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]
|
“‘He lashed out. He was scared’: the fight to save vulnerable UK children from being kicked out of school”– this Observer report by Anna Fazackerley on how two hundred lawyers “have come together to challenge a wave of discriminatory exclusions” focuses on the “unmet needs” of children who are excluded and the worry felt by their parents. Early on, we are told the story of an eleven year old boy called Sam:
His mother alerted the school that Sam would need support before going into class. But, two hours later, when she returned to check on him, she could hear a child screaming. It was Sam.
“As I went in, he was completely disregulated and surrounded by five adults and he collapsed on the floor. No one had called me,” she said.
The school suspended Sam for five days while they formulated a plan to manage his needs – something she was later told was unlawful. Having tried to push her to accept a move to a pupil referral unit, which caters for children who cannot attend mainstream school, she was then sent the notice of permanent exclusion.
After three months at home, Sam was enrolled at a new school, but it did not review whether he needed any additional support. His grades and class reports were good but, halfway through the year, a girl who had been bullying Sam pushed him and he shoved her back. The school permanently excluded him for assaulting a teacher who then physically restrained him.
“When I got there, he was in floods of tears,” his mother said. “He had lashed out but not in anger. He was scared.”
Maybe he wasn’t the only scared one.
These days one often sees signs displayed in hospitals, in government offices and on public transport that say something like “Assaults on our staff will not be tolerated”. I was tempted to ask rhetorically, “Should not the same apply to teachers?” and end the post there. But there is a complication that will be familiar to libertarians: even the gentlest, most loving childcare inevitably involves adults using force on children. Before Sam assaulted the teacher, the teacher physically restrained Sam. Am I OK with that?
Broadly, yes. I had hoped to quote one or two of Brian Micklethwait’s writings on this paradox but have not been able to find the pieces I was thinking of. Never mind. Brian was the last man to worry about someone else making his argument their own.
For babies and small children, it is inevitable that they spend almost their entire lives being physically moved around by adults. They are fed, dressed, cleaned and generally sustained by beings bigger and stronger than they are without anyone getting their signature on a consent form. Then, if all goes well, as they grow older children gain more and more independence until they reach adulthood. In a sane world, schools for children of about Sam’s age would be half-way houses to independence where the necessity of rules being enforced by, well, force, was acknowledged but not something one had to think about minute by minute. All but the very worst of workplaces and other places where adults spend their time are like this. A great deal of the unpleasantness of school life derives from the fact that, in contrast, they are places where force is omnipresent. The least bad part of this is that for 90% the time the children cannot choose what they do – after all, much of adult life also involves spending time on tasks one would not do for pleasure. The most bad part of it, the horrifying part of it, is that they cannot choose to leave. They cannot get away from bullies. Some of those bullies are fellow-pupils, some are teachers. Both categories of bullies are often bullied in their turn. They probably became bullies in the first place out of fear. Frightened people lash out, as Sam did. One ought to be able to spare some compassion for Sam and those like him; to acknowledge that in a better environment he might not have turned violent. It remains a hard fact that in this timeline the continued presence of violent pupils like Sam in a school makes life a misery for other pupils and teachers. It remains a fact that state schools are, on average, places of greater misery than private schools because when state schools try to protect their staff and students by expelling violent pupils they are hamstrung by the likes of the two hundred benevolent lawyers in the School Inclusion Project.
219 years ago today…
 
The UK experienced a nationwide blackout after its main energy plant failed, officials said.
Its power grid collapsed at around 11:00 (15:00 GMT), the energy ministry wrote on X.
Grid officials said they did not know how long it would take to restore power.
This follows months of lengthy blackouts on the island – prompting the prime minister to declare an “energy emergency” on Thursday.
Other stories
Fuel in the UK to become five times more expensive
The UK laments collapse of iconic sugar beet industry
‘The violence is getting out of hand’: Crime grips the UK’s streets
Friday’s total blackout came after the UK’s final coal-powered fire station, the last on the island – went offline. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the situation was his “absolute priority”.
That’s all bunk, er, the future: Here is the real news, from the BBC:
Cuba experienced a nationwide blackout after its main energy plant failed, officials said. Its power grid collapsed at around 11:00 (15:00 GMT), the energy ministry wrote on X. Grid officials said they did not know how long it would take to restore power. This follows months of lengthy blackouts on the island – prompting the prime minister to declare an “energy emergency” on Thursday.
