Fred Thompson, actor and political candidate, will not be President of the United States. As this fine article points out, that is a pity. He was too normal, apparently.
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My father told me a while back that I was distantly related to Henry Blofeld, landowner and legendary cricket commentator. The Blofelds are an old Norfolk landowning family. Well, if it turns out I am related to a family that has the same surname as one of the greatest Bond villains, then maybe I should invest in something suitably sinister. It may be cheaper than a hollowed-out volcano, if only slightly. Staying with the Bond theme, you can now, if you have the wealth, live in a beach resort in the same part of Jamaica as Ian Fleming’s old beachside home of Goldeneye. Back in 1956, during the Suez crisis, Anthony Eden, then prime minister, stayed at the Flemings’. January 31st, 2008 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
 On some, if not all issues, Rod Liddle is a man of sound views. He loathes the nanny state; he is unconvinced that we need to crack down on freedom of speech in order to avoid giving offence to religious groups. He is a patriot. In this week’s edition of the Spectator, where other authors rant away splendidly, Liddle rails against the six-month-old government ban on smoking in all public buildings, including privately owned ones (apart from private homes), such as pubs and restaurants. He makes a good case and some of his paragraphs are cheer-out-loud material:
Or this:
But as always with Mr Liddle, the carelessness with which he chucks around numbers makes me wonder if any reader will want to get past his first paragraph:
500,000 Iraqis? Is that correct? Liddle gives no source for this or attempts to do so later in the piece. Now Rod may be right to suggest that the overthrow of a power-mad, dangerous dictator was even worse than letting him stay in power (I occasionally wonder why a certain type of right-winger is so indulgent towards evil men like Saddam). But if he is going to make an argument with statistics as part of his core argument, it is probably not a great idea to kick off an argument with a massive figure based on, whatever. Oh, in case anyone asks, I don’t smoke, except on National No Smoking Day. January 31st, 2008 | 70 comments - (Comments are closed)
Via the glorious Devil’s Kitchen blog – it’s not for the squeamish or easily offended – I cam across this collection of comments made in the weekend press by various supposedly eminent people on how they would improve Britain. Some are quite good. But our Devil reserves his sulphur for Rory Bremner, an impressionist whom I used to rather like (his impersonation of Tony Blair is brilliant), but who has become boring. Bremner’s pet idea is to force teenagers to serve in “community projects”, a sort of civilian version of an army. Whenever the issue of youth delinquency comes up, as it has recently due to the problems of youth crime in our major cities, you can always count on parts of the right and left to join ideological hands over the idea of making youth “serve” their nation in some way. The objections to this are, however, considerable: Young people are not the property of the state. This may come as a shocking revelation to anyone straying on to this blog for the first time in their lives, but there it is. You own your own life, and no-one else. The idea that after having been forced, on pain of legal penalty, to endure education until the age of 18, that one should continue to be forced to devote X hours of your time to “serving” the nation in some ill-defined way is monstrous. The issue is about inculcating the virtue of self-responsibility; state-run schemes are not exactly famed for doing that. It is unlikely to provide a solution to things like crime. It might encourage some kids to become mildly less unruly than before, but the substance of the problem is that far too many youngsters are borne to single-parent families with no male role models. (Yes I am aware of the many children in these circumstances that turn out fine, but the general trend cannot be denied). I am not sure that coercing people into some form of state-run scheme is really going to reverse any problems, although I suppose some people might enjoy it, like the bureaucrats who will be employed to run whatever schemes get thought up. It says something about the quality of TV “satire” that an advocate of collectively forcing the “nation’s youth” into some form of national service scheme can be voiced by a man who no doubt thinks he is a radical lefty. But then it is not really so strange at all, when you think about it. January 29th, 2008 | 69 comments - (Comments are closed)
Perry de Havilland of this parish just loves these creatures. Here’s a great story to brighten up a rather dull, grey day in London. I really must go on safari one day. January 28th, 2008 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
There are lots of posters on the Tube and other places about this exhibition of Russian-owned art at London’s Royal Academy. Henry Matisse’s “The Dancers” is shown in the adverts; I am not a massive Matisse fan, but the sheer variety and quality of the work on show is tempting. A problem I have, however, is that these works were stolen from their original buyers back in the Russian Revolution or in the 1920s (ironically, Stalin wanted to destroy some of this stuff because he considered it to be “decadent”). I am not really comfortable in looking at something that has been stolen from a private owner; I feel slightly the same way about taking tours around ancient buildings that are no longer owned by their original owners because they have been forced to sell up due to massive death duties, now transferred to such bodies as the National Trust. One might argue, of course, that aristocrats who own massive stately piles are not worth too much sympathy since their families may have come into these lands as a result of earlier hand-outs. Oh well, I fear my curiosity will overcome my squeamishness. It pays to book early: this exhibition looks to be a sell-out. Thanks to regular Samizdata commenter Julian Taylor for suggesting that I write about this topic. January 27th, 2008 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
