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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‘The system is the problem, not people’: how a radical food group spread round the world
Incredible Edible’s guerrilla gardening movement encourages people to take food-growing – and more – into their own hands
Pam Warhurst insists she’s no anarchist. Nevertheless, the founder of Incredible Edible, a food-focused guerrilla gardening movement, wants the state to get out of people’s way.
“The biggest obstacle is the inability of people in elected positions to cede power to the grassroots,” she says.
[…]
Her big idea is guerrilla gardening – with a twist. Where guerrilla gardeners subvert urban spaces by reintroducing nature, Incredible Edible’s growers go one step further: planting food on public land and then inviting all-comers to take it and eat.
I doubt this idea would scale up, but if growing food to give to others gives people pleasure, go for it. I cannot bring myself to feel outraged about the odd unauthorised carrot in a municipal flowerbed. And long have I waited to see lines like those I have put in bold type appear in the pages of the Guardian:
But as much as Warhurst’s idea has simplicity and wholesomeness, it also has a radical streak. At its heart, Incredible Edible is about hijacking public spaces – spaces nominally owned by communities, and paid for through their taxes, but administered and jealously guarded by public authorities.
And that is where Incredible Edible meets its biggest challenge: the dead hand of the state.
In a previous post – borrowing from C.S. Lewis – I used the word “unconciliatory” to describe Sir Keir Starmer, and I increasingly find it the most appropriate one when thinking about the tenor of governance to which we are now subject. Labour’s victory in the 2024 election was artificial and its well of support is ankle-deep; since only one in five of the electorate actually voted for the party it was already unpopular at the very point of taking office. Politicians who were not thoroughgoing mediocrities would, finding themselves in such a position, be prudent. They would recognise their priorities to be consolidation, calmness and concession – their aim would be to lay stable foundations for future governance with quiet competence. But the current crop do not really understand the word ‘prudence’, or like it. So we are patently not going to get that. We are instead going to get a programme of improvement imposed upon us from above: eat your greens, do your press-ups, and do as nanny says (oh, and hand over your pocket money while you’re at it).
This will all unravel very quickly. People will not get with the programme, because people never really do, and certainly not when it has been designed by those they actively mistrust and sense have nothing but disdain for them. And therefore, in short order, as the truth dawns on the Government that the people are not on board with its plan of action, the sense of disappointment it feels is going to turn to rage. This will in turn have the inevitable result, as the rage becomes nakedly apparent, that the population will start to kick back – mulishly, and hard.
– David McGrogan
I highly commending this article, read the whole thing.
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Have I or have I not done anything different here? I don’t suppose they will be exhuming William Shakespeare any time soon, but what she said was no worse than this. It was words, nothing more. We are now firmly in an authoritarian police state. A substantial custodial sentence for hurty words is the kind of thing we thought was confined to the old Soviet Union, but it looks as if the ghost of that monstrosity is alive and well in modern Britain.
– Longrider
Tommy Robinson being interviewed by Jordan Peterson presents me with pair of people I am not predisposed to like. But set aside Robinson’s thesis about Islam in the UK for a moment, which you can agree with or not, I contend what the state does to try and shut him down is actually the critical issue. Indeed, I would say if even a small fraction of what he says about security services is true, we have rocketed past the point where normal politics can be relied upon for redress and remedy. Watch and listen with an open mind. We are not heading towards a police state, we are well and truly in one.
Starmer has also always been happy to be accused of running a ‘nanny state’. Much of the agenda that he and his Health Secretary Wes Streeting have revealed more widely for the NHS borders on that, with a focus on preventive healthcare rather than waiting until a patient needs acute (and more expensive) treatment. But an interesting question is whether the new government would have gone for this kind of ban had the Tories not already suggested it. As Katy explains here, the fact that Rishi Sunak championed the move first has made it much easier for Labour to take steps to crack down on smoking more generally. It is, she says, plausible that this approach could be extended to fast food and alcohol consumption. In fact, it wouldn’t make much sense if Starmer talks about the cost to the NHS of smoking but takes no action on obesity, even if that problem is far more complex than the relatively easy win of making it harder to smoke cigarettes.
And it will be much harder for the Conservatives to argue against those further moves because they were the ones who started all this off – in legislative terms, at least.
