrecking a Michelin-starred restaurant after having spent £1,000 a head there.
Well, a pretty good one, of course. (And I wonder just who that “dashing” Iranian was?) “We’ve all done things we regret,” Mr Cameron now says. But actually, not all of us, in fact hardly any of us, were this appalling. The fear now is that if and when Mr Cameron enters Number Ten, this open thuggery will be replaced not by anything resembling true decency or genuine political wisdom, but by thuggery on a far grander scale, legally sanctioned, and covered in and disguised by an expert layer of smarm.
I am going through a gadget blog phase just now. It is good to remind oneself of the wonders that capitalism is cranking out by the hour, especially if one reads Samizdata daily and is hence liable to be depressed, about ID cards, Islamofascism, etc..
Today at engadget, there is a torrent of mobile phones to be seen, of which this posting is only the most torrential of many. There have been about half a dozen other mobile phones featured at engadget only today, far too numerous to bother linking to indvidually. Go there, scroll down, and you will soon see what I mean.
I yield to nobody in my admiration for the mobile phone industry, and for the good it is doing to the world. The entire international aidocracy could drop dead, and on balance that would probably improve things, but if all the world’s mobile phones were suddenly to vanish, that would be a true catastrophe. In Africa, the impact of the mobile phone is proving to be literally epoch making.
But, I get a bit bored with mobile phones. Of engadget’s gadgeterial offerings today, my favourite is a robotic bird, designed to seduce real birds:
Apparently male sage-grouses, like some people, really aren’t picky enough about their mates to discern between the real deal and a dolled up machine. Unlike 90% of other, monogamous birds, it’s that oversexed sage-grouse libido that’s fueling UC Davis researcher Gail Patricelli’s project, designed to learn the innermost secrets about the game birds’ mating rituals. The fembot bird (no Austin Powers jokes, please) wheels – head bobbing – around all dolled up, just waiting for males to approach and do their mating ritual. Apparently something’s working right, too: Patricelli said of her coquette, “The males liked her quite well.” We’d rather not dwell on what “quite well” must mean in her line of work, but we’re happy for her – and her cold-hearted fembot – all the same.
The attempted humour of that is, for me, leaden. For better jokes about gadgets, I recommend Idiot Toys. But joking aside, is that not an interesting device?
I have often thought that computers and robots have a great future in enabling humans to communicate better with animals, in all kinds of ways. A computer/robot could turn the posturings of an animal into a stream of consciousness emotional commentary. It could offer a human a menu of simple statements that it is capable of passing on to the animal or bird, rather like Arnold Schwarzenegger choosing what line to say off a screen of computerised alternatives. Now I grant you, the first major applications for such gadgetry would probably be in making doomed animals more accepting of their doom (as with that woman who knows how to make cows less nervous), but at least it might cheer up their lives a bit in the meantime. And we will learn all manner of surprising things.
Maybe certain animals (pigs?) will become so likable to us that we will be unable to eat them any more, the way that we here in Britain (anyway) already prefer not to eat dogs, cats or horses.
“The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’ and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: ‘Look at that frightful ass Spode, swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a frightful perisher?'”
– Bertie Wooster helps Keith Windschuttle describe the English-speaking century
Last week I was interviewed by David Grossman of the BBC, on the subject of Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes. When I did the pamphlets for the Libertarian Alliance, we published three pieces by Paul (this, this, and this), hence the BBC’s interest. The show I was contributing to, a Radio 4 programme called Profile, was first broadcast at 7pm on Saturday night, and you can listen to it by rootling around here.
The impressive thing about Paul Staines is that he has always understood the connection between political freedom – civil liberties etc. – economic freedom, and what for want of a better phrase is called lifestyle freedom, i.e. sex and drugs and rock and roll. All are but different faces of the same thing: freedom! Most self-styled enthusiasts for freedom tend to emphasise some freedoms but to downplay and even oppose others. Paul Staines always was (and now Guido is) in favour of freedom across the board. Those three LA publications – about human rights abuses around the world, about acid house parties and the efforts of bossy Conservative politicians and of newer varieties of lefty safety nazis to shut them down and to stop anyone having any fun, and about the benefits of unfettered financial markets – cover pretty much the whole spectrum of freedom. When it comes to freedom of any sort, Paul Staines is on the side of the angels.
He is particularly good at distinguishing between the idea of free market capitalism, which is about how we may all do what we want with and trade with what is rightly ours, and the mere interests of particular capitalists.
Not that the man himself is always an angel. He is very flawed, very human. As are all the politicians whom he now torments. Their problem being that they often try to present themselves to the world as something rather more elevated than that, and accordingly as people who know better than we do what is best for us.
