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Tonight the intrepid Samizdatistas ventured into the heart of darkness (Westminster) to attend the Adam Smith Institute Christmas party at their rather splendid offices overlooking the Houses of Parliament. Vast quantities of champagne were consumed (well I certainly did). The party was absolutely jam packed with free marketeers of all shapes and sizes. 
The crowd was lively and, compared to pretty much any other UK think-tank, of a remarkably young average age. December 3rd, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The Fourth British Blogger Bash in Chelsea was a chaotic and noisy affair…but then they always are, so no change there. Thirty-five worthy souls dived into the famous Chilli con Chelsea and only a few were slain by the lurking habanero demons therein…  Adriana, David and Luisa looked on as Perry ritually sacrified a civil servant to get the party swinging
Adriana and Philip amused themselves by hiding the bottles that were inexplicably protruding from Michael’s back pockets
Hair? Ha! Hair is for weaklings!
For some reason the oxygen was getting sucked out of the room…
Brian rather unkindly ate Claire’s Chilli whilst she was in a staring competition with Antoine
Briffa and Sherrif look on nonplused whilst Frank Sennsenbrenner does his Nixon impersonation
David and Claire do the ‘La Dolce Vita’ look rather well
Debbie, Jackie & Simon laugh, little knowing the camera is stealing their souls!
Andrew gets the message and does not tread on Linda
The Dissident Frogman morphs whilst talking to Andrew. Paul and Philip pretend not to notice
Even the hard core started to feel the strain after a while…. but he was just ‘resting his eyes’ really. Yes… another highly successful blogger bash!
November 30th, 2003 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
Thirty five bloggers, assorted members of the commentariat and sundry camp followers descended on Samizdata.net HQ with wild gleams in their eyes (and not just Andrew Dodge) last night and the final hard core did not slither out into the damp London daylight until about 9:00 am this morning! I shall post more images of the proceedings but for now… 
November 30th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
There may be rather sluggish posting from the London contingent of Samizdata.net contributors and commentariat tonight as we are about to have the Fourth British Blogger Bash in Chelsea However if anyone disgraces themselves… …I will be sure to sneak away from the proceedings and post incriminating pictures November 29th, 2003 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
The conference of the Libertarian Alliance and Libertarian International will be in London starts tomorrow and it is not too late to come if you wish. It last from Saturday 22nd to Sunday 23rd November 2003. It is possible to register and pay on-line. The speakers include fellow Samizdatista David Carr and serial Samizdata commenter Paul Coulam. I hope to meet up with a few of you there. November 21st, 2003 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
This remark by ‘G’ posted by Iraqi blogger Salam Pax pretty much perfectly sums up why I have such contempt for most of the protestors:
Amen to that, Bro! November 21st, 2003 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
George Monbiot has had a revelation… a few decades later than it should have been, but hey, better late than never. Having had the rare pleasure of meeting George Monbiot in the flesh, I was somewhat incredulous to read of his sudden insight that the only plausible way to end capitalism is with totalitarianism rather than caring sharing ‘democracy’:
Of course the choking weed of ‘democratic’ regulatory statism will continue to bugger up that great impersonal global capitalist wealth generation machine for quite a while yet. However in the long run Monbiot is quite right that the only way to actually kill off that protean virus-like thing called capitalism is to kill 20 or 30 million people in the developed world… and that ain’t gonna happen. Nevertheless, do not expect Monbiot to abandon his attempt to replace as many several social interactions as possible with collective political interactions any time soon (euphemistically called ‘making the world more democratic’). In many ways, his sudden realisation that he cannot wish capitalism out of existence by calling for a show of hands will make him more keen on gaming the system to achieve his ends, much the same way Ralph Nader holds himself up to be a ‘consumer advocate’ (and what could be more ‘capitalist’ that a ‘consumer’, right?) and speaking outside the tradition left wing meta-context. November 19th, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Do not listen to the lies of those who would describe the protesters as hypocritical apologists for mass murdering fascism. Being caring, sharing people, the smiling protestors who will be marching through London to protest the visit of George Bush to Britain, will be decrying the state of unemployment in Iraq (Bush strangely seems to get no credit at all for his protectionist, anti-globalisation economic policies). The brutal, uncaring British and American capitalists now in occupation of that hapless country have, with malice of forethought, simply thrown previously industrious workers on the scrap heap of life without the slightest concern for their well being. Hundred of highly skilled ‘information retrieval’ experts that were happily at work debriefing people in every city, town and village in Iraq are now reduced to pouring through the ‘help wanted’ add in the Guardian as they look for alternative uses for their skills with pliers, blowtorches and electricity. The management and workers in the chemical industry of that once proud nation, the people who gained world fame from the use of their products in Halabja, are almost to a man reduced to flipping burgers and slicing donner kebabs or working in Syria. Is there no end to the iniquities of global capitalism? And so it is hardly surprising that the people who will be baying for Bush’s downfall were conspicuously absent on the streets in March of 1988, when Iraqi industry was humming along rather nicely producing useful products, not to feed the evil capitalist Bushist machine, but for local use in Iraq by local Iraqi people, and who could possibly object to that? 
Mother and child sleeping well thanks to better science! I mean, it must all be true, Michael Moore said so! November 17th, 2003 | 64 comments - (Comments are closed)
Over on White Rose I have put up some remarks by Josie Appleton of Spiked On-Line regarding ID Cards. To which all I can add is… yeah! And while you are at it, you might like to check out Trevor Mendham’s worthy anti-ID cards campaign on iCan.  November 15th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
“[…] the cards do represent an attack upon the culture of liberty – upon our sense that we can do as we please within the law, and mix freely with others. What ID cards represent is a society where we are constantly having to answer for ourselves – constantly having to say who we are, to prove our identity to officialdom. They also symbolise a society where we are mistrustful of our fellow citizens. In Blunkett-world, we should only trust those who have become a member of the ID-card community, and are allowing the powers that be to keep tabs on them.” November 15th, 2003 | Comments are closed
The redoubtable Dissident Frogman has created a desktop image that spells out what a lot of us really think about the issue of mandatory National ID Cards 
click for larger image November 14th, 2003 | Comments are closed
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Update: And the 
