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]
|
Assuming that global warming really is happening, and really is caused by man, the rich will get off nearly scot free, as usual.
Ain’t that great!
The reason that it truly is good news for all humanity is that, whereas we have scarcely an inkling as to how to stop global warming, and our efforts to change human behaviour so as to mitigate it show an unbroken record of failure in all aspects save that of making new pretexts for tyranny, we do now know how to end poverty.
Hell, we’ve done it, in the rich world. Clue’s in the name.
If you are poor in the rich world, and are annoyed at me for saying this, do feel free to write in and complain. Email in, I mean, on your personal computer using your broadband connection or the one provided for free in a public library.
Hell, we’ve got halfway to doing it in great swathes of what was once the poor world. Last month I read about some Parisian hotel developer who caused outrage when he said his exclusive new hotel wouldn’t be open to Chinese tourists. Then he backtracked in a hurry and said “he was referring to ‘mass tourism’ when he used the phrase ‘Chinese tourists’.” Yes, I know hundreds of millions of Chinese are still poor, but think of how far we have come when a snob thinks of the Chinese when he denigrates ‘mass tourism’. Think of how far we have come when the outrage is expressed by Chinese internet users.
Hell, but hell on earth is getting less hellish by the day. There is harder evidence for this than my little anecdote above. Look up worldwide life expectancy statistics. This despite the mad folly of the economic policy of practically every government in the world. We have got so stonkingly, gobsmackingly, tingle-down-your-leggingly good at poverty reduction over the last few decades that we can even do it with socialism round our necks. Just think what we could achieve without that millstone.
We could exterminate the poor as a class. Would that not be agreeable? Quote me on that, you global warming activists who divide your time between Copenhagen and New York; I find the poor tiresome and would rather not have them around any more. I’d rather have all the Chinese, and all the Indians, and all the Africans getting rich and flying to London to take pictures of each other in front of London landmarks, in rotation if need be. It might cause a bit of global warming. Never mind, we rich folk can live with that.
A recent blog post by Tim Worstall describes the lack of understanding that surrounds this embarrassing condition. He recalls his experiences as a chronic sufferer since childhood:
When at primary in Bath, good strong Bathonian. And the standard Eng middle class at home, like what I speak now. Of[f] we move to Italy to the Forces school when I’m 8. My mother still remarks on the near cockney (probably closer to what we would call estuarine now) that my brother and I both picked up in weeks. And started speaking as we walked through the doors of the school and dropped the moment we left them.
A SORAS survivor among his commenters, ‘Chris’, had an even more overwhelming attack,
“When I came back to England from British Guiana at 11, to attend an almost all-white boarding school, I had a strong Guianese accent – for about 10 minutes”
Another commenter, ‘Richard’ was a witness as the syndrome struck down a friend.
“… [he] said he could hear his accent change, in 2 or 3 stages, over the train journey home at the end of term.
Be aware that initial symptoms can seem trivial – hearing a person who has lived in England for half his life say, “put it down by there” within seconds of setting foot of the platform at Swansea station may not, at first, seem cause for concern. However without treatment “by there” can become interjections of “mun” or even “Ych y fi” with terrifying speed.
Although the disease is most common in its homolocutic form, in which people suddenly revert to an accent they thought they had abandoned years ago but did actually have at one time, it also has a heterolocutic variant.
At the London SORAS support group, I recently met Berenice (28) who blames the loss of her job at an advertising agency specialising in political campaigns on the heterolocutic form of the disease. At a creative meeting, she prefaced her query as to whether an advert suggesting that first time female voters might like to grant Ed Miliband the traditional jus primae noctis would really resonate with the youth demographic with the words “Not being funny or nuffink”, and was fired on the spot. Berenice was infected after discussing the weather with a work experience girl.
