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I’m watching the BBC Top Gear motoring programme right now and its main presenter, the irrepressible Jeremy Clarkson, is driving a hot-rod Mercedes sports car at high speed along a German autobahn listening to a CD of Margaret Thatcher speeches. How can you not love this guy? July 3rd, 2005 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Yours truly, my fiancee plus regular Samizdata commenter Julian Taylor, have returned from a fine and patriotic day out in Portsmouth for the “International Festival of the Sea”, an event which at its core commemorates the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. Trafalgar in fact was fought in October, but the organisers are no doubt exploiting what passes for the English summer to put on all manner of events for sailing nuts like myself. There has already been a fair amount of media coverage of the events linked to the Trafalgar bicentennial, although arguably the BBC has underclubbed its coverage, giving more attention it seems to Wimbledon tennis and the Live8 music event. For anyone who wants to know the human cost of defending this nation’s liberties, however, understanding what Lord Nelson and his forces achieved is important. As an island nation, our livelihood is crucially dependent on our peaceable enjoyment of the high seas. For more than 100 years after Nelson crushed the Franco-Spanish forces off Cadiz, the Royal Navy dominated the world’s oceans, enjoying a naval mastery to an extent not seen until the modern U.S. navy and its vast carrier fleets. Nelson instilled in the Senior Service an esprit de corps, a sense of confidence that was to carry on until the First World War, at which point Germany and Japan began to challenge Britain’s mastery. There are many excellent studies of Nelson’s life and achievements, and I would recommend in particular Alan Schom’s study of the countdown to Trafalgar, which gives credit not just to Norfolk’s most famous son but also many of the other actors of the time, who ensured that the Royal Navy was raised to a high pitch of excellence. Tom Pocock’s biography of Nelson is also a rattling good read of this brilliant, occasionally vain and charismatic man. July 2nd, 2005 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have already mentioned the guy’s robust views about the upcoming Live8 musical event about to hit central London and I make no apologies for following up by plugging a fine book by Richard D. North in which he defends affluence and modern industrial society in his book, Rich Is Beautiful. Written in a deliberately provocative tone of voice, North crushes one modern shibboleth after another in a style reminiscent of a British P.J. O’Rourke. First class. July 1st, 2005 | Comments are closed
Fine and detailed article here over at The Register, a techie website, laying out many of the pitfalls associated with the British government’s wretched ID card measures. Some of the arguments are pretty familiar terrain to Samizdata regulars but in the current climate it pays to repeat an argument as loudly as possible. I have already made it clear in the comments, but I’d like to repeat how much I like the look of Michael Taylor’s idea on naming and shaming the businesses, officials and politicians backing this proposal. The Freedom of Information Act can be a highly effective weapon in the hands of those skilled at digging out information and we should make use of it. Having some experience of investigations, I’ll be hoping to post up more details of the sort Michael Taylor referred to in the next few days. Please keep the comments coming in and hopefully this blog can kick up a storm. June 29th, 2005 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
Still buzzing with pleasure after a terrific day with pals at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on Saturday, it struck me as I walked around the ground and past the huge car park as to how fantastic is the level of motoring engineering, aesthetics and of course safety these days. But we are hemmed in as never before by rules and regulations, speed cameras and road humps, the combined effect of which is to make driving in most of Britain a frustrating experience. The joys of flooring the accelerator on the open road, with the roar of wind in the hair, are over. Such a shame. As my dad said, it is a bit like being surrounded by the world’s most beautiful women and then to be told by the State that you are not allowed to ask any of them for a date. June 26th, 2005 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Richard B. North has a terrific set of articles about the current focus on Africa, debt-relief and poverty brought about partly by the efforts of Sir Bob “keep it off eBay” Geldof. It is fair to summarise that North is not totally blown away with admiration by the scruffy former lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, or indeed with the grandstanding of our own wonderful PM, Tony Blair. Definitely not the sort of articles one would expect to get on a college degree reading list. How I wish the weblog existed when studying for my degree back in the 80s. June 21st, 2005 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I came across a text of a speech by Democrat Senator Richard Durbin here which, at least from my reading, did not liken what is going on with suspected terrorists in U.S. captivity and the old Soviet gulag, on the other. The speech contains a lot that one might reasonably dispute but it is not rabid Michael Moore moonbattery, as far as I can tell. (Of course, his speech on his website may have been edited later on with the offending para taken out, but one should not assume that out of fairness to the senator). So where did the reference to the “Dick Durbin slanders our boys” come from? Seriously, I’d like to know. I posted similar thoughts over here. It appears Durbin did make a reference to the gulag and the Nazis in the speech text I have now seen, so the guy clearly deserves some of the heat coming his way. But like I said, it doesn’t overall appear to be a rabidly silly speech. June 21st, 2005 | 65 comments - (Comments are closed)