This man writes very well and very entertainingly, but I wish he would stop using the word ‘liberal’ to describe people who want to restrict and often abolish liberty.
Liberal is a good word, and we who believe in liberty should keep hold of the word tight. Calling shameless collectivists, who believe neither in economic nor ‘social’ liberty nor any other kind of liberty, ‘liberal’ will destroy this good word.
When someone disagrees with you about how to protect and extend liberty, he is still entitled to be called a liberal. When he stops even bothering about liberty and starts saying that liberty is neither an important end, nor even an important means towards the achievement of other worthy ends, then what sense does it make to let him take the word liberal off with him into the tyrannical bog that he has blundered or marched into?
In the USA, it would appear that the battle for this word was won and lost long ago. But on this side of the Atlantic, the word ‘liberal’ still means something far more truly liberal. We must keep it that way.
This short posting is the sort of thing I am objecting to:
Further proof of the moral degeneracy of Liberals. Not only pushing even more legislation restricting free speech, but loading it down with caveats to protect people whitewashing their favourite murderers.
The point is a good one, as are so many points made by this writer. But… Liberals?
I also think that describing your very sharp views as coming from the ‘House of Dumb’ is, well, dumb. He is not a bit dumb, and I am sure he has his reasons for doing this, but whatever they may be, if I learn them I do not expect to be persuaded by them. Irony perhaps? Whatever. Argumentatively speaking, calling yourself dumb amounts to constructing a huge open goal for your opponents to tap in a succession of soft goals. One of the basic rules of propaganda is: do not put yourself down. Speak out with clarity, seriousness and sincerity. By all means make trivial jokes about yourself, but the seriously wounding jokes should always be on the other fellows. ‘House of Dumb’ ought to be a blog dedicated to the idiocies of the non-liberal, anti-liberal collectivist creeps, and it briefly crossed my mind while writing this sentence that maybe this is what the man had in mind, which would have made this sentence read very foolishly. But then I remembered that he calls himself ‘DumbJon’. It is his own house that he is talking about, just as I had been assuming. And his very name, never mind his blog’s name, is a pre-emptive cringe. Right wingers bloggers do this a lot, with their I-know-what-you-think-I-am-but-I-don’t-care names. They think it is showing toughness and wit. It think it is admitting that you are wrong before you even open your mouth.
I repeat, I really like how ‘DumbJon’ writes, and I agree with point after point that he scores against his hated “liberal” anti-liberals. I particular, agree with him, as many ferocious opponents of Islamism or “Islamic extremism” often do not that Islam itself is a huge problem for the West, rather than the Islam problem merely being a few nutters who take it too far. What the nutters do is take Islam seriously, just as they claim to.
Anyway, having made my points about liberality and dumbness, I will leave it at that and continue to read House of Dumb with profit and pleasure. It is obviously far too late for ‘DumbJon’ himself to consider any name changes. But, to any other worthy people with ideas like his who are still wondering what to call their blogs, I say: do not be ironic about yourself if you want to be truly persuasive and truly wounding to those whom you seek to wound. Do not build the insults of your opponents into your descriptions of yourself and of your ideas.
And do not hand your opponents compliments that they do not deserve. Do not, for example, call people ‘liberal’ when they are nothing of the kind.
Yesterday, I attended a most enjoyable Sunday lunch, with an old school friend and his wife . It began at a civilised time, 2pm, which enabled me, before departing, to hear the winner of CD Review’s pick of the best available recording of Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 on Radio 3. This delightfully sunny piece is one of my favouries, and Colin Davis and the Concertgebouw played it wonderfully. As I walked across the Thames to Vauxhall Station I took photos, in the perfect early February yet spring-like weather. The train I travelled on arrived at Vauxhall exactly when I reached the platform it stopped at, and was agreeably uncrowded. The walk from Wimbledon Station to my friend’s home was most pleasant. So I was in a good mood when I got there, and nothing happened from then on to spoil my enjoyment in any way.
Anyway. One of those present was a rather rich man, and I now know how you can tell a rich man. Ask him how many houses he owns. He hesitates, and then he starts counting on his fingers.
In the latest pull-out-of-the-middle-and-bin travel supplement in the Radio Times, there is an advert for going on holiday in Cuba:
Warm golden sand touched by shimmering seas, endlessly clear and calm. Sparkling contrasts. A deep sense of harmony. Cuba is life.
Unless you are one of the poor bastards who actually has to live there.
A Cuba tourism website was mentioned at the bottom of the advert. I went there, seeking further Cubanities to sneer at. I was not disappointed. In the Knowing Culture section, I read:
Cuba’s cultura is very prestigious. It happy people live very rooted to its traditions and customs. If you want to know about that go and visit the museums.
