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A hilarious outburst of flat-earth rhetoric from self-fisking socialist dinosaur Polly Toynbee:
Bang the drum for social democratic values. Give up pandering to the language of Thatcherism, of markets, individualism, consumerism. Stop trying to do good by stealth, stop running against public services. Spell out what good the state does and how much more it can do. The NHS is the most efficient health system in the world: now it is well financed, it can be the best. Education is already sweeping up the OECD tables: improving at this rate, we shall reach top ratings. Tell it like it is: only the state can buy the things that make people happiest. Eighties selfishness turned out to be self-defeating. Don’t blur the social democratic message, brand it on the national soul.
I invite you to read the rest of the article. Believe it or not, it gets even funnier.
[My thanks to reader Ian Brunton for the link.]
You may think the Belgians are a bit presumptuous by granting themselves jurisdiction over the entire planet in the matter of alleged war-crimes, but they have nothing on our Home Secretary David Blunkett who is trying to turn everyone in the developed world into lab rats:
Even before the Government has decided how to proceed with its identity card scheme, the Home Secretary David Blunkett claims to have persuaded his G8 colleagues to take a look at “smart” passports.
No firm commitment was made by Mr Blunkett’s G8 counter-parts at Monday’s meeting, and most of them were probably just being polite in expressing support in principle. But Mr Blunkett is seemingly determined to press ahead with a plan to require all British passports to contain chips capable of storing unique biometric information about the bearer, including fingerprints and iris scans.
I realise how much this sounds like wishful thinking but it does sound to me as if Mr.Blunkett’s G8 counter-parts were humouring him. As indeed they should. Not only is the technology referred to unlikely to work in the way that Mr.Blunkett has suggested or at all, but it is also to be hoped that his counter-parts have recognised this scheme as merely the latest manifestation of New Labour’s neurosis.
As per usual, the British Home Office has its portentious-sounding reasons. They have shuffled through their pack of disposable justifications and come up with stopping ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘terrorists’ as the raisons du jour and I can only assume that they are blissfully immune to the hollow ring which has now grown resonant enough to shatter glass.
If such technology could indeed prevent some terrible terrorist atrocity then it would, at least, be worthy of consideration (if not necessarily implementation) but surely everybody knows that it will do no such thing. Mr.Blunkett may as well claim that his biometric passports will reduce sun-spot activity, prevent child abuse and turn base metal into gold without being any less plausible.
Overwhelmingly, illegal immigrants and potential terrorists originate from Third World countries where no databases exist and few people have genuine passports let alone biometric ones. So they will continue to swan in to collect their welfare cheques in South London and plan bomb attacks in Manchester without so much as let or hindrance while the law-abiding, tax-paying British holidaymakers and business travellers get turned into day-release prisoners; watched, tracked and monitored feverishly to no end whatsoever.
But this is all a part of the game we play in Britain. Our political masters work night-and-day to come up with frightfully impressive techno-whizzbangs while we all turn away and pretend not to notice the godawful, augean mess they have made out of every single thing they have laid their hands on.
New Labour politicians are like the idiot children of wealthy tycoons, skilled only in lavishing around vast sums of other people’s money in a squalid attempt to purchase popularity and self-esteem. Scratch the surface and what you find is stupid, loathsome and incompetent. They are deserving of nothing except our unalloyed contempt.
Burglars and street robbers are to benefit from new rights under proposals announced today by the government.
The extension of the existing rights regime is contained in the Employment (Non-Lawful Activities) Consolidation Act 2003 which has passed its second reading in the House of Commons and is due to take effect from 1st January 2004. Under the new legislation, all burglars are street robbers will be entitled to a maximum of six weeks paid paternity leave and a similar period of statutory sick pay. If any burglar or street robber is a member of a gang or criminal organisation, they will also now be able to claim compensation for unfair dismissal.
A government spokesperson rejected criticisms of the new legislation:
It is simply an administrative measure designed to extend basic protections that already exist for all other employees.
The Equal Opportunities Commission broadly welcomed the new legislation but said it did not go nearly far enough. Spokesperson Elaine Simper-Sweetley said:
The lack of rights for workers in the crime industry is nothing less then scandalous. We believe that this is a step in the right direction but the government must do more to protect burglars from negligent and exploitative householders.
