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]
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So Dianne Abbott’s decision to send her son to a private school is indefensible.
Says who? Says Ms Abbott:
On BBC2’s This Week, Miss Abbott, a member of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, said: “I’ve said very little about this because anything you say just sounds self-serving and hypocritical. You can’t defend the indefensible.
Since Ms Abbot appears to be lost for words, allow me to assist. Here are a few things Diane Abbott could say:
- “I have realised that education is too important to be left to the state.”
- “Perhaps everyone should have as much choice as I do.”
- “If I am not prepared to condemn my child to the state system, why should anyone else?”
- “The pursuit of equality for all means everyone gets crap.”
But Ms Abbot has not said any of those things. And she never will.
I have been struggling to find a slick way to use the phrase the ‘gobbledegook’ in this sorry little saga but however I stack it, it still sounds clunky.
Let’s just say, as ye sow so shall ye reap. [From the UK Times.]
TURKEY farmers are barricading their premises to prevent the spread of a savage disease after Brussels banned the only drug that can eradicate it. Ten million turkeys being reared for the £100 million Christmas trade are at risk from blackhead (Histomanos meleagridis), which can destroy entire flocks.
The disease, which enters the gut of birds and attacks their liver, has broken out in France, Germany and the Netherlands and farmers fear that it will be carried into Britain by migrating birds. East Anglia and Kent are particularly vulnerable.
Two predictions:
- It will transpire that this drug was banned as a result of ferocious lobbying by the enviro-mentalists.
- The EUnuchs will try and find some way to blame this whole farrago on the Americans in general and George Bush in particular.
As luck would have it, there is no category called ‘Honking Great Hypocrisies’ so I have had to settle for filing this under ‘Education’ instead.
But that’s appropriate too because this story is nothing if not instructive:
Labour leaders backed Diane Abbott, the Left-wing MP, yesterday over her decision to educate her son privately, days after condemning a Tory MP for saying he would do the same.
Ms Abbott has used her wealth, status and privilege to give her child the best, as is befitting the ruling elite. In fact, Ms Abbott is merely following in the best traditions of Britain’s socialist politicians who have always had a curious and inexplicable penchant for both private education and healthcare (while publicly denouncing both).
Labour MPs were taken by surprise by the news that she had chosen the £10,000-a-year City of London Boys School for her son, by-passing four comprehensives in Hackney and Stoke Newington, the constituency she represents.
In the past Miss Abbott has criticised the Prime Minister, for rejecting schools in Islington and sending his sons to the London Oratory School in Fulham, and Harriet Harman, the Solicitor General, for choosing a grammar school outside her constituency. She once said of Miss Harman: “She made the Labour Party look as if we do one thing and say another.”
Now where would anyone get that crazy, zany idea?
Is this a case of ‘hiding in plain sight’?
A detective responsible for investigating racially motivated crime lives in a home filled with Nazi SS uniforms and tributes to Hitler, The Telegraph can reveal.
Det Con Linda Daniels, who is married to a known racist and BNP member who believes the Holocaust was “exaggerated”, works in the community safety unit at the police station in Notting Hill, one of the most ethnically diverse areas of London.
The unit, one of many set up across the city as a result of the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, investigates “hate crimes”, including “racist crime, domestic violence, homophobic crime and hate mail”.
Her home, however, which she shares with her 52-year-old husband Keith Beaumont, contains a life-size mannequin of a Nazi SS soldier, with swastikas on its helmet and belt, in the hallway.
Or perhaps its more case of ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’? Do you think Detective Constable Daniels suspects her hubby at all? Surely the swastikas are just a bit of a giveaway?
A mere coincidence? Not when election results go wrong:
A fire burning out of control in southern California has grown four times bigger in less than 24 hours.
Several thousand people have been evacuated, as the flames move towards built-up areas.
By Tuesday at the latest, there will be op-ed in the Guardian blaming this on Arnold Schwarzenneger.
All I advocate is that the free market is the only known method of solving the calculational problem of allocating work to those talents that can engage in it most productively. The free market means in practice comfort, prosperity and abundance for all economically as well as maximising the sphere of personal autonomy within which we can enjoy our liberty and prosperity. Attempts to find other solutions to this key social problem have always been failures, practically and conceptually.
– Paul Coulam
Another day, another public enemy.
