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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Oh dear! It is not that the services the PCS is proud of having delivered will not generally find much favour with denizens of Samizdata, that prompts me to clip this. It is that this is a disastrous committee-driven ad. They end up showing their members as miserable, whinging, ugly and colourless petty bureaucrats, who want taxpayers to be grateful to pay them more.
Even a minimal government would need officials. And even a big bureaucracy will contain some witty, energetic and attractive people. Sir Humphrey was much closer to being the hero of Yes, Minister than Jim Hacker.
Were I a PCS member then I would want to be represented as someone normal and likeable who cheerfully keeps the wheels of the country turning regardless of all the political shit thrown at me. And I would be looking for the head of whoever signed-off this ad. (Preferably to be displayed on a pole outside the Department of Work and Pensions, though perhaps my view of the possibilities of staff organisations are too influenced by Terry Gilliam’s The Crimson Permanent Assurance.)
Short cryptic link-posts, of the sort which will make absolutely no sense as soon as the link stops working, seem to be accumulating here just now, so here’s another. Check this out. It’s Friday Ephemerus (?) number one at David Thompson‘s today.
Seriously, forgetting about the short cryptic thing, but assuming you now know what I am talking about, I think this might make a good visual metaphor for the television people as they chatter about the Glenrothes bye-election, just won by Labour. Suddenly, David Cameron must now be becoming afraid, very afraid. Is the utter cluelessness of the Conservatives about all the financial turmoil grabbing defeat for them from the jaws of victory? Are they starting to McCain themselves? Are they, the party that is confused and hesitant about doing the wrong thing, going to be beaten yet again by the party that is unconfused and brazen about it?
I was wrong. I thought I had already found the world’s most ludicrously named chain of clothing stores.
However, the world is full of things that one has not dreamed of. In Hong Kong last week I found this.
Snow in London last night. The BBC news report I just watched (having come home past the BBC’s television studios which were covered in the white stuff) mentioned it on the East coast of England, but no mention of it in London.
For those not familiar with London weather, the last time I can find when snow was even claimed here this early in the autumn was 1974. One eyewitness suggested it was really hailstones. I don’t remember. All I know is that today, October 28 2008 is the earliest proper winter that I can record.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Only a few weeks ago, we were hearing that South Africa had snow, and not just that, but of the very late variety (South of the Equator, this time of year should be warming). But don’t worry, we must have a flexible view of reality: when it gets hot, it’s warming; when it gets cold, it’s warming; and when it seems to stay the same, it’s warming twice as fast.
Does global warming predict the weather right now? Only in the sense that Nostradamus predicted the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in the 1985 edition, and the fall of the Shah of Iran in the 1980 edition.
What does predict the weather we’re having is the sunspot cycle and we can now add some idea of what reduced solar wind does. [Hat tip, Instapundit]
Here’s a somewhat better forecast of the end of 2008’s weather than anything cooked up by the “capitalism causes tsunamis” crowd. Farmer’s Almanac? Maybe astrology is more scientific than the ecofascists.
Jonathan Ross has not followed his own advice. His new book is entitled “Why do I say these things”. How apt!
Perhaps he should employ a chimpanzee as a personal censor. Especially when his foolishness focused upon a member of the satanic sluts. I would not dare to cross them.
I am a sovereign wealth fund. This is a position that I never expected to be in. I and every other British taxpayer.
I have been told that this was necessary or indescribable consequences entailing the destruction of my life and welfare would have followed. This hypothesis was not tested, due to the supposed costs, and, therefore, I became a sovereign wealth fund.
This sovereign wealth fund is not like other sovereign wealth funds, in that the Chairman is one Gordon Brown and the money that he uses to purchase whatever assets he likes is mine. This does not give me confidence, and I suspect the wealth in the fund will decline in value. This is what Gordon Brown does.
There will be a shareholders meeting in 2010. I think we need to vote for a return of all assets to the shareholders. Voting for these managers certainly has not worked and the alternative consultancy offers more of the same.
I have always regarded Lloyd’s List as hard-packed with hard fact (as about the most expensive newspaper by weight you are likely to find anywhere, it should be). But can this really be true?
British Foreign Office officials are understood to have advised the Royal Navy not to confront or arrest pirates in the region [the horn of Africa] for fear of transgressing human rights legislation or encouraging their seeking asylum once taken to the UK.
If such advice is followed, it seems there is precious little reason left to even have a Royal Navy.