Ms.Simper-Sweetley added that the Commission would continue to campaign for existing Health & Safety legislation to be extended to protect both full and part-time criminals.
It is nought but a small step, and a hesitant one at that, but at least some Conservatives are starting to make the right noises about the BBC:
The Tories have pledged to rule nothing in and nothing out when it comes to pondering how the BBC should be financed in the future.
Culture spokesman John Whittingdale told BBC News Online that it was difficult to justify the current arrangement of the licence fee which he said faced growing public opposition.
Th irony of this being reported on the BBC news website is not lost on me but neither is the inference that the ‘growing public opposition’ is merely a Tory allegation instead of an objective fact. But even if it was a mere ‘allegation’ I am mildly encouraged that some Conservatives are prepared to level it. If this isn’t an opening shot across the bows of the hitherto inviolable shibboleth status of the BBC, then it is pretty convincing impression of one.
The Tory spokesman’s comments leaves the door open to everything from part-privatisation, subscriptions to the BBC’s digital programmes and the direct grant method.
Not exactly the kind of radicalism I have in mind but then I am not a politician and not, therefore, worried about ‘frightening the horses’ in the way that all politicans (be they Conservative or otherwise) are.
Time will tell whether the Conservatives are serious about depriving the BBC of its tax-cushion or whether the Tories infuriating paternalism is leading them to look for a less visible way to maintain the distorting state-subsidy.
But I will refrain from damning in advance and settle for some measure of satisfaction that the BBC’s reservoir of goodwill is rapidly dwindling away even among the political classes and if it is dawning on the Conservatives that we do not need ‘public service broadcasting’ then perhaps they may also realise that we don’t need ‘Culture Spokesmen’ either.
Still, given the circumstances, that is a quibble that I will reserve for another day.
I submit that it is a therapeutic, every so often, to remind ourselves about the horrors of communism.
A living testament to that horror can still be found today in Siberia. It is the road that runs from Magadan to Yakutsk, otherwise known as the ‘Road of Bones’.
It was built by political prisoners and slaves, countless numbers of whom were worked, frozen and starved to death in the process. Because the perma-frost makes the ground too hard to effect any burials, the bones of the cadavers were broken up and used as ballast upon which to build the road.
We will never know for sure how many lives were sacrificed to this ‘glorious people’s project’, but by repute, every metre of the road cost one human life. The road is 2000 kilometres long.
There are still many people in the world today who subscribe to this terrible, anti-human, homicidal psychosis.
Never forget. Never forgive. Remain vigilant and, above all, never ever, ever apologise for fighting back.
Last Thursday’s local council elections in England seems to have provided some evidence that the Conservative Party may still be twitching and not yet dead. They managed to pick up a whopping 566 seats nationwide, thus far exceeding all expectations, including my own. The Tories now control more local authorities than both Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined. I am far from convinced that this performance will reflect at parliamentary level but it does mean, for the time being at least, that Iain Duncan Smith keeps his job as party leader.
Scotland, though. Scotland is a very different and far more melancholy story. Last Thursday also saw elections to the regional assemblies in both Scotland and Wales but it was Scotland that returned the most worrying results. Even prior to last Thursday, Scottish politics is lock-down between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, both left-of-centre parties. Their main opposition comes from the Scottish Nationalist Party which is also (surprise, surprise) a left-wing operation. There are also a handful of squeaky, apologetic Scottish Conservatives who, it would seem, spend most of the time trying to keep their heads below the parapet (though, to be fair to them, they are seriously up against it).
Now one would think that the Scots had more than enough socialists to go round and keep everybody happy but, no. The biggest winner from the Thursday’s regional assembly elections were the Scottish Socialist Party, a class-war marxist outfit, who jumped from having one seat in the assembly to nine seats and a 5% share of the vote.
Apparently a growing number of Scots are getting tired of the milquetoast, watered-down version of socialism they have been getting and yearn for the real thing:
The SSP stands for the socialist transformation of society. To replace capitalism with an economic system based on democratic ownership and control of the key sectors of the economy. A system based on social need and environmental protection rather than private profit and ecological destruction.
