Samizdata

A few days ago my phone line went silent. I rang BT (British Telecommunications plc). After about ten minutes and several phone calls later, trying to dodge past multiple choice computers and computerised music, I eventually got to talk to some helpful humans. Do you, they asked, have any extensions on your line? (One badly behaved extension can shut everything down, it seems.) Yes, several. Unplug each one, they said, one at a time, and see if things improve. The extension in my bathroom was the culprit. It had got wet. When I unplugged it, all was well again. So, aside from the difficulty of getting through to the helpful humans in the first place, a good result. Another of the humans rang me the following day to check that all was well, which it was. Thank you gentlemen, great job, wonderful.

But then earlier today I had another call, from a market research company calling “on behalf of BT” wanting to ask me more questions about my “experience” with the fault I’d reported. I told them the story you have just read, minus the complaints about the multiple choice computers and the moron music. I said that I was very satisfied with the advice I’d been given, and that my problem was solved. No, no engineers had called. No worries. Okay?

No. Not okay. Would I mind “answering some questions” about all this? What?! I thought I just had. This would apparently take “about five minutes”. I said yes I would mind. I’ve just told you the story, for heaven’s sake. Write that down.

What was depressing about this call today was that although this was clearly an intelligent human doing the talking, he, unlike the people who had actually helped me, was obviously reading from a script, and this script had beaten all the commonsense out of him. I just couldn’t face five minutes (or more) wading through this conversational treacle just when I had got deep into doing something else. So, I said I would mind, and that was that.

Afterwards I felt bad about this. BT had helped me. Why couldn’t I answer a few questions? I felt guilty, and then angry about being made to feel guilty. Grrrr!

So, having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, by telling me (eventually) how to handle my phone problem, BT then snatched defeat back again by trying to inflict an annoying conversation on me, and then making me feel bad about having said get lost.

Now that I think about it, it also annoys me intensely when BT calls me to ask whether I’d like my phone bill reduced. Yes, I say. Then please tell us which numbers you use most often. This is insane. They know the answer to that at least as well as I do, because they list it all on my phone bills. And after I’ve told them that, how many more questions will there be? I say: “If you want to cut my phone bill, then cut it. When you’ve decided about that, I’ll decide about whether I go on using BT. Put that in your questionnaire!” Jesus. But of course they can’t, because there’s no question that goes “Is this call driving you insane?”, and no box for “Yes it f***ing is!”, in this particular idiot script. You can feel BT’s market share collapsing during calls like these, right in front of their idiotically self-blinded eyes.

BT are fine at installing phones. Their engineers are fine, and great to deal with. But when it comes to the ancient and ignoble art of using telephones to drive people crazy, BT’s “marketers” and “market researchers” are, in my experience, among Britain’s leading offenders. It’s ironic when you think about it. Britain’s biggest phone company uses its own product to drive its own customers crazy.

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Dealing with and being dealt with by big organisations on the phone doesn’t have to be like this. BT should take some lessons from Viking Direct, from whom I and the Libertarian Alliance get our office supplies.

When I call Viking Direct it’s a human who answers, not a machine with a recorded humanoid voice, and she usually does this straight away. Sharon (“This is Viking Direct my name is Sharon how may I help you?”), or whoever, is most definitely the product of her training. But she uses her computer to make things easier for me rather than more impersonal and pre-scripted, for example by checking exactly which printer toner cartridges I ordered last time and ordering the exact same ones again, or by volunteering that there’s a special offer on A4 paper so I can have it even cheaper than usual, which, chances are, makes me order a couple of extra boxes.

Note that, BT. She tells me about the price cut, and immediately arranges for me to get it. There’s no nonsense about me having to tell them which item I order most frequently.

Nor does Sharon try to bash me into a pre-scripted conversational prison. We simply talk, like the two humans that we are. There’s the big clever machine, and there’s Sharon and me making maximum use of it, two people working intelligently together, both of us on the same side.

And nobody ever rings me up later to pester me about whether Sharon and her computer have been helpful, presumably because if they want to know this, they simply stand behind her and listen, or perhaps listen in on another extension.

Another for our “triumphs of capitalism” collection, don’t you agree?

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You will not be amazed to learn, if you don’t know it already, that whereas BT is a quasi-governmental, heavily regulated organisation which it is complicated and costly to take your business away from, Viking Direct, although big and bureaucratised, is nevertheless out there every hour of the day in the freest bit of the free market, the bit where me taking my business elsewhere is as easy as me picking up a different catalogue and trying a different number. Which is all part of why I haven’t and don’t plan to.

BT on the other hand, I may be switching from …

I cannot but note the discrepancy between compensations awarded to people who suffered from defective products on the opposite sides of the Atlantic. Take for example the classic(!) case of Stella Liebeck who was awarded $2.9 million in damages for spilling a cup of McDonald’s coffee on herself.