– The Spectator
Given the complaints recently about “two-tier” policing of crime and disorder in the UK, I thought it worthwhile to set out this summary of the principles of policing as set out by former Home Secretary and reforming British statesman, Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), also renowned as founder of the modern Conservative Party (Tamworth Manifesto of 1834), remover of Corn Law tariffs, reformer of banking (with some remaining issues), and general all-round good guy of British history:
1, To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2, To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3, To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4, To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5, To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6, To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7, To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8, To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9, To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
Victims are blamed, pressured into keeping quiet, and whistleblowers are pursued. In short, after an initial flurry of activity, we have taken the Rotherham vaccine and become inured to the plight of our young girls, who are foolishly looking to us in hope of salvation, imploring us for help and daily praying for justice – a vain yearning in today’s Britain.
Mentioning the scandal carries a “branding” sentence, which an increasing number of people feel unable to bear, preferring to throttle the source of the sound of suffering than to deal with the root of the problem.
One thing is for sure: it is for us, not the authorities, to judge them on their record.
The mother in Wakefield lived through two-tier policing, as have many thousands of other desperate souls. That is a fact.
– Alex Story
We’ve all heard the prevailing narrative in recent weeks. The riots that hit our towns and cities were the consequence of a mix of ‘inflammatory rhetoric’ and ‘disinformation’ from malicious actors. Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, Andrew Tate, Nigel Farage – all these individuals have been depicted as the James-Bond-style villain responsible for the mayhem.
This misguided theory has repeatedly been advanced by various liberal sophisticates on social media – people who always appear so desperate to flaunt their ‘progressive’, high-status opinions (the better to win kudos from their peers, of course).
[…]
What it all shows is that if you scratch a member of the liberal intelligentsia, an anti-democratic authoritarian will bleed. We see time and again that, when it comes to the crunch, the liberal ‘good guys’ are as illiberal as the worst despots.
– Paul Embery
Media reaction to the National Wealth Fund has, in general, been positive, though (predictably) The Economist was critical. Interestingly, The Guardian did not appreciate the fund’s misleading name. Probably the most glowing responses came from the Financial Times. Many might think that this, as well as the various big names involved in the formulation of the policy — including former Bank of England governor Mark Carney and the Chief Executives of Aviva, NatWest, and Barclays — reflects the fact that this policy is well-formulated and fundamentally sensible. They would be wrong. As we have seen, there is nothing sensible about the majority of the ‘preliminary’ sectors chosen.
– Pimlico Journal
I have given this BBC story the “Health & Medical” tag due to its description of traumatic events:
‘Trauma’ as Pride flags vandalised for fifth time
Pride flags vandalised for the fifth time in north-east London have left residents “traumatised”, a local LGBTQ+ organisation says.
The flags, which are on the pavement near Forest Gate railway station, were covered with white paint on Monday.
They were also vandalised on 9 March, as well as on 23 and 26 June and 19 July.
Rob DesRoches, founder of Forest Gayte Pride, external, said the organisation would work with Newham Council to repair or replace the flags, adding: “We feel that people have been traumatised by the repeated vandalism, which needs to be sorted out now. The healing process needs to take place.”
The Metropolitan Police previously said it was treating the vandalism as a homophobic and transphobic hate crime.
I send my good wishes for the progress of this deeply necessary “healing process” to the traumatised people of Forest Gate, especially to the approximately 25% of them who are Muslim. Despite my view that we would all be better off if there were no such thing as public property, I do not approve of individuals taking it upon themselves to inflict criminal damage on public property. But the line taken by the left since the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston is that it is fine to destroy street furniture of which you disapprove. So – anyone taking odds on how long it lasts till next time?
I have seen the light. The man who convinced me of the truth of MMT was someone called Daron Medway, who replied to a tweet by Richard Murphy that said,
The government can never run out of money https://youtu.be/2m3BXdkDJYI?si=cjSA5MJ5AcDWkKgJ
Politicians, commentators and journalists all like to claim that the UK government could run out of money, but that is total nonsense. The UK government can always create the money it needs to pay its debts. It is the one and only organisation in the UK that can never, as a result, run out of money.
with this extremely persuasive point:
This is great! I guess I can keep all of mine then?
Government anti-terror ban forces closure of UK model steam train firm
A historic British firm which produced model steam trains for 87 years has been forced to close its doors after getting hamstrung by red tape.
Mamod this month closed down production in its factory due to dwindling sales and spiralling overheads, in an era of gaming consoles and social media.
The firm was also hobbled by a government ban on the ‘dangerous’ hexamine fuel tablets that had long been used in the models to heat water and set the intricate engines chuntering.
Founded in 1937, Mamod’s steam trains quickly became a favourite of children across the country, boasting static generators which powered models with wire loops and scaled-down traction engines.
While it is true that model steam engines of this type had all but disappeared as toys, there is a considerable market for them among dangerous men with names like Kenneth and Stanley who might convert their garden railways to hexamine-powered rail-mobile nuclear missile launch systems.
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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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