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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Why is this scum called animal rights activists?
A notorious extremist group says it has tampered with more than 250 items containing the antiseptic, which is mainly used to treat children suffering from cuts and grazes, as part of a long-running campaign against an animal testing laboratory.
The group, calling itself the Animal Rights Militia, said it targeted Savlon in a “clear and uncompromising” manner because it believes its Swiss manufacturer, Novartis, to be a client of the research centre Huntingdon Life Sciences.
And it warned its campaign would continue unless the pharmaceutical firm ends its links with HLS.
The Telegraph article seems to serve as a platform for their statement and agenda instead of a report that these criminals have been arrested and appropriately dealt with.
This glorious article in the BBC website appeared today. I’d love to know whether the person who wrote this has a sense of irony. There is just a hint that he might:
Britons are “addicted” to cheap flights and confused about the climate impact of flying, according to research.
Well, at least the writer had the good grace to put addicted inside scare quotes.
Britons want to fly for a cheap fare. The horror.
Well, that is probably inevitable anyway. Political honeymoons that last a long time tend to be followed by savage changes in fortune (Nicolas Sarkozy, please note). Gordon Brown enjoyed a bounce in the polls after he killed off, er, sorry, I meant took over from Tony Blair; he was able, however spuriously, to appear all statesmanlike amid the various natural disasters, almost-successful terror plots. But the shooting of the young boy in Liverpool, adding to a spate of gun crimes, has put crime higher up the political agenda, which may hurt Brown; the recognition that Brown has, after all, been finance minister since 1997 and therefore bears a fair share of the current difficulties, is starting to break into the public awareness. And the latest issue which could really wipe the smirk off his face is Europe. His attempt to slyly sign up to a EU Constitution in drag is unacceptable, and thank goodness if it is true that many Labour MPs and some ministers feel the same way.
Seeing is believing, of course. But somehow, I think life is going to get a lot rougher for the government. The question as always is whether the opposition will fully exploit it.
It is all too easy to imagine a future in which our grandchildren will talk of having had an ancestor who worked for the BBC in the same way as people nowadays mention having had a grandparent or great-grandparent who worked for the Sudanese Political Service, or was a District Officer in Bechuanaland.
–Jeremy Paxman, keeping hope alive for millions of Britons
Let’s see if we can spot the flaky reasoning in this letter to The Times (of London), as prompted by a good(ish) article by Daniel Finkelstein today:
Writing as a parent and as one who stands to inherit a large sum, a far better way to reduce inter-generational inequality would be to set inheritance tax at 100% over a comparatively high threshold (e.g. £500K). Then the older generation would have a strong incentive to sell their large, expensive homes – increasing supply and making property more affordable for the young – and spend the money, boosting the economy, employment and wages. It would also have the benefit of forcing the children of the rich to make their own way in the world – they have enough advantages in life anyway.
First, the writer assumes as a matter of course that “inter-generational inequality” – however defined – is of itself a bad thing, a thing to be prevented by limits on any wealth bequeathed above a certain level. For this writer, he/she assumes that no person should have, in this case, an amount higher than say, £500,000. But why on earth should the state rule that people should be banned from receiving, as a gift, more than whatever some egalitarian thinks is the “right” amount? So the inheritor may not “deserve” it in some sense but so what? If a person does not deserve to inherit £1m, neither do his fellow citizens deserve to have that wealth evenly divided up among themselves, either. I think it was FA Hayek who pointed out that in talking of deserve, we talk of deserve in the eyes of someone else, like a father, boss or God who decides that Johnathan Pearce or AN Other “deserve” to receive X or Y out of the multitudes. But dumb luck in inheriting money or good looks or a high IQ is just that: luck. Luck is neither undeserved or deserved. Through aeons of time, we have evolved into human beings with things like opposable thumbs and relatively large brains. We did not “deserve” those, either, so does this mean we should hold ourselves back to benefit our less fortunate creatures?
→ Continue reading: The fallacies behind inheritance tax
People worried that Britain’s supposedly overcrowded, damp island will soon burst at the seams from rising population levels should always remember that although immigration has been high lately, so has the exodus of many people. Of course, if you are bothered about underlying trend, it is not exactly cause for celebration that so many Britons, especially if they are young and talented, want to get out of here as quickly as possible. To say that this thought has not occured to the Samizdata crew would be an understatement. (Although one might debate whether yours truly is young or even talented).
