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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NickM, Samizdata comment thread regular who gigs over at CountingCats, pretty much sums up my own views about the Tories and David Cameron at the moment. Which got me thinking: what would happen if, heaven forbid, we got another few years of Gordon Brown in Number 10?
This is all getting very ugly indeed. For a start, sterling is falling fast in the exchanges. There is, I think, more than an outside chance that if long-term government bond yields start to rise faster to attract lenders to lend, it will push the UK back into the recession from which it only recently – if you believe the data – recovered. I also think this government is quite capable of reiimposing exchange controls, which means that tourists, for example, would not be allowed to take more than a piddling amount of cash out of the UK. Of course, such a policy would not be announced in advance but imposed as an immediate measure. But it is a prospect to bear in mind. It is a bit academic in my case, but it is worth moving any spare cash you might have offshore, assuming you can do this without incurring a heavy charge. With what investments I do have, I tend to make sure that a fairly high proportion are in economies that are not heavily exposed to sterling. I am also a bit of a long-term dollar bear, given that the US also suffers from massive debt problems and that the dollar is also losing its reserve currency status, albeit slowly. I also favour commodity-backed currencies (the Australian dollar, for instance.)
Next year, I can qualify to get a Maltese passport, which, among other things, makes it easier for me to live in places such as Canada, apparently. I am going to look into this seriously. In the current environment, it pays to have a Plan B. I am lucky: as we don’t – yet – have kids, me and the missus will not have too great a trouble getting out, although I would contemplate it perhaps even more so if I did have children. I have worked abroad from time to time, so some of the logistics would not be a mystery to me. My only major reservation at the moment is that if I did move, I would not want to be too far from my parents, who haven’t been in the best of health lately and are not getting any younger.
UPDATE: Thanks for the feedback (well, most of it, anyway). First of all, my support for the freedom to migrate – as in the above instance – does not mean that I can expect to go where I like, or change the culture of the country to which I choose to live, or impose my values on such places. Which means that I do not dismiss the worries of those who have been concerned about, say, the influx of folk from very different cultures into the UK (ie, from the Muslim world). There is also the injustice, of course, of migrants taking up welfare benefits in the countries to which they enter – that clearly should stop. But such important caveats aside, as I have said, the freedom of exit is, if you think about it, the ultimate freedom as it protects other freedoms. If the situation becomes intolerable, it is glib for someone to argue that I am somehow “harming” my fellows who stay behind by leaving. If a state can ban or seriously hamper any individual from leaving a country of his birth, tht person is a serf.
One commenter by the name of Tim thinks my argument for leaving is somehow unprincipled as I will be causing, albeit in a tiny way, the very sort of problems (a falling pound, etc) that is bothering me in the first place. That argument does not convince. One might as well object to my refusing to use the services of a firm any longer because the firm will lose sales. Yet the firm, if it is run by intelligent people (big if) will react to the loss by trying to make itself more attractive. If a country is losing people and their departure is a “harm”, then surely that very fact is an incentive for countries to change course, to encourage people to enter that country rather than leave. Or take another analogy: socialists get upset by the idea of school choice because a school will be “harmed” if dissatisfied parents pull their kids out and send them somewhere else.
Every time Labour show a whiff of recovery the pound crashes.
– Guido Fawkes comments on his graph showing that The Market Hates Labour.
One of my current top bloggers Richard North points to a new blog, Political Facts, where posting number one is about the Convenient Criminal. And since Richard North is now one of a lot of other people’s top bloggers also, that means that news of this new blog will spread fast, perhaps faster than its writer might have preferred.
The story its first posting tells if of how the British police, animated by the desire to meet targets rather than to mete out justice, have resorted to arresting the easiest persons to arrest, rather than the guiltiest. The guilty ones flee before the police arrive but the victims of the villainy stay, waiting for help and support, unpractised in the arts of obstructing the police. So they, or their angry sympathisers, get arrested, basically for being a bit angry about having been set upon by actual criminals.
Police arrive. One police officer tells the violent drunk, now a few yards away, to leave the area. The bleeding victim is helped to his feet and tries to point our his attacker but by now he has already left the scene as instructed by a police officer. Not good for the police who have attended an assault but now have no boxes to tick.
