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]
In geology, efforts to “decolonise the curriculum” involve challenging Western epistemologies, potentially diluting rigorous methodologies with subjective narratives. A UK study on science teaching staff revealed the dangers, with some fearing it undermines core scientific principles. By prioritising “diverse ways of knowing” over empirical validation, we risk equating myth with method, dooming students to a fragmented worldview where chaos reigns. This isn’t empowerment; it’s intellectual sabotage, ensuring no stable basis for societal flourishing.
Consider almost any apparently current ‘common knowledge’ today – Net Zero, critical race theory, trans, ‘diversity is our strength’ – and you will find instead a minority concern elevated to ‘common knowledge’ with the dictatorial overlord shouting down those who dare speak against it. This is most acutely felt within academia and certain corporates, but all of us at some point will have self-censored for fear our opinions are not common knowledge when in fact they probably are. If as a society we can succeed in getting a proper handle on ‘common knowledge’ we will greatly improve our country and our sense of ease within it.
As the Metropolitan Police announce the demise of non-crime hate incidents, the Telegraph has run a feature on the Free Speech Union, crediting its years of campaigning against NCHIs and support for cancel culture victims.
An Afghan migrant who was deemed an adult by UK authorities because he had a “protruding Adam’s apple”, bags under his eyes and skin that “did not appear youthful” has won £25,000 after a judge ruled he was a child.
You can be a “partner”, a “reliable supplier” or perhaps even an “ally” of Brussels. You can even stand next to Ursula von der Leyen in London and proclaim the end of the Brexit wars. But unless you are an EU member state, you will always be a competitor and ultimately expendable.
Visit BBC Broadcasting House in Central London and you’ll pass a statue of George Orwell accompanied by a quote from an unpublished preface to Animal Farm: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” When the statue was erected in 2017, the head of BBC history said it would serve as a reminder of “the value of journalism in holding authority to account”.
If only. The statue isn’t a symbol of the BBC’s journalistic excellence, but a standing reproach for its failure.
– Helen Joyce, in an article called The BBC’s dangerous lies in the print version of The Critic
There’s a fascinating case study to be made of how in a generation or so the British ripped leagues of old Etonians, Harrovians, Wykehamists out of institutions to be replaced by “the best and brightest”, and then inexplicably everything became shit
I’m wondering, is this another one of those speeches [Keir Starmer] didn’t get round to reading before he hit the lectern.
Wrapping himself in the flag is about as authentic and my love for Pilates. I know it exists, but I have no idea what it is.
With this in mind, we may understand Reform better through considering the political thought of the party’s court historian, Sir David Starkey, than we do by mocking Dame Andrea Jenkyns’ sequinned conference sing-along. As summarised by Nicholas Harris in the New Statesman: David Starkey at conference “lectured on the Blairite coup of 1997, which he compared to a ‘slow burn French Revolution’… condemning ‘the catastrophe of human rights’, the Supreme Court and the ECHR… while musing on historical analogies for the coming Reform takeover: the 1832 Reform Act, the Glorious Revolution, the Stuart Restoration”. This is not conservatism as we have come to understand it, but counter-revolution: a swift and total toppling, through packing the Lords with sympathetic new peers, and a bonfire of Blairite legislation, of New Labour’s unloved and malignant constitutional order, the “theoretick dogmas” of our own revolutionary lawyers.
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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