Fuel in Cuba to become five times more expensive
Cuba laments collapse of iconic sugar industry
‘The violence is getting out of hand’: Crime grips Cuba’s streets
Friday’s total blackout came after the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas – the largest on the island – went offline. President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez said the situation was his “absolute priority“. “There will be no rest until power is restored,” he wrote on X.
Earlier on Friday, officials announced that all schools and nonessential activities, including nightclubs, were to close until Monday.
Non-essential workers were urged to stay home to safeguard electricity supply, and non-vital government services were suspended. Cubans have also been urged to switch off high-consumption appliances during peak hours, such as fridges and ovens, according to local media.
Don’t worry folks, non-vital government services suspended? it won’t happen here.
In response to the CMN, Tom Greatrex, Chief Executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, stressed the importance of new investments in nuclear power. Tom Greatrex said: “Without fresh investment and decisions on new nuclear projects at Sizewell C and Wylfa as well as Small Modular Reactors, these warnings will become more commonplace and we will have to continue relying on volatile gas markets to fill the gaps in supply, threatening out energy security and driving up bills and emissions.”
The article titled Liberal Authoritarianism from Uncibal should serve as a foundational understanding of where not just the British state is but to a fair extent much of the Western World.
Starmer, it is plain, is one of those socialists for whom the appeal of socialism lies not so much in its amelioration of poverty, but rather in its provision of a rationale for the imposition of a perfect order on society – the construction of a ‘great social machine’, as Sydney Webb once put it, within which every individual must be made to fit. There is the touch of the Javert about him; he is one of those men who, all things considered, prefers the stars, who ‘know [their] place in the sky’, to people, who have an irritating tendency to exhibit free will. There is also in the air around him a quality that CS Lewis called ‘Saturnocentric’, which Michael Ward summarised as a combination of the ‘astringent, stern, tough, unmerry, uncomfortable, unconciliatory, and serious’. It is no surprise at all that Starmer should once have made his living as England & Wales’ Director of Public Prosecutions: this is a man who would take to the political task of steering public policy regarding criminal prosecutions like a duck to water.
It should also be no surprise that Starmer was once a human rights lawyer. Some have found it difficult to square these two aspects of his character. Silkie Carlo, the prominent civil liberties campaigner, for instance, remarked in a recent interview concerning the use of live facial recognition how strange she found it that Sir Keir, who purportedly is a human rights advocate, would embrace a technology that seems almost designed to usher a Chinese total surveillance system into the UK.
But this confusion is based on a complete misunderstanding of what human rights are all about.
– David McGrogan.
I heartily recommend reading the entire linked article as it is penetrating indeed. But I do lament the loss of the term ‘liberal’ to now mean someone intolerant of all unlicenced opinions and behaviours, i.e. to mean someone who is profoundly illiberal.
This excellent article brings two other quotes to mind, one from a certain Italian leader and the other modestly from me.
Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state (Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato)
– Benito Mussolini (speech to Chamber of Deputies – 9 December 1928)
…and…
Socialism must be the most ironic use of language in the history of human linguistics: it is the advocacy of the complete replacement of social interaction with political interaction, the very negation of civil society itself.
– Perry de Havilland
“In many parts of the country the graduate earnings premium is negative – these local economies are unable to absorb or properly use higher qualified people because of the structure of the local economy.”
– From this essay, “Levelling up: against just “cities and skills”, by Neil O’Brien, who I think is the Conservative MP of that name. I found the link via the trade unionist Joe Allen.
Though I salute Mr Allen’s open-mindedness in linking across the political aisle, I would like to make one observation with which he probably – and his employer the TUC certainly – disagrees: to whit, the fact that there are parts of the country where going to university on average makes a young person poorer is yet another argument against rent control.
Again and again I see the argument that, far from it being a problem that landlords are being driven out of the rental market, it is a fine thing, because landlords selling up will make more homes available. “Home” is a beautiful word, but there are and always will be people who are not looking for a permanent home. Some of this group are students, obviously, alongside those in temporary jobs, those whose work requires them to move frequently – and those who have a choice between staying at home where their degree is useless or moving to some place where it isn’t. A strong rental market allows rural people to try out life in the city, and vice versa for city people. In a society where landlordism is banished and every house is a home, you had better pray that the waiting list to leave your quaint village is exactly equal in length to the waiting list to join it.
“Badenoch favourite to win Tory leadership in members’ vote against Jenrick”, reports the Guardian. This is unexpected. The format for the Conservative leadership contest this time round was as follows:
Six candidates stood for the leadership: Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel, Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat. They will be eliminated in a series of votes, until two remain to stand in November. On 4 September, Patel was eliminated in the first round of voting, with Jenrick outperforming expectations by coming first. On 10 September, Stride was eliminated in the second round and went on to endorse Cleverly.
