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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Here is one of those quotes where you add “read the whole thing”:
But next time you are told that Osborne is imposing savage, reckless cuts on the UK, remember that the figures tell a different story. So far, spending is still going up. The plan is for total spending to go up in cash terms overall this financial year and to fall by 0.6 per cent in real terms (the measure that really matters). This will hurt, especially given that debt interest payments are soaring, reducing the funds available for public services by a lot more than the 0.6 per cent overall cut. But this should also be put into context. Barack Obama, who was in London yesterday, wants to cut public spending by 3.8 per cent next year, more than the 3.7 per cent pencilled in over four years by Osborne. In other words, Obama’s cuts – which many in the US want to make even larger – are four times larger than the average annual cuts proposed by slowcoach Osborne.
So it is no wonder really that the UK’s credit rating was downgraded yesterday by (wait for it) Chinese rating agency Dagong, which cut the UK by one notch to A+, from AA-, and placed it on a negative outlook. You may snigger – but unless the UK is able to deliver on its fiscal austerity not just this year but for the next four, our creditors will soon start panicking again, with good reason.
That’s Allister Heath, writing in the London giveaway newspaper, City A.M., which he edits. His point being that the journey in question has only just begun.
Read the whole thing. The above quote comes at the end. Before that come a few of the facts and the figures.
I suppose the optimistic take on all this is that you can’t wrench a graph that is going up onto a downward path, just like that. But how much wrenching is actually going on?
So, Ken Clarke hamfistedly but correctly says there are degrees of seriousness in rape and the law reflects this – and causes great outrage. Not just from the avowedly feminist Guardian either. The Sun says he’s a danger to women, no less.
Interestingly, both the the Guardian’s and the Sun’s commenters seem to take a more nuanced view than their respective papers. As they should. Clarke was attempting to make a valid distinction. Sure, he messed it up, particularly when he appeared to confuse date rape and statutory rape, but of course there are degrees of seriousness in rape as in any other crime. To say that is not to say that any form of rape is trivial. Whoopi Goldberg’s much derided comment that Roman Polanksi was not guilty of “rape rape” was not outrageous because she attempted to distinguish between statutory and actual rape, but because Polanski had committed rape rape.
It distresses me that so many of those who seek to help to rape victims seem to act all the time as if they were a politician on the radio. By this I mean that they have always ready in their heads one idea, one sound bite, that they must express. Nothing must detract from that message; no ifs, no buts, no side issues. I agree entirely with the One Idea in this case: all rape is serious. But when one sees what trouble a real politician on the radio got into for merely touching upon the reasons for a sliding scale of sentences one also sees why most politicians try so hard to stick with the pre-prepared One Idea. Meanwhile Lara Williams in the Guardian (linked to above), a woman whose real-life experience of helping rape victims would lead one to hope that her views were rooted in observation, comes out with the sort of mindlessly simplified slogans that have given politicians a bad name:
Through distinguishing “serious” and “less serious” rape, Clarke assumed a perverse gradient of suffering, a warped taxonomy of perceived victimisation.
No one actually believes that. If called upon in court to state what impact a particular rape had had on a particular victim, I have no doubt that this writer would recoil in horror from saying, “Oh, the usual. All rapes have the same impact. All rapes are equally bad.” Yet that is the logical implication of what she has written. She is not the only such commenter. It is sad to see obviously intelligent and compassionate people with so little faith in the public that they make themselves believe that the only way to put forward a true idea – all rape is bad – is to coarsen it into falsehood.
We seem to be having quite a lot of referendums at the moment in the UK and Europe. As we might note with a sort of grim amusement, the largest recent ones – on the EU Constitution – were airily ignored with customary insouciance by the EU political elites, and therefore fill many people will understandable cynicism. Over at the EU Referendum blog there is a long item about protest movements, violence, referendums and political change. I may have more to say when I have the time to study it. It looks a good piece, and I recommend it.
Talking of protests, here is a nice collection of photos of recent “rally against debt” held in central London a few days ago, as taken by our own Brian Micklethwait.
Owing to my habit of listening to the BBC radio news at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning, on account of me liking to record CD Review, I just heard about this:
The heads of 15 green campaign groups have written to the prime minister warning the government is in danger of losing its way on environmental policy.
I do hope so.
The letter says the coalition should promote a green economy with “urgency and resolve” if it is to follow its vow to be the “greenest government ever”.
The groups include Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the RSPB.
Downing Street says it stands by its record of protecting the environment and delivering a low carbon economy.
A year ago, David Cameron said the environment would be a top priority.