One girl tells the police they are useless and is arrested for a Section 5 Public Order Offence for screaming and swearing at the violent drunk as he assaulted the young man. A female bouncer from the nightclub who has witnessed this rushes across the street and tries to tell the police they have the wrong person. (Captured on CCTV) Police tell her to go away and proceed to issue a Fixed Penalty notice. Another Convenient Criminal without police having to take the time and effort of now trying to find and arrest the violent drunk. Effortlessly ticks all the boxes the officers need ticked for their performance targets while justice is thrown away.
But are that event and another similar one outside a pub real events, or were they merely, as they say in the movies, “based on fact”? Are these actual people, or merely composites. This first posting is strong on principle, not so strong on chapter and verse. A widespread set of prejudices about how the police now operate is eloquently laid out. But where are the actual reports of actual events, in local papers or in other blogs? At first glance, the posting looks to be full of links, but all that bold-and-in-colour stuff turns out merely to be bold-and-in-colour. It doesn’t lead anywhere.
But, as I say, it’s early days for this blog and with luck it soon will start to lead somewhere. More to the point those facts alluded to in the blog’s title may start gravitating towards it. After all, the blog’s readers now at least know the kind of facts being sought. The man can obviously write, and with luck, he will turn out to be well placed enough, near enough to the kind of dramas he now describes in a generalised way, soon to be deploying some serious facts and making some serious waves.
“The declaration of neutrality on the issue of the sovereignty of the Falklands issued by the US State Department is clear proof of the uselessness of the Obama administration.”
James Corum, military expert, ex-US soldier and writer in the Daily Telegraph. I would point out, in fairness, that in the early phases of the Falklands conflict in 1982, some members of the Reagan administration initially were sympathetic to Argentina, or at least tried to prevent a UK military recovery of the islands. But the Obama administration clearly has little love for the UK. Fair enough: let the UK follow its national interest and f**k the White House.
Over at Devil’s Kitchen, the blogger uses justifiably salty prose to describe what he thinks of Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, after Mr Clegg gave various proposals for taxing City bankers and the like, including such brilliant ideas as raising the rate of capital gains tax to 50 per cent on top earners, in line with the new, 50 per cent income tax rate due to kick in at the start of April. Clegg gave an interview to the daily freesheet, CityAm.
Clegg, let us not forget, could be in a position to be an important power-broker if the outcome of the next UK general election produces a hung parliament in which no one single party has an overall majority. Given that both the Tories and of course Labour have shown no reluctance to pander shamelessly to anti-banker, anti-capitalist sentiment, it is likely that if any of these parties gets into bed with the LibDems (a truly gruesome thought, Ed), that such “bash-the rich” crapola will get worse. So we can expect the exodus of wealthy people from this country to continue if this sort of zero-sum economics nonsense holds sway.
Under trade descriptions legislation, the LibDems’ own brandname would be declared as false advertising. Liberal they are certainly not.
“What’s really going on, I think, is that the nature of class war has changed. The old virus has mutated. The old social and political divisions have given way to two new classes — rather as on the trains. Those in economy are most of us, paying for the comforts of those in first class. And those in first class are the new political class — all those who owe their advancement and their security and their pensions and their privileges not to their backgrounds or their talents, or even necessarily their political parties, but to the state and our taxes.”
– Minette Marrin
Incoming from Rob Fisher, to whom thanks (and oh look, I get a mention in Rob’s latest posting), alerting me to this.
This is worth a look. The chap handles himself very well.
Indeed. His name is Bob Patefield. It comes across rather strongly that his real crime is not “being anti-social”, but telling the first semi-police-officer, a “Police Community Support Officer”, very politely, that he wasn’t prepared to give his personal details, because he didn’t believe that the semi-police-officer had the right to demand such details. That semi-police-officer then told a real police officer about this act of defiance, and the real police officer then moved in, inventing the claim that the photographer was taking pictures in an anti-social manner.
He was held in custody for eight hours, and then released without charge.
What a difference an internet makes. Not just in spreading the news of such harassment, but in rewarding those who resist it with a bit of glamour and attention and praise, from the likes of us. And punishing the police for such behaviour in an equal and opposite way.