Some sufferers choose to carry an information card or medical alert bracelet in order to assist first responders when the victim himself can no longer communicate verbally in a way normal people can understand. ‘Quentin’ (not his real name), a plumber’s mate struck down with the disease after installing a combi boiler in this right posh house up on Primrose Hill, is very grateful he did. While just about still able to speak comprehensibly he called an ambulance to say he had “the most frightful case of SORAS” before lapsing into a kind of idiodialect in which the only words medical staff could understand were “yah” and “darling.” It was only his desperate gesticulation towards the bracelet while strapped to a medical trolley that stopped him being wheeled into the genito-urinary ward.
Related conditions such as TIGFAF – Talking In a Generic Foreign Accent to Foreigners – can be even more distressing.
Should the word “rape” in the American term “statutory rape” be replaced with some other word?
I would argue in favour of replacement that it diminishes the perceived magnitude of the crime of rape in the ordinary sense (“rape rape” to use Whoopi Goldberg’s term, or “legitimate rape” to use Todd Akin’s) to use the same word for those cases of statutory rape where consent was present, or arguably present. It also makes calm discussion and clear thinking about the complex issue of consent much harder.
Incidentally, I think that most of the criticism that both Goldberg and Akin got for using the terms they did was unjust. They both deserved criticism for making public pronouncements about subjects of which they knew next to nothing. Goldberg apparently did not know that Polanski’s crime was indeed a particularly vile coercive rape of a minor. I suspect that she assumed that talented people from her own social milieu did not do that sort of thing. Akin had the silly belief that women’s bodies have the power to prevent conception by an act of will. However I do not think for a moment that when he said “legitimate” rape he meant that there were circumstances where rape should be permitted, and I do not think that those howling for his head really believe he meant that either. He just used the wrong word. He should have said “coercive rape” – but the very fact that people need to hunt around for a term that gets that across, and get into trouble when they get it wrong, is why I think the term of law should be renamed.
I am not arguing against the existence of such laws, although no doubt many of them could do with adjustment. I am told the term does not exist in English or Scottish law but it has certainly soaked into British public discourse, muddying the waters.
Britain’s charities and quangos are now stuffed to the gunwales with Labour placemen, writes Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph.
Not news to you, perhaps, but news to many.
What can be done? Dante placed the simonists in the Eighth Circle, turned upside down in large baptismal fonts cut into rock, with their feet set ablaze, but I’m thinking in the shorter term.
From an auctioneers’ website:
lot details
lot no 305
description
A silver rectangular medallion, London 1977, applied with ‘WE FIX’D IT FOR JIM’ and ‘NATIONAL VALA 1977’, 4.2cm high, with a suspension loop, on a belcher link chain, the ring catch stamped ‘STER’
The National Viewers’ And Listeners’ Association (National VALA) was founded by Mary Whitehouse, CBE (1910-2001) in 1965.
Provenance: From the estate of Sir Jimmy Savile. OBE, KCSG, LLD (1926-2011)
It would be ridiculous to attempt to extract some moral from the existence of a medallion apparently issued by the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, 1970s campaigners against obscenity, particularly obscenity on the BBC, and the late Jimmy Savile, 1970s BBC DJ and TV host, now alleged (credibly alleged, despite the inevitable swarm of bandwagoneers) to have been a sexual predator with no regard for gender, age, vulnerability or consent. Any competent hack could whip up two think-pieces with mutually exclusive morals in one hour flat and bank his cheques from the Mail and the Guardian in the morning.
It was just an odd thing I found on the internet.
Just to add to the oddity, the auction was held in Saviles Hall. It is no longer possible to Google for the origin of that name.
The medallion went for £220, somewhat below the estimate. Wonder what it’s worth now?
Yes, I think I am avoiding talking about the Savile case. You can remedy that below. The case, as opposed to the medallion, throws up so many questions and points for discussion that I was hard put to keep the number of categories for this post under half a dozen. Please bear the laws of libel in mind if referring to living persons.
You thought that no one could top awarding a Nobel peace prize to Barack Obama, a decision taken, if I recall correctly, eleven days into his presidency?
They topped it.
This is sublime. This is art.
European Union wins Nobel peace prize
…but room for only one regarding this: Julian Assange supporters ordered to forfeit £93,500 bail money.