I love the phrase “a top priority”, in particular the “a”. And when a government says that it “stands by its record”, that often means that it realises that it’s a stupid record and is about to attempt a somewhat different record. It will never apologise for past errors, but is now wanting to make different errors, now that the political wind has altered somewhat. It was trying to get elected. Now, it is trying to at least to appear to balance the books that the election has placed in front of it.
David Cameron is the sort of politician who cannot be relied upon even to break a “vow”, but this news sounds, if not good, then at least like an improvement. There has been quite a little furry of news lately to the effect that his government is starting to have doubts about its electoral promise to wreck the British economy in the name of junk science, by making modern life illegal. Given that the British economy is already being wrecked in the service of junk money, I guess they are starting to reckon that one self-administered catastrophe is probably as much as the country can take just now.
Presumably similar calculations are going on in all other countries. Again, I hope so.
The Daily Mash satire site has this beauty of an item on Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
He is the gift that keeps on giving, as Perry de Havilland of this parish noticed a while ago.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard
– H. L. Mencken
I read this article by Matthew d’Ancona and had to laugh out loud.
David Cameron would be wrong to jettison his co-pilot. Nick Clegg’s only chance of recovery is to ignore the turbulence and carry on regardless […] Instead, Clegg has led his party in another direction: into office with an ideological rival, and the cockpit of compromise, U-turns, and grinding policy formation. To say it has not been easy is a laughable understatement, and the price – so far – has been immense. But it was the right call.
Hahahaha… political rivals, sure… but ‘ideological’ rivals? Oh give me a break. Tories, LibDems, Labour, oh and SNP… ie. all of Britain’s main parties are utterly committed to the regulatory welfare state and their ‘idealogical rivalry’ amounts to arguing over the length of their minister’s ties. The ‘co-pilot’ is staring straight ahead as the aircraft in on ‘finals’ for a CFIT.
I particularly loved this…
“The best help we can give the Lib Dems is not a shopping list of policies,” says one senior Cameroon, “but to help them through their adolescence as a party of government – to help them navigate this crisis.”
It is not that the LibDems are ‘adolescent’ but rather that the entire political establishment appear to be intellectually ‘senile’ as the disconnect between objective reality and acceptable political reality grows apace (and largely unremarked by that essential priesthood of media truthsayers).
It hardly matters which of these lumps are in office. All the policies being bandied about are akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and not only does *no* major political party have the will to implement a radical reduction in state expenditure and a massive reduction in the red tape that limit the scope for new market entrants in industry after industry, they all lack the will to even seriously discuss such notions.
When someone suggests a budget that has the state appropriating 20% less of the national wealth overall next financial year and the same the year after that, and allowing banks to simply go bust if they screw the pooch on an epic scale, well then and only then are they are getting serious… but until that happens, let the various party loyalists blather on about Dave and Nick as if it actually matters.
The Ponzi scheme has reached the ‘end game’ phase and the antics of the clowns in Westminster and their supporters are as important as a tinker’s damn. Britain and much of the western world have got the leaders they voted for and the ones they deserve. Drink wine, watch films, play games, meet friends, but only pay attention to politics for the entertainment value. It is not like politics is actually going to have much impact on where the economy is heading.
I loved the hats.
And the grumpy-looking little bridesmaid on the balcony at the exact moment of one of The Kisses (surely a future Violet Elizabeth Bott).
And the foxy chief bridesmaid.
And hearing again the words of the Anglican wedding service (even though it prompted, again, wistful laments from my wife about our own godless civil ceremony).
But mostly the hats.
I am sitting next to the beach at Lyme Regis, south Dorset. The sun is out, the Brits have a public holiday due to the Royal Wedding, and I have deliberately fled central London to be down here. A good choice, as it turns out. This has to be one of the nicest parts of the UK.
The Daily Telegraph has one of those gushing, pro-Royal editorials written, I sometimes think, with the deliberate desire to wind up the malcontents out there. It seems to have succeeded most admirably, judging by this fellow in the comment threads by the name of “tyburntree”:
“….a nation with much to celebrate…”
Er, like what exactly? Treason committed at the highest levels. Illegal wars. Thoughroughly undemocratic parliamentary system. Deliberate population replacement and destruction of indigenous identity and culture ( contary to international law). Islamic extremism. Children killing children. Strutting Peacocks and thieves in our House of Shame. A three party dictatorship. Useless police. Useless courts. Useless schools. The refusal of our political class and courts to deport foreign criminals. Holiday camp prisons. Mulitculturalism. And last but not least a series of broken coronation oaths that have left this country at the mercy of an EU dictatorship.
Independent English Republic now!”
