“[…] 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.”
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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
 In the comment section of David Carr‘s article here on Samizdata.net called Government Property, one of the commenters, Tim Haas, suggested the inimitable Dissident Frogman should come up with a suitable graphic… and indeed he has! 
click for larger image November 14th, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Low cost airline RyanAir is a subject that gets mixed feelings from this blog’s different contributors. Their latest problem is an EU ruling that affects their French and Belgian operations from the British Isles because the preferential rates offered to RyanAir amount to a state subsidy (funny how state subsidies to farmers do not seem to get the same response, eh?) because the airports in question are all state owned:
The solution is screamingly obvious. Privatise all the frigging airports in Belgium and France and the problem goes away! Duh. November 13th, 2003 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
As I prefer to argue matters from first principles rather than on the basis of falsely self-legitimising artefacts of state such as legal documents, I rarely discuss, much less quote, the much vaunted US Constitution. Yet I think any reasonable reading of those lines above would say that the objective at hand when it was written was to safeguard the freedom to express views, particularly political views, in any manner, so long as it was done peaceably. So I can only assume that Democratic Party Presidential wannabe Wes Clark1 takes the view that speech and press mean literally spoken word and mechanical press, and thus the Amendment does not actually refer to expression, and thus does not cover anything not literally speech or printed media produced with a honking great press, such as the Internet or anything else not literally speech or press. How else does one explain his support for prosecuting people who engage in political expression by desecrating US flags? Of course the argument often used is that burning a US flag pisses off some people in the USA so much that it is likely to cause violence. Funny how the same people who make that argument usually also oppose the same argument when it is applied to so-called ‘hate speech’… but being a left winger, I guess Wes Clark is at least being consistent in wanting political control over unpopular forms of expression unlike the more inconsistent conservative ‘hand on heart’ supporters who want to turn the US flag into an inviolate icon whilst insisting on the right to call a fag a fag and a spick a spick. 1 = British readers will be fascinated to know this is the same clown who wanted to start a shooting war between Russia and NATO in June, 1998. This is the guy who will save us from ‘that madman and threat to world peace, George Bush’. Aiyiyi… November 13th, 2003 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
With apologies to Bob Dylan… A welcome new addition to the blogopshere is David Smith, the economics editor for The Sunday Times. More and more well known journalists are seeing blogging as a useful adjunct to their work. Blogging is here to stay, ladies and gents. David’s latest blog article is entitled How high is the next peak in base rates?… and he started off with an article with somewhat broader appeal called George Bush’s scorched-earth economics policy. The EconomicsUK Blog promises to be a regular stop for economists, policy wonks and politicos! Welcome to the blogosphere, David!  November 12th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has announced that it will be pressing for a ban on using technological techniques to allow parents to choose the gender of their children. The Telegraph reports:
So what we are being told is that the main reason for banning this technique is that it is distasteful to the majority of British people. Not that it is inherently bad, just that it is unpopular. This is enough for millions of people and all of government to justify the threat of violence against anyone who dares to try and order their private lives a certain way. As a result, I am wondering why when someone says something else about another widely unpopular and abominated practice, far from the Tribunes of the People leaping to book legislative time in Parliament to pass more laws, they are investigating the speaker of these words for possible criminal prosecution. Speak out against homosexuality, even though only the most purblind would claim the majority of people do not find homosexual practices really distasteful, and you will find yourself up in front of the Beak with some explaining to do. Why not just give the force of coercive law to what ‘The British Public’ think about that too? Why not lend the hammer of state to every prejudice that is widely held by ‘the people’? Next time you hear George Monbiot or Peter Hain talking about making society more democratic, I suggest you take the time to figure out what that really means. November 12th, 2003 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
Music is a very subjective thing and so it is hard to say something is ‘good’ music without adding what that really means is that it is good for me. I had assumed for quite some years that the fact I regarded almost all the popular music I heard on the radio or TV as dismal crap was more indicative that I had reached a certain age where I was just perminently out of phase with younger tastes, rather than some sudden collective inability of the modern pop music industry to be creative… No, it had to be me. Maybe 10 years ago there was a narrow tributary off the seething mainstream that I could swim in musically, but that was clearly no longer the case. Well, maybe not. Whilst wandering past the Virgin Megastore on the King’s Road in Chelsea yesterday I heard what sounded like a rather danceable bit of vaguely sinister pop/darkwave/electronica that sucked me into the shop irresistibly. Upon asking at the desk what was being played, I was surprised to discover it was a track called Vertigo (extended mix), which is a remix of bubblegum popstress par excellence Holly Valance‘s latest song ‘State of Mind’ on a CD EP single. It sounds like Siouxsie & The Banshees (think ‘cities in dust’) being morphed with Kylie at her most virally and annoyingly catchy… yeah, yeah, I know… hard to imagine. I bought the extended play CD single and slunk out into the street worrying about the state of my ‘cred’… and have been unable to stop playing it since. Anyway, I guess it is nice to know that, circa 2003, a teen singer in a tiny skirt can front something that brings a pleasing snarl even to the lips of a doomed and jaded old geezer such as myself… plus I rather liked the delightfully arrogant and essentially meaningless video for ‘State of Mind’ on the CD. Ah the joys of Western civilisation. 
