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]
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“This sub-prime revival is part of an alleged “growth package” which will have exactly the opposite effect to the one intended. It will further stoke inflation, inflict more misery on savers (pensioners especially) and further distort the market mechanisms whose proper functioning is vital to our economic recovery. One might expect this kind of crazed Keynesian recklessness from President Obama: he does at least have the excuse of being a Marxist, hell bent on destroying the US economy, with Paul Krugman as his adviser. But Cameron? Please can someone, anyone, explain what exactly the point is of voting in a conservative prime minister if he won’t cut taxes, won’t deregulate, won’t support free markets, won’t promote sensible energy policies, won’t defend Britain’s interests in Europe, won’t in fact do anything that Ed Miliband wouldn’t have done in the same position. And at least Ed Miliband has the decency to admit to being a socialist, so we’d know more or less what we were getting.”
James Delingpole.
Our own Perry de Havilland had Cameron more or less figured out in January, 2006. I have had no reason, and neither has Perry, to change my mind about him.
“As the Church of England keeps telling us how much it shares the aims of the St Paul’s protestors, I notice an advertisement in the Financial Times. The Church Commissioners need a chief operating officer. He will be paid a `six figure salary’, says the advertisement, to manage their `£5 billion multi-asset portfolio’. There is no mention of anything Christian, or even anything ethical. The language is all management-speak. The ideal candidate will have a `proven track record of driving continuous and consistent operational performance’. The job’s responsibilities include `to build and maintain internal controls and process and to lead a no-surprises culture’. Although it is pretty hard to reconcile a `no-surprises culture’ with the mystery of the Incarnation, one must admit that it might have come in useful in dealing these various `occupations’. As well as St Paul’s, there is no one else outside Bristol, Exeter and Sheffield Cathedrals. You have only to study the websites of the various Occupy groups across the country to see that they, too, stick to a no-surprises culture. Events include Palestine Solidarity Campaign rallies, performances by Billy Bragg, strikers’ benefit gigs, meetings of the Anti-Cuts Alliance. They are not forerunners of a Second Coming: they are the usual suspects. There is nothing unchristian about rounding them up (caringly, of course).”
Charles Moore, page 11 of Spectator, 19 November. (This is behind the magazine’s pay-wall. Be grateful to your humble Samizdata scribe for re-typing these words from the dead-tree version).
I like the point about Billy Bragg. He’s in danger of becoming a “national treasure”.
I remember, about a quarter of a century ago, speculating that the way things were heading, in Britain, all “drugs” would eventually be legal, except tobacco. We seem …
All smoking in cars should be banned across the UK to protect people from second-hand smoke, doctors say.
The British Medical Association called for the extension of the current ban on smoking in public places after reviewing evidence of the dangers.
… to be on course for exactly this arrangement:
Ex-MI5 chief Baroness Manningham-Buller is set to call for cannabis to be decriminalised in a speech.
The crossbench peer believes that only by regulating the sale of cannabis can its psychotic effects be controlled.
She is also expected to say the “war on drugs” has been “fruitless”.
I am reluctant to urge consistency in these matters. That might mean them banning the lot, which actually seems a rather more likely outcome. And note that the Baroness favours legalisation because illegal drugs are the sort over which They have less control. So both proclamations are consistent with one another, in wanting Them to have more control.
“A paramedic was also told to remove his harness and halt an attempt to reach Mrs Hume because he was not familiar with fire service equipment”
That is from a report in the Herald on the Fatal Accident Enquiry carried out by Sheriff Desmond Leslie on the slow death of Alison Hume while the Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service read up about “the parameters of their engagement” and concluded that these did not include her rescue. She was eventually pulled out by a police mountain rescue team, but by that time hypothermia had taken hold. She died of a heart attack in hospital.
Sheriff Leslie said that some degree of “imagination, flexibility and adaptability were necessary” in conducting a rescue of this kind. He described “a preoccupation with adherence to Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service policy which was entirely detached from the event with which Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service was confronted.”
He said: “There was clearly a balance to be struck between the interests and safety of the rescuers, and those of the casualty they were there to rescue.”
Sheriff Leslie directly criticised two senior officers, group commanders Paul Stewart and William Thomson, for their attitudes at the inquiry. He said they were “focused on self-justification for the action or non-action taken by them”.
The sheriff said: “I found their evidence to be bullish, if not arrogant, in their determination to justify the subservience of the need to carry out a rescue to the letter of Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service Brigade policy.”
It is good that the sheriff has named names. There is precious little penalty other than public shame that will touch a public sector employee who has adhered to procedure. Although the report says that criminal charges “may be brought”, I have a presentiment that the route between the Procurator Fiscal’s office and the criminal courts will turn out to be full of deep holes that an embarrassing report can fall down.