The campaign to add so-called ‘junk food’ to the tobacco-alcohol ‘axis of evil’ has been fulminating for quite a while. There is nothing on the Statute books yet but I think we all know that it is only a matter of time.
In the not-too-distant future, the Samizdata will be reporting the police raids on clandestine onion-ring factories and publishing underground recipes for ‘academic and research purposes only’. By that time, I sincerely hope that there will be a wider understading of the social-working class mentality that has led to that woeful state of affairs. Nothing could illustrate that mentality more starkly than this article from the UK Times:
People are incapable of saying no to junk food and other health risks, and it is the duty of the State to influence them, according to a senior public health official.
In defence of the “nanny state”, Professor Dr John Ashton, regional director of public health in the North West, said yesterday that government intervention was needed to protect those incapable of protecting themselves. “Individuals cannot protect themselves from bioterrorism, epidemics of Sars, the concerted efforts of the junk food industry, drug dealers and promoters of tobacco and alcohol,” he said.
Thus lumping together consumer choice, forces of nature and murderous aggression into one misleading and grossly stupid soundbite.
He said that it was the job of the State, not of the individual alone, to resist health problems brought about by drink, food or drugs. The State had a duty to protect and influence young people, many of whom were building up problems by adopting sedentary lifestyles and eating junk food.
“It is in no one’s interest to have an obese generation, riddled with diabetes and degenerative heart disease and a burden on the taxpayer,” he said. “The Government has a duty to take action about it.
It is in no-one’s interest to have a power-obsessed generation, riddled with this kind of contemptuous paternalism.
The State is the guardian of the weak and underprivileged. It should intervene to encourage people to eat healthily and take exercise.
“Furthermore, it has a duty to ensure that those less well-off in society have safe, warm, low-cost housing, convenient transport links to shops and amenities, and the protection of police on the streets. The State is our protector and we must defend its right to fulfil that function.”
There are no citizens, only ‘clients’.
He has three grown-up sons, but recently became a father again with his partner Maggi Morris, 47, a director of public health in Preston. Their baby has been named Fabian Che Jed, after the Fabian Society, Che Guevara and the Old Testament prophet Jedediah.
And doesn’t that say it all.
There are lots of dark forces at play here but the oft-overlooked one is the element of kulturkampf. What these people mean by ‘junk food’ is hamburgers, hot-dogs and milk-shakes. For people like Dr.Ashton the hamburger has become a symbol of what they consider to be American cultural imperialism and that is the real basis of their animus.
Quite aside from the fact that the fashionable demonisation of ‘fatty food’ is ill-founded (which it is), an Indian or Chinese meal contains more fat and calories than McDonalds could ever dish up. As does the homegrown popular delicacy of ‘Fish and Chips’ (all deep fried). Nonetheless when these people speak it is ‘burgers’ that they invariably identify as the alleged enemies of public health.
The ‘War against Junk Food’ has been carefully crafted to fulfil both the practical and ideological needs of the social-working class. Not only will its successful prosecution provide them with more wealth and status but it also opens another front in the cultural and political war against America.
[My thanks to Nigel Meek who posted this article to the Libertarian Alliance Forum]
It took a while but the truth is no longer ‘out there’, it has landed smack dab onto the pages of the Guardian. Yes, the Guardian.
This long-overdue confirmation of the real centre-left agenda comes courtesy of David Walker who is gleeful about the viral growth of tax-consumers:
Tony – reform is my middle name – Blair isn’t obviously the public sector’s friend. Nor, for all his protestations of affection, is Gordon Brown, the man who insisted on putting the safety of London’s tube travellers in the hands of profit-maximising companies.
Yet under them the public sector prospers. Since 1999 it has just kept growing as a source of jobs; the UK’s approximation to full employment owes a lot to council, NHS and government recruitment. Paranoid rightwingers, for whom the Guardian’s thick advertising sections are a weekly torment, don’t know the half of it. Under Labour, “indirect” employment has also boomed. Yesterday John Prescott published an evaluation of his new deal for communities, a set of participative projects in run-down areas. Between the lines it noted that a sort of reserve army of tenants and activists has been recruited, subsisting of government grants.
Imagine how ‘paranoid’ those ‘rightwingers’ would get if they suspected the truth about how many people are suckling at the state teat? Why, it would be enough to drive them round the twist.
