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.
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I mean really geeky! But cool nevertheless.
Although I care very little about the arguments regarding the merits of State Comprehensive Schools vs. State Grammar Schools, it is certainly a topic that has much excited Tories over the years.
Thus when Dave Cameron suddenly decided to jettison his party’s long standing support for Grammar Schools, calling their Tory supporters ‘delusional’, he has been rewarded by losing a member of his front bench, European spokesman Graham Brad MP, who has resigned in protest. And of course regardless of the fawning resignation letter, resigning the front bench is the political equivalent of publicly screaming “bite me, you halfwit loser!” in Cameron’s face. He was ticked off by the chief whip for his support of Grammar schools but rather than kowtow, he has taken his leave. I can respect that.
Who would have thought it? A Tory with principles? Damn! Brady is well out of it as he is clearly a man who was going to be very uncomfortable on the front benches with a weathervane like Cameron as leader.
And now I shall return to my profound indifference to the antics of inane party politics.
Venezuela is a case study of how democracy is no sure defence against tyranny and how it can actually be the means by which it comes about. I realise we already have the example of Germany in the 1930’s, but unlike the NSDAP, the democratic majority for Chavez was far less ambiguous than the ones that incrementally brought Hitler to power.
It was interesting to note how many on the left (with many honourable exceptions I must add) have supported the establishment of a state television monopoly in Venezuela once the Chavez regime announced it was going to shut down anti-government station Rádio Caracas Televisión.
However is good to see people on the street marching in defiance of Hugo Chavez. Will it make any difference? In the short run, probably not, but it is never wrong to make a stand against a tyrant regardless of how popular he may be.
There is an article on the Guardian site called Throw a pebble at Goliath: don’t buy Israeli produce, by Yvonne Roberts, in which she urges people to boycott Israel because of its human rights record.
Now I know nothing about Yvonne Robert and have never even heard of her before, but I assume she also an avid campaigner for people to boycott products from Cuba, Burma, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, China (good luck doing that), Iran, Syria, Belorus, Zimbabwe, North Korea (assuming they actually produce any products) etc. etc. etc… after all, if she is such a tireless campaigner for human rights, surely she could not possibly feel it was alright for people to trade with all those places, given the state of human rights in those places. Right?
Anyone want to take any bets on this?
The latest developments in the investigation into the assassination of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed last November in London, is interesting, to say the least.
To no one’s surprise (at least no one who is not a Kremlin stooge), the person the British Director of Public Prosecutions has charged with the murder is an former(?) member of the Russian security services, just as his victim was. The Crown Prosecution Service is formally demanding Andrei Lugovoi’s extradition from Russia.
What makes this really fascinating is that the CPS is well aware that the Russian state has a policy of not extraditing Russian nationals to other countries (nor are they in the habit of surrendering their assassins to foreign police no matter how politely they are asked). The fact they went ahead and made the demand for extradition anyway shows that the government is at last taking the threat Putin and his cronies pose seriously and this is an excellent way of dealing him a no-win hand politically, even though it will not result in Lugovoi being brought to justice. Although no one in an official capacity is saying the Putin regime ordered this murder on British soil, you do not have to squint very hard to see the writing between the lines.
Update: an new article in the Telegraph seems to confirm what I was suggesting about a determination to face Putin down. Good.
The other day I was watching the news and saw a story about a sudden influx of Romanian gypsy children into Slough (of all places). Several things struck me about the story.
Firstly, the children they interviewed were entirely candid about the reason they arrived in the UK: state welfare. They had come to Britain because they learned that all you have to do is turn up and you will be provided with free housing and food which is better than what they had in Romania.
They were entirely honest what their motives were. So I suppose unlike in Romania, they do not have to steal to support themselves, they are counting on the British state to do it for them. That said, several shopkeepers were also interviewed and they were aghast at the prospect of these new arrivals.
The second thing that really stuck me was the sheer idiocy of the spokesman that was quoted (I assume he was from Slough Council), who said “we are working to figure out how to reunite these children with their parents”, or words to that effect… as if these parasites were washed up after a storm rather than having intentionally travelled from Romania to Slough. Quite rightly the reporter commented that there was no indication these children were likely to oblige as they were clearly very satisfied with what they were being given.
However my guess is that once they have established themselves, they will indeed be “reunited with their parents”… who will arrive in the UK to do exactly the same.
It is interesting to contrast this with the highly successful influx of Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and now Baltic immigrants into the UK over the last few years. High initiative, quickly integrating Eastern Europeans attracted by the more dynamic economy of Britain, have joined the work force and broader British society generally to the noticeable benefit of everyone… but in this case in Slough, the welfare system has attracted the worst kind of bare faced parasites from a predatory sub-culture. An interesting contrast and proof yet again that ‘immigration’ is not a problem, it is immigration-plus-welfare-handouts that causes the problems.
There is an excellent article in the Telegraph by Boris Berezovsky, the exiled anti-Putin Russian politician and businessman, called Why modern Russia is a state of denial.
First, Yeltsin lacked the will (or, maybe, the courage) to indict the communist regime as a criminal one – no less so than the Nazi regime, with all the resulting consequences for the communists themselves, and for their vanguard, the Soviet secret police. Second, Yeltsin also failed to lead Russia to repentance, to make every Russian acknowledge his own responsibility for the crimes of the communist regime. Without repentance, however, those who were oppressed and raped by Russia, such as Estonia and the other Baltic states, will never trust it again.
Great stuff and much the same point I have been making on the issue of former communist countries. Read the whole thing.
The only substantive issue on which David Cameron declaimed that made him in any way preferable (or to be more accurate, distinguishable) from the Blairite Labour Party was the issue of ID cards.
Cameron (eventually) came down against them once he realised just how unpopular the scheme was. Well it seems that the impending Brown government is also going to give ID cards the heave-ho, which if true is indeed a good thing.
So, no excuse left for actual conservatives not abandon the Tories and vote UKIP then.
In Poland a court has ruled that the governments attempts at de-communisation are unconstitutional.
The law required some 700,000 people, including school directors and board members of public companies, to submit statements declaring any contact they had had with the communist secret services.
The court rejected key aspects of the law including the requirement for journalists to submit declarations. […] “A state based on the rule of law should not fulfill a craving for revenge instead of fulfilling justice,” he said. “Screening must not be used for meting out punishment.”
But surely justice cannot be served by allowing the communist era and above all, the role of the people who made it all possible, to vanish down the memory hole. If people did despicable things during the communist era, why should they escape punishment? I cannot imagine a German court being allowed to stop the process of de-nazification in German, so why tolerate something similar in Poland in the aftermath of communism?
Forgiveness can not come before repentance and a lot of people have yet to repent. I wonder if there are any senior judges who might have an embarrassing file on their communist era activities that they would rather not see the light of day? Just wondering.
They are at it again. Medical experts are advising the state that they should mass medicate the population of Britain against a non-infectious disorder.
Perhaps a ‘totalitarianism’ of experts might be more accurate as Food Standards Agency seem to think it is the super-owner of the bodies of everyone in the country.
Instapundit noted that we did not rush to comment on the announced departure of Tony Blair but speaking for myself, the reason I felt no need to dash off an article is that I do not really give a damn because it is actually not that important. Glenn expects us to be cheering, but why? About the prospect of Gordon Brown running our affairs? Sorry but that is nothing to cheer about and I cannot really see that this will make a great deal of difference to government policies.
Apologies for the sluggishness of the site recently, we have been under concerted attack from spammers.
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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.
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