We’d all play like that… if we could. – John Coltrane, no mean saxophone player, talking about arguably the greatest of them all, Stan Getz. His cool, silk-like style is the perfect cure for a stressful day at the office. January 27th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Anyone in Britain who wishes to file a tax return to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs must do so online. Oh goody:
Of course, as the Daily Telegraph rightly points out, the HMRC is the department that managed to lose details of 25m people back in the autumn; it may be a rash prediction to make, but the more this sort of nonsense piles up, the less likely it is that the ID card will go ahead as planned. We can all live in hope, anyway. January 26th, 2008 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Guido Fawkes, the blogger who focuses on political sleaze in Britain, can claim a fair measure of credit for exposing the odious Peter Hain’s financial misdeeds. Guido is on the BBC Newsnight programme. It starts at 10:30 tonight. I hope he handles it a bit better than last time. In terms of sheer effectiveness, Guido is probably far more deadly than Private Eye is these days. If I were Ian Hislop, the Eye’s editor, I would start to wonder whether it was time to pack it in. January 24th, 2008 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Well, why should the English-speaking world have all the fun when it comes to a banking disaster?
3.6bn quid. However one looks at it, that is a lot of money. The Telegraph story I linked to has named the guy who is alleged to have perpetrated the fraud; the meltdown easily surpasses the collapse of Barings, the blue-blooded British bank that went down due to massive losses incurred by derivatives dealer Nick Leeson back in the mid-90s. What early conclusions can one draw? First of all, it is not possible to argue that the more heavily regulated banking systems in continental Europe are inherently superior to those wild, anarchic Anglos. At the very largest banks operating out of Paris, New York or London, it seems that human venality, incompetence and dishonesty is no respecter of cultural differences. What investors need to realise is that banks contain human beings with all the weaknesses, as well as virtues, humans have. Regulatory zeal has not prevented frauds; and yet every time there is a fresh SNAFU, a chorus goes up demanding some new set of regulations – “something must be done”. In the end, the only course is to catch the wrongdoers, lock them up or force them, if possible, to repay the folk they have swindled. To say that 2008 has started badly in the financial markets is an understatement; with banks like Citi taking huge losses linked to the falls in the US housing sector, this latest, Gallic twist of bad financial news is the last thing that investors needed. Jobs have already been axed in the City; it is likely to get worse before it gets better. Here is a list of recent monster banking frauds. January 24th, 2008 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ian Fleming, former Reuters and Sunday Times journalist, intelligence officer, and creator of 007. Quote taken from this book, on page 171. Pretty good guidance. Suffice to say that this applies just as much to women as men, of course (Mr Fleming was not what you would call PC). January 23rd, 2008 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
It has been a mad-cap few days; the FTSE 100 index of shares oscillated by 9% today, an incredibly volatile day and although it ended higher after the Fed tried to kick-start the US economy with a sharp rate cut, we are not out of the woods yet. Although Britain may not have some of the problems of the USA, we have the disaster of Northern Rock. It looks as if the British government has decided that it is so desperate to avoid being tarnished as a government that nationalised a failed bank that it will, instead, create an elaborate set of government guarantees to enable a consortium of investors, led by Richard Branson, to run Northern Rock and over a period of time and with luck, repay the loans. It is a no-win situation for the taxpayer, of course, who bears the risk of this venture. It also adds to moral hazard and undermines the necessary fear of going bust that should, in a healthy economy, act to deter unwise lending practices (that is harsh, I know, but consider the long-term problems of not letting this happen). Anatole Kaletsky is far too much of an economic intervenionist for my liking, but his article today is pretty good. His comments on Brown are damning. Some time ago I made vaguely praiseworthy comments about Richard Branson, in the context of the airline industry. Well, we are all entitled to revise our opinions; I am not really sure I like what the Bearded One is up to, or his rather undedifying association with a deal involving huge amounts of public funds. Update: Tim Worstall has some further thoughts. January 22nd, 2008 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
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