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.
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A new green toolkit produced by the Royal College of Physicians tells its members they are “uniquely placed” to raise the issue in consultations and that they should “repeat it often”.
The guidance, which is can be found on the royal college’s website, also tells doctors to work from home on non-clinical shifts and offer remote consultations “where clinically appropriate” to cut emissions from commuting.
They should remain alert to “eco-distress”, depression or anxiety a patient may be suffering because of the changing climate, the document adds.
Critics branded the guidance, which is 11 pages long, “virtue signalling” and warned it could lead to diagnoses being missed.
The comment most recommended by Telegraph readers is this:
Mark Smith
Utterly utterly mad. When guidance like this is issued you know the current system is beyond repair. When patient get 10minutes with a GP, there’s little time to get a proper diagnosis and 5 of those minutes will be to receive a sermon. While the NHS is falling to bits we get this.
closely followed by this:
Andrew Bunting
Speaking as a doctor I find this diabolical.
Who has time on their hands to come up with such tosh?
In January 2011, a man called Jared Loughner tried to murder Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and did murder six others. The media rushed to blame his crime on a map put out by Sarah Palin’s campaign showing a map of the US with states that she regarded as political targets marked by crosshairs, with the names of those states’ Democratic representatives whom she hoped to unseat listed below. Loughner was a paranoid schizophrenic who held a longstanding – and bizarre – grudge against Giffords. There is no evidence he ever saw Palin’s map.
Ever since their defeat, many Tories have been on the airwaves smothering themselves with comfort blankets. They’ve been saying Farage and Reform are merely a ‘protest vote’. Are ‘far right’. Are ‘not Conservative’. But actually the evidence does not support this at all. Reform, we already know, rallied an electorate that is socially distinctive —is mainly older, leans toward the working-class and non-graduates, and tends to be outside the cities and university towns. This makes it ‘sticky’, more likely it will stick to Reform in the years ahead. And in his post-election poll, Lord Ashcroft finds that most of the people who voted for Reform did so because they ‘preferred the promises made by the party I voted for more than the promises of other parties’, and ‘I trusted the motives of the party I voted for more than those of other parties’. This does not sound like protest to me. It sounds like a very instrumental vote rooted in sincere and coherent concerns about the country. Furthermore, the top issue for these voters is immigration and asylum, once again underlining their coherent worldview.
The count through the night after British elections makes great TV. What could be more juicy than thrusting a microphone into the face of someone who has just made their concession speech and asking them how they feel? ITV’s election coverage roped in a lot of ex-politicians who had been there themselves to carry out this task, including two former Chancellors of the Exchequer, one Labour and one Conservative, Ed Balls and George Osborne. The two former rivals seemed very pally. As is the custom, they interviewed both the winning and the losing candidates in various constituencies just after the results were announced when emotions are at their most raw.
So, in the early hours of Friday morning, Steve Baker was standing in Stoke Mandeville Stadium where the Wycombe count took place, having just lost his seat to Labour, being quizzed by a visibly gloating Ed Balls. Baker talked about three factors that got him into politics, all of which had been presided over by the government of which Balls was a part: Extraordinary Rendition, Labour bringing forward the Lisbon Treaty to avoid having a referendum on the Constitution for Europe, and “that your government rode an enormous credit boom within which the money supply tripled, leading into the global financial crisis”.
Chuckling, Ed Balls said, “Goodness me, Mr Baker, I have to say, y’know, it’s 2024. You’ve just lost your seat in your constituency. You’ve sort of thought of three different things which all happened over seventeen years ago. Are you maybe in denial?”