Hat-tip: The Register
Peter Tatchell, selling Green policy under the guise of giving advice to the PM, has a number of suggestions. One of them fully restores the Green Party’s reputation for plain weirdness:
Raise tax-free personal allowances from £6,035 to £8,000 for people earning under £20,000 a year and to £7,000 for those earning £20,000 to £25,000, which would be funded by a rise in tax on incomes over £80,000 and which would assist the lower-paid at a time of rocketing food prices.
That top limit of £25,000 implies he’s leaving personal allowances where they are for people earning over £25,000, so that they drop by £1,000, twice. Lots of people, including me, have suggested reshaping the tax system by raising allowances. But no-one I think has before suggested that it would be a vote-winner openly to treat very large numbers of people to marginal rates over 100% by clawing back an extra £200 when they cross an arbitrary threshold. Twice. At close to the median earnings level so the maximum numbers notice.
In fact, it was a disaster for Gordon Brown when he did it as a concealed one-time-only adjustment. Possibly it was the disaster for Gordon Brown, where he finally came unstuck. It’s probably not something he wants to try again once, Peter. Let alone twice.
Probably it is the whole world I do not understand, but I am going to stick to not grasping it a bit at a time. It seems less daunting.
How does this work? Some commentators are saying that Senator McCain picked Governor Palin as his running-mate in order to attract supporters of Senator Clinton who are cross with Senator Obama for not giving up when he was winning the Democratic nomination.
Just who is crazy here? The Clintonites who think Obama is such a middle-of-the-road disaster for failing to appeal to the activist base that they might consider voting for a party that is over the other side of the road? And having done so, I look forward to their saying is the racism of the American public not Democratic-party petulance that has kept him out of the Whitehouse. Or the super-Clintonites who say they are mad at Obama for not being a woman? Republican strategists (if they exist) who care about what the tiny number of leftist Democratic activists think, but nevertheless think Palin will attract them, despite her being of the religious right persuasion and ideologically about as far from a leftist Democratic activist as possible? Or the commentators who assert such a strategy would make sense?
Or are there really large numbers of Americans who will vote for McCain solely because Palin is female and for no other reason of policy, personality or competence dividing the candidates and their platforms? That would be crazy. Wouldn’t it?
This morning’s superstrangeness:
Ministers are being urged to stop faith schools in England selecting pupils and staff on the basis of their religion.
Accord, a new coalition of secular and religious figures, wants the government to stop state-funded schools engaging in what they say is “discrimination”.
As an atheist I find a lot of things to do with religious faith incomprehensible, so maybe I’m missing something that’s obvious to a believer, but in what way is a school with no religious requirements of pupils or teachers a “faith school”?
I’m sure that Hugo Chavez has done some good. Much more bad than good probably, but some good. And Ken Livingstone is certainly not totally evil. But when the two of them get together it is very implausible that it is good news for the world on average.
Though if Mr Livingstone spends a lot of time in Venezuela, that will be pleasant both for him and for Londoners, I am really quite puzzled what Latin America, or even Mr Chavez, gets from this deal:
Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, has found a new role as an adviser to the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and his political allies. During a surprise visit to Caracas, Livingstone said yesterday that he would act as a consultant on the capital’s policing, transport and other municipal issues.
“I believe that Caracas will become a first-world city in 20 years. I have a very extensive network of contacts both domestically and internationally which I will be calling on to assist in this,” he told reporters at the presidential palace after meeting Chávez.
But the most puzling thing of all is that use of the phrase “first-world city”. I was under the impression that the ‘first world’ was the capitalist western countries, the ‘second world’ the realm of state-socialism, and the ‘third world’ the unindustrialised rest, not clearly part of either. Continuing the metaphor of separate worlds – and wishing away trade and travel and telegraph – the Rev John Papworth has even coined “Fourth World” for the poorest of the poor and those rejecting economic development altogether.
I cannot believe Red Ken was trying to suggest that the Bolivarian Revolution will fail, and that in 20 years Venezuela will be fully part of the capitalist first world again. Surely Mr Livingstone means he wants Caracas to be a second-world city?
It may be disgustingly authoritarian, but it is risibly incompetent too. It appears the Home Office has just spent a very large amount of UK readers’ money making a vast online advertisement for NO2ID. We’d despaired of reaching ‘the youth’ ourselves, too expensive. I’m very glad they decided to do it for us.
With audience participation. Which embarrassingly for the Home Office shows ‘kids’ not to be quite the suckers they’d hoped. Enjoy.
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