In the 1960s, there was talk about a “brain drain” from high-tax Britain. The situation is a little different now: I think the reason(s) for leaving are as much about the regulatory climate, the bloody awful weather, crime, the general ugliness and boorishness of Britain, and the better perceived better chances of raising a family. I am not saying that all these reasons are valid: countries like Australia or the US have their own problems and having been to the States regularly, I find it bizarre that that country is held up as a beacon of freedom sometimes, if only because some states like California seem hellbent on copying the worst regulatory excesses of Europe. But such caveats aside, this exodus ought to be an issue for Gordon Brown and the opposition to think about. If such large numbers of people want to leave, it is sending out a message.
Edward Paul Brown was a premature baby whose birth and death took place within minutes of each other on February 23rd 2007 in a lavatory in Queen’s Hospital, Romford.
Eighteen weeks into her pregnancy, his mother, Catherine Brown, was told that there was no amniotic fluid surrounding the baby in her womb. This meant that the baby’s chances of survival were minimal and her own life was threatened. Catherine Brown took the “devastating” decision to abort. Even those (such as I) who generally oppose abortion, will see this as a hard case – and I hope that any comments do not get sidetracked onto that issue.
So. We have a woman in hospital waiting for the procedure that will abort her baby, a child she had wanted to bear and raise. Not a pleasant situation at any time, but what followed next was disconcerting to read about even for those who have grown weary of NHS “war stories”.
I first saw this in the Times (Baby’s birth and death in lavatory of hospital with no trained staff), but there is a considerably more detailed account in This Is London (Mother forced to give birth alone in toilet of ‘flagship’ NHS hospital) (A very similar account appeared in the Daily Mail.)
Both headlines understate the peculiarly modern horror of what happened. The reader gets a picture of nurses trying to help, but out of their depth because Queen’s Hospital did not at that time have a proper maternity unit. That picture is wrong. The part of it that is wrong is the “trying to help.” The nurses declined to help.
→ Continue reading: Loss of nerve
It looks like those advising and supporting Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, are determined to blackguard his prospective Tory opponent Boris Johnson by any means necessary.
First we had Doreen Lawrence (who has been cultivated by race-activists over the last decade to the point of co-option) wheeled out in The Guardian, to wave her son’s shroud and say:
Boris Johnson is not an appropriate person to run a multi-cultural city like London. Think of London, the richness of London, and having someone like him as mayor would destroy the city’s unity. He is definitely not the right person to even be thinking to put his name forward.
Those people that think he is a lovable rogue need to take a good look at themselves, and look at him. I just find his remarks very offensive. I think once people read his views, there is no way he is going to get the support of any people in the black community.
A classic piece of noughties argumentation: a champion victim finds him offensive. He should not be considered. But note also the visual metaphor: “look at themselves… look at him”.
This morning The Voice carried the news that: “London’s mayor Ken Livingstone will next week issue a formal apology for his city’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade”.
When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,
It may just be coincidence, but I prophesy that Ken will not be shy of inviting other mayoral candidates to do the same, hinting that they if they will not, it is because they are racists who secretly approve of slavery. We know where Boris stands. In the logical, historical, position. Nonetheless, officials from such organisations as Blink (the 1990 trust), and Operation Black Vote (which is supposed to be a non-partisan organisation encouraging electoral participation), have already described him as “a hardcore racist” and “bigoted”.
I suppose that we should not expect much better of professional agitators and their stooges. Boris is presented as a cartoon racist – using racial and class stereotypes. “Look! he’s blond, blue-eyed, with an Etonian accent” they are saying. “He’s cavalier about things right-on people feel strongly about, wickedly western, rational and white.”
That is a narrative calculated to appeal to their fellow quangocrats and positive-discriminators, beneficiaries of the Crimson Newt’s largesse, and to buttress them in their self-righteousness. But it also projects contemptuously low expectations of London’s black people in general, treating them as an ignorant client class who will lap up the most shameless propaganda. It is to be hoped London’s general public, black and white, will take the man as they find him, not as he is painted by an overt attempt to organise ‘racial loyalty’ at the polls worthy of the BNP.
