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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Tax is non-negotiable

· Opinions on liberty · UK affairs

‘Petrol Price Rise Announced’ blares the BBC Headline:

Fuel duty will rise by 1.28p a litre from 1 October, the Treasury has confirmed.

The increase, which will add five pence a gallon to petrol and diesel prices, is in line with inflation, it said.

So it isn’t a ‘price rise’ at all. It’s a tax increase

I think the public has a right to be told in less ambivalent terms.

September 25th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)

The kiss of death

· Sui generis · UK affairs

The Conservative Party has been blessed with a ringing endorsement from none other than Polly Toynbee:

A remarkable document has emerged from the Conservative frontbench. Search it from cover to cover and few would guess its provenance. Its deceptively dull title hides a radical departure: Old Europe? Demographic change and pension reform, by David Willetts, the shadow secretary for work and pensions, transforms Conservative family policy.

Not even his economics smells of Conservatism. The pensions problem does not, Willetts declares, need more saving by today’s workers. “Europe needs more consumption, more spending and more borrowing. Keynes warned in the 30s that ageing societies with high levels of savings and not many investment opportunities face a deflationary nightmare.”

So, is this just a devlishly cunning bit of cognitive jiu-jitsu to throw their opponents? I don’t believe they are anywhere near clever enough for that.

I think the end is nigh.

September 24th, 2003 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)

A warning salvo

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation

This strikes me as rather draconian:

The software giant Microsoft declared war on internet paedophiles last night by announcing the closure of its thousands of UK-based chatrooms used by millions of people.

It will also restrict access to chatroom systems around the world, allowing only identifiable, adults living in the same country to use them.

The decision is a significant precedent, the first time one of the biggest internet service providers has cut off an element of the World Wide Web in reaction to concerns over misuse.

Calls to place all internet chat rooms under strict state regulation and control cannot be far off.

September 24th, 2003 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)

Yankee euphemisms go home!!

· Personal views

Now this is one American import we could well do without especially as it appears to be selling rather well.

Among the distributors are Simon Jenkins who devotes his latest column in the UK Times to ‘The Untimely Death of a Liberal Generation’:

Three British liberals have died in the past few days, all before their time. Jim Thompson, Gareth Williams and Hugo Young were still in their sixties. Each was outstanding in his profession, as priest, lawyer and journalist. They cut their political teeth with the rise of the welfare state and sharpened them on the Thatcher era. They lived to see what they regarded as Thatcherism’s denouement in the Labour landslide of 1997. They are gone. Something has died with them.

I certainly hope so because, as the brief obituaries which follow make abundantly clear, these men were not ‘liberals’ they were socialists.

I don’t care if I am ploughing a lonely furrow, I am not going to stop campaigning against this gross distortion of language.

September 24th, 2003 | 47 comments - (Comments are closed)

Wherever you go, whatever you do

· Big Brother · Surveillance · Technology

There are several disturbing features of this panoptican state in which we will soon be living not the least of which is the sheer breakneck pace of its assembly.

It seems like only yesterday that speed cameras suddenly appeared on every lamppost but even they are so much old hat now:

Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems are set to be deployed by police forces throughout the UK as a major plank of a campaign of “denying criminals the use of the roads.” The system will link up to the DVLA, Police National Computer and a National Insurance Database, with these links alone giving it the capability of identifying untaxed, unroadworthy and uninsured vehicles, but they’ll also facilitate police surveillance operations, the swapping of data on “prolific offenders” between forces and, well, other stuff… Take this, for instance:

“Eventually the database will link to most CCTV systems in town centres, meaning that all vehicles filmed on one of the many cameras protecting Bedford High Street, for instance, can be checked against the database and the movements of wanted cars traced to help with serious crime investigations.”

As far as the drivers are concerned, well, that just about wraps it up, folks.

But truly one hardly has time to digest one horror before the next one comes galloping over the horizon. Dr.Sean Gabb has suggested that our rulers our ‘drunk with the technology’ but I am not so sure. More like they are stone-cold sober and determined to get the whole country locked down before the public realises exactly what has been done to them.

September 24th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)

Pilger-bot

· Middle East & Islamic · North American affairs

That lonely, marginalised, oppressed siren voice in the wilderness John Pilger has managed to escape from the daggers of the vicious McCarthyite witch-hunt that has cowed so many into a silence that has prevented them from speaking the truth about America and the war in Iraq.

