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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Back in 1990 the Conservative MP Norman Tebbit got a lot of stick for his “cricket test”. Amateur. They play that game more seriously in India. The Hindustan Times reports,
‘Those celebrating Pak’s victory will face sedition case’: Yogi Adityanath
Chief minister [of the state of Uttar Pradesh] Yogi Adityanath on Thursday said that the sedition charges will be invoked against those celebrating Pakistan’s victory against India in the recent T20 World Cup match.
“Those celebrating Pakistan’s victory will face sedition,” a tweet posted on the official handle of Adityanath’s office said.
The Pakistan cricket team on Sunday defeated the Indian side by 10 wickets in a Super 12 game in Dubai for their first win in 13 attempts over their arch-rivals in a World Cup match.
A senior police official said a total of five cases were registered against seven people in Agra, Bareilly, Budaun and Sitapur for allegedly using indecent words against the Indian cricket team and celebrating Pakistan’s vicory. He said one case each was lodged in Agra, Budaun and Sitapur while two cases were registered in Bareilly’s Izzatnagar police station.
The three Kashmiri students were produced in the court of the special chief judicial magistrate on Thursday. The court sent them to 14 days’ judicial custody. “During the course of the investigation, section 124-A (sedition) was added against these three Kashmiri students,” said PK Singh, the inspector in charge of Jagdishpura police station.
The report continues,
In Budaun, the FIR was lodged under IPC section 124 A for sedition and section 66 of the IT Act against one person at the Faizganj Behta police station.
“Sedition charges should not be invoked in case of cheering in sports. No violence happened in these cases. England had been our bigger and worst enemy ever. But many times people in India do laud England’s team or players.”, said a Samajwadi Party leader on condition of anonymity
The (wisely) anonymous speaker may have been prompted to mention India’s relatively friendly cricketing relations with England by the fact that, as the article says, most of the accused were charged under the notorious Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code. In 1922, Gandhi was imprisoned by the British under Section 124A and referred to it as the “prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen”. Ninety-nine years have gone by, seventy-four of them with India as an independent nation, and the prince remains in power.
As the vultures circle above Glasgow for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference a.k.a. Cop26, here is a flashback to Cop15 which took place in Copenhagen in 2009:
Above all, Obama needed to be able to demonstrate to the Senate that he could deliver China in any global climate regulation framework, so conservative senators could not argue that US carbon cuts would further advantage Chinese industry. With midterm elections looming, Obama and his staff also knew that Copenhagen would be probably their only opportunity to go to climate change talks with a strong mandate. This further strengthened China’s negotiating hand, as did the complete lack of civil society political pressure on either China or India. Campaign groups never blame developing countries for failure; this is an iron rule that is never broken. The Indians, in particular, have become past masters at co-opting the language of equity (“equal rights to the atmosphere”) in the service of planetary suicide – and leftish campaigners and commentators are hoist with their own petard.
– Mark Lynas writing in the Guardian on 22 December 2009: “How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room”
The majestic cycle continues: “Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver”. He won’t. China will wreck the deal. Developing countries will grandstand, led by the Maldives. Doom will be imminent if we do not get a Green New Deal within a timeframe just longer than one electoral cycle. Preparations will begin for Cop27.
Brian and I recorded a couple of conversations which remained unpublished at the time of this death. This is the first.
Any comments – which would be gratefully received – are probably best left here on Samizdata.
Interesting and significant (probably) to see Brian’s influence all over the preceding post. My apologies to anyone reading this who didn’t know him and feels left out.
Then:
After the Uniformity Act 1662, for about two centuries, it was difficult for any but practising members of the Church of England to gain degrees from the old English universities, at Cambridge and Oxford. The University of Oxford, in particular, required – until the Oxford University Act 1854 – a religious test on admission that was comparable to that for joining the Church. The situation at the University of Cambridge was that a statutory test was required to take a bachelor’s degree.