The SSP do not control Scotland. Far from it. But they are now an electoral force to be reckoned with in that country and it means that an already left-of-centre administration is going to have to tack much further to the left to appease them and prevent their support from snowballing.
The country that gave Adam Smith and Andrew Carnegie to the world, is fast succumbing to the Endarkenment.
And that is no longer just my pejorative opinion. It is a view that is being enthusiastically endorsed by its proponents:
During the May Day protests, we are going to be in the City of London vacuuming up after capitalism.
We’ll be there with our vacuum cleaners and warning people to watch out for the dirty capitalism all around them.
With our cleaners, we never let dirty capitalism settle.
I hope they intend to clean up after themselves. Last year’s ‘May Day’ marches left central London looking like an industrial tip.
So a lot of work is about humour because that really works. If people see a group of us vacuuming or praying, I think it’s more likely to get them to question things.
You’re right, the humour does work. I am already doubled up with laughter.
All the messages that are put about by advertisers are basically saying that shopping is the new religion. We were just taking it that little bit further.
Shopping as a religion? Damn, that’s a good idea. Anyone else fancy the idea of forming a Church of Conspicuous Consumption?
We had quite an interesting reaction. A lot of the shoppers were quite startled. Some of them laughed. Others looked at us as if we were idiots.
Conspicuous consumers are generally a perceptive and sensible lot.
Eventually the security guards threw us out. We’re not aggressive and we know that what we do and film takes place on private property so if they ask us to leave, we do.
Yet more ‘crushing of dissent’! Oh the humanity!!
The group goes into a store, all wearing the same shirts. Then, in a line, each member pushes around empty shopping trolleys [carts in America] in a quiet meditation.
Just silently contemplating all those seductive bargains.
I’ve got no illusions that what we do is going to stop people shopping. But the person who sees us praying or vacuuming may go home and have a question in their mind about the society we’ve created.
I’ll wager that the question in their mind is, how did you manage to fall from the Stupid Tree and hit every branch on the way down?
Whenever I get despondent about the state of the world, up pop the Children of the Revolution to remind me just how debased, banal and self-parodying they have become.
A disturbing development in the Middle East. Well, two disturbing developments to be more precise.
First, another successful human missile attack in Israel, this time aimed at a beachfront cafe in Tel Aviv, has killed three people. Proof that no security system is foolproof and even though attempted mass murders are thwarted virtually every day, some still get through.
Secondly, Israeli police appear to have evidence that two men involved in the attack were both British citizens:
Israeli television has shown passports alleged to belong to the two men, which name them as Asif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif.
If it transpires that the claims are true then this is the first time, to my knowledge, that non-Palestinians Muslims have been engaged in attacks on Israel. It must raise the issue of the extent to which Islamic terror gangs have been successfully recruiting in this country and, perhaps, elsewhere in the West.
Of course, there is also the corollary that perhaps the reservoir of ‘willing recruits’ among the Palestinians is starting to dry up, forcing the terror-masters to look elsewhere for their walking payloads.
Looks like there’s an uprising in progress down in East Africa:
Baboons “protesting” at the killing of one of their group have disrupted traffic on the busy Tororo-Jinja highway in eastern Uganda.
The trouble began after a speeding lorry ran over a huge female baboon, who died instantly in the Busitema Forest Reserve, 15 kilometres from the Uganda-Kenya border.
According to eyewitnesses, the driver deliberately swerved across the road to hit the female who was eating white ants.
Soon afterwards, an infuriated group of baboons converged at the scene of the killing and surrounded her body.
They sat in the middle on the road for about 30 minutes causing a temporary traffic jam.
Baboons are as mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. A representative of the PLO (Primate Liberation Organisation) said:
Eating white ants is an important part of our culture and we are sick of the anti-baboonist attitudes of this illegitimate regime. This was no accident. It was a deliberate act of African imperialist aggression.
Despite the fiery rhetoric, the majority of baboons claim to be committed to finding a peaceful solution. But, clearly, there is a lot of anger down on the plains.