The Fire Brigades Union also made a contribution:
John Duffy, of the Fire Brigades Union Scotland, said: “If we are going to do these specialist rescues you need specialist teams who know what they are doing and know how to use the equipment. We have three statutory functions – to fight fires, prevent fires and deal with road accidents. The problem is we are being asked to do a whole range of duties with no more funding.”
As a commenter to the Herald story suggests, specialist equipment sat there unused and highly trained men sat there debating while Alison Hume slowly died beneath their feet.
Some past Samizdata posts that are also relevant: Alameda County Cowards, We have to wait for the fire brigade because of health and safety, and my first Loss of nerve post.
This evening I dined with a friend, and on my way there took this snap of an Evening Standard headline. A couple of years ago I thought that the Evening Standard itself – never mind these billboards – would soon be extinct. But although diminished in number, these headlines are still a familiar part of the London scene, now as then usually telling of catastrophe of one kind or another, public or personal. This evening’s offering was no exception:
Here‘s the story. Depending on your preferred explanation for this sad circumstance, you’ll pick out a different bit of the story. I pick this:
The shocking new total was published today as Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King warned Britain is in danger of sliding back into recession.
He downgraded his growth forecasts again, saying the economy will expand by one per cent this year and next, a fraction of the hoped-for rate.
As Instpundit would say: Unexpectedly! It would appear that quantitative easing is proving less than completely stimulating. We here are not shocked by this bad unemployment news.
For a little light relief, here’s a snap I took later, on my way home:
The advertising trade was bound to take advantage sooner or later of the wave of health and safety signage that is such a feature of British life just now. This is the first time I’ve noticed it, but I’m sure others have seen such things many times already.
I have long thought, first, that the United Kingdom has for some time been heading towards being the Non-United Kingdom, and second, that this would probably be a very good thing.
If such a separation is indeed happening, then what is causing it is the end of the British Empire. That and what followed around half a century later (i.e. around now), probably as an inevitable next step, namely the abandonment of the English-stroke-British attempt to remain a top ranking Great Power.
The British Empire meant that lots of Scots wanted to be attached to England, to get in on all the deals involved. Then Britain, empireless but still trying to remain a Great Power, needed Scotland to remain in. Scotland provided and still provides military manpower, and projected and still projects British power in northerly and westerly and easterly directions, in a way that England without Scotland will never be able to match. Could England without Scotland (to say nothing of Northern Ireland) have won the Battle of Atlantic? Hardly. Could England then have even threatened to win the re-run of that battle that from the end of WW2 until the collapse of the Soviet Union, dominated British naval thinking, and Britain’s strategic thinking generally? Again, hardly. For as long as the Cold War lasted, the English plus whichever local allies went along with them, were determined to square up to the Russians and thus keep their seat at that Top Table that politicians are all so very keen to be seen sitting at. A dis-United Kingdom was a non-starter, for contriving all that.
But now? Russia remains a looming monster, or a huge wreck if you prefer the Perry de Havilland take on Russia, which I think I probably do. But even if you think that Russia remains very strong, it no longer fancies itself as a global ideological magnet, bankrolling and talking up every nutter in the civilised world with a mad plan to derange civilisation. It no longer even goes through the motions of attempting to conquer everywhere else. Russia is now just another Problem, along with government debt and bank turmoil, the Euro, the Dollar, the Pound, China, energy shortages or “climate change” (again according to taste), crime, schools’n’hospitals, etc. etc. etc., rather than The Problem.
The global ideological derangement torch has now been seized by Mad Mullahs, and they won’t be re-fighting the Battle of the Atlantic any time soon. Nor do they have nearly so many nuclear bombs, or nearly such potent means of chucking them about in the world. They require very different strategies. Given the weaknesses and difficulties faced by the Mad Mullahs, and given the weaknesses and difficulties faced by us, their enemies, I wouldn’t now want to call them anything more than just another Problem, among all the others.
Other career paths for English politicians to that Top Table have since been identified, based less on British power and more on personal skills and individual contributions to the new global elite. To put it bluntly, you don’t need to be part of one of the old empires in order to participate in running the New World Order.
England’s Great Power-ish inclined warriors and foreigner-scarers, of greatly varying social grandeur from Air Marshals to ex-army pub landlords to army-fan dog-owning T-shirted denizens of south of England housing estates, are being presented with a fait accompli. This warrior tendency has traditionally been very pro the Union with Scotland, but is now being being starved of resources and humiliated by its consequent failures to make very effective uses even of those resources that it does still receive. Its last serious throw of the dice was the Falklands War. Since then, Britain been militarily “powerful” by supporting America, which is not nearly so satisfying, or so impressive to spectators. Britain’s more recent military escapades, against those Mad Mullahs, seem to have accomplished, and to be accomplishing, less and less with each passing year. Chasing terrorists in foreign parts is all well and good, but it seems foolish to be trying to impose democracy upon such places as Afghanistan, given the problems we now have domestically. And even if you don’t agree about that, you can hardly deny that most English people surely now do think thus. The Will to Great Power, to adapt Nietzsche, seems more and more to be lacking in Britain. Too costly. Not worth it. Time to consign all that to the history books.
