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]
|
Roger Thornhill, an occasional commenter here who also has his own blog, asks what is all the fuss about a foreign firm in the UK hiring foreign workers? He points out that if a UK firm operating in say, Germany, were to bring over some of its own staff, it might cause outrage among the locals, but then UK unions would protest at their members being banned from working abroad.
The truth is that when Gordon Brown made his comment, “British jobs for British workers”, he stoked the flames of a protectionist labour force doctrine that is now threatening to get out of hand. The disgrace of it is that even when the UK economy was growing relatively strongly, millions of able-bodied UK adults were not working and living off benefits. The tax, benefit and education system conspire to keep large numbers of the indigenous population out of the workforce. So naturally, firms turn to other sources of labour if they feel they can get a better deal.
In these tough times I feel sympathy for skilled workers who have felt themselves to be frozen out by a foreign employer doing business in the UK, but the brutal fact has to be faced that as far as many employers are concerned, some of the locals are just not as employable as foreigners. It is a terrible indictment of what has happened to the UK labour market under this administration. Untangling the mess is, or should be, a priority lest the situation fans the flames of protectionism, with disastrous consequences.
Update: The always cool-headed Chris Dillow puts up a feast of links explaining the impact of such foreign labour on local markets.
This is excellent. Brew up a coffee, give yourself a break, and read the whole thing.
The UK’s National Gallery – a state-backed institution – and galleries in Scotland have secured £50 million to pay to keep a Titian painting “for the nation”, using state – taxpayer’s money – for this purpose. A Scottish Labour MP has criticised the use of taxpayers’ funds on this painting, arguing that such money would be better spent on supporting arts eduction for school children instead. The story is here. Naturally, the idea that a work of art that has been loaned by its owner is private property and should not be thought of as a something that belongs to “the nation” is not addressed in the article I link to, since that is outside the intellectual frame of reference either of the arts bureaucrats who spend this public money, or indeed the Labour MP who criticises them.
Leave aside the hopefully temporary problems posed by the credit crunch. For the past decade or so, there has been a huge amount of money swirling around among the rich and even not-so-rich to be spent on the arts. There is no need, in my view, for a penny of taxpayer’s money to be spent on the arts. Leave aside whether you love or loathe the things that public funds are used to support: the point is that these things should not be receiving tax-raised funds at all. Let the rich of today patronise what budding Titians, Raphaels or Turners that might be out there.
This is hilarious. All together now: aaaahhhhhhh!
(Hat-tip, Noodlefood).
This is wonderful, funny and true.
Via Radley Balko.
It is on days like these that I am glad that I work for a web-based business and that I work from home for part of the day anyway. Judging by how severe weather has hit the UK overnight, rendering the UK public transport network immobile, that is just as well. The London Underground – with the exception of the Victoria line – is down. Buses and other transport like trains are severely affected.
I am hearing that this is the heaviest snowfall since 1991. We have already had some severe cold in early January. Whether this is part of a trend I have no idea. But some of us are rediscovering how to cope with severely cold weather in the UK. I have a father who is recovering from a major operation in hospital and may not be able to go home because of the weather.
Take care out there.
I occasionally will read a big novel, such as a “classic”, because I think that it is a mark of a reasonably intelligent person to be on nodding terms with some of the high points of our literature, although I often wimp out and pick up an old R. A. Heinlein or the latest John Varley science fiction novel instead. But I certainly do accept that there is nothing more tedious than plodding through acres of text as if it were somehow proof of moral virtue or literary stamina. Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a bit like climbing the North face of the Eiger – more of an effort than I think it worthwhile making right now. And James Delingpole thinks the same. His article on the late John Updike is caustic, if not disrespectful.
Via Will Wilkinson’s blog, a term I think is ideal for the crazed Keynesian policies now being applied: disaster dirigisme.
“There is as much or more reason to be afraid of bigotry, narrow-mindedness and capricious censure in a village than in a large and complex society. It is worth noting that those who complained of a present or impending “age of cant” never thought that their minds would become less independent – it was always directed at opponents and, principally, down the social scale.”
– Ben Wilson, Decency & Disorder, 1789-1837, page 444. One of the most arresting and entertaining works of social and cultural history I have read for some time. This quote is particularly relevant in our own time when one occasionally hears people bemoaning the loss of “small, tight-knit communities” and the supposed soullessness of urban life. In fact the ability to choose one’s networks of friends rather than get lumbered with whatever is on offer in a small community is one of the unacknowedged joys of modern life.
More support comes from the medical profession that regular, moderate intakes of red wine is good for health. (Via this blog).
This makes me happy.
“The folly and immorality of the “stimulus” plan passed today can be attacked on many fronts. For one thing there’s the awe-inspiring irony of a Democrat-dominated Congress and a Democrat president spending taking nearly a trillion dollars from the hardworking middle class people of this country and giving it to corporations and businesses—and precisely as a result of the apparent improprieties in which those same businesses were engaged! Honest liberals who resent corporate welfare must really have a headache at this point.”
– Timothy Sandefur.
A good friend of mine, the Norwegian journalist Kristine Lowe, reflects on a recent trip to Iceland, which has seen its government collapse amid the credit crunch. Iceland has, of course, benefited from sensible low-tax policies as well as being buoyed by what now appears to be some foolish banking lending policies.
I am not sure I would want to live there, mind. The long nights and expensive beer would drive me nuts.
|
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.
|
