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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In response to another European Directive, the supine government of Her Majesty, will later today impose Workers Councils upon all companies employing 150 workers, or more. In 2008, the same regulations will apply to all companies with 50 workers, or more. No doubt, now this principle has been established, it will apply to my hiring of a single plumber, in the fullness of time.
Employers will be obliged to consult these councils on any change of company ownership, or on any change in the numbers of staff employed by the company; no doubt, this workers’ control will ultimately govern every minute decision taken by any employer, as the ratchet tightens itself further. This will, obviously, usher in a period of wealth, happiness, and economic harmony, as they currently possess in the rest of the mainstream EU. Like in Germany, and in France, for instance.
It seems now, that when I hire someone, by the hour, to carry out a task for me, not only do I have to compensate them, at an agreed rate, for the disutility of their labour, but I also become in thrall to them. I have to ask them whether I can suspend their employment, offer them less cash per hour, or sell my own property. Excellent. This won’t encourage me to invest offshore, invest onshore using more capital-intensive robotics, or sack more workers until I get down to a maximum of 49 people, or whatever the next minimum is. It won’t do any of that, no. It’s all been thought through.
It also offers another splendid opportunity we cannot afford to miss. As the EU expands to the east, taking in countries such as Turkey, Cyprus, Siberia, and so on, the word European becomes increasingly redundant. We could replace the whole phrase with Union. But this single word looks a little lonely, by itself, a little doubtful. To give it some added strength, let’s uniquely identify what kind of union we have, by the addition of a description of its dominant economic philosophy. This gives us, the Workers Council Union. (You may be able to guess where this is going  )
Now, as we expand to the east, we need to make our Russian brethren (or comrades), feel a little more included. They’ve always felt a bit out on a limb, so I think we should take this opportunity to make them feel more at home. So let’s rename this new improved Union, in their honour. (This also takes us away from the evil English language of the American capitalists.)
So the Workers Council Union becomes the Rabochiy Sovyet Union. Which looks good so far. But brainstorming it even further, isn’t this now a little bit too long? And isn’t that pronunciation a little difficult, particularly for the Germanic tongue? In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, yes. I think so. So let’s shorten it, and simplify that pronunciation at the same time, killing two birds with one stone. Et voila, we have arrived at the perfect social democracy we have been trying to achieve for all these years. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, please, a round of applause, the new Soviet Union!
At the risk of emulating the Roman Republic’s Cato, who added Carthago delenda est! (Carthage must be destroyed) to the end of every speech he made, or letter he wrote, I think I’m developing my own personal version. The sooner we are out of the EU, the better. It really cannot come soon enough.
Silvio Berlusconi has crossed the line. It was bad enough that he is wealthy businessman and not a bureaucrat. His right-of-centre views are distasteful but containable. Even his support for America could be overlooked in the circumstances.
But, now, Berlusconi has gone too far. He has brought disharmony to Brussels and insulted a left-wing Eurocrat. That is beyond the pale. That is unforgiveable. Now he must be destroyed:
Even if he is voted out at the next election, the damage that has been done to Italian democracy will be difficult to repair. Should he remain in office, the prospects are grim indeed. It is time Europe woke up to the threat Berlusconi poses. He is not just another rightwing politician; he represents the greatest challenge to democracy anywhere in Europe.
As evidenced by this frothing-at-the-mouth, hysterical denouncement in the Guardian, the lefties have struck up the cogs, wheels and pistons of their considerable propoganda machine to churn away at full steam and not stop until Berlusconi has been drawn into the mincer and disposed of.
This is not going to be allowed to simply blow over. You cannot commit the ultimate crime of cocking a snoot at the Euro-left and expect to get away with it. Over the coming months the left will deploy the entire range of their customary demonology against Berlusconi in the same way they have deployed it against George Bush. In fact, Berlusconi is now the George Bush of Europe.
Signor Berlusconi has got a lot of money and a lot of moxy but what he needs most of all now is a set of brass balls. I hope he has got those too.
The EU will shortly announce its plans to more strictly regulate the Budget Airline industry. After decades of nationalised “flag carriers”, which in Europe priced out ordinary consumers from regular air travel, world-wide Thatcherite reforms of this important transportation industry drove prices down, and greatly increased the numbers of destinations and budget price options; this brought a stagnant European industry more into line with a vibrant US.
