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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David Smith, the economics editor for the Sunday Times, has a splendid article on his personal blog, Economics UK, about why the Eurosceptic approach is the economically rational one.
Britain’s unemployment rate, on a comparable basis, is 4.8%, against 9.4% in France and 9.8% in Germany. Unemployment stands at under half the EU average. Per capita gross domestic product in Britain, according to a new report from Capital Economics, is higher at $30,200 (£16,440), than Germany’s $29,200 or France’s $28,500.
The economic momentum is with us. Britain has been growing continuously for 12 years, during which time other EU countries have suffered at least one recession and in some cases two. The sick man of Europe has made a remarkable recovery.
Of course the economic argument for Britain being in the EU (as opposed to some EFTA-like agreement) was always tosh. Switzerland anyone? It is now highly visible tosh.
Here on Samizdata.net we may decry the regulatory idiocy of the Labour government but clearly things are even worse in Euroland, and at least if more sovereignty is maintained at the UK level, more of the damage can be undone at the UK level rather than locked in by remote stasis oriented Europe wide institutions. All the EU has to offer is corruption, stagnation and regulation. No thanks.
For those who insist that the lack of an Al-Qaeda/Iraq link means Saddam should have been left to mass murder his own people unmolested, Melanie Philips has some measured words for you.
The excitement was over a preliminary assessment of evidence about al-Qa’eda by the US commission investigating September 11. The only problem was that the press coverage was untrue. The report does not rule out links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’eda. On the contrary, as the commission’s chairman, Thomas Kean, confirmed: “There were contacts between Iraq and al-Qa’eda, a number of them, some of them a little shadowy. They were definitely there.” As so often in the coverage of Iraq, those who make the (illogical) claim that there was no such contact and therefore no cause for war saw in this report only what they wanted to see.
[…]
Bill Clinton’s administration was absolutely certain that Saddam was in cahoots with al-Qa’eda. It was a given. That is surely why, after September 11, Pentagon officials were obsessed with Iraq. Whether Saddam was personally involved in 9/11 was irrelevant; if he was aiding al-Qa’eda’s terror, he had to be stopped. But this has been obliterated from the collective memory in order to place the most malign interpretation possible on the motives of the Bush administration.
Nothing new and from my point of view, so what… that Saddam was a tyrant was enough of a reason for me… but seeing as how people keep repeating ‘there was no link’ (I was highly sceptical myself at first), continue to oppose the overthrow of the Ba’athist regime if you like but please find another approach because ‘that dawg don’t hunt no more’.
I am glad to see I am not the only one who thinks the frequently reported ‘sharp exchanges’ between Blair and Chirac (or Shröder) are a phoney as a three pound note. Some of the commenters here on Samizdata.net seems to have taken a similar view as has the Daily Telegraph opinion leader article.
At EU summits, there is always a row and always a deal – and the European constitution negotiations did not disappoint. Tony Blair’s spin doctors did not quite say, “Gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here,” but he was, apparently, battling like Henry V against the French and also the Germans. But he signed the constitution anyway, even though last week’s election results clearly show he had no mandate to do so. There was something distinctly phoney about the row.
Indeed. The fact having ‘rows’ with the French and Germans is good for the standing of a British leader hardly needs explaining. Yet the fact is that regardless of the acrimony, the deals still seem to get signed. ‘Red line’ after red line gets laid down, acclaimed by both supporters and people who should know better: “Thus far and no further!” cries our plucky Leader of the Day. Which of course really means “only thus far this time“. Just wait a year or two and the process can be repeated yet again and a little more agreed, once the ‘red lines’ of yesteryear have vanished down the memory hole.
Forget the rhetoric, if you want to know the truth, just look for the signatures on the treaties. The rest is just so much verbal fart gas.
I wonder if the fact France is, get this, cracking down on opponents of the theocratic tyranny in Iran will produce howls of anger from the same people who complain that the US has on many occasions propped up unsavoury regimes for various reasons? I have my doubts as most are convinced that if the US is not involved in something, it does not really happen.
Why is the French state doing this? Well who knows… I am sure that fact lucrative deals have been signed in Iran by French companies over the last few months have nothing to do with it. Nope, that could not possibly be the reason.
An EU Constitution has been agreed, sort of, and now a powerful section of the political establishment will begin the process of spinning it as ‘a great victory for Britain’ because it will not immediately wipe out the ability of British people to have at least a little influence over the laws under which they live. And in other parts of Europe, the same constitution will be spun as ‘moving Europe closer to complete union’. It is like a vast edifice growing ever taller by the year, a great movable siege tower surrounded by a fog of graft and corruption and expense accounts.
But it is a constitution quite unlike the more famous US one. The EU constitution will incorporate, amongst other things, the essence of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which requires not that the state refrain from making laws in many areas of life but that laws be mandated to ensure ‘rights’. This includes such wonders as the ‘right to education’ including the phrase “this right includes the possibility to receive free compulsory education” (which is of course not in fact free at all and suggests we have a ‘right to be compelled’). And wonders of double talk such as:
Equality between men and women must be ensured in all areas, including employment, work and pay. The principle of equality shall not prevent the maintenance or adoption of measures providing for specific advantages in favour of the under-represented sex.
So the much awaited document will prohibit discrimination between men and women… unless it is decided to pass laws requiring discrimination between men and woman. Clearly the Charter of Fundamental Rights which the new EU Constitution will aim to enforce is nothing less that the ‘right’ to require all European states to maintain regulatory welfare states. The much vaunted priests of democracy want to make sure that the constitution ensures that all you can vote for is who gets to regulate you rather than whether or not you will be regulated at all.
It is not too late for Britain but the last bastion is indeed the one on which the battle will be fought. Perhaps, just perhaps, when comes time for the UK referendum, that vast and growing tower will be struck by lightning and come crashing down.
