Every day is Earth Day in North Korea
– Samizdata commenter ‘newrouter’
It is 8:30 pm in London and ‘Earth Day’ has begun. Every single light in our house and garden have now been turned on.
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March 27th, 2011 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Imagine you are walking down the street and a man in a suit walks up to you holding a large cudgel… “Excuse me,” he says, “I have seen you walk down this street on a daily basis wearing a tee-shirt and in future I would like you to wear a suit and tie to raise the tone of the neighbourhood.” “Er, no,” you reply, “I am happy dressed the way I am.” “I see,” the man replies, “well I would rather not have to threaten to hit you with this cudgel if you do not do what I say so I want you to voluntarily agree to wear a suit and tie.” “But you are threatening to hit me with that cudgel!” you point out. “No,” he says, “I will only threaten to hit you with this cudgel if you don’t do what I want voluntarily.” This statement of the bleedin’ obvious by me was brought on this sadly typical piece of ‘press release’ style journalism:
So rather than writing an article that explains the dynamic of what is going on here, Rosa Prince in effect just delivers a government press release complete with the approved spin… ‘voluntary’… ‘not nanny state’… Why exactly does The Telegraph need to have a ‘political correspondent’ at all rather than just republishing whatever the government wishes? What value is Rosa Prince actually adding here? The fact that these food industry groups agreed to do something under threat of compulsory measures means that this clearly is a prime example of the ‘Nanny State’ in action… and moreover if there is an explicit threat of legal coercion, how is this in any meaningful sense ‘voluntary’? February 19th, 2011 | 53 comments - (Comments are closed)
… Kenneth Clarke invariably supports anything with “european” in front of it. If they re-named ebola virus “european virus”, I expect he’d declare himself in favour of that, too. – Owen Morgan commenting on James Kirkup’s Daily Telegraph blog February 10th, 2011 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
A rat has been photographed outside 10 Downing Street. Presumably the only thing that makes this news worthy is it was not exiting the building and getting into an official chauffeured government vehicle on its way to Parliament. January 25th, 2011 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
John Hawkins: Now, in recent years we started to hear more people calling to get rid of the Federal Reserve. Good idea, bad idea? What are your thoughts? Thomas Sowell: Good idea. John Hawkins: Good idea? What do you think we should replace it with? What do you think we should do? Thomas Sowell: Well it’s like when you remove a cancer what do you replace it with? January 24th, 2011 | 63 comments - (Comments are closed)
I reacted rather badly the other day to Baroness Warsi’s weird rant about ‘bigotry‘ towards Muslims but it is gratifying to see I was not the only one who her remarks rubbed the wrong way. Warsi seems to be of the view that unless you have a positive view of Islam, it is not really acceptable for you to express your opinions in polite society even in private ‘around the dinner table’. That someone who is a member of the establishment in the UK could think that notion was going to fly is a measure of the disconnect between some people ‘at the top’ and us oiks out in the real world. January 22nd, 2011 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
Predictably in the wake of the shooting of a US politician and her surrounding admirers by an incoherent leftist (but I repeat myself), the journalistic profession continues to show just how completely they do not understand the subject they write about.
Yet far from gunmakers (who are a trivial political force) driving this debate, never was there a more truly ‘grass roots’ movement in the USA than the one which supports the right to keep and bear arms. Moreover ‘individual defence’ is only one of the reasons the Second Amendment exists… the primary reason for this piece of constitutional artifice is to keep the population armed as a counterweight not to criminals, well private sector criminals that is, but to the state itself. But to expect a mainstream journalist writing for a British newspaper declaiming about US affairs to understand that… well I suppose that is like expecting a rodent to suddenly start quoting Shakespeare. It just ain’t going to happen. People like journalist Harold Evans have hardly blinked as personal liberties have been remorselessly eroded across the western world and when they call for yet more state controls, their opinions should be judged accordingly. January 16th, 2011 | 64 comments - (Comments are closed)
Where Tony Blair had no reverse gear, and Lady T was not for turning, Mr Cameron has a full gearbox and power steering that allow him to execute swerves and three point turns. … yet again I find myself pondering adding a “No shit Sherlock” category… maybe more decorously listed as “I told you so” or some such. December 27th, 2010 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
George Osborne was recently in New York, soaking up plaudits for boldly leading Britain into fiscal austerity at a time when, apparently in contrast, America’s feckless political elite has allowed the national debt to balloon. The problem is that UK austerity, so far at least, is a myth. November’s national accounts, released last week, were shocking. Government spending last month was sharply up on the same month in 2009 – yes, up! British state borrowing is still escalating, with the national debt rising very quickly. However I do rather roll my eyes at the word ‘shocking’ as it has been screamingly obvious what was happening for quite some time. Sometimes I think Samizdata needs a category called ‘No shit, Sherlock’. How anyone could have thought Cameron’s dismal followers were ever serious about actually cutting back the state is hard to fathom. December 26th, 2010 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
December 24th, 2010 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you think the previous leaks were amazing, check out this. December 14th, 2010 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
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