This is what might count as a sort of grumpy, right-wing kind of anti-royalist. I suspect that Samizdata regulars might agree with some of the sentiments expressed here – although the stuff about “deliberate population replacement” sounds a bit hysterical to me – plus the line about “illegal” wars (what, so it is okay so long as we get UN approval for them?). And for a person who seems to be concerned about the loss of “indigenous” identity and culture, why does this man want a republic? Like it or not, a constitutional monarchy is part of that “indigenous culture” of the UK, and has been for a long time. To be a republican, as this guy must surely know, is to make a pretty big break with tradition.
I am an agnostic about republics and monarchies – I think the system we have now is no worse than any likely alternatives. Republics have not, by and large, been noticeably less prone to the follies of socialism and big government than constitutional monarchies. Arguably, the reverse.
Anyway, I’ll unashamedly be raising a glass to the happy couple today. We can resume normal service tomorrow, whatever that means.
Well, call Ghost Busters if you like but for heaven’s sake do not call the Plod.
When a gang of travellers trespassed on her land and allegedly threatened to cut her throat with a chainsaw, Tracy St Clair Pearce dialled 999, expecting protection and reassurance from the police.
But while they took a statement and visited the nearby traveller camp, officers came back and confiscated her shotgun, saying it was a “sensible precaution”.
Well Tracy got quite a life lesson, eh? Where on earth did she get notion the State gives a damn about her right to self defence from some predatory ‘Traveller’ thugs?
The rule is simple… are you a home owner? Never. Ever. Call. The. Police.
They are not there to protect you. Just file this under ‘the State is not your friend’…
Recently, I’ve been exploring the area around the Royal Victoria Dock, which now has lots of houses on its south side, between it and the River Thames, and the ExCeL (apologies for the correct spelling there) Centre on its north side, where they hold big exhibitions like, most recently, this.
The area abounds with photo-opportunities of the sort that I like. To the West, there is the Dome and the Docklands Towers. Beyond them, other more distant towers nearer to London’s centre can be spotted, by me anyway. To the East, interestingly obscure airplanes land and take off from the City Airport, often flying the length of the Dock in the process, near enough for me to actually see some detail in my snaps of them. All around the Dock, large but idle cranes stand, reminders of more muscular and industrial times for this stretch of water, which now advertises itself on the outsides of nearby building sites as being a venue for sporty little sailing boats.
Best of all, there is a big footbridge, half way along the Dock, north to south, with a span high into the sky which is reached by lifts at each end. The views from this bridge, especially those looking West into central London, are very fine.
And all around the Royal Victoria Dock, as everywhere else in Britain that I have visited lately, there are official signs of all sorts (a more recent photographic enthusiasm of mine), urging this, forbidding that, threatening and warning and nagging and cajoling.
Are you a building worker? Be careful in there:
Building workers seem often to get bombarded with the visual equivalent of a Fidel Castro speech, in the form of huge clumps of warnings about every imaginable infringement of safety they might choose to indulge in.
The rest of us are of course nagged on a similar scale, but each nag tends to have its own separate notice.
So, at the Royal Victoria Docks, we observe, if we choose to, dozens of nags and official imprecations of all kinds… → Continue reading: Swimming in the Royal Victoria Dock really is dangerous!
There is a nice exposé in the Telegraph indicating that tax money and the tax funded BBC are funding key people and institutions in the warmist/environmental movement. The article provides a useful who’s-who of establishment figures with their snouts in the public trough…
…but what a pity they did not just read the indispensable Biased-BBC blog because the Telegraph could have written this exposé more than a year ago.
David Deutsch, quantum theorist, libertarian and a man with a brain exceptionally huge even for a libertarian, has posted a video on youTube of himself discoursing against AV (thanks to Sarah Fitz-Claridge for passing news of it on to me).
It is a beautifully clear 15 minutes of listening. He argues that AV, by making proportions of MPs more closely reflect the proportions of electors supporting the parties, doesn’t succeed in its purported aim of making the electoral system fairer. Rather, by making coalitions almost inevitable, it gives king-making power to the third party. Not only does that have nothing to do with numerical ‘fairness’, it makes it virtually impossible for electors to influence the third party and hence for it to learn from experience – Popperphiles will love his introduction of the great Karl into the argument near the end. First-past-the-post is less bad in this respect. The implication is that any proportional-representation system will have the same weakness.
I always participate in elections. I almost invariably spoil the ballot paper with a libertarian slogan. I try unsuccessfully to make my kinfolk and friends understand that this symbolic act is no more ineffective than the votes that they cast and is just as morally responsible. One of the rare votes I did cast was for a UKIP local councillor. I could actually detect a difference between UKIP and the other parties, and I approved of it.
Now I think David Deutsch might have persuaded me to cast a vote again – against AV.
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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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