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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I do love Guido:
Knife crime is the media scare of the moment and on Sunday Jacqui Smith spun Sky News that “something would be done”. The knife carrying and stabbing classes would be taken to hospital A&Es to confront the results of their crimes.
See the snag? Sounds tough and progressive to triangulating wonks. Sounds more like adding insult to injury when you are lying on a trolley bleeding, hoping you won’t catch MRSA – “Here’s Wayne, he is very sorry he stabbed you”. Doctors and the opposition went ballistic. By lunchtime today the plan was dropped.
The official line here is that They’re As Bad As Each Other, but I actually think that the Cameron regime, as and when it materialises, might show real glimmerings of adequacy, at any rate compared to this lot. I realise that much of my optimism is based on believing David Cameron to be a liar, and not as bad as he says he will be about such things as the environment (which I am basically opposed to), and taxes (ditto), and EUrope (ditto again). But I think it is reasonable to hope for the best, as well as to fear that he might be telling the truth. Except re EUrope, about which I assume Cameron to be lying only in hinting that he might do a teensy bit of good.
Meanwhile, it says a great deal about the terminal state of this present government that they are now making such particular fools of themselves in the one solitary area that they used until a year or two ago to excel at, namely manipulating the contents of the newspapers and the television. They have taxed and regulated the British economy into stagnation and presided over the relentless decline of all public services except weather forecasts and cricket commentaries, and this process of degradation began, or rather continued, as soon as they were voted in in 1997. But they used at least to be able to boss the newspapers. Not any more.
John Redwood MP has a blog, which is very party political as is only to be expected of a party politician, but I find him quite good. Not so long ago he had a posting entitled Legislation – just a longer press release?
You sense that everyone in and around the government has now come to similar conclusions themselves, about themselves. It is being said that what is keeping Mr Brown in his job is that they are all far too busy abandoning ship to care who the captain is. Although, maybe they are being too pessimistic about how badly they will do. Presumably their extreme pessimism comes from reading the newspapers every day.
It may be disgustingly authoritarian, but it is risibly incompetent too. It appears the Home Office has just spent a very large amount of UK readers’ money making a vast online advertisement for NO2ID. We’d despaired of reaching ‘the youth’ ourselves, too expensive. I’m very glad they decided to do it for us.
With audience participation. Which embarrassingly for the Home Office shows ‘kids’ not to be quite the suckers they’d hoped. Enjoy.
One mechanism for ensuring the individual does take responsibility for his or her health is social stigma. For many a year we have been enjoined to cease stigmatising the morbidly obese, the terminally drunk and skagheads, because it really isn’t their fault — and as a result an important means of combating these social ills has been thrown away. Stigmatising has a point; it is not just fun to shout abuse at fat people, it is socially useful too.
– Rod Liddle, who talks some sense, although he is a bit of a yob himself.
Update: some people have asked if I support all of his argument. I do not. For a start, obesity is not something one can define precisely; secondly, it can add to the generally authortarian, bullying atmsophere in which we live if it is deemed acceptable to make all kinds of fun of the largely-built, or whatever. But Liddle is quite correct to locate the issue of personal responsibility and to get away from the victim-culture angle that is so often exploited by the medical profession and their political friends
That invaluable organisation, the Taxpayer’s Alliance, has worked out that the total cost of the various surveillance and data-gathering services favoured by the UK government is just under £20 billion, or about £800 per household. The figure is a total, not an annual sum. £20 billion is a huge figure, even in these times of inflated financial sums.
Now the question arises whether, if we really do face serious security threats – and I think we do – what else could that £20 billion have purchased that might actually have made us safer?
Of course, £20 billion could also enable quite a few tax cuts, but that is obviously hark heresy these days (sarcasm alert).
At my education blog late last night, I found myself putting, in connection with this (which is a story about how two French science students were brutally murdered in London yesterday), this:
It’s somewhat off topic for this blog, but I say: allow non-crims be be armed!
It may yet happen. London, full of disarmed non-crims and armed crims, is rapidly becoming like New York used to be but is now so conspicuously not, a “crime capital”. Any decade now, something might just give. Or, to use the language of this blog, the lesson might be learned.
Something about the extreme savagery of that double murder yesterday made me think that now was the exact time to be saying such a thing, not just to those few of my devoted libertarian friends so devoted that they read that education blog of mine, but also to any eco-friendly home-schoolers or weary school teachers who happen to drop by there. Suddenly, the anti-gun-control message felt very right, like an idea whose time, finally, might have come. → Continue reading: Is gun control about to be rolled back in Britain?
Another senior UK figure – one of the most senior judges in the land – has argued that some aspects of Sharia law should be permissable when it comes to settling certain disputes between Muslim couples. This re-ignites the controversy sparked by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who argued for the same.