Holly does darkwave, sort of… and surprisingly well November 12th, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
These simple truisms go a long way to explaining MP & blogger Tom Watson‘s support for passing laws regarding the use of fireworks. On his blog, and on this blog in our comments section, the Honourable Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East calls for more regulation and makes it clear that fireworks will simply be banned if that does not produce the desired effects. And yet when talking about an incident in which a woman was injured by some idiot throwing a firework he himself notes:
�and then proceeds to ignore that fact from then on. I do not know Tom Watson personally but I heard him speak in Houses of Parliament and he seems both affable and reasonable for a politician. But as Brian Micklethwait’s article today says regarding the ‘problem’ of obesity, it is only to be expected that a person whose salary depends on passing more laws to, well, always insist on passing more laws. The United States, for all the many, varied and egregious flaws in that constitutional republic, has at least managed to some degree to place whole sections of civil society off-limits to the law making Tom Watson’s of the world. For example free speech is largely protected against erosion in ways that have not proved to be the case in Britain with the advent of so called ‘hate speech’ laws. In so many ways it is where the USA has managed to constrain regulatory democracy from intruding wherever vox populi wishes it to, and the resulting politicizations of social interactions that entails, that its vast economic power and admirable civil virtues spring. Similarly it is where the United States has departed from those principles (RICO, civil forfeiture, IRS reversal of burden of proof, etc.) that things have gone very badly wrong. And therein lays the problem at the heart of modern democratic states: so much of society has been made amenable to literal force (i.e. political action) that it makes little difference in the long run who is in control of the democratic means of coercion, the end result for civil liberties and several ownership (including self-ownership) will be the same. Face it, in Britain there is little to choose between Tory Michael Howard and NuLabour David Blunkett when it comes to which of them has abridged more civil liberties whilst serving as Home Secretary. Likewise, Janet Reno may have presided over the mass murder of a bunch of wackos in Waco, Texas, but is anyone really going to claim John Ashcroft is not continuing the process of shredding the much vaunted Bill of Rights? The problem is the whole meta-context of seeing as axiomatic that politics is always acceptable just so long as it gets the imprimatur from a plurality of the politically engaged. Until enough people are willing to look to the moral basis of a law and simply refuse to accept the legitimacy of laws just because they are laws, we will always have politicians singing their siren song for your votes to empower not you, but themselves, by offering to solve your every problem with more laws. It is not enough to just not vote for them, you must find innovative ways to not cooperate with them.
November 10th, 2003 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Drug ‘War’ continues to dement US society in new and innovative ways that even a cynic such as myself find hard to credit. This is truly staggering:
I am sorry, but some square headed jerks in blue shirts start waving guns around a bunch of children who are just going about their business at school, and it is reported that parents are “questioning the wisdom of police tactics”? Questioning the wisdom of police tactics? To quote that wit and sage Eddy Murphy, get the fuck outa here. I would be looking for some heads-on-spikes if a child of mine was subjected to that sort of treatment. How this incident has not resulted in angry mobs in the streets throwing rocks is beyond me. What does it take to really piss these people off? So… attention all parents in Goose Creek: are you starting to have second thoughts about the wisdom of entrusting your children to state ‘care’ yet? Unbelievable. 
And now class, today’s important lesson: The state is not your friend. Any questions? via Catallarchy.net November 9th, 2003 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Like some undead creature from a B-movie, the festering Political Compass refuses to lie down and die. I have not changed my views of this daft test one jot. Hand me another sharpened stake. November 8th, 2003 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
I doubt the BBC particularly wants my off-the-cuff attempt to pee in their iCan pool and I really look forward to goading Johnathan Miller into setting up an anti-TV licence campaign on iCan. However with the Cambridge Women in Black we see an example of exactly the sort of campaign the BBC had in mind when it set up its strange vaguely bloggish monstrosity. They state:
Note that the woes of the Iraqi people are not due to decades of Ba’athist mass murder and repression but are from the war and sanctions… sanctions during which large palaces and grandiose mosques were constructed in Iraq. Still, I do not suppose I should hold that against the ‘Cambridge Women in Black’ because after all, they state they are mourning “all victims of terrorism and war”… and never said anything about the victims of national socialist tyranny. story via The Daily Ablution November 7th, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
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