But those heady days seem numbered under the forthcoming EU regulations. These, of course, will be written by many in a corrupt organisation regularly claiming 1st class weekend airfare expenses, from Brussels to home, without the need to produce either receipts, or even without the need to take the flight.
Instead of the consumer placing their custom where they will, with different competitors, and companies building up individual loyalty and trust in their brands, the EU has decided, in its wisdom, to crack down its regulatory whip.
For those passengers bumped off over-booked flights, compensation levels will be doubled; some claims for compensation may even be several times the original low-budget fare. The new measures will also introduce enforced compensation for delays, whether the fault of the airline or not; indeed the industry claims 75% per cent of delays are caused by the failures of the various European air traffic control systems.
Many of the companies involved, such as Ryan Air and Easyjet, have complained bitterly about this planned interference in their market. They argue that if travellers want both low fares and compensation, they should protect themselves through the purchase their own travel insurance. But it seems the EU will have its way.
Once again consumers are to be treated as mindless cattle, with an inability to make their own travel choices, change their purchasing decisions, or risk the uncertainties that low-fare travel inevitably brings with it. What’s really sad, is that many consumers in this dirigiste continent will agree with the plan; what many of these supporters won’t realise however, until it’s too late, is that they will also pay for it.
It seems certain that fares will rise sharply, to cover the airline insurance necessary to fulfil compensation claims, and the courts will be swamped with form-waving compensation-culture vultures trying to bleed the industry dry. Marginal destinations, such as the many which have recently sprung up in France and Spain, servicing holiday-home Britons, may also be dropped altogether, as their slim potential profits will fail to cover the possible compensation costs or necessary insurance.
So, thanks Big Brother EU. Where would we be without you?
The European Union’s 15 member nations have introduced a value-added tax on digital sales to residents by non-European companies. By 3rd July, non-EU companies have to register with European tax authorities to levy, collect and remit the VAT on sales of various digital goods and services. A directive issued by the EU in May 2002, mandates companies that do not have a physical presence in an EU member nation to assess the tax at the rates charged by the countries where individual customers are located.
Computerworld reports that this imposition has forced many U.S. businesses to undertake months of legal and technical preparations. The VAT in the EU countries ranges from 15% in Luxembourg to 25% in Denmark and Sweden and as a result, some U.S. companies have had to choose between two costly alternatives: updating their e-commerce systems to track sales and initiate VAT payments at the various rates, or setting up new operations in one of the member countries so they can apply its tax rate to all digital sales throughout the EU.
Scott Pendergrast of Fictionwise, an e-books seller, said it would not have been economically feasible to invest in a European operation. Instead, he is preparing to collect the tax in different countries, although reluctantly.
I think paying it is ridiculous, and it’s unfair for a foreign government to make me a tax collector. I have enough trouble keeping track of the the U.S. tax code.
Others are questioning the ability of the EU to enforce the tax on the grounds that European courts would not have jurisdiction over them. Jon Abolins of Taxware, an e-commerce software developer, has been advising companies not to do so, because there is speculation that EU countries might not fight to protect the intellectual property rights of sellers that fail to collect the VAT.
There is so much wrong with this picture one does not know where to begin. First, of all, taxing on-line transactions is not specific to the EU, merely another thieving hand of the state. Secondly, the EU approved the VAT plan after content providers based in Europe complained that they were at a competitive disadvantage because they already have to collect the tax. A classic interference of the political into the economical, so beloved of the EU commissioners. Thirdly, in a typical EU fashion the law is ambiguous as to how companies are to determine the location of the buyer and near unenforceable by the vendors. They will spend hundreds of thousands hard earned profits on installing systems designed to assess and collect the VAT and on third-party vendors tracing the IP addresses of their customers.
And, if the EU governments feel they are not getting enough, they can send the tax authorities after the companies for not collecting the taxes for them. Welcome to the EU, the land where business is just another branch of the state.
Ever since the US implemented software patents, the EU has been determined not to be left behind. According to an item in Debian News:
“More on European Software Patents. An article at ZDNet UK says that the EU bureaucrats aren’t even considering the numerous anti-software patenting opinions out there. According to a well-connected lobbyist group, they have determined there will be patents, and the only question is what kind.”
Software patents are a very bad idea as many have discovered in the US. They put a fence around parts of mathematics. Even worse, the government guardians of the fencemaking are not familiar with the field and its’ literature and are vastly understaffed to boot. This has led to some gawdawfully silly (and economically destructive) patents being granted.