The bottom line of all this, I believe, is that none of us actually believes that the way to stop terrorists, any terrorists, is to stop people taking photos of buildings. There are just too many people who take such pictures for entirely innocent reasons for such harassment to make any sense. Contrariwise, have terrorists ever crept about the scene of their subsequent crime, taking snaps? If so, I sure we would now be being told about it relentlessly. I like to take pictures of tourists taking pictures in the centre of London, and they constantly take pictures of buildings that are surely a lot more likely to be attacked by terrorists than is Accrington town centre. Like: the Houses of Parliament. The police never seem to bother them.
Maybe the police want to establish a track record having harassed lots of people who they have no reason to suspect of being terrorists, so that when they really do suspect someone of being a terrorist, who is also taking photos, and they ask him who he is, they can avoid accusations of racism, Islamophobia, etc. But if they have reasons for such suspicions, why all this kerfuffle when they haven’t? These PCSO people in Accrington should perhaps be told about this.
Maybe the truth of this is that these PCSOs are simply picking fights with people, in order to prove that they are doing something other than just wandering about rather aimlessly and not really earning whatever they are paid. Maybe it’s that simple.
Political bloggers of the Guido Fawkes/Iain Dale variety have found themselves, I suspect, and as I suspect that the traffic numbers may now be proving, being ever so slightly sidelined during the last month or two. Who cares about the petty pilferings of MPs when there is a world of lies and plunderings out there, under the general rubric of “Climategate”? It’s not that the blog-as-gossip mongers been ignoring this story, more that they have faced a problem of how to respond to it. Should they hurl themselves into the science of it all? Probably better to leave that to specialists. Should they switch from contemplating the merely local government of Britain, to contemplating the government of the world, no less? Probably not.
One way for these bloggers to turn Climategate into their kind of story is to follow the money, especially if it is flowing through Westminster. Iain Dale, a political blogger very much inside the Westminster Bubble, yesterday featured an expensively produced climate change propaganda guidance leaflet entitled the rules of the game. Characteristic quote:
Those who deny climate change science are irritating but not important. The argument is not about if we should deal with climate change, but how we should deal with climate change.
Which just goes to show how much difference Climategate had made and continues to make. Without Climategate, the wider public was just left having to trust the scientists and acquiesce to this kind of stuff. Now “those who deny climate change science” are a whole lot more than irritating, important even, and the question very much is about if we should deal with climate change by any means other than simply adapting to it, as and when it really does occur.
Besides which, the second part of the quoted claim is also false. The argument being put by these climate propagandists is that we all should “deal with climate change” in the particular manner that they demand. Us saying that we have different opinions about how to adapt to climate change is also to be ignored, just as is the claim from any of us that “climate change”, i.e. climate change of the man-made and catastrophic variety, may not even be happening.
The whole thing is disgusting, of course, and kudos to Iain Dale for featuring it. But the point I want to make here and now is that this disgustingness is only now clear. For as long as “climate science” was widely trusted, or at least not widely contested, this leaflet was just a leaflet, not a story. Publishing it before Climategate would merely have resulted in counter-comments from those who agree with it to the effect that they agree with it.
I recall being told by some pessimistic commenters on this early Climategate posting of mine here (done during the time before that word had even been decided upon as the name for all this), and reading elsewhere, that this story would, contrary to what I was already then enthusiastically asserting, soon go away. It would, that is to say, be made to go away. This Iain Dale posting is just one small example of very how untrue that notion is proving to be.
Back into the Westminster Village. Readers may have already seen the news reports alleging that Gordon Brown bullied members of his own staff in Downing Street (his office, it should be said, denies such claims). Apparently, a charity that runs a sort of hotline service took a call or calls from folk at Number 10 pleading for help. The issue threatens to turn into a major political storm. On the BBC Breakfast News this morning, one of the presenters was trying quite hard to put the charity on the defensive but the charity adamantly backed up the claim that complaints of bullying had been received. It did not, it should be noted, state that it believed Brown was in the wrong.