And with it, the overriding imperative for England and Scotland to remain politically attached to one another.
Meanwhile, that strand of English opinion which favours trade, free markets, and so on, is, in the absence of any continuing great power logic to justify union with Scotland, likely to become ever more irked but it. This tradesman tendency, so to speak, of free market inclined businessmen, City of Londoners, shopkeepers, and bookish students who like reading Hayek and Friedman and, these days, clicking onto mises.org, has lately suffered a severe dose of Scottish moralistic … I don’t think anti-Englishness is too strong a phrase for it, at the hated hands of Gordon Brown. More and more they (and count me in too) now think: well Jock, if you want out, then you just go ahead and get out. We might then get the sort of government we want, instead of having our choice vetoed by you all the time.
The above thoughts were triggered again in my head just last week, by a recent report (thank you Bishop Hill), which said that if Scotland does go independent, it will as a direct consequence have to stop being nearly as crackpottedly ridiculous as it is now about “renewable” energy, i.e. the sort of energy of which there is not now and for the foreseeable future never will be enough. Suddenly, I found myself becoming a passionate Scottish Nationalist, if only to put the wind up the idiotic wind-farmer tendency. Although, Bishop Hill jokes that such greenery in Scotland is actually a plan to keep the Union with Scotland going, by making Scottish independence impossible.
For wind-farming in particular, read Scottish economic thought and policy generally. Libertarians like me have another reason to want to see Scotland separate itself from England, which is that once the indignity of being told by annoying English people like me to favour more rational economic theories and economic policies has been removed, the Scots, once independent, will then almost certainly become far more ready to tell each other to think and to behave in an economically more sane manner.
If Scotland goes independent, then Scotland will, for reasons of sheer economic self-preservation, have to stop being a huge drag on the global pro-free-market tendency in general and the libertarian movement in particular, and might even become a net contributor to such tendencies. Again.
Final thought. Where will all this leave UKIP? Changing its name for a start. But then, as the EIP, much more likely to get what it wants. And that’s another reason for England to eject Scotland from its union with England. It would then be a lot easier for England to eject itself from the EU.
Given the proximity of Remembrance Day (11 November), there is something particularly nasty about the theft of metal from war memorials. With prices of some metals at high levels, thieves are tempted to desecrate such things, as well as steal bells from churches, and so on. Boris Johnson is in trenchant form on the subject today.
Once again, I am reminded of how awful a lot of the comments on the Daily Telegraph now are, as shown by much of the commentary linked to BJ’s piece. A lot of the sentiment is to the effect that all this thieving is caused by immigrants. But as one person put it, to steal scrap metal, you need scrap dealers, and they are, often as not, from the indigenous population. It is not as if thieving is something invented by people who come to this nation from abroad.
Via CityAM, here is an interesting article about the UK’s own space industry. It is bigger than might be supposed from first glance.
(Thanks to my good friend Tim Evans, over at the Adam Smith Institute and the Cobden Centre, for the pointer).
BTW, one of the big places for registering space-related companies these days is the Isle of Man. No doubt, in centuries to come, the Tranzis will be trying to shut down tax havens in outer space.
Favourite climate-related quote of the week so far:
The claim that AGW is consistent with heavier snowfalls wasn’t mainstream until it needed to be true.
It’s a comment, from Nicholas Hallam, on this, at Bishop Hill. Heh.
Although, actually, the recent Bishop Hill posting that I find most interesting is this one, which is about a bunch of solar power grant guzzlers begging to have their grants renewed at the level they have become accustomed to. Something along those lines. The absence of any widespread public support for these chancers will reveal just what a propaganda beating the greenies have been taking for the last few years, not least from blogs like this one. Most people will react to these green supplications, if they react at all, only by saying something like: “Oh you’re losing your jobs, bad luck, join the club, but actually what we really don’t like is our fuel bills doubling.”
Until now, it’s all been sane people begging the politicians to stop chucking money down the green drain. Now the politicians are starting to rearrange things a tiny bit against the interests of some of the politically less well connected greenies, and these greenies are now also starting to beg. Yes, folks, it’s the reversing of the burden of proof. We no longer have to convince them that all that “settled science” isn’t so settled after all. They have to convince us that they aren’t scam artists. Or deluding themselves. Or a bit of both. Good luck guys.
Billions are still being tipped down the green drain. This is only the very beginning of the end of the great green scam, which will probably never completely disappear. But, once the politicians realise how little support there is for green subsidies, they will get bolder, and cut them some more. And the greenies will scream some more. And the arms of the general public will remain folded, their faces blank with contempt.