Now here come new figures for direct government employment. Whitehall is booming. During the past year, the Inland Revenue took on 8,500 extra people, at a time when total civil service numbers increased by nearly 4%. Even the tiny Department of Culture, Media and Sport, 450 strong in April last year, added 30 people to its roster.
Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice!!! Roll on the glorious day when everyone works for the state!
In theory, that ought to mean up to 6 million households -perhaps 15 million people – with a direct interest in buoyant public expenditure, and hence in having a government likely to keep it that way. Labour’s formula for permanent re-election, you might think. But turkeys will vote for Christmas.
And to think it is capitalists like me who are generally regarded as ‘self-serving’.
Not once does Mr.Walker even attempt to invoke the mendacious tropes about ‘social justice’ and ‘caring’ and while his candour cannot be regarded as admirable it is, nonetheless, refreshing. His is as bold an admission as I can imagine that the motivation behind voting Labour is to increase one’s chances of joining or staying on the government payroll. Of course, libertarians have been saying this for years and I suppose I must extend some muted thanks to Mr.Walker for publicly admitting that we were right.
But being right is one thing and prevailing is something else. In order to prevail this message must filter down to the remaining 45 million or so other British people who struggle to support themselves and carry the burden of this parasite class on their backs.
Ou readers may have noticed that the Samizdata was down for a few hours today. It appears that the cause was sustained DOS attack directed to our hosting company Hosting Matters.
Little Green Footballs was also affected and has further details.
Independent TV news has just reported that Tony Blair has been admitted to hospital with a suspected heart irregularity.
No updates yet.
The ambitions of the political classes are danger enough but let no-one underestimate the threat posed by the therapy culture:
New York City taxpayers are probably going to be liable not only for the physical injuries inflicted in Wednesday’s Staten Island Ferry crash — which include ten deaths and about 60 injuries resulting in hospitalization, some of them horrific — but also for damages potentially payable to all of the unhurt passengers, widely estimated to number 1,500. A “federal maritime doctrine allows all those who were in the face of danger and who suffered emotional distress to file for compensation, even if they were not physically injured”. Among likely claims, according to Columbia law dean David Leebron, are those from “passengers who claim to now have a fear of ferries that affects their ability to commute and earn a living”.
Damn, I’m thinking of making a claim myself. So what if I actually live in London? So what if I was 3000 miles away when the tragedy occured? I saw it on the news, didn’t I? As a result I have been emotionally scarred, my life has been ruined, I can’t sleep at nights, I keep getting flashbacks and…yadda, yadda, yadda.
Of course, the therapy culture wouldn’t exist at all if it wasn’t so well incentivised with rewards.
These must surely be salad days for our Labour government. Free of any concerns about an effective opposition, they can roll up their sleeves, spit on their hands and get down to some really serious looting:
Gordon Brown is considering imposing capital gains tax on the sale of all houses in an attempt to plug the widening gulf between his spending plans and public finances.
The Telegraph has learnt that Treasury officials have held confidential discussions with private sector tax consultants on extending the levy to domestic properties.
The reform would mean homeowners facing a tax of up to 40 per cent on any profits made from the sale of their home, which for many people is their principal asset. The levy would, however, raise £11 billion a year, equivalent to 4p on the basic rate of income tax, according to government figures.
I think some clarification is required because the opening paragraph is not entirely correct. Currently a tax of 40% is charged on all capital gains which includes the capital gain made on the sale of property or land. However, one’s principal dwelling home has always been exempt from this charge. Now HMG is proposing to abolish this exemption (although the effect is the same as imposing the tax on ordinary homeowners).
The Chancellor has already indicated, however, that he believes that homeowners are “lightly taxed” and is looking for additional methods to control the buoyant housing market.
‘Lightly taxed’?!! The guy has got some nerve. And it’s abject drivel that this is about controlling the ‘bouyant housing market. This has been on the cards for a while. Gordon Brown has already plundered private pension funds and I knew that it was only a matter of time before he turned his avarice on the last stores of privately owned wealth. There was no way he could leave all that booty untouched with a ballooning public sector into which money must be shovelled like coal into a roaring furnace.
It’s a no-brainer for the government. A general election is still as much as three years away and they are going to win it handsomely anyway. In the meantime they can placate their opponents on the left and reward their supporters in the state sector.
The way things are now, there is nothing to stop the state from growing until the bones of the last taxpayer have been picked clean and left to bleach in the sun.
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Who Are We? 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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