Compare this to a case in France, where it apparently takes more than a hot cup of coffee to claim damages, which are, in any case, nowhere near as spectacular. A French court has ordered two medical associations to pay damages to the family of a woman, Pascale Fachin, who died a horrible lingering death from the human form of mad cow disease (vCJD) after growth hormone treatment was administered with contaminated products to the tune of €394,000 (£253,060). Oh, and a paltry few thousand €uros to friends who looked after Fachin during her illness.

Go figure…

Most of the news I hear from South Africa is bad. AIDS. AIDS denial. Crime. And black politicians blaming everything on white racism and trying to impose equal outcomes by the force of law, as opposed to equality before the law with the outcomes coming out as they will. As a sports fan, I particularly noticed what sounded like a truly vile quota rule, insisting that there had to be at least one black player in the national cricket team. They also, I learned today when digging deeper, had a rule that provincial cricket sides had to have at least four “players of colour” in them.

The good news is that they are now scrapping these quotas. South Africa’s Sports Minister is having “talks” with South Africa’s United Cricket Board. But assuming that talk is all that ensues, that the Minister is reassured rather than determined to over-ride and over-rule, and that the quotas will indeed be got rid of, this is the best news I’ve heard from South Africa for quite some time.

Positive discrimination rules of this kind perpetuate the process of judging people according to skin colour and collective racial membership rather than on individual merit. The South Africa cricket quota rules were bound to give rise to the suspicion that individual players, even players who in fact fully deserved international recognition, had in fact only got into the national team because of “politics”.

Quota rules are especially depressing in sport, because sport has traditionally been an arena where, because results matter so much and because individual merit is so hard to ignore, hitherto disadvantaged racial groups have time and again been able to make their first big strides towards social and legal equality, lead by their greatest individual sportsmen. From a TV documentary screened in connection with the recent soccer World Cup about the great Pele, for example, I learned for the first time what a big part the unavoidably brilliant talent of that great sportsman played in breaking down the racism so powerful in Brazil in the nineteen fifties. (Brazil won the recent World Cup, with a team containing, of course, numerous coloured players.)

Assuming that the South Africans really have now dumped their cricket quota rules, I am even willing to say, retrospectively, and despite their obvious ghastliness, that I can see why they had these rules, temporarily, and that I can see what they may have achieved with them. By flagging up the issue of non-white participation in cricket in this aggressively interventionist manner, the South African cricket authorities at least made it clear that they were serious about involving all South Africans in cricket and not just white South Africans. The quotas may now have ended, but the UCB has made it very clear that all the other efforts South African cricket has been making to achieve greater equality of cricketing opportunity (and thereby in due course lots of non-white international representation on merit), such as new pitches and new coaching schemes in non-white areas, will continue.

I’ve been having philosophical thoughts on the Tony Martin affair and some of those thoughts crystalized as I was talking it over with my business partner, a fellow who grew up on the Falls Road.

Government has scarce enough reasons for existing at all, but very few citizens would disagree the core of the “social contract” is protection of person and property. In a healthy community this is the primary role of the police. A free society will not have enough police to have them everywhere, nor will it allow mass surveillance and the corresponding destruction of privacy. Citizens will be expected to defend themselves. They will know police are their friends, always ready to help them in time of need.

Tony Martin’s actions should hardly be noteworthy enough to make the local news. If the incident were noted at all, he would be reported as an exemplary citizen doing exactly what is expected of any good citizen. He would have wounded or detained the troublemakers. The police would have come by, thanked him and perhaps had a spot of tea to pass the time until the ambulance arrived to haul the sorry carcasses off for patching up so a judge could put them away.

Mr Fearon would now be serving a very, very long sentence. He would be held up as a total disgrace, a human being with no intrinsic worth.

But we do not live in a healthy community. Good citizens are fair game for scum; if the scum get hurt they are lionized as downtrodden victims. Meanwhile the real victims are dragged off and given a good swift kick in the goolies for good measure.

This is an unstable situation. If good citizenship is held in contempt there will soon not be any. The social contract has been violated and the result will not be salutory. If there is one social good people will not do without, it is personal safety. If the government can not supply that good, the provision of it will go underground. One should not find this idea surprising as a good fraction of the economy has already done so. Those of Statist mentality don’t seem to understand there is a “conservation law” at work. If there is a demand for a good and they promise to provide it and do not, words will not replace the missing quantity. An underground method will appear and will grow until it satisfies the need. If the government interferes with the underground service provision, we’ll end up with Colombian Neighborhood Watch cartels.