“Rooted to its traditions and customs” as in “bugger all has happened for the last fifty years”. Say what you like about communism, at least it avoids disfiguring the landscape with a lot of mucky economic development. Well, muck they can do. It’s the economic development they avoid. Film companies love communism, because huge swathes of ancient places get preserved by it as if in aspic, needing only a scrub-down and then some mending and a lick of paint to bring the distant past back to instant and authentic life.
As the heading says here, about some very boring-looking historical building:
Arranged Historical Place as Museum
A phrase that would do well as a description of Cuba itself. One instinctively knows which questions not to ask.
Meanwhile, back at the Knowing Culture section, the blurb ends thus:
If you take a tour of our cities you will see the development of music, dance or plastic arts, manifestations that have left a trace in the world.
Mostly in Miami.
So, potential tourists living outside Cuba have no problem accessing the internetted tourist version of Cuba. But what is internet access like for the the natives?
With less than 2 per cent of its population online, Cuba is one of the most backward Internet countries. An investigation carried out by Reporters Without Borders in October revealed that the Cuban government uses several levers to ensure that this medium is not used in a “counter-revolutionary” way. Firstly, it has more or less banned private Internet connections. To surf the Internet or check their e-mail, Cubans have to go to public access points such as Internet cafes, universities and “youth computer clubs” where their activity is more easily monitored. Secondly, the computers in all the Internet cafes and leading hotels contain software installed by the Cuban police that triggers an alert message whenever “subversive” key-words are spotted. The regime also ensures that there is no Internet access for dissidents and independent journalists, for whom communicating with people abroad is an ordeal. Finally, the government also relies on self-censorship. You can get 20 years in prison for writing “counter-revolutionary” articles for foreign websites. You can even get five years just for connecting to the Internet illegally. Few Internet users dare to run the risk of defying the regime’s censorship.
Which would explain the “deep sense of harmony”.
This entire situation has come about because of State intrusion into matters that should be left to private conscience. It is a consequence of contradictory legislation that tries to protect rights to religious beliefs at the same time as preventing actions that stem from those beliefs. This Government is constructing a State morality backed by legislation. Not only is this wrong in principle – it is a practical impossibility as this situation demonstrates.
– UKIP Chairman John Whittaker commenting last week on the row about gay versus Roman Catholic adoption (with thanks to Peter Briffa for the link)
David Cameron, the Leader of the Opposition and of the Conservative Party, is mainly known here as the man who makes Perry de Havilland spit blood.
But quite aside from the fact that most of us here disagree with the things that Cameron has been saying in recent months, there is the puzzle of why he has been saying them. I am thinking of things like fluffing on tax cuts, the NHS, Europe, and so on. He seems determined not just to be more left wing than Conservatives used to be. He seems to want to be more left wing than the country. All the politicians, for instance, now seem to accept the virtues or at least the inevitability of relentlessly high taxation. Except the voters!
Tony Blair did not get where he got by altering the substance of Thatcherism. He did it by putting a more amenable face on the front of it, that of a Hugh Grantish ingratiator, rather than of a bald, out-of-touch, Conservative. Cannot Cameron see that? What the country seems to want is Conservatism with a non-Conservative face. Thatcherite policies, but without those smug bastard, crowing and thieving Conservatives fronting for it all. They want Blair, before he became mired in sleaze and incompetence. But Cameron has gone out of his way to supply more than this. The Conservative Party has changed, he says. Who is he trying to convince, and of what?
Why is he apparently dumping all of the substance of Thatcherism, and thereby risking the very leakage that Perry notes, of voters from the Conservatives to things like UKIP, or almost as damagingly, to the screw-them-all-we’re-not-voting-for-anybody party? The we’re-not-voting-for-anybody party has really hurt the Conservatives in recent elections. Why is Cameron risking the wrath of this party yet again?
I think we can best understand Cameron’s performance so far as an exercise in allowing the mainstream media to attack Labour.
Media people are never going to like Conservatives, but towards this Conservative or that Conservative they feel very variable degrees of dislike. Cameron has presented himself to London’s media people as the kind of Conservative Prime Minister that they would be willing to put up with, given that they have to put up with Conservative Prime Ministers from time to time.
This has made a big difference to the political atmosphere of Britain. I recall, somewhat over a year ago (I have searched through the Samizdata archives but have failed to find the posting in question – sorry), noting that something had happened to what used to be called “Fleet Street”, and that suddenly they were really putting the knife in. At the time, I was rather puzzled, but guessed it might have something to do with some particularly annoying tax things that Gordon Brown had just been doing. Now, I believe that the biggest difference has been made by David Cameron. → Continue reading: How Cameron turned the media loose on the government
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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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