About time.
LATER: More:
“We built a business on the back of David Cameron’s promises. He has betrayed us twice. Anybody thinking of investing in government-sponsored green opportunities, I would advise them to run away.”
Or government-sponsored anything else, come to that. Welcome to politics, mate.
This is priceless. It is a Friday, and it is good to have a laugh, even of a dark sort. Halloween’s on the way:
“Sir, I am saddened by the naivety of William Cash in juxtaposing wind farms and housing development as comparable threats to “our heritage”. If we do not tackle climate change there will be no heritage worth preserving, and probably no one around to appreciate the old piles. Not to mention, in the interim, the untold suffering caused to countries more immediately affected, such as Pakistan and the Horn of Africa. Opposing means of reducing carbon emissions is little better, where the likely consequences for human beings are concerned, than appeasing Hitler. Wind turbines are not, actually, particularly ugly, and certainly less so than the pylons we have lived with for decades.”
A letter from “Antony Black”, of Dundee, published in the 22 October print edition of the Spectator, page 30.
I love the way that this man likens skeptical views on Man-made global warming, and resistence to things like giant windmills, to the appeasement of a proven thug. It is worth quoting people like this man, not because it will have the slightest effect in changing their views, which constitute religious belief in its mix of fervour, self-righteousness and faux-rationality, but because it is important to show how such seemingly articulate people can believe such tosh, and get it printed in what is a relatively respectable publication.
James Delingpole, the British journalist, has a good take on the sort of folk that form part of the Climate Change alarmist crowd.
Snapped by me earlier this evening:
One of the key arguments in Detlev Schlichter’s Paper Money Collapse concerns the oft-repeated claim that the world’s central bankers won’t allow inflation to get out of control, because they are fully aware of what a very bad thing it is. But what if they also fear something else that they regard as even worse? Like the monster economic correction that a decades-long policy of easy money is now demanding, from the entire world?
The huge pile of paper next to this Evening Standard billboard seems rather appropriate, I think.
Instapundit chooses the first few sentences of this piece about the Occupy Wall Street … thing, to recycle. But my favourite bit is where George Will summarises the OWS position:
Washington is grotesquely corrupt and insufficiently powerful.
I also agree with the following comment, which was attached to this:
The reason why these occupiers are getting so much attention is that the mainstream media think they’re not idiots and are advertising them, and the right wing alternative media know that they are idiots and are advertising them.
Which says part of what George Will said, and which I agree with because I wrote it.
It is, when you think about it, easier to write about something that is rather small. When you encounter an OWS event, you can listen to anyone there who wants to say anything in about ten minutes. Compare that with working out what the hell everyone thinks at a Tea Party get-together. To do an honest job on that you have to be there for hours.
But then again, these protesters are not, perhaps, all of them, complete idiots. They are very right that things have gone very wrong.
We’re due an OWS copycat demo here in London this weekend. Someone called Peter Hodgson, of UK Uncut, is calling for, among other things, “an end to austerity”, by which he means him and his friends keeping their useless jobs for ever. Good luck with that, mate.
There is actually some overlap between what some of these Occupy London characters may or may not be saying this weekend, and what my team says about it all.
Laura Taylor, a supporter of the so-called OccupyLSX, said: “Why are we paying for a crisis the banks caused? More than a million people have lost their jobs and tens of thousands of homes have been repossessed, while small businesses are struggling to survive.
“Yet bankers continue to make billions in profit and pay themselves enormous bonuses, even after we bailed them out with £850 billion.”
It’s like the Tea Party in Britain is too small, and has to climb aboard Occupy London. Well, maybe not, because Laura Taylor neglects to mention the role of the world’s governments in setting the various trains in this giant train-wreck in motion. Who caused the banks to cause this crisis? That’s what my team wants to add. The banks were only doing what the politicians had long been incentivising them to do, and the banks are doing that still. The banks are only to blame for this mess in the sense that they are now paying the politicians to keep it going. But that is quite a big blame, I do agree.
So anyway, the British government, like the US government, is now also grotesquely corrupt, and it should jolly well pull its socks up, its finger out and itself together. And then be hung from lamp posts.
Seriously, I remember back at Essex University in the early 1970s how the Lenin-with-hair tendency thought that the answer to every problem in the world then was to occupy something, fill it with rubbish and then bugger off and plan their next stupid occupation. They were tossers then, and they, their children and their grandchildren are tossers now. Farce repeating itself as farce.
Maybe I’ll dress up (as in: down) in shabby clothes and sandals with no socks (which I would never dream of doing normally) and join in, with a camera. Although, I promise nothing, because this weekend there is also the Rugby World Cup semi-finals to be attending to.
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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.
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