This brave, determined peace-campaigner has finally succeeded in casting off the shackles of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that has, hitherto, so ruthlessly crushed his dissent with a one-hour television special screened earlier tonight on ITV1, Britain’s most popular TV channel. There is no link here, mostly because I couldn’t be bothered to go and look for one.

Neither could I actually be bothered to watch the programme. I have been exposed to enough of Pilger’s toxic, manipulative propoganda to know in advance exactly the kind of things he was going to be whining about. In fact, I think I can even summarise them:

Bush. Warmongers. Neo-Conservatives. Oil. Conspiracy. World domination. Capitalism. Globalisation. Unfair trade. Bush. Oil. Rumsfeld. Wolfowitz. CIA. Mossad. Inequality. Poverty. Despair. Hopelessness. Arms trade. Environment. Sharon. Zionist thugs. Oppression. Cruelty. Palestinians. Bush. Oil. Blair. NATO. Poodles. American bullying. Human rights. Amnesty International. Unilateral. Nuremburg trials. Nazis. Aggression. Bush regime. Conquer the world. Crush dissent. United Nations is our only hope.

And those were the good bits!

September 23rd, 2003 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)

It’s for the children

· Surveillance

I really don’t know how all these so-called ‘civil libertarians’ can possibly live with themselves. Don’t they care about the children?

Children are frightened of speeding traffic and want more measures to make roads safer, a survey has suggested.

Three-quarters of children questioned said they wanted more speed cameras.

About 70% thought drivers should go slower near their school, with almost as many wanting drivers to slow down near their house.

Half of the 1,500 children surveyed wanted safer places to cross the road.

The findings of the survey of children aged 7-14 in city schools by road safety charity Brake were released to coincide with the annual Road Safety Week.

A good friend of mine who has been professionaly engaged in market research has provided me with chapter and verse on just how ludicrously easy it is to get the answers that the researcher wants. Quadruple the easiness when the views being solicited are those of children.

A ‘road safety charity’?

September 23rd, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)

Was that a debut?

· How very odd! · Media & Journalism

I have just heard a reporter on the BBC ‘Newsnight’ show describe the European Common Agricultural Policy as an expensive ‘boondoggle’.

I cannot recall ever having heard that term used in the mainstream British press before. Is that a first?

September 22nd, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)

Pasta Republic

· European Union

I don’t know about Denmark but it sounds as if there is something rather rotten going on in the state of Italy according to this report in the UK Times:

ROMANS are to be offered cut-price family meals in a novel attempt by the city’s authorities to curb inflation that has plagued Italy since the introduction of euro notes and coins at the beginning of last year.

The scheme, called Shopping Sport, starts on October 1 in the city’s 140 street markets. Stallholders will be asked to offer shoppers a basket containing enough ingredients to make a meal for four people, including meat or fish, vegetables and dessert, for €12 (£8.34).

Restaurants, bars, hairdressers, garages, plumbers and supermarkets have also been asked to join the campaign. For example, restaurants will be expected to offer a starter, a pizza and a pudding for €12 — and it should be possible to get a morning cappuccino and croissant for €1.50 (£1.05). The authorities will publish a list of the businesses taking part.

Begging your pardon and all that, but doesn’t that sound an awful lot like price-fixing?

Newspapers run stories almost daily on the “real” inflation rate, which some put as high as 30%. Even everyday items such as bread and milk have risen by 16% and a bus ticket by 29% since December 2001, according to Consumer’s Contract, a group that lobbies for consumers’ rights.

Italians voted with their purses last week, staging a consumer “strike” in which as many as 40% of people were reported to have taken part in some areas. Further action is planned around Christmas. Some shops also shut for the day in a sign of solidarity with their customers.

And doesn’t that sound an awful lot like galloping inflation?

So galloping inflation and price-fixing. Isn’t that precisely the kind of Banana Republic economics that the introduction of the single currency was supposed to banish?

[My thanks to

September 22nd, 2003 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)

It’s ‘Make Your Mind Up’ time

· UK affairs

There are times (rare, it must be said) when I feel a pang of sympathy for our politicians.