Some may say that harping on such matters misses the “Big picture”: should it matter whether a prime minister is a decent person to work for or is a total jerk? I think it does matter, just as it matters when it turns out that so-called climate scientists fabricate evidence and then try and lie about it, or bully or generally try to intimidate anyone who disagrees. It matters, in other words, that some of the people that we might disagree with in our ideological battles are shits and liars. For one of the emotional tactics that collectivists of various hues have used over the ages is that “We are good people.” To be an AGW skeptic, for instance, is not just to be wrong, it is a sign that you are a Bad Person. To have disagreed with socialism was, for a long period of time, also a sign that you were “bad” in some way, or that you failed in terms of compassion, etc. Mr Brown is a man who goes on a lot about “values”: indeed, he waves his morally excellent beliefs around like a badge. So to find out that he allegedly bullied junior staff who might be reluctant to answer back is a useful fact to know about.
This point should not be pressed too far. After all, people whom I regard as being broadly on the side of the angels can sometimes be hard work and be rude. But it is interesting, I think, that a person known to be tough as a debater and sometimes rude to cabinet colleagues, as was the case with Mrs Thatcher, was well known for treating her staff in Downing Street with great kindness and consideration, according to various accounts that I have read. In the end, I think it matters in how a powerful person treats those who are not powerful. On that basis, the stories coming out about Brown are very damaging indeed.
This could be an interesting week in UK politics.
Update: I see that Rod Liddle has suggested that the alleged victims of workplace bullying grow a bit of backbone. I guess he has a bit of point, but Mr Liddle would presumably draw the line when an employer starts throwing physical objects at staff, causing potential injury. Many years ago, I used to hear stories about a news editor for a regional publication who would hurl typewriters at staff, lose his temper uncontrollably, etc. In that case I think an employee should not only sue, but if necessary, hit the employer in self defence.
Like James Delingpole, I’m finding it hard to keep up with Climategate, the latest posting by this Climategating journo-blogger, after another tumultuous weekend of Climategatery, being a piece he put up on Saturday about the Beano. Read EU Referendum, read the Bishop, Climate Audit, WUWT, and the rest of them. In particular, the sheer quantity of good stuff that EU Referendum puts up every day amazes me.
In one of his more recent postings, EU Referendum’s Richard North says this:
… there is a long way to go before the institutional inertia supporting the global warming industry can be overturned, and the lack of political engagement by the Conservatives is a major handicap. Until and unless this issue goes political, there is little to sustain it in the long run. Without that political traction, skeptics will find it hard to keep up the momentum, feeding fresh stories to the media. The campaign could falter.
I don’t believe the campaign will falter for a moment, any more than that old habit we used to have of complaining about the uselessness of Communism ever stopped, just because the newspapers had been ignoring that fact for a week or two. But, I get the point. Yes, the “campaign”, in the sense of daily old and new media Warmist catastrophes and surrenders and humiliations and measured retreats that turn into routs, might soon slacken off bit. And a few words of doubt about Warmism from David Cameron would indeed keep the media pot boiling that little bit longer. But how to contrive this? → Continue reading: The global warming hoax is a capitalist plot!
“Had McQueen’s life been recorded in a measured and appropriate way, it would have retained some dignity. As it is, we’ve had to consider the silhouette of trousers as though it ranks with the irrigation of Sudan or a cure for cancer. And that just makes him look a complete prat.”
George Pitcher, writing about the fashion industry in the light of the death of 40-year-old designer Alexander McQueen. Much of what Mr Pitcher writes in this piece also applies, in my view, to parts of the architecture and “modern” art establishment. However, at least the fashion industry operates mostly in a free(ish) market. If we don’t like its products, then we don’t have to buy them. When a tax-funded body pays for some freakish statue, for example, it is not quite the same thing.
“In short, sterling is in the toilet, our pensions have been slaughtered, cash savings yield almost nothing, the country is up to its neck in unprecedented debt, the banking system is awash with funny money, our gold reserves were sold off at rock-bottom prices, and Britain’s dole queue is considerably longer than before Crash Gordon began cooking the books. Apart from that, it’s not too bad.”
Jeff Randall.
Even now, after thinking through all the various words written about the plodding disaster of a man that Brown is, it is shocking to contemplate the damage he has done and continues to do, as he heads towards oblivion.
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