There has been some interesting discussion on Peaktalk in the subject of freedom of expression, marking the second anniversary of the murder of Theo van Gogh. As there are several relevant articles, I have not linked to any in particular.
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November 2nd, 2006 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
 In today’s news, media channels bring Samizdata readers this stunning, shocking announcement:
One of the many justifications for creating this all-seeing, all-knowing state is that it will help reduce crime. Well, it does not appear to be having much impact on Britain’s lovely teenagers, at least according to a new report. Of course, one wonders how much of the worries about crime are partly a moral panic and partly based on hard, ugly reality (a bit of both, probably). Even so, Britain’s approach to crime, which involves massive use of surveillance technology to catch offenders, appears not to be all that much of a deterrent to certain forms of crime, although arguably it does mean that there is a slightly greater chance of catching people once a crime has been carried out (not much consolation for the victims of said, obviously). I recently got this book on the whole issue of crime, state powers, surveillance and terrorism, by Bruce Schneier, who confronts the whole idea that we face an inescapable trade-off, a zero sum game, between liberty and security. Recommended. November 2nd, 2006 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is not just in the UK that the steady drum beat of the state encroaching on ancient liberties can be heard. There is some good discussion on 10 Zen Monkeys regarding the horrendous Military Commissions Act in the USA. However I do find the lack of concern about the effects on non-US subjects a bit disconcerting given the propensity of American courts to try and apply their laws extra-territorially. Naturally these laws have been sold as only applying to The Bad Guys… just as RICO was sold as just being a tool to go after organised crime and yet it ended up being used again anti-abortion activists. Regardless of what the politicians say when they are selling a prospective law, once enacted, legislation gets used against anyone it can be used against, not just the targets intended at the time the laws is passed. I must say that anyone without a US passport who is politically active and less than flattering about US government’s policies should serious reconsider taking that holiday in Florida or going to visit American friends. October 25th, 2006 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
A lot of people have been talking to me about the pubs of Yeovil this week. Not because of my unwise enthusiasm when young for rough cider. But because of this, first covered at the beginning of the year:
That’s from a report in The Guardian in May, which went on to explain:
But things have moved on. “Don’t like it? You can drink elsewhere. Let the market sort it out… let these awful surveillance clubs go out of business and free-wheeling ones thrive,” was my immediate reaction. It appears that was naive. While it may be “voluntary” for drinkers, it appears that it is not voluntary for pubs and clubs. Not any longer. The Register explains,
The fingerprinting is epiphenomenon. What’s deeply disturbing here is the construction of new regimes of official control out of powers granted nominally in the spirit of “liberalisation”. The Licensing Act 2003 passed licensing the sale of alcohol and permits for music and dancing – yes, you need a permit to let your customers dance in England and Wales – from magistrates to local authorities. And it provided for local authorities to set conditions on licenses as they saw fit. Though local authorities are notionally elected bodies, and magistrates appointees, this looked like democratic reform. But all the powers of local authorities are actually exercised by permanent officials – who also tell elected councillors what their duties are. And there are an awful lot of them. Magistrates used to hear licensing applications quickly. They had other things to do. And they exercised their power judicially: deciding, but not seeking to control. Ms Bradburn and her staff have time to work with the police and the Home Office on innovative schemes. I’ve noted before how simple-sounding powers can be pooled by otherwise separate agencies to common purpose, gaining leverage over the citizen. I call it The Power Wedge. They are entirely dedicated to making us safer. How terrifying. “A Republic?” said the Seagreen, with one of his dry husky unsportful laughs, “What is that?” GIve me the foul air of corruption, if that is the only way I may be permitted to breath at all. October 24th, 2006 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
Henry Porter, the British journalist, gave a lecture recently, which is reproduced in the Independent newspaper here, which lays out in trenchant terms the sheer magnitude of the Blair government’s assault on civil liberties. None of the broad points will exactly come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog but I link to it because it is a pretty good primer on the issue for those who have not thought much about this issue. Here are a couple of excerpts:
I like the way that Porter directly confronts the nonsense ‘argument’ that “only the guilty have anything to fear” line that one hears being trotted out in favour of things like abolition of Habeas Corpus or eroding the presumption of innocence in the Common Law. This is a fine article that deserves to be widely read. At the end, Porter recommends, among other things, a wholesale effort to teach children about how the laws protecting liberty were acquired, and why they were acquired, in the first place. For it is in its attempts to obliterate history, or make us feel deeply ashamed of it, that the real menace of New Labour’s modernisation obsession first revealed itself. It may strike some critics of libertarianism as paradoxical, given that libertarians are usually seen as fans of modern life, that any defence of freedom must be steeped in an understanding and appreciation of history, including the Classics. Perhaps our modern legislators would be far less of a menace if they had bothered to study the speeches of Pericles or Cicero. October 21st, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
You can guess the context.