Well, no, perhaps ‘sympathy’ is too strong a word. Let’s just say that I do occasionally recognise the thorniness of the predicaments in which they find themselves. Such as this one:

“We have quite a lot of evidence that illustrates that the council tax is very near the limit of acceptability in a number of areas,” said Mr Raynsford. “The increases in the last two or three years have really taxed the patience of a lot of people. They have been very substantial increases and we have to look at options for change including the possibility of finding other sources of revenue.”

Mr Raynsford’s remarks are evidence of Government concern that soaring council tax could severely damage Labour’s popularity in the run-up to the next general election.

The increases have led to threats of civil disobedience by pensioners in Devon who say they cannot afford the rises on their fixed incomes and are refusing to pay.

So what’s the problem? Just lower the taxes, right? Ah, well if only it was as easy as that. See the politicians realise that onerous taxes are making them unpopular but the only way to reduce that burden is to slash public spending and that will make them equally (if not more) unpopular. What’s a government minister to do?

Truly this is almost a picture perfect snapshot of a schitzoid nation. The common folk are always grumbling menacingly about the taxes they are forced to pay but at the same time they are not prepared to entertain even a suggestion of a reduction in the size of government (national or local) nor any diminution in the level of state largesse which they demand with an unquenchable vigour.

Oft-times this infected body politic breaks out in pustules that send the political classes scurrying around to find a less tender part of the body onto which to shift the burden. I suppose that method of treatment has a limited shelf-life.

It is slightly worrying that even after the Thatcher years there still seems to be no clear understanding that state activism comes at a high price. The British people appear to want low taxes and big government without appreciating that they cannot possibly have both. Until such time that sufficient numbers of them have settled on which one they want, these techtonic plates of expectation are going to continue grinding against each other, leading to frequent tremors and occasional quakes.

[Note to non-UK readers: ‘Council taxes’ are property-based taxes collected and spent at local level.]

September 21st, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)

The real curse of bureaucrats

· Economics, Business & Globalization

I would love to open a current account with the World Bank. Imagine having those portentious words printed all over your cheques. I wonder what rate of interest they would give me on my savings? Do they do mortgages? How about financial planning?

I would truly be tempted to make such enquiries were it not the fact that the ‘World Bank’ seem to regard themselves as being way above all that kind of vulgar, selfish, money-grubbing. Much better to channel their energies into pious waffle:

The real curse of world poverty is the lack of access to crucial services such as education and healthcare, the World Bank has warned.

Poverty is indeed a curse but it is a curse that can be so easily banished by the application of capitalism and property rights. Embrace those two pillars of civilisation and good education and healthcare will follow as naturally as night follows day.

One would have thought that, being ‘bankers’ and all, the paladins of the World Bank would know that. If they do, they are keeping it very quiet. I wonder why?

And I also wonder why they appear to be so obsessed with tradeable services such as education and healthcare? Is that because their true constituents are the Western bureaucrats who hold a monopoly control over just those services? I don’t suppose they would be at all interested in expanding their empires? No, of course not. Heaven forfend.

I don’t think that the World Bank is interested in offering me a savings account. Nor are they interested in ending world poverty. Not when the wealth and status of the privileged class they belong to is sustained on the back of it.

September 21st, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)

Only half?

· Media & Journalism

Given the trademark timorousness of the British Conservative Party, I must grudgingly concede that this is something of a brave pronouncement by their standards:

The Conservatives are to propose that the television licence fee should be halved as part of a radical overhaul of the role of the BBC.

Why ‘halved’? Who does that help? What does that achieve? Why not scrap the iniquitous television tax altogether? ‘Half’ indeed. Pah! Presumably they don’t feel quite bold enough to go the whole hog.

I see an upside and a downside here. The upside is that I think this is the first time that the BBC’s looting rights have been publicly challenged in the mainstream. That’s a start. But it is only a start.

The downside is that the Conservatives cannot be entirely trusted to see through even this lily-livered compromise. All it takes is a Guardian op-ed denouncing them as rabid fascists for them to drop the idea like a hot brick and run away.

Even if that were not the case, the Conservatives actually have to be back in power in order to effect their semi-decent idea and the prospects of that happening are looking dimmer by the day.

‘Auntie’ is still a long way from threatened.

September 21st, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
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