Within the last couple years BT tried to claim a patent in the US on hyperlinks1. This was shot down after a massive search by the open source community. It ended with the web publication of a late 1960’s lecture discussing the idea.
Virtually everything in well done programming is “obvious” when you get “there”, down to the core of the problem at hand. Two top programmers given a reasonable time to attack a complex problem will very likely find large sections of their work very similar if not almost identical.
A program in a well formed language is equivalent to a mathematical expression. Such expressions are in most cases transformable into each other.
The Debian News cited article can be found here
1 = 01/07/2000 NewScientist p017 “The Net Strikes Back: BT tries To Patent links”
I don’t give two flying figs about Silvio Berlusconi’s business dealings be they murky or otherwise. All I know is that he is just about the only European political figure with personality:
Mr Berlusconi lashed out when socialist Martin Schulz accused him of an alleged conflict of interest over his Italian media empire.
Does this qualify as ‘lashing out’?
“I know there is a man producing a film on the Nazi concentration camps,” Mr Berlusconi said, “I would like to suggest to you the role of Kapo (guard chosen from among the prisoners) – you’d be perfect.”
Naturally this left all the po-faced EUnuchs clucking like a lot of indignant hens. Expect a draft directive on inappropriate insults any day now.
I think that Hermann Rorschach was really onto something with that little inkblot test of his. If two different but apparently sane people can look at the same picture and see two entirely different things then perhaps that goes at least some way explaining ideology as well as psychology.
A perfect illustration of this lies in the response of British socialist bloggers to the plans for the regionalisation of England. This is the plan to divide England up into nine entirely artifical ‘sectors’ and give each its own assembly with regulatory functions. The details of this project are currently being thrashed out by the Office of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.
Over on the left, this is an eagerly awaited development. One of the new kids on the left-block, Farringdon Street, waxes lyrical:
The northwest is going to have a referendum on a regional assembly. This is a development that should be greeted with alacrity. While its chief protagonist in central government John Prescott hardly has a reputation as a constitutional iconoclast, devolution is vital to the reconstruction of British politics.
Power is to concentrated, the agenda to London centric. The regions especially those furthest from the capital need their own champions. We must increase the sheer amount of political muscle deployable in London and Brussels to advance the regional interest.
And he is far from alone in his enthusiasm. It is sincerely shared by the rest of British left all of whom appear to be getting moist-knickered and dewey-eyed over what they are trying to present as ‘decentralisation’.
Now, if this really was a process of decentralisation it might have some merit. At the very least it would be worthy of further discussion. But this is not a process of decentralisation. Not even to the smallest degree. → Continue reading: Top down and down and down
The trouble with people who ‘come in from the cold’ is that they have unfortunate tendency to bring some of that coldness with them and, every so often, they just cannot help but drop a little of it into our lives.
Take, for example, Christopher Hitchens, a man who has been widely (and justifiably) praised for the excoration of his former leftist colleagues since the WTC attacks. But reports of defection from the dark side may well have been exaggerated if this infuriatingly superficial and condescending bit of Euro-fawning is anything to by:
The Turkish Cypriots did not mount mass demonstrations against partition because they had any romantic idea of the European dream.
They just didn’t want to be confined in a little sweat-shop state, forced to do business in the mainland Turkish lira, and kept away from a prosperity that they could see taking place on the other side of the wall.
See, the Turkish Cypriots want to embrace Europe so why are we Brits being so stubborn? Who is Mr.Hitchens trying to kid? The Northern (Turkish) sector of Cyprus has been the subject of official sanctions imposed by just about every European country since it was established in 1974. If the Cypriot Turks are, indeed,wallowing in a ‘little sweat-shop state’ then Europe is the cause of their misery not the cure.
For them, “protection” and “protectionism” became the
same thing – another name for stagnation and isolation.
‘Protectionism’ does indeed mean ‘stagnation’ but membership of the EU does not mean the abolition of protectionism. It simply means writing protectionism across a whole continent. It is exchanging the almost non-existant risk of ‘Fortress Britain’ for the racing, inescapable certainty of ‘Fortress Europe’. A bad idea does not get better by simply inflating it.
In order to join this club, you had to have a political
democracy and free movement of labour and capital
No, in order to join this club you have to submit to the will of the Commission and agree to trade according to their incomprehensible ziggurat of rules and regulations. → Continue reading: Smack my Hitch up
Or is the headline France satisfied with EU deal on farm subsidies somewhat worrying? If it was “France absolutely livid about EU deal on farm subsides”, then we might be getting somewhere. However, that doesn’t seem to be something we ever see. If France was absolutely livid, there wouldn’t be a deal.