Once more, the bedrock principle of a liberal order, that men and women should be treated equally before the law, is potentially at odds with a code that, by definition, does not accept this equality as part of its essence. The inherently anti-women bias of Sharia is not a bug, it is a feature. Take cases where, for instance, a young English guy who is an atheist or Christian tries to take a Muslim girl out on a date and the latter gets physically intimidated by her family (this is not a hypothetical situation, it has happened). To what authority should the woman or man appeal in dealing with such cases? Unless the judge is able to answer that sort of hard question, which goes to the heart of why sharia is considered unworkable in a liberal order, the judge would be well advised to focus on his core responsibility, of seeing that justice is done under the laws of this land. This is one of those examples of why I do not think that a polycentric legal order can really work unless it is possible for its members to elect to choose under which code they wish to be treated. Muslim women would not have that choice if sharia law was incorporated. More importantly, they do not have the key right of “exit”, the right to choose no longer to be treated under a specific code of their families.
The judge, like the Archbishop, is proof to radical Islamists that some of the most senior figures in what might pass for the British Establishment lack the intellectual or moral fibre to defend the core values of this nation.
Last night, flicking through the TV channels after watching Andy Murray get pulverised by Nadal, the muscle-bound Spaniard, in the tennis, I watched in bemused fascination as ITV and the BBC both devoted quite a lot of air time to celebrating – that word was used repeatedly – the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service. There has even been a church service, attended by Prince Charles and the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to mark the anniversary of Britain’s monopoly provider of health care, an essentially socialist creation that is hardly emulated anywhere else in the world, and for good reason. None of the major objections to health care that is provided via tax and distributed “free” at the point of use were mentioned. Last night’s stories gave no balancing comments from skeptics or opponents of the NHS to counter the general feel-good presentations.
At the Institute of Economic Affairs, here is a rather more sober treatment of the NHS. As the US writer PJ O’Rourke once warned his countrymen about socialised medical care, if you think US private sector healthcare is expensive, just wait until it is “free”.
Data is accumulating that the British residential property market is now undergoing a significant fall. The commercial side of it has been suffering for some time. Apart from some prime residential bits in central London – and even these parts are not immune to change – average prices have now fallen month on month across the country for quite some time.
Some of this may abate eventually. I hope so, since a collapse in house prices would presage a major recession. It is all well and good for people to say that a shakeout is necessary to clear all this cheap money out of the system – and I understand that point – but it is pretty grim having to endure the process first-hand. But beyond that, what this episode reminds me of is the unwise move by many people to put all their long-term retirement savings options into property. I know quite a few people who cheerfully tell me that they have no pension and are relying on a business or set of properties to do the job. Well, they have a half-decent point: many pension savings schemes are a rip-off and poorly invested. But relying on bricks and mortar to keep us comfortable in our rocking chairs does not strike me as very smart. Maybe market developments will act as a wakeup call. And anyway, as I have remarked before, more and more people are going to have to re-think the whole notion of “retirement” anyway, particularly if we are going to live longer, and in healthier shape, than our ancestors.
You may not know that a Home Office minister is touring the UK holding ‘consultation’ meetings about the National Identity Scheme, and that it is more nonsensical than even the average government consultation exercise. She is, however, and nothing will be allowed to stand in her way. 3 members of NO2ID were arrested this morning for “suspected breach of the peace” while protesting outside the venue of the Edinburgh consultation exercise. Making ministers look bad will these days get you hustled away by police, apparently.
The reason the ‘consultation’ is even more fatuous than usual is this. There is no question the intention is to go ahead: the legislation was passed two years ago. And any questioning of the plan is ruled out of order – if not, indeed, arrestable. The object of this tour is to gather together “stakeholders” – businesses and voluntary organisations, and to persuade them that helping the government strong-arm their customers, staff and volunteers into enrolling will ultimately be for the good of all. In fact it seeks suggestions from them how best to get universal compliance.
Rounding up any dissidents is the last resort, of course.
Update: Apparently 9 people are still in custody at time of writing (18:20 BST). Hat-tip: Glasgow Herald, who called me for a statement.
Update 2: (06:23 BST) You can read the account of Geraint Bevan, of NO2ID Scotland, here. (The hard scientists among our readers will be pleased to know that the ‘Dr’ signifies Geraint just got his PhD in engineering.)
Much has been said about David Davis’s motives for doing what he’s doing. He is vain. He is mad. He is bored. My opinion? He is a politician. Politicians are vain, often mad. Politics is mostly very boring. I say: Who cares what Davis’s reasons are for saying what he is saying, and doing what he is doing? What matters is what messages he is sending out and what impact, if any, they will have.
I applaud Davis for communicating a general unease concerning civil liberties. What Davis said in his campaign blog yesterday about the DNA database will surely please our own Guy Herbert, if it has not done so already :
…why should a million innocent people and 100,000 children be kept on the DNA database? This is the state exceeding its powers.