I threw a piece of sugarcane to the bereaved baboons, but none of them rushed to pick it up.
The PLO representative was dismissive:
Do they think we can be bought off with a bit of sugarcane? We will actively resist this neo-humanist attempt to subjugate our species and steal our resources.
The conflict rages on with no easy resolution in sight. Meanwhile, the Primate Liberation Organisation has denied any formal links with the French Government.
As is so often the case, it’s the little things one should watch out for. The nature and effect of seemingly insignificant or passing incidents can so often provide a more accurate insight into the political topography of any country than the sweeping op-eds of the mainstream press.
A good example is provided by Stephen Pollard who has just attended a Conference of Head Teachers in Brighton:
I have seen no more apposite comment on the state of the Conservative Party than this: one of the speakers this year was Damian Green, Shadow Education Secretary. Not only was he relegated to one of the break-out sessions; there were just 19 people present – out of some 300 – at his talk. Even at a meeting of public school heads, most of whom one might reasonably assume are Conservatives, almost no one gives a damn what he or his party thinks.
This is exactly the kind of nugget that speaks volumes about the reality of life on the nitty-gritty ground and yet is not controversial or glamourous enough to inspire editorial column inches. And, in response, I can only agree with Stephen. No-one giving a damn is quite the most damning indictment of the British Conservative Party. Contempt may be damaging but indifference is surely the killer.
Whilst the great and the good still ruminate about the future of the Conservatives in the broadsheet stratosphere, down on planet Earth they are in danger of dropping off the political radar screen.
A more tangible examination is 24 hours away. Tomorrow, May 1st, Britain goes to the voting booths in nationwide Local Council elections. Ostensibly, this is all about local issues such garbage collection, street lighting, libraries and the such. No ‘big policy’ stuff. Still no-one seriously believes that it is not, at least to some degree, a reflection of political support at the macro level as well.
The Labour Party is anxious to see if they benefit from ‘Baghdad bounce’ or ‘Baghdad backlash’ and, realistically, they will lose some seats but probably not enough to seriously dent them. Likewise, the Conservatives will pick up some seats but probably not the several hundred they need to fix the impression in their own minds, as well as everybody else’s, that they are a serious party of opposition.
In other words, business as usual. Except for angry, buzzing little fly-in-the-ointment; the British National Party. Although still a very marginal movement the fact remains that they have been doing alarmingly well in local and mayoral elections across the North of England and the Midlands, thus proving that their plain-talking, tub-thumping brand of whites-only socialism has a certain resonance in the working class heartlands where the ‘cafe latte elitism’ of New Labour is the source of growing irritation and disillusionment.
Tomorrow, the BNP will be fielding a record number of candidates; over 200. They are full of beans and righteous froth and earnestly believe that they are on the verge of some sort of breakthrough. I think that is probably and overstatement but I am disinclined to bet against them doing well.
Come the end of the week, it will still be ‘politics as usual’ but perhaps the wearyingly familiar mummery of the settled consensus will be underscored by the distracting backbeat of a whole host of panic pulses.
Events appear to be developing rather faster than I thought they would. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that they are snowballing.
I doubt very much whether either Monsieur Chirac or Herr Schroeder have spent any time in the blogosphere but, judging from the news in the UK Times their reaction to the ‘Axis of Weasels’ slur was to take it deadly seriously:
At a meeting in Brussels with the Prime Ministers of Belgium and Luxembourg, President Chirac and Gerhard Schroder, the German Chancellor, want to clear the way for a common European defence system that would start with a core of volunteer states.
To be honest, I am trying very hard to suppress my natural inclination to double over in hoots of derisive laughter. Perhaps they will rent a seedy, run-down office, kit themselves out with a set of overalls and call themselves ‘Yankbusters’. It is hard to imagine what else they could do with armies that consist of time-serving pensioners and conscripted students.
There is nothing new about the idea of a common EU defence pact, of course, only now the French (and it is primarily the French) appear to be driving the issue with an unseemly haste. It bears all the hallmarks of panic and, given the growlings emanating from Washington of late, that panic may be more than a little justified:
Although the Germans have qualms about a confrontation with Nato, the French are not hiding their aim to achieve their long-standing goal of unhitching the United States from European defence. This has become more pressing with the reported plans of the US to punish France for its stand on the war in Iraq by excluding it from Nato decision-making.
