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]
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A most interesting document has come into our possession – and quite coincidentally, we understand, into the possession of several other well-known blogs. It is a scan of the internal document of the Identity and Passport Service outlining the new implementation strategy for the UK’s identity card scheme, liberally annotated by the experts at NO2ID.
We think it tends to disprove the denials only just issued by HM Government in relation to the scheme, as well as some half-lies and full lies they have been telling all along. (It may also show up the feeble grip of Gordon Brown’s paper Stalinism. “In government, but not in power,” ministers will rubber-stamp anything – just as long as it doesn’t look like a retreat.) But judge for yourself: (pdf 1.17Mb)
The Stockholm Network people are trying as hard as they can to parlay their Golden Umbrella Awards into something truly significant. So they were pleased when Perry de Havilland did a piece here about the awards dinner last week, and even more pleased when Instapundit linked to that posting. And they were also delighted by this Wall Street Journal piece by John Fund. With awards ceremonies, what matters is not so much the dishing out of the awards as the matter of whether anyone else cares, or can be persuaded to care. This event was good. But it is the response to the event that will surely mean that the corresponding jamboree next year will be better.
Fund, who presented one of the awards, to a Bulgarian by the name of Dimitar Chobanov, begins his piece thus:
The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and other free-market Washington think tanks are known to many Americans. What isn’t generally understood is that there has been an explosion of free-market think tanks around the world that are increasingly challenging the conventional view that government is the solution to society’s problems.
Like Perry, I was part of the throng, and in a piece I did about these awards for another European think tank last week, I made the same point about free market think tank expansion. Whereas Fund sees these enterprises spreading beyond the USA, I see them spreading beyond Western Europe, but however you slice this story, free market think tanks are spreading.
In among being impressed by all this, I took photos. Usually, when I take photos at pro-free-market events, my only questions are: How many women are here and how nice do they look? But the photography I did at the Golden Umbrellas focussed more on what was being officially talked about. Those ladies I did snap were snapped because they were on the stage, like Mistress of Ceremonies Karen Horn, Janet Daley and Cécile Philippe. There were plenty of other fine looking women present that night, but I concentrated my picture-taking on the people who were giving and receiving awards. And as well as photographing them, I listened to what they were actually saying. Which you can also do by going here.
Many of the Samizdatistas attended the Stockholm Network‘s Golden Umbrella Awards last night, an event that was described to me as the ‘Free Market Oscars’. The intention is to encourage the people working in the varied pro-market think-tanks and advocacy groups around the world by acknowledging their contributions to the cause of liberty.
In truth I attended with moderate expectations as I have struggled to say awake through all too many award ceremonies, but was surprised at how well the event was managed and produced and although it may damage my credentials as a cynic, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Helen Disney, the Stockholm Network’s CEO, is one of the most focused and appealing people on the free market scene and her team, such as Tim Evans (who as many of you know, also wears a Libertarian Alliance hat), should be congratulated on managing such a great event. The Master (Mistress, surely?) of Ceremonies was Dr. Karen Horn of the Cologne Institute for Economic Research and former economics editor for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She was an outstanding choice, attractive, witty and very engaging, thus setting a wonderful tone for the evening.
The after-dinner speech was delivered by C. Boyden Gray, the imposing US Ambassador to the EU. He is a terrific speaker and I found his less than flattering remarks about the US legal profession most endearing. There was very little to disagree with in his advocacy of reducing limits to free trade and he was frank about how this needs to happen on both sides of the Atlantic.
Another notably good speaker was Ján Čarnogurský, the former Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic. In fact the only speaker who hit the wrong note was Iain Duncan Smith MP, who launched into a defence of his own think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, although by the time he had finished speaking I still had no idea who he was defending it from or what the hell it actually does.
For details of who won what, see here, but the big winner of the evening was the Bulgarian think tank, the Institute for Market Economics, who walked away with two well deserved prizes. I was also delighted to see the very worthy UK based Taxpayers Alliance come away with an award. The TPA are like a fact-checking ‘urban guerilla’ organisation of thorn-in-the-side activists who have achieved results out of all proportion to the resources at their disposal.
I was quite struck by how young most of the think-tank and activist people in attendance were and that is surely a good thing.
The US Ambassador is an excellent speaker…
…and he towered over everyone! Seen here with Tural Veliyev of the Free Minds Association of Azerbaijan
Karen Horn and Cécile Phillipe, presenting an award to Richard Durana of the Institute of Economic and Social Studies in Slovakia
The delightful Cécile Phillipe, Director of the Molinari Economic Institute
Ján Čarnogurský is also an excellent speaker
Janet Daly is not someone I often agree with but I found little to disagree with last night
No, I am not going to put up any pictures of Iain Duncan Smith speaking
Big Pharma! Eye Catching Dresses!