Following a strong performance at the Conservative Party Conference, Cleverly emerged as a frontrunner by coming first in the third round of voting, whilst Tugendhat was eliminated.
Despite this, Cleverly was unexpectedly eliminated in a close fourth round of voting when both Badenoch and Jenrick overtook him.
What happened? The Guardian‘s Andrew Sparrow quotes this tweet from Alex Wickham of Bloomberg that might explain it:
Tories saying they think the Cleverly camp lent Jenrick votes to try to keep Badenoch off the ballot but lent too many. Or Cleverly supporters did it off their own backs thinking he was nailed on for the final
Great plot twist, looking forward to the finale.
One detail that perhaps got lost in the recent UK decision about the Indian Ocean group of islands containing Diego Garcia – taken very fast and over the heads of the Chagos Islands locals (which hardly fits with ideas about decolonisation) – was that President Biden applauded the move. In way this isn’t surprising. Pr. Biden doesn’t particularly like the UK, and like a certain kind of American politician, has a grudge about the old, post-imperial network of relationships and territories that the UK has, or had, around the world. More fool him.
In this transfer and lease deal (which is not, as far as I know, formally signed and there has been no formal debate or legislation about this in Parliament) the UK is transferring taxpayers money in a payment programme to a tax haven (Mauritius). If the Tories had done this, the tax haven angle would have been constantly mentioned.
It seems ironic that Labour, a party not exactly known for its love of tax havens (unless Tony Blair uses one) or such international conduits, feels it is okay to deal with Mauritius financially in this way. Don’t get me wrong, I am for tax havens, and the more of them the better, because they deter otherwise high-tax governments from going crazy when capital is mobile, although as UK finance minister Rachel Reeves is proving, that’s not a solid protection. Tax hikes are likely in the 30 October UK budget. People are leaving.
Biden’s support for what’s happened should give pause, given what a poor President he is on foreign affairs, in my view. Also, he hasn’t made much disguise of his distaste for Brexit and the UK’s independence out of the bloc, and neither did Barack Obama. There’s no enthusiasm from that quarter for the UK to engage in new trade and other deals with countries outside the EU. And Biden’s own recent judgement about foreign affairs is spotty at best: half-decent on Israel and Ukraine, and shockingly inept over Afghanistan, with the rushed departure and loss of billions of dollars of equipment.
Those on the Republican side are, apparently, far less happy about the Chagos islands deal, and the potential risk to security of the Diego Garcia airbase jointly used by the UK and US. They know how porous leasehold deals can be, and have seen that Mauritius has used all legal pressure to change the terms of its independence settlement with the UK of 1968. The US Air Force has used the base in recent conflicts; if it wanted to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, for example, and do so via Diego Garcia, the situation becomes dicier than it might have been. One has to wonder about the role of China in all this (Chinese money flows through Mauritius.)
This whole saga also shows that if the UK is to pursue a more “blue water” foreign policy in future as it expands trade links with countries outside Europe, particular in Asia, that getting its defence arrangements locked down is essential. And we need to lose our illusions about how special our relationship with the US really is at times.
Daniel Hannan has this excellent overview of just what a shockingly poor transaction the UK has made with Mauritius. Hannan argues that Mauritius has never exercised sovereignty over the islands, a fact that is so shocking it is hard to argue how on earth we reached this point and how the Mauritius government thought it could bully its way ahead on this. However, a future, different UK government should certainly revisit the terms of this deal, and press hard on Mauritius if, for example, that country’s anti-money laundering standards are questioned in future. Time for a bit of nastiness behind the smiles.
It may be too late now to change course on this specific, shabby deal, at least under the current Starmer government. I fear it is. And now there’s speculation about what happens to the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar. The UK has shown itself to be weak. People tend to notice.
But the U.K.’s climate agenda is now decades old. The Climate Change Act (CCA) was made legislation in 2008, 16 years ago, but the drive towards decarbonisation started much earlier in the days of the Blair Government. The years ahead of the CCA saw the formation of a cross-party Westminster consensus on climate change, rather than a conversation with the public about what it would require of them and to seek their support. Consequently, the apparatus for the climate agenda was established through intergovernmental agencies and agreements, deals with the EU, legally-binding legislative measures to allow the enforcement of the green agenda by wealthy interests in the courts, and the construction of domestic carbon bureaucracies.