I have known for quite a while that the hierarchy of Roman Catholic Church in England has decided that it no longer wishes the Church to be a force for moral suasion but would rather simply act as a political lobby, seeking to use the force of the state to compel behaviour it approves of rather than allow moral choices to remain in hands of thier parishioners (or anyone else for that matter). It is good to see articles in the mainstream press saying much the same thing and holding them up to a spotlight.
I would hope that Roman Catholics who view the political secularisation of their church do not just meekly sit in their pews and listen to the advocacy of coercive statism without a murmur. If the Church wants to act like a political organisation, people should have no compunction treating them like nothing more than that… and there are few ways better to get an institution’s undivided attention than starving it of funds.
If the leaders of the Church in England want the state to take your money regardless of how you feel about that, rather than bending their efforts to urging you to give it to charitable works of you own free will, then might I suggest to Church-goers that they remember that when the collection plate comes around during mass… but do not just decline to part with your funds, tell your priest that you will not do so and why.
The story of the next general election is one of three party politics
Charles Kennedy, Liberal Democrat leader
Sure, Tories, Labour and… UKIP? 
It has been reported that the 700 strong 1st battalion of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment has been in contact with the enemy every day for the past six weeks, racking up 250 seperate combat incidents.
Capt Justin Barry, a military spokesman, is quoted in the Daily Telegraph:
The fighters engaged were basically terrorists and gangsters – people who are out to destabilise the area, drive out the Coalition and suck as much out of Iraq as they can. But at the end of the day, we got the better of them. The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment were engaged in very heavy hand-to-hand fighting and bayonets were fixed. There’s a great sense of satisfaction among the men with the way this turned out.
Indeed, but no thanks to Tony Blair. The fact the government has not greatly reinforced UK forces is nothing short of a national scandal.
The UKIP has just become a significant force in British politics. Will it last? I have no idea. But the fact is that the UKIP is now a major player in the European Parliament and allegedly gained almost 16% of the vote where they stood.
And yet this appearance of a new political force in Britain seems to be almost a footnote in most of the articles in the press. Oh, it is being covered, but the fact this upstart party is being examined in such muted matter is itself quite worth pondering. Although I am hardly an uncritical admirer of the UKIP in many ways, I do share their antipathy to the EU and I think that their success does show that a deep vein of disaffection is beginning to come to the surface even amongst Britain’s typically ovine electorate.
And the fact the sensationalist British press is not treating this into a sensation is itself rather interesting.
Nick Denton of Gawker, Gizmodo (etc. etc.) fame is perhaps the best known face on the commercial blog scene and certainly the most quoted these days. I also think he is quite incorrect in his understanding of why people read blogs, which means I think his business model is not one I would care to follow myself. Do I think all of what the redoubtable Denton does is wrong? No, not at all, but I do not really think the foremost advocate of blogging-for-business really understand blogs that well and I do not think he understand the blogosphere at all.
Most people do not look at something because they want to have advertisements shoved in front of them. Old style ‘interruption marketing’ might work when people have few options, say just a few TV channels, and are willing therefore to accept advertising as the ‘price’ for something else they value, but what Nick Denton seems to be saying is that there are lots of people who actually like reading ad-copy and will read blogs that are just well packaged advertisements (or ‘advertainment’ if you prefer) when the Internet is awash with places giving content away and doing no such thing. I simply do not believe that is true. Yet I do believe that there is a role for commercial blogging.
People read blogs to get a different perspective, even if they do not always agree with it. If people want to read a blog which is largely advertisement dressed up in well written urban hip and blog-speak rather begs the question, why would such a person not just stick to established media channels which are filled with endless marketing? Are blog readers really so dim as to not pick out the fact they are just being handed the same old interruption marketing message dressed up in a slightly different way?
I think for a commercial blog to succeed, it must do the same thing as a successful non-commercial blog, and that means it must be interesting and credible to its audience. In fact I would say a blog is a ‘credibility machine’. To use the words of the Cluetrain Manifesto, a blog must speak with the author’s authentic voice if it is to be believed… and it is a rare company indeed who can be authentic if all people hear from them is what their marketing and PR department say.
For a companies and other institutions to blog successfully, and people like Macromedia, The Adam Smith Institute, Microsoft and others do indeed blog successfully, then they actually have to speak in ways that are a long way from a press release that has been carefully worded by the PR department, and a million miles away from copy produced by an advertising agency. No one actually believes that crap any more and sticking it on a blog just makes it stand out like poop on a pool table.
No, if a company wants to blog, it needs to decide that it wants to be forthright and talk to people like human beings… if you have desirable or difficult or complex products and have interesting things to say about them, people might actually be interested in hearing what you have to say if you can convince them you are not just parroting the same old sales pitches served up for the Google Generation.
It will be very interesting to see what happens in the election in Britain today… As I have written before I would like to see the UKIP cut into the Tory vote in the hope of that moving them in a more Eurosceptic direction.
But part of me would be just as happy to see a nice low turn out as people find a better use of their time than voting for which group of control obsessed kleptos get to exercise their looting rights. Sadly the use of postal ballots looks like it might actually increase ‘turn out’. Too bad.
Tory leader Michael Howard is now loudly stressing his Eurosceptic credentials’ as the Euro elections come closer and it looks like the UKIP will be seriously cutting into the Tory vote.
Of course talk is cheap and the only way the Tory Party is ever going to actually become a genuine (rather than a tactical) Eurosceptic party is if the party’s very survival and the jobs and pay checks of its professional politicos is actually put in real, rather than potential, jeopardy… and there is only one way to do that.
Do not reward a decade of duplicity with a mindlessly tribal vote for the Conservatives. If you are going to vote at all, vote UKIP tomorrow.
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