My sparser (even) than usual blogging lately is largely the result of the expanding demands of NO2ID. Thank you to everyone (including several Samizdata contributors) who has added to the avalanche of cheques into our legal fund. The bank clerks in Marylebone High Street are grateful for the work, too.
We (NO2ID) are about to make things even more fun by recruiting a new cohort of refuseniks to join those 10,000 immortals who committed themselves in 2005. In the aftermath of the HMRC data-sharing scandal, the British public is ready for the message that the only way to stop the state from debauching your personal information is not to give it a chance.
When Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne vowed to defy the ID scheme recently, it quickly became clear that not many people really understood what this meant. We have formulated a nice clear promise that anyone at all can make, and set it free, online and off. It will be an interesting exercise in network effects.
What follows is a piece I wrote for public distribution explaining the point of the whole thing:
You might be prepared to go to gaol rather than have an ID card. But you can’t.
David Blunkett has been smugly pronouncing that there will be no ID card martyrs because the intent is to have a system of penalties – like monstrous parking fines – hard to contest in court. So further punishments would relate to failure to pay, not ID cards. That silly distinction is currently irrelevant, since powers of direct compulsion have been dropped, for now. It has not stopped Mr Blunkett repeating it, though.
Subtler minds have been at work. The Home Office plans to make you to “volunteer”. It hopes almost all the population will “volunteer”, before most people have even noticed what is happening. Well before it rounds-up and force-fingerprints a few pariahs. Official documents will one by one be “designated”, so that you cannot get one without at the same time asking to be placed – for life – on the National Identity Register.
The civil servant, Sylvanus Vivian who originated this idea in 1934 – yes, that’s right, nineteen thirty-four – called it “parasitic vitality”. In other words, the scheme is a vampire. It has no life of its own, and thrives only if it feeds. → Continue reading: Just say no
Why is this scum called animal rights activists?
A notorious extremist group says it has tampered with more than 250 items containing the antiseptic, which is mainly used to treat children suffering from cuts and grazes, as part of a long-running campaign against an animal testing laboratory.
The group, calling itself the Animal Rights Militia, said it targeted Savlon in a “clear and uncompromising” manner because it believes its Swiss manufacturer, Novartis, to be a client of the research centre Huntingdon Life Sciences.
And it warned its campaign would continue unless the pharmaceutical firm ends its links with HLS.
The Telegraph article seems to serve as a platform for their statement and agenda instead of a report that these criminals have been arrested and appropriately dealt with.
He wrapped up his Friday broadcast with carefully bracketed video of young Republicans in Washington. His softly presented outrage leads to the inevitable conclusion that he is embracing the libertarian principle of individual, personal action. The only other possible interpretation being that he is a sanctimonious hypocrite.
Ending his July 27 broadcast of Bill Moyers Journal, he makes his opinion very clear that unless someone has committed to personally experience the greatest possible cost of what they are advocating, their opinion is without standing and worthy only of ridicule and moral reprobation. His quiet anger is directed at people who advocate actions for which others will bear the burden. I for one consider this to be a marked improvement in Moyer’s politics. Prior to this he has always identified strongly with activists who want to force the rest of society to bear the burden for their projects. I look forward eagerly to seeing him apply his new standard to every guest that he invites onto his program. It will be refreshing to only hear opinions from people who have first made a total personal sacrifice to a cause, before they may express belief in the justice of that cause. Because, Bill’s right. If you have not given yourself totally to some great endeavor first, ‘volunteering’ others is the very essence of hypocrisy.
transcript excerpt: → Continue reading: Bill Moyers embraces libertarianism
Joseph Rowntree, like other Victorian Giants, campaigned against social evils in the footsteps of William Wilberforce, the abolitionist. The list of evils are clear, universal, puritanically nonconformist and relevant to the twenty-first century.
When Joseph Rowntree, the chocolate baron, established his charitable trust in 1904, he charged it with seeking out and curing the great scourges of humanity
It should pay particular attention to war, slavery, intemperance, the opium traffic, impurity, and gambling, he said.
Now, the Rowntree Trust has become dissatisfied with traditional social evils. They are probably too fuddy-duddy and fail to move the charitably inclined. But Julia Unwin, the Trust Director, who also deputises at the Food Standards Agency, has a list…
The ambitious 18-month project will be launched with a lecture at the Royal Society of Arts tonight by Julia Unwin, the trust director.
She said: From the very start our founder had amazing far-sightedness in predicting that both the causes and manifestations of social evils would change over time. We are asking people: ‘What is it that really appals you?’