Indeed. However, Herbertians may also be somewhat surprised and not a little distressed by what Davis said in that same posting, immediately above that bit about the DNA database, on the subject of CCTV cameras:
… I have been explaining that I am not against CCTV – but if it is going to be used the cameras should be able to provide clear images and all of the evidence should be usable in court. Currently only 20% is usable. At the moment we just have a placebo effect for Citizen UK.
His objection to the cameras is: that they do not work well enough! We are not, in this matter as in so many others, getting as much government as we are paying for. Of the possible damage to British society that might result from it being constantly spied on by officialdom, with very good cameras, for which David Davis will surely not have to wait long, he says, at any rate in this posting, nothing.
As I say, David Davis is a politician. Be thankful for small mercies, but do not assume any large ones from this man.
The BBC reports that our mad government is about to attempt to warp time by the application of law:
The government is to bring forward new legislation to outlaw all forms of age discrimination, the BBC has learned. Equalities Minister Harriet Harman is expected to announce the plan on Thursday as part of a package of measures in an Equalities Bill.[…] Travel, health and motor insurance is also expected to be included, where cover is simply withdrawn beyond a certain age or is prohibitively expensive.
How is this going to work with mortgages, and those annuities that HMRC forces people to buy with their pension funds on retirement? Women live longer, so they get less for their money in retirement annuities, which they wouldn’t with another investment.
(Digression: Annuitants also pay more tax than they might from some other forms of investment. This is one explanation for HMRC maintaining insurance companies in this monopoly. That’s slightly more creditable than the one that senior tax officials and treasury ministers are accustomed to give more effort to understanding of the problems of the big financial institutions than those of ordinary pensioners because they have an eye to supplementing their own retirement funds by directorships and consultancies.)
It gets weirder:
Under plans to make workplaces more diverse, Ms Harman wants to allow employers to appoint people specifically because of their race or gender. The proposals would only apply when choosing between candidates equally qualified for the job. But it means, for example, women or people from minorities could be hired ahead of others in order to create a more balanced workforce. Some employers argue they already do this, while others may say these policies will need careful handling to reduce the risk of causing resentment amongst existing staff.
You don’t say. The capacity for bureaucrats lunacy, personal distress, and horrifically abstruse legal dispute where racial and sexual discrimination is both banned and permitted at the same time is going to be vast.
I predict an efflorescence of debates between ‘equalities’ officials in which several contradictory standards are created. (Should recruitment ‘represent’ the locality or the country at large? is its current makeup relevant? Or can you hire an exclusively Kazakh workforce because they are the only Kazakhs in the country?). Ethnic and other demographic categorisation of individuals will be even more ramified. And employers will be under more pressure to collect information about people’s family background and personal habits in order to ensure they are either correctly not discriminating, or discriminating correctly.
The government has faced criticism from some quarters for presiding over a society which has arguably become more unequal.
All animals are unequal, but some animals are more unequal than others. All it requires is an official licence.
There seems, finally, to be a concerted effort going on to rid Zimbabwe of its appalling President, Robert Mugabe. The disgust felt by the entire civilised world at from the farce of the recent Zimbabwean election, won in the first round by the opposition but now about to be scrubbed out by pure force, was too much even for President Mbeki of South Africa to resist. Today Nelson Mandela made a short speech giving voice, finally, to his disgust at Mugabe’s behaviour. And now that Mandela has spoken, Britain has felt able to chip in by forbidding a Zimbawe cricket visit to Britain next year, and by stripping Mugabe of a knighthood of a particularly grand and vacuous variety that was conferred upon him some years ago. As the Tesco adverts say, every little helps.
But Mugabe will never go merely because of trivial indignities such as those. He has no better nature to be appealed to, no shame. It is being said that if South Africa pulls the plug in some way on the Mugabe regime, that will finish it. I hope that some time during the next few days or weeks, we will all get the chance to see if that’s true. When the lights don’t work inside Mugabe’s palaces, when the electric fences guarding him stop hurting anyone, when his bodyguards don’t know where their next meal is to come from, then that will indeed be the end of him, and this can’t come too soon for the wretched people of the country he has ruined. It’s all very Shakespearian.
I don’t know if Mr Brown will deserve any particular credit for such an outcome, if and when it finally materialises. I recall Mr Brown lining himself up some weeks ago with all this anti-Mugabe activity, speaking out against this grotesque man at the UN or some such place. But I suspect that this was only done then so noisily and so newsworthily because this was about the only uncontroversially respectable policy that Mr Brown still had on his desk at that time, which was, you will recall, a time of impending elections. I remember at around that same time speculating that Mugabe would outlast Brown. I hope that this turns out to be wrong, or, if right, that this is because Mr Brown succumbs to mysterious medical problems brought on by Labour Party fundraising difficulties, some time during the next few days.
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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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