Pfff… The Samizdata.net Christmas/Cthulhumas Party has wound down with the last inebriates staggering off at a mere 02:30 in the morning. Lightweights! We have had blogger bashes last until 9:00 am the next morning!
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Seeing as Samizdata.net is having its Christmas party (or is it Cthuhulumas party?) today, I thought I would stick up some pictures from… the very congenial Adam Smith Institute party last Tuesday. Just for the hell of it.
December 4th, 2004 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
 Last night I had some friends and business associates around for dinner here in Chelsea. It was an agreeable evening at which some interesting conversations were had, some good food was enjoyed and some nice wine drunk. And at around 7:00pm while all that was happening in my home, some 50 yards away my neighbour John Monckton was stabbed to death and his wife seriously injured by a pair of young vermin who broke into their house. Of course the state forbids people like the Moncktons from owning the means to defend themselves. And the CCTV cameras on our street? I cannot tell you how much better they must make everyone around here feel. The police who have closed off my street are festooned with all manner of weapons and body armour but given that their actual role in modern Britain is little more than clearing up the mess after another disarmed householder has been butchered, perhaps waterproof coveralls and mops would be more suitable equipment for our tax funded ‘guardians’. Bitter? You bet. The world is full of predators and we are required to face them disarmed and as much in fear of the law as the criminal who attack us. The state is not your friend. November 30th, 2004 | 107 comments - (Comments are closed)
If David Blunkett falls from office because of his shenanigans between the sheets, I do hope that civil rights activists will not see this as a sign from God (be it Cthuhlu or whoever) that the truly perilous state in which British liberty stands is about to take a turn for the better. Nothing Blunkett has ever done was done under his authority alone. The accelerating rate at which common law is set aside and ancient liberties debased have been the product of decades of antipathy to non-collectivist rights and individual liberty, a process which was well under way when David Blunkett’s Tory predecessor was in power: would-be future Prime Minister Michael ‘a touch of the night’ Howard. The fall of a ringwraith might be cause for some brief rejoicing (I will certainly be raising a glass or two that day!) but please remember there are plenty more where he came from. Sauron lives at Number 10 Downing Street, not in the office of the Home Secretary. November 29th, 2004 | 50 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Ukraine faces a choice between living in Vladamir Putin’s shadow or living under the shadow of more locally sourced rascals. Yes, I wish the protestors well in their attempt to prevent Russia’s pet poodle Viktor Yanukovych from stealing an election but in truth I do not know enough about the alternatives to Yanukovych to get any real enthusiasm for what is going on. The fact that anti-government people have a tendency to ‘disappear’ in the Ukraine is cause enough to want to see the end of Yanukovych and his supporting but the notion that ‘democracy’ is possibly being subverted is not any real cause for excitement to me per se, given that any alternative to Yanukovych (and the pretty strange Leonid Kuchma) will no doubt use democratic processes to turn the Ukraine into just another highly regulated EU-satellite ‘aid crack’ addicted state. So sure, good luck guys, just try to make sure you are not changing Moscow’s iron handcuffs for locally made ones with a velvet lining imported from Brussels. November 28th, 2004 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
When was the last time you heard a Tory leader say something like this?
Very interesting indeed! November 26th, 2004 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that we have long regarded the Ban on Foxhunting with Dogs as having very little to do with foxhunting. As David Carr has pointed out before, those who shout loudly that the move against hunting is ‘undemocratic’ are completely wrong: it is perfectly democratic. Welcome to the world in which there is no give and take of civil society… welcome to the world of total politics.
No kidding. That is what we have been pointing out here on Samizdata.net for quite some time and why we have treated commenters who shrugged and said “why get worked up about foxhunting?” with such derision. It was never about hunting but rather things that are far, far more fundamental. It is about those who would make all things subject to democratically sanctified politics (‘Rule by Activist’) seeking to crush those who see private property and society, rather than state, as what matters.