Miss Unwin, deputy chairman of the Food Standards Agency, was reluctant to sway public opinion but said many new social problems arose from our growing affluence, including over-consumption; an ageing population; obesity; integration; alienation and political apathy.
You can add your vote here.
So, disgust with politics and choosing not to vote is now a social evil. How we can see the voluntary charity worker is now transformed into the professional disciplinarian, the whip of the public sector professional class, with all three mainstream parties as their political wing.
This is a rather gloomy public service announcement.
I wrote about the Serious Crime Bill in January. Since, it has proceeded quietly through the House of Lords, almost unchanged. Yesterday, so suddenly that I did not know it had happened, and was talking today about how NO2ID should brief MPs for its appearance, it received its Second Reading in the House of Commons. It is amazing that there has been no large scale protest about this
If you live in the UK (or are a voting ex-pat), you have a few weeks to write to your MP before it becomes law.
Update:
In response to popular demand, some more information. Here are:
On Part I of the Bill, a briefing note on Serious Crime Prevention Orders from the Conservative Liberty Forum.
On Part II, a somewhat more technical briefing (pdf)on the mindboggling abolition and replacement of incitement at common law from Liberty.
On Part III, A briefing I wrote (pdf) on the data-sharing aspects for NO2ID.
Which may collectively clarify what I’m going on about. Or not. But take my word for it, this is very bad indeed. Worse than ID cards. If you have an MP, write to them.
Patrick Crozier defends Al Gore against the hypocrisy charge, in a way which I think is slightly mistaken. He compares Al Gore’s vast greenhouse gas emissions with his, Patrick Crozier’s, use of state regulated trains, which Patrick disapproves of, but still uses, unhypocritically. But I think that Patrick does not quite nail it. Gore is being somewhat hypocritical. He surely could fairly easily do more to reduce his emissions. But, those who disagree with Gore are being very unwise if they make that their central complaint about him. What matters is not the degree to which Gore is or is not personally doing what he says should be done by people generally, but whether he is right about what should be done.
I am talking here about the “we are not doing enough” way of winning – and of losing – arguments.
You win arguments in politics by saying exactly what you want and not stopping until you get it. Sometimes that means setting an impossibly high standard of improvement, because what you want is very hard to get. Tough. You want it? Say so. Never say you are entirely satisfied until you really are entirely satisfied. You do not win arguments by surrendering three quarters of your case before the argument even begins. → Continue reading: Thoughts on the “not doing enough” argument
No no, not money. I need ideas.
I recently agreed to do another chat spot on 18 Doughty Street TV, and like a fool I picked Tuesday March 20th, i.e. this evening, all unaware that tomorrow is Budget Day, and we would all have to talk about the damn Budget. I hate, hate, hate Budget Days and Budgets, and conversations about Budget Day and conversations about Budgets, from the depths of my soul. I find the details of tax law deeply depressing and complicated, not least deeply depressing because so damn complicated. Plus everyone on regular TV drones on about it all for hour after hour, while saying (because knowing) extremely little, like cricket commentators when it is raining only not funny or interesting.
Anyway, I got an email this morning from His IainDaleness which included the following instruction:
We will talk about tomorrow’s budget in the first half hour. Please come armed with three things you’d like the Chancellor to do and three things you think he actually will do.
Any suggestions? I particularly need help with the “he actually will do” bit. Generally, presumably, he will (a) kiss babies and (b) steal their lollypops. (A lollypop for whoever can pin down the movie reference there.) But more precisely, what specific horrors are in the pipeline? I assume a lot of anti-4×4 crap. But what else?
And, of course, suggestions about what he should do will also be trawled through with a view to me using the best of them tonight, probably without credit to the originator.
I think that the entire government down be shut down for ever and taxes lowered to zero. But I think they want something more precise than that. So far, I can only think of saying, again, that The Top Rate of Income Tax Should Be Cut to Zero, which I think is a brilliant idea, if only because it makes the current lot of leftier-than-thou Conservatives squirm.
I am now off to read what UKIP has to say, budget-wise. (So far I have not got beyond the heading. Which should surely say “fiddles” rather than “tinkers”. The Emperor Nero was a violinist, was he not?)
Tomorrow is national No Smoking Day. Whoopeeeeeeee!!!!
I shall mark the occasion by puffing my way through at least one pack of my favourite Belgian cigarettes (not contributing to the cavernous coffers of HM Treasury makes the experience so much more enjoyable) while blowing great, billowing clouds of grey, acrid, carcinogenic fumes into the air.
I shall consider quitting if and when we ever have a national No Nagging, Preaching, Hectoring, Finger-Wagging, Pecksniffing, Condescending, Nannying Or Sanctimonious Sermonising Just Bugger Off And Mind Your Own Fucking Business Day.
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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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