“I think this nanny state business, you know, is just nonsense.”
– Tony Blair, today’s BBC2 Newsnight, responding to the allegation that he is creating a nanny state
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And another thing – the argument that we can all support Cameron’s leftward lurch because it’s all an act and he doesn’t really mean it – he is lying pretty low. I might be prepared to give someone the benefit of the doubt on the grounds that they are telling the truth, but to give someone the benefit of the doubt in the hope that they are lying through their teeth? January 5th, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Veisalgia– the medical term for the common or garden hangover. I suspect that there has been a slight epidemic of veisalgia in the ranks of Samizdata’s contributors and editors lately. A useful word to know when filling out sick leave application forms for work. January 4th, 2006 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Last century over 170 million people were murdered by their own governments, and your government doesn’t want you to have a gun. Doesn’t that bother you just a little? January 3rd, 2006 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Now that they have a fairly sensible and popular sceptic policy on Europe, the Conservatives react with wounded surprise when polls say that the public still do not respect them on the subject. But the reason is very simple: again and again, their actions have belied their words. December 29th, 2005 | Comments are closed
But, whatever the crimes of our forefathers, this is the country of Drake, Clive and Kitchener, not of Tipu Sultan, Shaka Zulu or the Mahdi. December 27th, 2005 | 49 comments - (Comments are closed)
These whiners are the same people who complain of American cultural imperialism because people like Coke and Starbucks. [Yet] there is no more rigid, aggressive, ignorant bunch of cultural imperialists in the world than Muslims who, as a group, are intent on forcing their preposterous beliefs on the rest of the world. Give me Starbucks any day. December 24th, 2005 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
– Adriana Cronin-Lukas, on dealing with day to day annoyances of Eastern Europe’s post communist legacy December 22nd, 2005 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Pity Samizdata.net does not have a catagory for articles called “Treason & Betrayal”. December 19th, 2005 | 76 comments - (Comments are closed)
Protectionism does not aid development. Developing countries with open economies are catching up with rich ones; those with closed economies are falling further behind. – Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s Shadow Secretary of State for International Development December 15th, 2005 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
My least favourite radical chic interviewee: the talented but humourless Ute Lemper. Ensconced in a luxury suite at the Savoy, she embarked on a lecture about the downtrodden masses, and was so busy talking about how East German workers were exploited that she forgot to even acknowledge the existence of the maid who’d put a tray of tea in front of her. – Clive Davis commenting on this. December 14th, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
I admit to feeling a little uneasy at the sight of a Muslim woman shrouded not simply in a headscarf but a face-concealing, head-to-toe chador, and wonder just how much choice she has had in deciding her lifestyle. I am not hugely sympathetic to a Muslim seeking asylum because he claims to have been discriminated against because of his support for sharia law. I cannot celebrate such culture in the way that I celebrate Italian National Day in Leichhardt or the Tet festival in Cabramatta or Greek Orthodox Easter or a Seder at Passover or a service of Eritrean Orthodox Church, such as the one I attended a couple of years ago in a borrowed Church of England in London, or lunch with a couple of Palestinian intellectuals. Some multicultural theorists will squawk and say that I prefer only a soft multiculturalism (if they insist on calling it that) that does not offend western liberal values. They would be spot on. My acceptance ends when the assault on the liberality of society itself begins. – Andrew West, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald. (Link via Tim Blair) December 13th, 2005 | 52 comments - (Comments are closed)
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