I’m against the rise in student fees… ‘cos it ain’t fuckin’ high enough
If you think the previous leaks were amazing, check out this.
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December 24th, 2010 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
 December 14th, 2010 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Philip Johnston write that “Vested interests are protecting administrators and forcing cuts to vital services” in an article about PFI contracts (Public Finance Initiative). But for the most part “privatisation” is a meaningless distraction. The only realistic way to reduce state expenditure is to actually shed state functions as the root cause is not which mechanism the state uses: direct employees funded with taxes or outside hired hands funded with taxes. Either way, the people who carry out state functions are creatures of a system funded by taxes rather than subject to the rigours of actual market pressures… until everyone in the chain can go broke as a consequence of their actions, it is still a state structure regardless of who is making the wheels go around. Indeed every time the state bales out a bank regardless of the moral hazard, they spread the decision skewing and insulated-from-consequence disease associated with being supported by taxes. To reduce state expenditure, you need to get the state out of all but its “core business”. You need to remove whole function of what the state does, not just hire different people to do it. The real problem is a century of ‘mission creep’. Until you can countenance that you are not serious about reducing the bloated state. December 14th, 2010 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
But I don’t get the impression that Cameron and his Coalition are any more interested in personal liberty or rolling back the frontiers of state than their predecessors. The “Big Society”, indeed, is a watered-down version of the sort of bogus, grand, unifying scheme employed in the Fascist Italy of the Thirties. December 13th, 2010 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
This started off as a reply to a comment on Samizdata but by the time I reached the fifth paragraph, I realised it might as well be a full blown blog post. Below is the remark to which I was replying but this article is now really about explaining why I have moved from tentative opposition to inescapable support for Wikileaks.
This is actually the very core of the ‘systemic attack’ that Assange has made on nation-states. It is precisely by attacking their ability to informally and easily exchange casual and often banal information that has such remarkable implications on the ability of states to act the way states act. It does not need to be “the date of D-Day” kind of revelations (the kind I too want to remain secret) that can significantly interfere with a state’s ability to act as a ‘conspiracy’ (and not in the “Grassy Knoll” or “Bilderburg” or similar gonzo conspiracy theory sense)… indeed I wish Assange had never used the word ‘conspiracy’… I have long described the Green movement ‘Warmists’ as a ‘confluence of interests’ rather than a ‘conspiracy’… but I actually mean the exact same thing when discussing the Greens as Assange means when he describes Government as a ‘conspiracy’… But if you are someone of the view that the modern regulatory welfare state has vastly too much power over its subjects, and that these states are unreformable from within the ‘democratic’ systems… the very systems that have been in place during the growth of this overweening state power, then a valid way to oppose that power is to carry out systemic attacks on the very networks that allow that ‘confluence of interests’ to express what those interests are and to thereby find ways to achieve that confluence. → Continue reading: Why I support Wikileaks December 11th, 2010 | 146 comments - (Comments are closed)
If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information, that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the First Amendment and the independence of the internet? – Ron Paul December 11th, 2010 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
It seems almost unbelievably crass that attempts to take down Julian Assange should revolve around such a patently obvious ploy as concocting ‘sexual assault‘ charges against him. It reminds me of some other oh so obvious black bag operations, i.e. the patently absurd planted media articles to link Saddam (a secular socialist) to Al Qaeda (Islamists) in the run up to the allied attack on Iraq. I have grave misgiving about Wikileaks releasing operational military information but the fact the governments of the world are all baying for his blood and starting to cooperate with operations to discredit him speaks volumes about the damage he has done to the leviathan state everywhere… as was always his intention…and for that Assange has already assured himself a very special place in history. I suspect people will be talking about him long after the current crop of political leaders have been consigned to the mundane sections of historical record. December 1st, 2010 | 116 comments - (Comments are closed)
To anyone with a vaguely libertarian perspective observing the relentless creep of regulatory politics into ever more aspects of civil life, it has long been self evident that as a practical matter the statist right are largely interchangeable with the statist left. After all David “I see no liberty” Blunkett was simply standing on the shoulders of Michael “there is something of the night about him” Howard, no? Hence the recent remark by the dependably dismal John Major that he likes being in coalition come as no surprise to me whatsoever. Indeed the only thing that ever so slightly raised one eyebrow on my part was his willingness to left the mask slip. And with this in mind, I left a comment on Norman Tebbit’s blog in response to this:
“Well I would respect you a lot more if you were not aiding and abetting the people who have turned the Conservative party into a party of Big Euro Statism… but the fact is they could not have done it without folks such as yourself helping to keep a critical mass of genuine conservatives voting for the party despite profound unease with the likes of Cameron, Major et al. If you are hanging in there because you seek to take over the Tory party (re-take really) and drive out the twerps who now freely admit they are ideologically fungible with the left (something I have been pointing out for a decade, so Major’s remarks are hardly a revelation to me)… ie you remain a Tory so you can do a UK version of the Tea Party… well great, that is certainly something I could get behind… but if you are just going to be enablers for people who frankly do not share your conservative views, then with all due respect Norman (and I do mean that) you are part of the problem rather than part of the solution, and that is a great pity.” November 29th, 2010 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
November 28th, 2010 | 80 comments - (Comments are closed)
Sarah Palin has apparently attacked Barack Obama in her impending book ‘America By Heart’ and Alex Spillius writes:
A political saying unflattering things about a political opponent! Whatever next? Crazy days, eh? November 20th, 2010 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Real life spy dramas are interesting but what happens after the Big Denouement?
Hardly surprising…
…so his loved one were left behind in Russia when we was extracted by CIA Operations, eh? Pity that but…
…er, hang on, Fyodor… did you not just say his loved one were not by his side? Sorry but sounds to me like some guy called Hank Smith from Chickasaw Falls, plus his wife Wilma, son Hank Jr and daughter Natasha… er, I mean Britney… are living Happily Ever After and spending that hearty ‘financial settlement’ from Uncle Sam in a suburban strip mall looking forwards to Christmas somewhere with a fuck load better weather than Moscow. November 19th, 2010 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
The story of Waleed Hasayin, a Palestinian West Bank atheist blogger, is indicative of the nightmare that is inevitable in any system where state, society and religion are completely intertwined.
The mere existence of an outspoken atheist is intolerable in such an environment… but the thing about tolerance is it is only appropriate when it is reciprocated and Islam does not tolerate views that deny their God’s existence, so why should any non-Muslim tolerate Islam? Tolerance for intolerance is cowardice, not to mention suicidal. November 16th, 2010 | 92 comments - (Comments are closed)
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