Vaughan Smith, the former British army captain who hosted Assange at his Norfolk home while he was on bail throughout 2011, and had promised to pay £20,000 if Assange skipped bail, was ordered to pay £12,000, while Philip Knightly, a veteran Australian investigative journalist who exposed the British traitor Kim Philby as a Russian spy, was ordered to pay £15,000, £5,000 less than he originally pledged.
…
It is understood that a separate group of Assange supporters, thought to include the film-maker Ken Loach, the writer and campaigner Jemima Khan, the journalist John Pilger and the magazine publisher Felix Dennis have already forfeited bail cash worth £200,000 following a court order earlier this year.
I am kind of glad that the old softy of a magistrate let off those of the sureties who were of limited means from paying the full amount, but, sorry, if you aren’t laughing at the luvvies losing their dosh, call an exorcist. You are dead.
Via Jim Miller on Politics I learn that the Maine Republicans have been stirring up prejudice against a Democratic candidate for the state senate, Colleen Lachowicz, because she is an orc.
The Repubs have made a website called Colleen’s World in which they quote some of Ms Lachowicz’s more vigorous statements made while playing or talking about World of Warcraft. The intro to the website says,
In Colleen’s online fantasy world, she gets away with crude, vicious and violent comments like the ones below. Maine needs a State Senator that lives in the real world, not in Colleen’s fantasy world.
While whoever thought up this line of attack could justly be praised for seizing an opportunity, he or she could also justly have his or her head staved in by a +5 mace for scaremongering. There is a reason for the first word in the phrase “Fantasy roleplaying games.” That when playing or discussing the World of Warcraft game Ms Lachowicz a.k.a. Santiaga the Orc occasionally says things like “I can kill stuff without going to jail. There are some days when this is more necessary than others” tells you nothing about her character other than she has a neat turn of phrase.
I take this personally. I would not want anyone to malign my character for similar reasons. People often do malign my character, not so much because he finds a lot of job satisfaction in ripping up malefactors with a wall of bullets from his trusty Steyr AUG, that’s par for the course in the Urban Arcana D20 Modern campaign setting, more because (a) he has no sense of humour whatsoever about being called “Harold Potter”, and (b) he’s a tax inspector.
Mr Potter positively relishes eviscerating some poor hardworking zombie minion and then slapping what’s left of him with a £9,000 bill in back-taxes for violation of IR35.
You don’t think I would behave in such a foul manner in real life, do you?
I’ve nothing against zombies, either.
This happy combination of headline and subheading on the Green Party home page will probably be gone by tomorrow, but if you click here and look under the heading “National news”, it says,
Global GM experiment must stop
More research into genetically-modified food and herbicides must be done, in the light of more evidence…
Thus spake the prophet Micklethwait on September 27, a week before the US presidential debate that has just taken place:
Romney is not nearly as big a jerk as a lot of disappointed Libbos and Conservatives seem to think, or as Dems hope. He keeps on winning. I think he will do much better in the debates than most others seem to, because he has a story to tell, to and about an opponent who does not. Romney is indeed not a genius debater, but he knows it, and knowing also that he is winning, he will prepare hard and go in with exactly the right amount of and kind of confidence, like a winning sportsman. He will surprise many by how well he does.
Meanwhile Obama, surrounded by yes men, and fatally arrogant, and tired, a fed-up and probably knowing he is going to lose, and having nothing to say, will not prepare well enough for the debates. He faces a near-impossible task, and will not be up to it.
Correct in every detail bar two. I do not think Mitt Romney knew he was going to win the debate and I do not think Barack Obama knew he was going to lose.
Romney was a Mormon missionary in France for two and a half years. Apparently he met with a slightly less overwhelming proportion of rejection than most, and was promoted. Whatever your opinion of Mormonism, no one can emerge after thirty months of knocking on doors and trying to proselytise the French, in French, and not have developed some debating skills and also seen the limit of what any such skills can do. No one can do this and not learn, ineradicably, that the world contains people who do not think like them at all. Romney lives among the heathen. Obama lives among those who defend him from the heathen.