English Dissenters in this context were Nonconformist Protestants who could not in good conscience subscribe (i.e. conform) to the beliefs of the Church of England. As they were debarred from taking degrees in the only two English universities, many of them attended the dissenting academies. If they could afford it, they completed their education at the universities of Leyden, Utrecht, Glasgow or Edinburgh, the last, particularly, those who were studying medicine or law.
Now:
After making their grades and unpacking their bags, new students may be forgiven for thinking they are ready to launch themselves into university life.
But at one of Britain’s leading institutions, they must now clear one more hurdle before beginning their studies: they must accept “personal guilt”.
St Andrews has introduced compulsory modules on sustainability, diversity, consent and good academic practice and will not allow students to matriculate if they do not “pass” by agreeing with certain statements. The university is one of a growing number insisting that students undertake training on subjects including anti-bullying and climate change.
[…]
At St Andrews, the induction asks students to agree with statements including: “Acknowledging your personal guilt is a useful start point in overcoming unconscious bias.” Those who tick “disagree” are marked incorrect and too many wrong answers mean they have failed the module and must retake it.
Another question from the course asks: “Does equality mean treating everyone the same?” Those who respond yes are told: “That’s not right, in fact equality may mean treating people differently and in a way that is appropriate to their needs so that they have fair outcomes and equal opportunity.”
Students are also asked to agree with the statement: “It is important to think about and understand our own prejudices and stereotypes so we don’t treat someone else unfairly or inappropriately.”
Britain’s electricity supply is in peril. On Monday (20 Sep) the Financial Times reported,
Peter McGirr wanted to modernise the British consumer energy market when he founded Green three years ago, building a customer base of more than 250,000 households. Now, with the sector in meltdown, he says it is “incredibly unlikely” the Newcastle-based supplier will survive until Christmas without government intervention.
Five smaller suppliers have collapsed in the past six weeks, with four or five more expected to join them in the next 10 days as the industry is battered by unprecedented surges in wholesale electricity and gas prices.
Observers are predicting as few as 10 suppliers will make it through the winter, implying 40 could go bust. Some executives have privately suggested the sector could go back to a big four, five or six companies.
How did this happen to us? I know who to blame for setting the UK on this disastrous course. On Tuesday 24 September 2013, eight years ago tomorrow, the then Leader of the Labour party, Ed Miliband, gave his big speech to the Labour party conference in Brighton. One item was particularly popular:
“If we win the election 2015 the next Labour government will freeze gas and electricity prices until the start of 2017. Your bills will not rise. It will benefit millions of families and millions of businesses. That’s what I mean by a government that fights for you. That’s what I mean when I say Britain can do better than this.”
The response from the Tories was immediate and scathing:
As the Guardian reported,
Energy minister Greg Barker attacks Labour’s plan to cap energy prices
In response to Ed Miliband’s announcement, the energy minister says capping energy prices would have catastrophic consequences for investment in the UK
Figures from the gas industry chipped in:
The lights could go out if Labour introduces its 20-month freeze on energy prices, Ian Peters of British Gas said. “If we have no ability to control what we do in the retail prices” and wholesale prices suddenly go up within a single year “that will threaten energy security,” he said. Asked if that meant the lights would go out, he replied: “I think that is a risk.”
But Mr Miliband’s policy had equally vigorous defenders. On 25 September 2013, the day after Mr Miliband’s speech, Alex Andreou of the New Statesman thundered:
Ed Miliband’s critics think his energy pledge will make the lights go out. They are wrong
The critics were wrong. Ed Miliband is innocent OK! It was not his pledge that a Labour government would limit energy prices that has brought us so near to having the lights go out.
The Conservative manifesto of 2017 included energy price controls, duly introduced by Prime Minister Theresa May on 1st January 2019.
And here we are.
They’ve come for the tiger.
“Children’s book ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’ could lead to rape and harassment’ because it reinforces gender inequality that causes violence against women, campaigner claims”, reports the Mail.
It may have delighted generations of children, but The Tiger Who Came To Tea reinforces gender inequality which causes violence against women and girls, a campaigner said yesterday.
Rachel Adamson, of Zero Tolerance, a charity working to end men’s violence against women, said Judith Kerr’s 1968 classic was ‘problematic’ because of its ‘old fashioned’ portrayal of women and family dynamics.