(via Eldan).
European Union agriculture ministers have agreed radical reforms to the controversial system of paying subsidies to farmers. They promise to slash the monstrous bill of 43bn euro ($50) that EU countries’ taxpayers have to foot in order to subsidise ehem…French… ehem… farmers.
EU farm commissioner Franz Fischler, who first proposed the reforms, said the accord marked “the start of a new era” and would fundamentally change the 45-year old Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
Is this encouraging? We do not think so. And neither does the BBC. Shock, horror. Cast your eye over the deal and note it has as many (loop)holes as Swiss cheese (which, by the way, is produced without EU subsidies). I would like to draw your attention to the point 3.
- Abolish most of the subsidies that reward farmers according to how much food they grow.
- Farmers will receive a single payment, rather than grading the amount of money in line with the amount of food produced.
- Individual countries will be able to stick to the old system if there is a risk that the new system would lead to the land being abandoned.
- The prices at which the EU intervenes to support farmers are to be cut in key sectors, including milk powder and butter
- Countries like the UK, which want to press ahead with more radical reform, are allowed to do so.
- Direct payment for bigger farms will be cut to finance the new rural development policy, promoting the environment and animal welfare.
So the end of EUcrats meddling in agriculture in nowhere in sight. The ‘reform’ is merely a cosmetic rejuggling of CAP’s inefficiencies and vast bureaucracy induced by the wide-spread criticism of the policy for distorting global trade and hurting poor countries. The subsidies have been the key sticking point in agreeing the next round of global trade talks directly opposing the EU child-like and visionary drive for ‘global influence’ as a counterpart to the US.
Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.
It’s a typical EU compromise which gives and takes a little from everyone and creates terrible difficulties for those who have to implement it.
Guess who said that? Gerd Sonnleitner, head of Germany’s farmers union. He got that right but I doubt he will see the light on the other side of the EU fence.
Mr Prodi is not amused. The UK government’s decision on the euro had disappointed him. Oh dear. He probably can’t wait to get his hands on UK affairs himself.
The EU chief also reckons that it was a signal of deep political problems. He is right there. The EU has deep political problems. No wait, he meant the UK – it appears that he doubts the wisdom of the direction our reverent Tony Blair has taken over the euro.
Prodi acknowledged that Tony might have had a tough time winning a referendum but he said he did not know whether the prime minister’s decision was due to political wisdom or a lack of courage. Of course, Prodi does not worry about referendums, you just keep having them until they say ‘yes’.
And finally, Mr Prodi warns that Britain cannot remain half in and half out of Europe. Oh good. Let’s get out then…
Never mind San Francisco or Hampstead, Brussels is the true home of the radical student left. Still as committed as ever to the anti-ismism crusades of the 1980’s, they continue to dig away at the foundations of our ‘bourgeois values’.
Seems they have just struck another seam:
The Commission is in the final stages of drawing up a directive to ban sex discrimination, with implications for the media, advertising and insurance industries.
The draft directive, revealed in Tuesday’s Financial Times, would leave it to the courts to decide whether programmes or advertisements were sexist or “did not respect human dignity”. An explanatory note says: “The purpose of this provision is to avoid throughout all forms of mass media all stereotypical portrayals of women and men, as well as any projection of unacceptable images of men and women affecting human dignity and decency in advertisements.”
The law could have profound implications for institutions such as Britain’s topless Page Three girls in The Sun newspaper and vast swathes of Italian television. Advertisers using sex to sell could also be affected.
If it wasn’t so offensive and inappropriate, I’d say that they’ve just discovered a motherlode.
The real devil in this detail lies with the apparently reasonable proposition to ‘leave it to the Courts’ thereby providing a fig-leaf of objective justice. Actually, though, this is a charter and blessing for looney-left activists to drag any number of advertising agencies and media companies through any number of Courts on pretty much any pretext they damn well please (as these things are usually drafted in the widest and vaguest possible terms).
However, in practice, this will only need to be done once or twice for the wicked capitalists to get the message and, in order to avoid the risk of a ruinous lawsuit, start censoring themselves. That is the ideal solution because why bother with all that messy and troublesome enforcement business when life is so much easier for the ruling elite if everyone just internalises their own repression.
The European Union: if it didn’t exist, we would not have to invent it.
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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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