“I think that maybe – just maybe – anti-Wal Mart sentiment has more to do with an aversion to the white, rural ethnology the store sometimes represents than its labor practices. We can’t have our Ethiopian restaurants and esoteric bookstores blighted by NASCAR culture.” – The always good American blogger Radley Balko, telling it like it is. June 19th, 2005 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yet another Russian firm, Rambler Media, a search engine, has listed on the small-cap AIM stock market in London, preferring to hold its IPO in Britain rather than back home in Mother Russia. The story in the Daily Telegraph here gives a fairly sketchy outline of the listing but neglects to explore a possible broader reason for the listing. Let me have a stab at it. Russian entrepreneurs are turning their backs on their home turf because they are worried about the possibility of their wealth being grabbed by the Russian state. Political risk is driving many Russian-owned firms to run their business affairs offshore. Perhaps one should call this the “Yukos Effect.” In many respects the seizure of the oil firm’s assets by Putin’s Russian state is not quite the terrible smash-and-grab raid portrayed in some quarters – its owner was a decidely shady character – but it has certainly put a big chill into investors, pushing Russian shares down compared with their emerging market peers. Expect to see plenty more launches of Russian firms on the British and other western stock markets for a while yet. June 16th, 2005 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
As I remarked in my previous post, Sir Bob Geldof is an annoying gentleman but capable of moments of lucidity. (I was a bit rude about him in my previous post. Sorry Bob). As an act of charity to the fellow, here is a quotation he might like to ponder:
Those words were uttered by Richard Cobden about 150 years ago, a man who saw a congruence between the ideals of personal liberty, concern for the welfare of one’s fellows, and the free market order. For him, like his great Victorian contemporaries like Sir Robert Peel, free trade was a progressive cause to be championed in the interests of the little guy, and not the cause of big powerful interests. It is a message that urgently needs to be understood by those who, no doubt from fine motives in a few cases, rail against global capitalism. If the case for the free market is to be more widely advanced, we have to appeal to the sense of idealism and concern for the downtrodden that animated our ancestors and could still appeal to the decent folk on the left. It is worth a try, anyway. June 15th, 2005 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Sir Bob “Make Poverty History” Geldof is getting the vapours over the fact that tickets for his various supposed poverty-relief events have been put up for sale on that symbol of dark, rampant capitalism, eBay. In particular, he seems all upset that a big corporation like eBay should make any money from such a highminded event. Horsefeathers, is all I can say. eBay, in my view, contributes vastly more to the sum total of human happiness and welfare than that preening stage army of hasbeens, wannabees and well-intentioned nitwits that have clustered around Sir Bob. As has already been recounted in detail here, Sir Bob Geldof is a man of infuriating contradictions, able to talk with piercing clarity and lack of cant about the corruption of African governments and yet also willing and able to spout the cheap pieties that seem to accompany many a post-colonial guiltfest such as Live8. If Africa’s economy were run with the same brio, dash and entrepreneurial brilliance of eBay, Sir Bob and his ilk would have to spend a little more time on what they supposedly do best. UPDATE: thinking this through in the light of watching Geldof on the television, I can certainly applaud his desire to steer as much revenue to the poor of the world as possible but there seems no awareness on the part of the Live 8 crowd that what Africa needs is precisely the sort of business acumen of which eBay is a modern example. UPDATE 1: eBay has blocked sales of such tickets on its pages, according to the BBC. June 14th, 2005 | 67 comments - (Comments are closed)
The following meme has been bouncing around blogdom and what the heck, I’ll join in. What are the five books that mean most to me?
Honourable mentions: Heinlein, Ayn Rand (of course!), John Varley, Vernor Vinge, Ian Fleming, Joseph Conrad, Victor Hugo, Evelyn Waugh and Wodehouse. June 8th, 2005 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
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