The book sees an uninvited tiger join a young girl and her mother for tea before eating all the food in the house, drinking everything, running the taps dry and leaving.
The girl’s father then comes home and takes her and her mother to a cafe.
Miss Adamson did not call for the book to be banned but said it could be used to ‘raise a conversation’ in nurseries.
She told BBC Radio Scotland: ‘We know that gender stereotypes are harmful and they reinforce gender inequality, and that gender inequality is the cause of violence against women and girls, such as domestic abuse, rape and sexual harassment.’
Adamson questioned the tiger’s gender and why he was not female or gender neutral.
Um… would this campaigner against violence inflicted on women and girls, whose organisation specifically defends its focus on men’s violence against women really want to see a children’s book in which the enormous, physically dominant predator who blags its way into a space which a woman and a girl had thought their own and abuses their hospitality was female or transgender?
Sigh. As the Mail article points out, Judith Kerr knew a thing or two about prejudice leading to violence. Her father was a well known German Jewish writer who had to flee with his family when the Nazis came to power and put a price on his head. They only just escaped. She wrote a lightly fictionalised account of her family’s story in When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. Nonetheless, she always resisted attempts to claim that the tiger was a metaphor for Nazism. It was just a big hungry but affable tiger who ate all the buns and drank all the water in the tap.
→ Continue reading: Came for tea, stayed for the rape: a beloved children’s classic re-analysed
BBC News 17:16 BST: Taliban take over Presidential Palace – reports
Conveniently, Afghanistan has had its own Samizdata tag for nearly twenty years. It is interesting, if depressing, to look at the old entries.
The day before yesterday a man called Jake Davison murdered five people in Plymouth. In a pattern common with many spree killers he first murdered his mother and then went on to kill random strangers, including a three year old girl and her father.
The three major “spree” or “rampage” killings in British history were carried out in Hungerford in 1987, in Dunblane in 1996 and in Cumbria in 2010.
There was also a spree killing of five people in West Bromwich and Nuneaton in 1978.
There have been other mass murders following different dynamics, such as serial killers targeting particular categories of victim such as prostitutes or homosexuals, or medical murderers like Dr Harold Shipman, who may have murdered hundreds over his lifetime. There have also been other spree killers who were stopped or killed themselves after claiming fewer victims than those listed above.
Many years ago I wrote a pamphlet for the Libertarian Alliance about the Dunblane Massacre called “Rachel weeping for her children”. I wrote,
… in Britain there was almost no control of guns before the 1920 Firearms Act and widespread ownership of pistols for self defence until the 1968 Act and yet there was one of the lowest murder rates of any society in human history. In Britain, as gun laws have got stricter, gun crime has got worse. Everyone then would then say, unencumbered by any shred of evidence, “Aha! But crime would have been yet worse if the laws had not come in!” This was my first introduction to the enormous inertia of a failed policy.
Other than quoting that passage I will not repeat here any of the arguments about gun laws that I made in that piece.
I simply wish to pose the question at the top of this post. Why weren’t there any British massacres of that type, the rampage killer who attacks random people, early in the twentieth century? It cannot have been that guns were unavailable: the world wars flooded the UK with guns. So far as I know spree killings were rarer in the US during that period too. Not that there was an absence of mass murders during this time – there were several political/racial pogroms such as the Tulsa race massacre, but random killings seem to have been less frequent than in the decades before or afterwards.
The two major exceptions that I can recall, the Bath School massacre and Pacific Airlines Flight 773, were both carried out by means other than guns.
I may be wrong about the US. That list on Wikipedia omits what I would have thought was the progenitor of the modern type of random mass shooting: the University of Texas clock tower massacre in 1966.
I may be wrong about the whole thing. Perhaps there is no pattern to be discerned from what are, fortunately, very rare events. Yet it seems to me that there is just enough of a pattern there to make the question worth asking.
Writing books about “current affairs” is tricky. If you write your book while whatever you are writing about is not yet over, you are liable to be wrong-footed by later events, especially if you thought it was over.