I don’t suppose that the French are under any real illusion as to the capacity of Belgium to ride to their rescue. No, this is just the French doing what the French have always done; desperately seeking alliances in order to advance their own national interests. Not having the sufficient wherewithal to rule the world (as they believe they rightly should) they seek instead to project their influence by building blocs which must be configured in such as a way as to enable the French to dominate them. Mock we may, but for the French political classes this is as serious as a heart-attack and, possibly, a last throw of the dice.
Panic, however, is not merely confined to Paris. Tony Blair can see exactly where this is heading and it’s giving him the the big-time jitters:
“I don’t want Europe setting itself up in opposition to America. I think it will be dangerous and destabilising.”
Mark those words. Blair has a very clear idea of the stability he wants and knows every bit as surely that this isn’t it. Blair, being neither pro- nor anti- anything, is the consumate internationalist. Harmony is what he seeks. At home he has adroitly neutralised all opposition by gathering everybody into a big tent of consensus. Abroad he hoped to be the golden bridge that brought the USA and the EU together to sing melodiously from the same hymn-sheet in a global choir of co-operation.
It’s all off-key now and the discord is grating harshly on the ears. The American Star Tenor that Blair adores simply cannot work with the pushy European falsettos he hopes to please and now everyone is about to flounce off in a huge huff, leaving only the Fat Lady. She isn’t singing yet, but she’s clearing her throat.
Many years ago, not long after I had graduated from law school, I briefly succumbed to a rather silly conviction that I was a cultural barbarian and this state of affairs could be addressed by becoming an afficianado of European cinema. I should admit that this conviction was in no small measure driven by the belief that being au fait with the work of European film-makers was a surefire way to impress the girlies.
So I started to spend much of my free time ferreting out art-house independent cinemas (of the kind that sold organic brownies in the foyer instead of popcorn) and sat through endless hours of turgid, narcolepsy-inducing, state-funded, navel-gazing about the tortured psychological relationship between a middle-aged sub-postmaster and his trotskyite revolutionary girlfriend in the seedy hostel they share with a couple of Vietnamese refugees on the outskirts of Hamburg. Or something.
These films have all amalgamated in my mind and I cannot remember the name of even a single one. After about six months, I decided that no woman was worth this level of constipation so I threw the towel in and went back to watching simplistic sci-fi blockbusters and gangster movies.
But it is because of that brief self-inflicted nightmare that I understand exactly how these guys feel:
The survey by the Parliament’s cultural committee concluded that EU consumers prefer foreign cultural goods – such as films and music – to European products.
About 40 per cent of respondents said that, in general, European citizens do not prefer European cultural products. The situation in the European film industry is particularly bad.
By ‘foreign’ I rather think they mean Anglosphere, especially Hollywood.
Anyway, as per usual for the Belgian Empire, the answer to this problem lies in a top-down political solution. Understandably alarmed by this disturbing outbreak of free market value judgements, the EU has swung into action and established a ‘Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport’ (no, really!) that has produced a ‘working document’ that reads pretty much like a script for one of the above-mentioned movies.
However, there are a few things that caught my eye:
Another challenge is how to stimulate the industrial actors to respond in time to loud-and-clear customer demand, in particular of the not-so-well-off younger generation, thereby focusing on long-term viability instead of on fast returns.
How is any ‘industrial actor’ supposed to recognise ‘loud-and-clear customer demand’ except by reference to the returns? Note how institutional the old soclialist canards have become. These people actually believe that the way to ensure an industry has long-term viability is to render it unprofitable.
The time has come to shape an inspired, efficient and democratically defined long-term cultural policy in order for the Union to make better use of its underdeveloped growth potential, as President Prodi repeatedly advocated in our House.
Right there is that sentence is an encapsulation of just about everything that is so grossly wrong with European thinking. The idea that in order to have more culture it must be defined and prescribed by a committee of appointed poobahs, pretty much guarantees that European cultural output remains as crap and unwanted as it clearly is now.
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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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