Now I am usually harsh in my criticism of the National Health Service and indeed I wish to see it abolished entirely… but credit where credit is due. This was a very, er, uplifting example of ‘Enterprise Thinking’ by the NHS.
Carry on, Doctor!
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The Times has vanished behind a pay wall and… frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. There is nothing about The Times that cannot be easily replaced with other on-line sources. Move along, nothing to see (literally). June 17th, 2010 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties – Ludwig von Mises June 12th, 2010 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
No, the British state is not financially bankrupt, at least not quite yet, but thus quoth Dave Cameron…
These remarks by David Cameron might look like something that would get a thumbs up from the Samizdata mob yes? Well no. “Unavoidably tough”… I have no doubt whatsoever that these cuts are something Cameron would indeed prefer to avoid, and therein lies the reason I despise him just as much as I have ever done. The cuts to government spending, which should be an order of magnitude greater just as starters, are not being done because allowing the appropriative state to grow so vast is morally wrong or intellectually foolish, no, it is being done but because it cannot currently be avoided. If it could be, what Cameron really wanted to do was increase the size of the state’s appropriation by £ 25 billion. That is what he intended to do before he realised it was simply impossible: never ever allow that key fact vanish down the memory hole. He is not making the moral case for a smaller state, because he does not want a smaller state, he is just discussing dealing with the current economic crisis, nothing more. In this respect he is the ‘anti-Thatcher’, who at least made the intellectual case for a less pervasive state (even if she then allowed Norman Tebbit to destroy the very political cadre that sprung up to support that view). Could it not be that what “we” want, and certainly what “we” need, is not for more skoolzanhopitalz funded by the state? What “we” need is for more wealth to be created, not more stuff to be funded by money diminished by being filtered through the wealth destroying tax system and then mis-allocated by politics. June 7th, 2010 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
June 1st, 2010 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Mr Congdon said the dominant voices in US policy-making – Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz, as well as Mr Summers and Fed chair Ben Bernanke – are all Keynesians of different stripes who “despise traditional monetary theory and have a religious aversion to any mention of the quantity of money” – This is the, er, money quote, so to speak, from an article by the erratic Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, quoting Tim Congdon May 27th, 2010 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
So when Hilary Clinton states that maintaining stability on the peninsula was “critical”, surely a solution seems to be staring everyone in the face.
So… Bite the bullet, so to speak. Give South Korea a nudge and whatever backing it needs to blow the living shit out of the North and reunify the country. They have the wherewithal to do most of the heavy lifting themselves and the casus belli is a legal slam dunk. Result? Short term death and misery, for sure… but long term geopolitical stability for the region because:
The backroom deal is obvious: China throws North Korea to the wolves and US promises to get out of the post-unification Korean peninsula. This has the making of a win-win-win-win for China, the hapless occupants of that open air prison called North Korea, nuclear threatened South Korea and the ever burdened US taxpayer. Extra added ‘win’ can also be added to the scenario if the leadership in Pyongyang end up on meat hooks (but eating a laser guided 500 kg bomb also works). May 25th, 2010 | 77 comments - (Comments are closed)
A ‘muslim’ babe called Rimah Fakih wins a beauty pageant in the USA and apparently this is a Hezbollah conspiracy. 
Rimah Fakih strikes a nice Islamic pose much favoured in Hezbollah circles whilst onlookers chant “Allahu Akbar!”
Rimah Fakih contemplates sharia in Michigan
Rimah Fakih models the latest in approved burqa fashions Yup, clearly a sign of how deep radical muslim infiltration of key American institutions go. Moreover as we all know that beauty pageant winners are known for their original thinking and deep political insights, and moreover some radical in Lebanon (this one, not this one) shares her family name apparently, the Islamisation of the good ol’ USA is clearly at hand. I have posted these images as a wake up call to American to act before they are overrun with bikini wearing pole dancers intent on destroying the home of the free and land of the brave. No need to thank me… just another high minded public service from samizdata.net May 19th, 2010 | 67 comments - (Comments are closed)
Can it be? Do my eyes deceive me? An MP… a Tory MP… who seems to have a grasp of economics! How long before this guy gets a visit from the party whip advising him that insightful talk about real world economics might be harmful to his career, capice? May 9th, 2010 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is amusing to be honest. The Tory party faces a PM with no actual mandate, who is as charismatic as a bowl of cold Scottish porridge and who has presided over economically calamitous times… and the best the Tory Party can do is… 36.1 percent. I now look forward to some bracing political paralysis and hopefully the unedifying mess of a hanged… I mean hung parliament… hanged would be most edifying indeed. With a little luck the inevitable steaming pile of discordant political prima donnas will further discredit the whole establishment with their antics. I can only hope that in the coming months this period will do lasting damage to the Tory party in order to provide a wedge of daylight for the likes of Libertarians and UKIP to exploit. The ‘Middle of the Road’ is where you generally find road kill. May 7th, 2010 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Benedict Brogan wrote a Telegraph article called “Election 2010: a bracing reminder of the price we pay for political freedom“, in which he notes the cost to Britain’s young soldiers in Afghanistan in juxtaposition with the scenes of election tumult. Well I can think of several arguably good reasons for western troops to be fighting in Afghanistan but I sure hate to think of anyone dying for political freedom… freedom, sure… but that qualifying word in front does rather change things. Politics is what we call the struggle to control the means of collective coercion. It may be a process we cannot avoid but it is, at best, a necessary evil… and most of the time it is just evil without the necessary. Freedom is essential and worth fighting for… but anyone who died to defend political anything died for all the wrong reasons. What does ‘political freedom’ even mean in Britain? The right to vote who gets to rape you? Britain’s political system is not something to get all misty eyed about because most politics has nothing whatsoever to do with “freedom” but rather forcing people to do things they would rather not do. It is for the most part about people using the proxy violence of the state to take things they want and punish people they do not like far more often than it is about dealing with the genuine collective threats of plague, disorder and war. And as for this being an ‘extraordinary’ election, as the linked article claims, I cannot recall one where it mattered less which of the largely interchangeable plonkers on offer gets into Number 10. All that will change is which of set of rapacious thugs says who gets snout space at Westminster’s trough filled with other people’s money. But of course many will vote Tory on the ‘lesser evil’ principle and no doubt act surprised when Cameron more or less does all the things he has said he will do to prop up the intrusive regulatory welfare state. People voting for an ever so slightly lesser evil (and quite possibly not even that) will get exactly what they vote for… another evil government. Nice one, guys. Today is the day that nothing important really changes. May 6th, 2010 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
The notion that it is the state’s business how fat people are is grotesque but we can thank athlete James Cracknell for giving us a superb example of why it does not matter a tinker’s damn which of the three clowns actually ends up in Downing Street:
The same relentless statist chipping away at civil society will happen regardless, egged on by countless busy bodies like James Cracknell. Mind.your.own.business. May 3rd, 2010 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
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