If you want a view of the future this insane treatment of Mr Martin has in store for you, look to the sectarian communities in Belfast during the depths of the Troubles. The government did not, and could not (and was not welcome to) deal with local crime. But the streets here were safer than those of London or Dublin. There was very little crime of any sort for the simple reason the community did not allow it. No one spoke about exactly who the fellows in the ski masks were even though they were friends and neighbors. The men folk went out and “took care of” street crime by the simple expedient of “taking care of” the trouble makers. If you were into robbery and such you got a warning. Then you got your knees done. If you were too stupid to get the point by then the next lesson was final. Rapists got the final lesson first and rape was virtually nonexistent.

It’s no surprise crime is on the rise now that the Troubles are history. You still hear about punishment beatings, but they are less severe and less common than before. I am not saying this is right; I am not seeing it is good. It is just the nearest to home example of “conservation of justice” I could come up with.

Government is not the sole source of justice. If it fails to do it’s job; if it fails to encourage good citizenship and honour those who openly defend their property and person we will have vigilantism. Men and women in masks. 3am executions of trouble makers. Disappeared criminals who might have only served a prison term in a normal society. All this and the climate of fear that goes with underground violence…

..for if the government does not provide the goods, others will and they will not have the luxury of leaving witnesses alive.

On BBC News 24 in the early hours of Monday morning they were reporting on “creationism” in the USA.

As an orthodox twentieth century boy, I believe that creationism is bunkum, and that evolution is the truth of the matter. But one thing I do agree with the creationists about is that Christian doctrine most definitely is in head-on collision with modern science.

Most of the Christians I know here in Europe seem to believe that Christianity is about different things to science, and that you can be a completely Christian Christian, and a completely scientific scientist, without any intellectual conflict.

If you go to the “The Church of England’s view on…” bit of the C of E’s website, you’ll find a long list of contemporary political and ethical issues to explore (such as “animal welfare”, “ethical investment”, “defence and disarmament”, “capital punishment”, “euthanasia”, “AIDS”, “the national lottery”, “child benefit”, and many more – plenty for us to get stuck into), but nothing involving the words “science” or “evolution”. Anglicans do not seem to be exercised by such arguments. As far as they are concerned, there is no collision between Christian doctrine and scientific doctrine to be discussed.

But the Book of Genesis makes claims about the origin of the earth and of its biological contents which, as was well understood in the late nineteenth century when these matters were first debated, are in total opposition to the theory of evolution. Either God was the maker of heaven and earth (as I was made to proclaim every Sunday morning when I recited the Creed at school) and men and beasts and plants and bugs, along the lines claimed in Genesis, or he was not.

You can’t have it both ways. Only by completely overturning what Christianity has meant for the best part of two thousand years, as the Church of England seems now to be doing by turning Christianity from a religion into a political sect, can you possibly believe that there’s no argument here.

Evelyn Palmeri thinks the perspective taken by Paul Marks regarding British politics has resonance in the USA as well.

The only way ‘local control’ is good is if it financed by local taxation – then people can ‘vote with their feet’ by going to the area with the lowest taxes (ditto regulations).
– Paul Marks, Thursday, July 04, 2002

Absolutely true.

‘Liberals’ (in the American sense of the word) only got power over us when we abdicated financial control over our local communities. It all started during our late unlamented cultural revolution of the 60’s when in the name of ‘fairness’ state and federal government began taxing us and then redistributing our money in the form of state and federal grants to local schools, hospitals, public works, welfare, etc., etc. In a short time most of the money for these operations came from outside the community. In our little Florida city of 5000, commissioners routinely tell us that this or that scheme won’t cost the city a dime because the money will come from state and/or federal funds. No amount of argument will make them see that it is all our own money.

Of course, non-Liberals know that fairness has nothing to do with redistributing income. It’s power they want and as a result public schools and other public services are in bondage to powerful unions and are run to benefit their members. Although trillions (a trillion is a thousand billion, if you can imagine such a huge sum) of dollars are spent in social services, the results are painful to see. The public school system in the U.S. once a model for the world is now a third-world operation, public hospitals are snake pits, social services do very little to help those in need, etc. Most wealthy people and those who are not so wealthy send their kids to private school and seek medical attention from private hospitals at great financial sacrifice, eschew all social services except those unavoidable ones like driver’s licenses.

Life still isn’t fair, but now it’s a lot more expensive for those of us work and pay taxes. The non-productive still aren’t satisfied with amounts of their handouts and continue to vote for politicians who promise them more and more OPM (Other People’s Money), and cycle continues.

Will it change in the foreseeable future? Has September 11^th thrown cold water on voters and caused them to wake up from the stupor of the last 25-30 years? Do we want to continue our drift to the ‘left’?

I think the November elections in the U.S. will give us a clue.

Evelyn Palmeri