Yes; they did disclose the “bcc”. The accompanying leaflet sets out the complaints procedure. It ends, inevitably, on a minatory note:
October 16th, 2006 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Economist Bryan Caplan has posed the question: which law would you like to break? I guess, that being a libertarian kind of guy, he favours giving the finger to those laws that do not protect life and property but instead regulate our behaviour for our own good. So, it being the start of the weekend, I shamelessly steal Bryan’s idea and pose this question to the Samizdata hordes: which law would you like to break? And also, why? October 13th, 2006 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just so you all know, and in case even Guy Herbert missed it, Joanna Lumley (who played the crazy blonde who lived on vodka in Ab Fab) has just said, on the Graham Norton show (BBC1 TV):
She also took a swipe at surveillance cameras, and anti-smoking laws, and the fact that you cannot get within a mile of Number Ten to say boo. To quite enthusiastic applause. I would not imagine that this means very much, but it presumably means a little.  October 9th, 2006 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Teach you I cannot, my young Padawan.” As a science fiction reader I am used to meeting strange words and either guessing their meaning through context or not guessing and enjoying the story anyway. So I was only slightly hampered when reading a story in yesterday’s Times headlined “New York Mayor fights drain of IPOs to London” by my complete ignorance of what an “IPO” is and the complete failure of the story to enlighten me. You can tell me all about it in the comments if you must, but as far as I am concerned “eye-pee-oh” could be replaced by any other sequence of sounds, such as snurg-ah-poog or plibble. Plibble it is. Plibbles must be pretty nice things, because the mayor of New York is so concerned that all the plibbles New York used to win (apparently plibbles are things you win) now being won by London that he has appointed management consultants to investigate causes and possible remedies for the Great Plibble Crisis. Concern has focused on the fact that since the passing of the Somebody-Whatsit Act, London has gained a 26.4 per cent share of the global plibbles. Hurrah for London, I think. New York’s problem is that doing whatever you have to do to comply with the Somebody-Whatsit act before you can get your plibbles is one big hassle. So the plibbles go somewhere else. Blimey, I could have saved Mayor Bloomberg a packet on consultancy fees and I still have no idea what a plibble is. Come to think of it, anyone could work out that if plibble-getting is made tedious and expensive in your country then plibbleseekers will get their fun somewhere else. Even if you do not know your plibbles from your twogbots. September 29th, 2006 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
On the surface the story that veteran country singer Willie Nelson has been arrested for marijuana possession is nothing more then a bit of comic relief. Especially when you read that his sister Bobbie was arrested as well. One visualises these people, well into their 70’s in age, sitting round the camp fire, having a puff, tripping out on a few pharmaceutical mushrooms, and polishing their ‘geriatrics for grass’ buttons. It is all rather ludicrous. However, even though I care little for country music and even less for marijuana, my own feeling is, well, good on them; people that get to their ‘Golden Years’ are entitled to as much enjoyment in life as the rest of us, after all. However, we are not talking about your everyday geriatrics here. This is not your Aunt Mabel pottering around her back yard, but a popular entertainer who has a history of political causes behind him, and is by no means inactive in politics even at this late stage of his career.
Louisiana police will deny that they are in any way trying to ‘send a message’ but in their latest arrest of the country music legend, they have done nothing but highlight the utter uselessness of drug laws. That these laws are useless is as well known as the fact that the sky is blue and the sun rises in the east. Yet to get anywhere in reforming them, Nelson has to throw what prestige he has behind an oddball candidate like ‘Kinky’ Friedman. What is wrong with this picture? September 19th, 2006 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
London calling! London calling! Reports are coming in of growing resistance to the brutal occupation of the Food Nazis:
Smuggling food into prisoners is a time-honoured practice but I have to admit that the cemetery angle is cool. They may need to start digging tunnels though. Hopefully, this is a ‘line in the sand’; a message from the public to the ruling class paternalists and busybodies that their food fascism is an intervention too far. September 16th, 2006 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
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