Gary Smith was the sole member of the panel at what was intended to be a debate for the same reason that it has not been possible for critics of Net Zero to get answers out of the likes of the U.K. Climate Change Committee (CCC). The CCC, as with any other agency or organisation, does not debate because it does not need to. The matter is settled. The cross-party consensus was established by green lobbyists without debate. And consequently, ostensibly democratic institutions have been wholly aligned to green ideology and the Net Zero policy agenda. It’s not up for debate.
– Ben Pile
Those who suffer injustice can be compensated:
Non-binary customers win compensation for being asked if they are male or female
Financial services firms have been forced to pay hundreds of pounds in compensation to non-binary customers over “discriminatory” application forms.
MoneySuperMarket (MSM), the comparison website, and Transunion, a credit union, were hit with separate complaints because their application forms did not include options for non-binary customers in their gender section.
Both cases were escalated to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) which awarded the complainants compensation for “distress and disappointment” incurred from the forms.
MSM was ordered to pay £200 to unnamed non-binary customer Mx B who was asked if they were male or female.
And those who commit injustice can be punished:
Council rejects appeal of mother fined £500 for leaving free cabinet out for neighbours
A council has rejected the appeal of a mother who was fined £500 for leaving a free cabinet outside her house for neighbours to take.
Isabelle Pepin, 42, placed the white piece of furniture from Ikea in front of her house in Southbourne, Bournemouth, in August.
However, three weeks later she was given the fly-tipping fine by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council because she had put it on the pavement.
Both stories come from today’s Telegraph.
Heraclitus said that “The people should fight for their law as for their city wall.” With laws like this, little wonder that decreasing numbers are willing to fight for their city wall.
Strange times we live in. A British newspaper, the Daily Mail, has published a damaging allegation about the spouse of the US president*, but so far I haven’t seen a word in any British or American newspaper about a damaging allegation about the UK prime minister. Given the relative strength of the libel laws of the two countries, one would think that “the shape of the PM’s family” would be all over the American press.
I must stress that at this stage both allegations are merely allegations. If the one about Sir Keir Starmer turns out to be true, I am not sure it will make much difference. Gone are the days when Cecil Parkinson had to resign as a minister because he impregnated his secretary. Boris Johnson’s behaviour imitated that of a medieval lord siring a bastard child in every nearby village without eliciting any noticeable political effect other than mild envy. Given that Starmer’s popularity has already suffered one of the steepest falls in recent political history, it might actually improve his polling. And get people calling him by his first name.
The allegation against Mr Emhoff is a slightly different nature, as if substantiated it would almost certainly be a crime. I repeat that it has not yet been substantiated. On the other hand, as the Daily Wire‘s Mary Margaret Olohan pointed out,
The #MeToo allegation against Doug Emhoff has more corroboration than Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation against Brett Kavanaugh, which Kamala Harris herself aggressively defended.
*Edit: Commenter Barracoder reminded me that Kamala Harris is not the president of the United States. I literally, genuinely forgot that Joe Biden still holds the office of president.
“And when Sue Gray, the former civil service head of “Propriety and Ethics”, having improperly and unethically defected to be his chief of staff, demands a salary larger than his own, Sir Keir gets furious with the journalists who ask him about it. “I don’t believe my staff should be the subject of political debate like this,” he told the BBC.
Though Prime Minister, he seems not to know that it is the first duty of our elected Parliament to question how and why public money is spent.”
– Charles Moore in the Telegraph.
Sue Gray was the civil servant, at the time much lauded for her impartiality, who wrote the “Partygate” report that brought down Boris Johnson. If she had then retired, or stayed in the civil service, or got any other private sector job than the one she did, her place in history as a minor avenging angel would have been secure. But what she actually did was leave the civil service to become Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. Her failure to declare that she had been in communication with Labour over this job offer while still a civil servant was a breach of civil service rules. Even if it had been within the letter of the rules, it was an obvious breach of their spirit, as more than one angry civil servant has said to me. Of course her salary is up for debate. She did not pass out of politics by going to work for the Labour Party, she passed into it. And her salary in her current position of Downing Street Chief of Staff is paid by the taxpayer.
May have overstated. May!?!
Chief medical officer Chris Whitty has admitted that the government may have overstated the danger of Covid at the start of the pandemic.
Well, it’s a start, I suppose. However, they massively overstated it, destroyed our liberties and economy on the basis of their own panic and inability to follow through with a sensible, rational plan that was already in place. No may about it. They did. Big time and every one of the fuckers should be doing jail time including Half-Whitty.
– Longrider, with whom I agree entirely. There needs to be professional, financial and social consequences or nothing changes. Instead, the fuckers get knighted.
|
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.
|