Freed of the obligations of being a minister, Baker’s response did not spare either the Labour or the Conservative Chancellor:
“You know as well as I do that these big treaty changes with the European Union, and indeed the monetary system post-Bretton Woods, is fifty years old – and it’s now breaking down. And I’m afraid you and George are as bad as each other on this particular score. Neither of you have ever really understood monetary economics and I’ve wasted a lot of breath in the House of Commons trying to explain to George in particular what was going on, and the kind of injustice it was manufacturing. Well, much good did it do everybody. And now, with the nation seething with a sense of injustice, economic injustice – of course they are; they can’t afford house prices if they are young! Why? Because cheap credit was pumped into a housing market in which supply was constrained by planning laws, about which neither of you did anything. So, you know, at last, as I say, I’m free, thank God.”
Commentators as varied as the financial journalist John Stepek, the IEA’s Reem Ibrahim, and the very left wing Aaron Bastani have reposted Baker’s reply. As Stepek said, “Sorry but @SteveBakerFRSA is mostly, perhaps entirely correct in his analysis here. And the smug reaction – ridicule, not to mention the extraordinary notion that 17 years ago is ancient history with no bearing on the current situation – exemplifies why voters are fed up”.
Having “got Brexit done”, the Tories in theory had a one-off opportunity to change the frame. They could have used the time to pack Britain’s NGOcracy with their people, or even tackle the plethora of New Labour constitutional innovations that paved the way for the post-liberal order. But they didn’t take it, which suggests that either they had so poor a grasp of the political machine they supposedly operated as to make an inadvertent case for the technocratic “experts” they affected to deplore. Or else, perhaps, they understood how that technocracy worked, and liked it just fine.
The latter position is understandable, if not commendable. When you can leave the machinery of state largely on autopilot and focus instead on lining your own and your friends’ pockets, who in their right mind would want actual responsibility? There are honourable exceptions to this: Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates have both stuck their necks out, while for voicing mainstream British views on migration control and the inadequacy of multiculturalism, Suella Braverman was smeared as the reincarnation of Oswald Mosley.
But that’s three MPs, out of what was (until the Tories’ roundly deserved electoral hammering) several hundred. As for the others, their behaviour in Parliament suggested that whatever the electorate may have hoped, they mostly accepted it is Tony’s world now, and we all just get to live in it.
So let us adapt and cherry-pick the words of Winston Churchill:
‘…And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, it will carry on, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old…‘.
But if that doesn’t come to pass, it will just be more of the same, faster, until what can’t carry on any longer, doesn’t.
…the Guardian’s website is thataway. Honestly, they are usually very good at this sort of thing, although even their best writers would struggle to inject much tension into this episode. Before I head up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire, I shall raise a glass to the humbling of the Scottish National Party and to whichever stubborn old reactionary kept British votes retro.
The Labour government that will take office tomorrow will be a disaster. Keir Starmer will make a terrible prime minister – a political weathervane, swinging wildly towards the policies he thinks will be most popular; a weak, unimaginative leader trying to keep the lid on a party seething with far-left lunatics, bitter class warriors, anti-Semitic bigots and deranged wokels.
What, in any event, does one say about the future of a country like this? The image that increasingly comes to mind when I dwell on these issues is one of an attic in a dilapidated country house, dusty and mildewed, with many old spider webs strung between the rafters. Brittle and frail, these strands of gossamer still somehow cling to the physical realm, and to physical existence, because the still, stale air does not contain quite enough movement to dispel them into nothingness. But all it will take is one decent breath of wind, one strong draft from a suddenly opened window somewhere else in the house, for them to be swept away forever.
That is how I envisage our political class and the chattering classes which surround them. They are of such thinness and intellectual fragility that they could be knocked over by a feather, and all we are really waiting for is to find out where the coup de grâce will come from and whether it will be economic, social, military, or something else entirely. To return to a different analogy, the feeling is increasingly one of wondering not whether the future is going to hurt, but how much – whether it will be equivalent of a knife or a bullet wound. We’re coming to the end of something, and we all know it; in this respect the promise of a ‘new Britain’ does seem somehow to be prophetic, although one strongly suspects that ‘renewing our democracy and rebuilding our economy’ are unlikely to be on the cards for a long while yet.
“They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother’s knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.”