Unlike some on this blog, Paul Marks, for instance, I do not see Obama as a hard core Marxist. Real Marxists live among the heathen, even on university campuses. I do not see Obama as having a hard core at all; he flows into the shape of whatever vessel he finds himself inside. His current vessel is fine and comfortable. I think he could not quite make himself believe that Romney would dare intrude.
Elections are mostly mere show, but what a splendid show a hard-fought one can be. I caught myself the other day being resentful because I could not turn to the back of the book or look up the episode guide on Wikipedia to see how it will all turn out. Aesop would have sold more fables if he had thought to have the moral (better yet, a hundred competing morals) in the middle but leave the tortoise and the hare still running right until the last page.
In 1992 I turned down a bet that would have obliged me to pay ten pounds for every parliamentary seat of Neil Kinnock’s majority, or gained me ten pounds for every seat short of it. I only turned down the bet because I’m a wimp who has never so much as been inside a bookmakers*; I knew that John Major was going to win because I eavesdropped on my fellow commuters on the Victoria Line. The UK media then were almost as domineering as the US media now; whenever obliged to interview someone willing to admit to the intention of voting Conservative the interviewer would visibly stand back to avoid contamination. I wanted Labour to win – I had stopped being a socialist but I was tired of the Tories – but I could tell, I could just tell that the media and the Cool People were talking each other up while the troglodytes on the Victoria Line were bullied into whispers but not into voting for the Cool Party just because the Cool People said that everyone who was anyone would.
Splendid as I am and nearly always right about everything, I have also been known to make wrong predictions. In the next UK election I thought the Shy Tory effect would still be present. If it was it was washed away in a flood of voters not shy in the least about finally having had enough of the Conservative party in power.
All this talk about bubbles has also reminded me of two occasions on which I specifically took note of obvious signs that the other sort of newsworthy bubble, a house price / stock market / tulip bubble, was expanding serenely away – noted these signs, cogitated upon their meaning, and ignominiously got it wrong. Or at best totally missed their major meaning because I was so keen to lecture the world about a minor sub-meaning. One such sign was seen in Ireland about six or seven years ago. My family is from Ireland and I always listen a little harder to news from there, so I was interested to learn from several different recent visitors to Ireland that everywhere you looked, on every little hillock and crammed into every little gap among the drystone walls, a new holiday cottage was going up, spoiling the austere beauty of the landscape somewhat but nice to see so many people doing well. I knew what that meant. It meant I could write a post for Samizdata about planning laws. Good thing I never got round to that one.
The other sign was from the United States. I, I will have you know, knew what “redlining” was, and knew of the laws and government pressure put upon banks to foribid this practice, and could speak knowledgeably of the Community Reinvestment Act long before the Crash of 2008. I knew what the CRA meant. It meant I could write a post for Samizdata about how the suppression of incentives for poor and marginalised people to act in ways that would help them get out of poverty (such as saving for a deposit on a house, or getting a steady job in order to qualify for a mortgage) would do them no good in the long run, not to mention encouraging them to take on debt they could not afford. There might still be a post in that, but the great floating balloon marked WORLDWIDE FINANCIAL CRISIS COMING TO YOUR TOWN SOON floated straight past me.
Blow me your bubbles, tell me about your predictions, especially the ones you got wrong.
*and also because the person offering it had endowed me with all his worldly goods anyway.
Remember sing-songs down the pub? OK, do you at least remember hearing that once upon a time there were such things as sing-songs down the pub? And Fred would stroll over to the old Joanna and have a tinkle on the ivories…
If this sounds as remote from modern life as the Wars of the Roses, that might be because for the last few years Fred would have been liable to arrest. The Licensing Act 2003 made live music at pubs illegal without a licence no matter how small the venue.
The good news is that it is no longer a crime to play a mouth organ in a pub without a licence.
The bad news is that for nine years it was a crime, and we submitted.
|
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.
|