But if you wait until you are sure that whatever it is has finally finished, your book is liable to be lost in a throng of rival books on the same subject, written by people all of whom, like you, know that it’s now or never, and at a time when whatever happened is now pretty much obvious to all. But what if you are spot-on about what is happening while it is still happening, but you wait until the dust settles? Then you miss your chance to have been “prophetic”. “That’s what I said!” works far better if you actually did say it, loud and clear, before it all became obvious.
Stephen Davies latest book, entitled The Economics and Politics of Brexit: The Realignment of British Public Life, is a rather cunning answer to this dilemma.
Davies has written a book about a process which still has a way to go, but also about one of the consequences of this process which is already very clear. The larger process is the political realignment which Britain is now still in the thick of. But one of the many consequences of this realignment has now been pretty much settled.
→ Continue reading: Stephen Davies on Brexit and political realignment
“The truth is that China has come out of the lockdowns grimmer, stronger and more assertive. The world we knew has gone.”
– Daniel Hannan, Sunday Telegraph today (behind paywall).
He is writing on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. An organisation responsible for the deaths of tens of millions and which continues to run a heavily authoritarian and dangerous place. It is nothing to celebrate – quite the reverse.
The future of the flying car is finally arriving, a flying car, the AirCar, has completed a test flight between two airports in Slovakia, reports the BBC.
This wonderful development brought to us by Professor Stefan Klein (the article has a short video showing the car flying etc.) is not yet licensed to fly, and given the caution around aviation, such approval may be a long way off, but it is technically possible now, almost a century after the English Electric Wren which was seen as a rival to the emergent motor car. To think that within around 31 years, English Electric would build the Lightning is simply mind-boggling.
However, this fantastic development runs on a petrol engine, has an airborne range of c. 1,000 km (625 miles) and can cruise at 170km/h (c.106 mph), at 8,200 feet (pressurisation not an option at the moment it seems). Imagine the liberty of flight, in your garage, the horror of unrestricted travel, no speed cameras, the Left’s (and the State’s) hatred of mobility and autonomy will shine like the fiery pits of Hell.
Two passengers, provided that they don’t weigh more than 31 stone. Let physics limit your weight, not the government.
Dr Stephen Wright, senior research fellow in avionics and aircraft, at the University of the West of England, described the AirCar as “the lovechild of a Bugatti Veyron and a Cesna 172”.
but there is obviously a cautionary note:
“I have to admit that this looks really cool – but I’ve got a hundred questions about certification,” Dr Wright said.
“Anyone can make an aeroplane but the trick is making one that flies and flies and flies for the thick end of a million hours, with a person on board, without having an incident.
“I can’t wait to see the piece of paper that says this is safe to fly and safe to sell.”
With a 600 mile range, a self-fly/drive break on the Continent would be a breeze. Short-haul aviation is pointless in such a world, as are inflexible trains (HS2 etc.), even car hire. Bring it on.
As soon as I saw it I thought of psychohistory. I was not alone, judging from the most recommended comment to this fascinating Guardian article:
‘At first I thought, this is crazy’: the real-life plan to use novels to predict the next war
An extract:
In one of his last reports to the defence ministry, towards the end of 2019, Wertheimer had drawn attention to an interesting development in the Caucasus. The culture ministry of Azerbaijan had recently supplied libraries in Georgia with books carrying explicit anti-Armenian messages, such as the works of poet Khalil Rza Uluturk. There were signs, he warned, that Azerbaijan was ramping up propaganda efforts in the brewing territorial conflict with its neighbouring former Soviet republic.
War broke out a year later: 6,000 soldiers and civilians died in a six-week battle over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave of Azerbaijan populated by ethnic Armenians. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used the war to bolster his strongman image, hailing Armenia’s defeat in December as a “glorious victory”. Russia, traditionally allied with Armenia, successfully leveraged the conflict to consolidate its influence in the region. Germany and the EU, meanwhile, looked on and stayed silent: being able to predict the future is one thing, knowing what to do with the information is another.
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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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