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People used to hand me the hymnbook and insist on finding me the place. – Rt Hon David Blunkett PC MP, on Radio 4’s Sunday programme today, recalls being at church in Sheffield as a blind boy… and provides a perfect metaphor for his party’s philosophy of government. He went on to explain that he would play along with the pointless drama – pretending to sing from the book. Compliance is not approval; nor is it evidence that the ‘enabling’ state is doing good. March 22nd, 2009 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
 There is no stated national consensus that as a country we should substantially reduce overall masturbation, but such a reduction would benefit the health of many who wank – and those affected by passive wanking- the concept I invented a few sentences ago and am now treating as a genuine problem. In 2006, 180,000 people died from pornographic-related causes. Wanking has a major impact on individual wanker’s health: it causes cancers of the liver, bowel, breast, throat, mouth, larynx and oesophagus; it causes blindness, hairy palms, a pale pallor and insanity … Some point to the potential benefits of self-pleasuring, but these tend to be greatly overstated. Despite its known harms, one-quarter of the adult population – about 10 million people – now wank above the recommended low-risk levels. I made this figure up but as the Chief Medical Officer I can cite myself because I am in a position of authority. Here is a graph to illustrate how many people are killed by masturbation. It actually represents something completely different, possibly cat food sales, but I’m guessing that most of you are actually too stupid to actually look at the graph in any detail … – some Unenlightened Commentary sadly not actually supplied by Sir Liam Donaldson (with thanks to Obnoxio the Clown) March 21st, 2009 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
“‘Cant’ is a four-leter word we don’t use much now. Most people of my generation have never heard of it, never alone use it in conversation…to apply it to someone is to accuse them of sloppy thinking, if you are being kind, or, at the very worst, of a total lack of sincerity.” Of course, when it comes to sincerity, one should remember as Milton Friedman once put it, that sincerity is a much overpraised virtue. People can sincerely believe in all manner of utter rubbish, while others insincerely pay tribute to things that are right and true. Oh, the crooked timber of humanity. March 20th, 2009 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
“I am not in favour of any parental choice in education. You will go to your local school.” – Former London mayor and Hugo Chavez buddy, Ken Livingstone. Not too up to speed with the concept of choice, is he? No wonder the unions loved him. March 19th, 2009 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
“It was John Maynard Keynes, a man of great intellect but limited knowledge of economic theory, who ultimately succeeded in rehabilitating a view long the preserve of cranks with whom he openly sympathised.” F.A. Hayek, Choice in Currency, a Way to Stop Inflation, Institute of Economic Affairs (1975), page 10. Prof. Hayek was usually a restrained and polite demolisher of nonsense but in this quote, I think we get a sense of the rage that he must have felt at how Lord Keynes, with his easy charm and confident manner, could persuade politicians of what they wanted to hear anyway – that you can create wealth by spending other people’s money. But even later on Hayek tries to argue that Keynes would have been alarmed at how his ideas have been used as cover for monetary insanity. I think that is a mark of how basically decent an intellectual opponent Hayek was. Meanwhile, following on from Kevin Dowd’s lecture last night – which I thought was very good – I will have more to say about his talk later on. March 18th, 2009 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
It’s like a parallel universe out there. Politicians, newspaper journalists and television presenters are running around like headless chickens with no clue as to how to deal with the economic crisis. But the truth is out there. Things are quite different from the recession of the 1970’s, which coincided with my discovery of libertarianism and Austrian School economics. Back then one had to be extraordinarily lucky to come across the likes of Mises, Hayek and Rothbard. Now correct explanations of why the crisis arose are just a few clicks away. March 15th, 2009 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
General Edmond Rasolomahandry . . . President Marc Ravalomanana . . . opposition leader Andry Rajoelina . . . Colonel Noel Ndriarijoana: newsreaders everywhere are praying for a swift resolution to the crisis. – Mick Hartley notes the possibility of civil war in Madagascar March 13th, 2009 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
But the internet is a city and, like any great city, it has monumental libraries and theatres and museums and places in which you can learn and pick up information and there are facilities for you that are astounding – specialised museums, not just general ones. But there are also slums and there are red light districts and there are really sleazy areas where you wouldn’t want your children wandering alone … And I think people must understand that about the internet – it is a new city, it’s a virtual city and there will be parts of it of course that they dislike, but you don’t pull down London because it’s got a red light district. That’s Stephen Fry talking, which I spotted here. This got posted at almost exactly the same time as the one below. Never mind. Both are worth having. And I am sure that Jon Coupal would agree that those wanting to castrate the internet make copious use of children to do it, just as others use children to boost their budgets. March 12th, 2009 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Those in power in the Capitol – as well as many local politicians – make skillful use of those who rely on government services to advance their spending agenda. They use children, the disabled, the elderly and others who appear vulnerable to justify increasing taxes. When reasonable arguments are made that higher taxes in an already high-tax state could lead to fiscal ruin and less for everyone, politicians and bureaucrats use these dependent classes as human shields. (via John Beck) March 12th, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The trouble is that because schools fail to teach history, especially legal and constitutional history, the vast majority of today’s citizens have no inkling to what they owe their liberty and prosperity, namely a long and successful struggle for the rights of which the right to property is the most fundamental. They are therefore unaware what debilitating effect the restrictions on property rights wil, over the long run, have on their lives.” – Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom, page 291. Of course, by property, one does not just mean physical property, but also to the whole idea that individuals, not the state, own their lives. March 11th, 2009 | 49 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is said that pragmatism trumps ideology in a crisis. What actually happens in a crisis, certainly in this one, is that the ruling party gets to rechristen its ideology as pragmatism. He is talking about the Democrat’s addiction to protectionism. But it is happening all over, and not just with ruling parties, but with would-be ruling ones. The wicked world is disintegrating, and it is all the fault of an evil which whatever commentator you are reading especially hates, and offers a superb opportunity for the bees in his bonnet to rebuild the social honeycomb so that mankind can buzz happily in unison ever after. I am reminded of the Trotskyist red-greens I met in the 80s, who had the merit of putting it very clearly. Unlike the merely conservation-minded, or deep-green nature-worshippers, they welcomed a predicted ecological collapse: chaos and mass-starvation would turn people to The Revolution out of desperation. A lot of those purveying their own patent medicines for the depression seem to be unconscious that they are engaged in the moral terrorism of the transitional demand. March 8th, 2009 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Regular commenter here Nick M takes a wack at Vernon Bogdanor:
I was going to put that up as a Samizdata quote of the day, but I reckon the feline enumerator has his sneer quotes around the wrong “progressive” there. Still, good stuff, albeit sweary. Talking of which, I do wonder about this swear-blogging thing. The bad news is that respectable bloggers who might give particular (swear-)blog postings of merit lots of new readers are put off by the swearing from linking to such postings. (Telegraph Blogger Alex Singleton recently told me exactly this.) On the other hand, a lot of people are very angry just now, not just, you know, in a state of respectful disagreement with the powers that, for the time being, be. Such angry persons deserve voices around which to rally, voices which communicate their feelings rather than just their thoughts. Swear-blogging may also mean that, by assembling all the angry ones in a cursing, seething internet mob, in a way that completely alienates our present version of Polite Society, the angry ones will achieve a far greater degree of tactical surprise come the storming of the Winter Palace, or whatever will be the equivalent event or events during the next few years. Polite Society just won’t see it coming, because it simply cannot now bear to look. It will consequently swing in far greater numbers from lamp-posts (or again, whatever will turn out to be the modern equivalent) than would otherwise have happened. Which just might be a rather fucking good thing. March 6th, 2009 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
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