I was aware of the boycott but did not join in. We do buy stuff from Wickes on occasion. It is useful that they open at 7am and close at 8pm. I certainly was not going to give up that utility because the company had gone woke. If I were to boycott all the companies who waste their substance by hiring “inclusion and diversity” teams and whose senior staff members gush about it to the media, I would have to live like a hermit. Still, it was foolish of Fraser Longden to first tell Pink News that “Creating a culture where everybody can feel welcomed – can be their authentic self, can be supported – is about modernising our business” and then tell the same Pink News that, in his estimate, ten percent of the UK population are “not welcome in our stores anyway”. I did not know whether my position on these issues, which I like to think of as nuanced, would have allowed him to welcome me through the rainbow-festooned portals of Wickes. Nor did I care. Wickes can hate me and still sell me screws.*
The DIY giant Wickes has been accused of stifling freedom of speech after its boss tried unsuccessfully to shut down a website criticising it as “woke” after its boss told trans-critical “bigots” to shop elsewhere.
[…]
In response [to Mr Longden’s comments], Timothy Huskey set up the protest site featuring the headline “Woke Wickes” and claiming “the UK calls for a boycott of Wickes” due to its “highly controversial sexual agenda”, claiming that the company “hates” customers who think there are only two genders.
[…]
In July, the home improvements store’s lawyers contacted Nominet, the body which oversees UK domain names, to complain that the website was abusing the company’s trademarked name, contained “malware capabilities” and was being used for “phishing”, a reference to the use of emails and online platforms for fraudulent behaviour.
Papers filed with the watchdog also said the site was set up for commercial gain and intended to “unfairly disrupt” Wickes’s business.
In response, Mr Huskey, who is American, said he set up the site as “legitimate criticism” of Wickes, and made it “abundantly clear” it is not connected to the company, even offering visitors the address for the company’s official website if anyone wanted to shop with them. He insisted it was not used to make money or for any phishing fraud and contained no malware.
The adjudicator, who ruled on the dispute, found the use of the word “boycott” in the protest site’s name meant visitors would not think it was linked to the official Wickes’s site.
They concluded the company’s claims the site was malicious or set up for “phishing” fell “well short of what is required to support its serious allegation”.
They added that Wickes had not proven that the criticism on the website was “of such an exceptional nature” to merit the site to be shut down. They were also satisfied it was not set up for commercial or illicit purposes.
Wickes’ use of obviously spurious claims about malware and phishing to attempt to silence a critic enrages me. I am glad the attempt failed; https://www.boycottwickes.co.uk/ is still there. Mind you, so is Fraser Longden. Obviously the earlier boycott did not damage their bottom line that much. And I do not delude myself that my little mini-boycott will leave their accountants a-tremble. Mr Longden is right about one thing, most grand resolutions fizzle out when it’s 6:30pm, everywhere else is closed, and you desperately need a screw.
Nonetheless, given that companies will count an expensive advertising campaign a success if it increases custom by one or two percent, they would be wise not to do things that cause even a few of their customers to get into the habit of looking elsewhere first. That is how most of my “boycotts” end up. In 2019 Nigel Farage had a milkshake thrown over him for the first time. Someone in Burger King’s social media team proved their worth by putting out a tweet saying, “Dear people of Scotland. We’re selling milkshakes all weekend. Have fun. Love BK. #justsaying”. The net worth of most companies’ social marketing teams is negative: until then I had often used the Burger Kings at motorway service stations because, like Wickes, they remain open when other outlets are closed, and because a family member gets a discount, but their encouragement of political violence led me to declare a boycott. Predictably, my resolve wavered. I have eaten several Burger King burgers at motorway services since then, when BK was the only place selling food open, or because it was what other members of the party wanted. But five years of looking elsewhere first adds up.
*I meant the type of screw that comes in Metric, Imperial or Whitworth. Although having started that line of thought, I did not have the strength not to follow the Wikipedia link that told me that all screws have inherent male gender.
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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.
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