And Mr. Bradley is correct but for one thing: the battle in question is about the limits of political power and not just Labour’s political power. Until the supporter of the Countryside Alliance see that they are actually struggling against the idea of a total political state, they will not even be fighting the right war. It is not about who controls the political system but what the political system is permitted to do under anyone’s control. The United States has a system of separation of powers and constitutional governance which (at least in theory even though not in fact) places whole areas of civil society outside politics. Britain on the other hand has no such well defined system and the customary checks and balances have been all but swept away under the current regime. Britain’s ‘unwritten constitution’ has been shown to be a paper tiger. But those who look to the Tories to save them from the class warriors of the left are missing another fundamental truth. During their time in power, the Tory Party set the very foundations upon which Blair and Blunkett are building the apparatus for totally replacing social processes with political processes, a world in which nothing cannot be compelled by law if that is what ‘The People’ want: populist authoritarianism has been here for a while but now it no longer even feels it has to hide its true face behind a mask. Moreover it would take another blind man to look back on Michael Howard’s time as Home Secretary and see him as being less corrosive to civil liberties that the monstrous David Blunkett. Have you heard the outraged Tory opposition to the terrifying Civil Contingencies Act? Of course not, because the intellectual bankruptcy of the Tory party is now complete… for the most part they support it. If the so-called ‘Conservatives’ will not lift a finger to stop the destruction of the ancient underpinnings of British liberty, what exactly are they allegedly intending to ‘conserve’? The Tories are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem and the sooner the UKIP destroy them by making them permanently unelectable, the better, so that some sort of real opposition can fill the ideological vacuum. Those who were marching against banning foxhunting completely miss the issues at stake here. The issue is not and never has been foxhunting but rather the acceptable limits of politics. And you cannot resolve that issue via the political system in Britain. It is only once the people who oppose the ban on foxhunting and the people who oppose the Civil Contingencies Act and the people who oppose the introduction of ID cards and data pooling all realise that these are NOT separate issues but the same issue will effective opposition be possible. And I fear that opposition will, at least until the ‘facts on the ground’ can be established, have to be via civil disobedience and other ways to make sections of this country ungovernable by whatever means prove effective. The solution does not lie in ‘democracy’ but rather by enough people across the country asserting their right to free association and non-politically mediated social interaction by refusing to obey the entirely democratic laws which come out of Westminster. Peter Bradley is right and he has provided any who are paying attention with a moment of utter clarity: It is time to challenge his right to ‘rule’ by whatever means necessary. November 22nd, 2004 | 65 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Civil Contingencies Act became law last Thursday in what can only be described as a blaze on non-publicity. This legislation, which represents perhaps the most serious threat to liberty in Britain since World War II, has put in place the legal tools for some future government to impose rule-by-edict. It would be hard to overstate how grave this situation is. November 22nd, 2004 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Civil Contingencies Act became law last Thursday in what can only be described as a blaze on non-publicity. This legislation, which represents perhaps the most serious threat to liberty in Britain since World War II, has put in place the legal tools for some future government to impose rule-by-edict. It would be hard to overstate how grave this situation is. November 21st, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
The ‘mainstreaming’ of the blog phenomenon continues apace as more applications for blogging start to join political prognostication, cultural commentary, demimonde diaries (warning: X-rated), technical tantrums, hitting things with hammers and paeans to beloved pussycats. New neighbourhoods of the blogosphere are springing up every day. And now an independent Hollywood movie called Blowing Smoke, which is still undergoing some final post production editing, has set up a blog to which the director, producer and cast members have started to post, talking about the extremely politically incorrect nature of the movie. The blog is still in its very early days, the site is still being tweaked and the users are at the stage where they are just getting to grips with blog publishing software but I think this could quite interesting if blogs like this catch on. As a movie enthusiast myself I would love to get more peeks behind the scenes and not just the same old marketing agency hype. 
November 16th, 2004 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Everyone is entitled to their sensibilities, however wacky, just so long as they do not try to make them the law of the land. As a result when I describe Los Angeles Times writer T. J. Simers as a ‘weird prude’, it is not with the sense of loathing, hatred and vitriol I would have used were I under the impression he was suggesting that his disquiet over a picture of a beautiful young woman in a pair of shorts (and presumed wish to see people share his puritan values regarding women) be reflected in the law of the land by imposing censorship. But a ‘weird prude’ is indeed what I think he is. Whilst I see that bizarrely the age of consent in the benighted state of California is 18, in the vast majority of the world and even in much of the USA, the age at which one is permitted to engage in sex is 16. Moreover even if for some reason you conclude that the age at which young adults should actually have sex should be 18, surely only the most purblind would actually expect a 16 year old to be asexual even if they were abstinent. So when an attractive physically active 17 year old has a picture taken wearing no less clothing than that in which millions of people have seen her win tennis tournaments…  … T. J. Simers asks, no doubt thinking the true answer is beyond the pale:
Well, yeah. The girl is question is Maria Sharapova and since she won Wimbledon, quite literally tens of millions of people know exactly how old she is. And what do I think? I think “Nice legs! What a babe”. I am, distressingly, old enough to be her father, but that does not change the fact she is a very attractive young woman. So what? He continues:
Well Lindsey Davenport was a great tennis player but I for one am also relieved she never struck such poses, though gallantry prevents me from elaborating what I think are the obvious reasons for that. But why oh why does Mr. Simers or Mrs. Davenport think a 17 years old should an asexual being? The advertisement was not one in which Maria Sharapova was offering to have sex with anyone, just displaying her athletic assets (her body) in a way in which many would find rather attractive. Being attractive does indeed sell so why pretend otherwise? Is the fact she is not pictured in the act of playing tennis somehow make her sexuality more obvious than these…   Clearly this is not a young woman who is in denial regarding the fact she is a sexual being and hardly seems like some bewildered victim of heartless ad man dressing her up as Lolita. I rather doubt the camera man had to wrestle a teddy bear out of her arms to get her to strike that pose. For T.J. Simers to find the WTA image offensive is perverse and suggests to me that he must have some quaint notions of what 17 year olds are really like and how people should perceive them. Millions and millions of people are married or in long term sexual relationships by the time they are 17 and many of those are also parents, which suggests that the peculiar notion of infantilising young adults and calling them ‘kids’ for as long as possible is rather far off the mark. I think what really made this whole thing seem so daft to me was that I have just got back from an interesting exhibition about the Crimean War which features an account of a 14 year old who had accompanied the British forces on that campaign and it all really does make some of the modern notion of a strict division between adulthood and childhood seem truly preposterous when talking about a worldly 17 year old Russian woman who, if you have ever heard her interviewed, is obviously no fool. There is something profoundly odd about the mindset of a certain ilk of conservative. November 14th, 2004 | 100 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Adam Smith Institute will be hosting an event called Democracy & the Blogosphere next Tuesday 16th November. The speakers will be Stephen Pollard, William Heath, Sandy Starr and yours truly. The event is ‘jacket and tie’ at 6:15pm and will be followed by a reception at the ASI at 23 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BL Anyone who would like to come along should send an e-mail for an invitation. November 12th, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
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