If Londoners are urged vote for Boris or against him on the basis of the colour of their skins rather than their individual consciences, it isn’t Boris dividing London on racial grounds, it is those doing the urging. I do not know if they are, but the thought that a significant number Londoners might be sufficiently ghettoised to follow the call is thoroughly depressing.
Readers will recall the conniptions with which the UK Government and its media proxies met a Conservative policy paper from John Redwood (not actually a party policy) recommending reductions in red-tape.
The horror was Mr Redwood projected to reduce the compliance burden on business by approximately £14 billion. No cut in public spending was mentioned. Given the way bureaucracy works, removing inspections and forms does not necessarily mean reducing the number of inspectors and form-monitors.
Now comes some analysis that shows both sides were making a fuss about nothing. The way the current government operates, £14 billion is peanuts – roughly the annual rise in the direct cost to the general taxpayer and the regulatee of new bureaucracies. Lets not attempt to count compliance costs. No-one else has. But the Economic Research Council has been doing some sums.
As reported in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph (and appearing shortly on the ERC site):
[T]he cost of executive agencies, advisory bodies, independent monitoring boards and other quangos has mushroomed under New Labour. Spending on such agencies soared to £167.5billion in 2006, up from £24.1bn in 1998. Research revealed for the first time this weekend shows that over the past two years ministers have created 200 quangos.
Now there is a wrinkle here that seems to have been sidestepped by The Telegraph and the ERC: much of that increase is reclassification combined with expansion, particularly of chunks of the NHS. Reclassification is also a ratchet device – it puts bits of government machinery beyond ready scrutiny by calling them independent and lets them be pumped up independently of the departmental budget. But nonetheless it means the Tories, had they the nerve (and if they thought it would work as a political strategy), should have no difficulty in promising £50 billion in actual tax cuts, with the lifting of any compliance burden mere spin-off, rather than the main event. You can make your own list of favourites for culling from this document [3.5Mb pdf], though reading a 372-page list of official bodies may be a distressing experience.
It may also be funny, for those with a sick sense of humour. This body does not appear to spend anything, yet, though there is provision for £200,000 a year in state funding, and administering its existence and listing must cost something:
National Community Forum.
The Community Forum acts as a sounding board and critical friend to ministers and senior managers in DCLG. Members provide a ‘grass-roots’ perspective on the way neighbourhood renewal and other policies impact on local communities. Especially in relation to community participation and empowerment. They also provide valuable insights and information based in their first-hand experience of living and working in deprived neighbourhoods.
Established 2002. The NFC has not been ‘reviewed’ by the department, but they have just completed a two year evaluation which is about to be discussed by the board and will be placed on the website.
It is not that “you couldn’t make it up”. Most writers of fiction would be ashamed to invent anything so banal in its pointlessness. Whatever happened to mandarin prose?
Ruth Lea (thanks to Perry for pointing this out to me) has what is a pretty good analysis of the upcoming regulatory juggernaut to hit the City out of Brussels. I won’t expand much further other than to say that without the City, the UK economy would be a shadow of what it is now. Of course, in the short run, the UK government has been content to let financiers make their big bucks because it pulls in so much taxable revenue. More fundamentally, however, London’s position as a great finance capital on the planet is not secure; while regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley have driven some US businesses to the UK, Brussels-generated laws could hamper the UK and drive that business outside the EU, although natural inertia and the benefits of London’s accumulated legal and financial expertise are strong assets. Never forget the Swiss. The weather is okay, the trains work, the Swiss mountains are great for skiing in the winter and although I am happily married, I have always rather admired their women. If you are a 30-something banker with no ties, London is not necessarily superior.
Of course, if the Scottish nationalists were not such lefties, they’d be playing the Adam Smith card and campaign to turn Edinburgh into a sort of tartan low-tax paradise, and take a leaf out of the Irish book on how to revive an economy (no, the Irish economy is not all about EU grants, in case anyone brings that one up).
A report in the Times (of London) states that one of the UK’s leading charities, Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), has told gap-year students (students taking a period of time off between school and university or whatever) not to take part in costly and often useless aid projects.
Indeed. Far better to encourage students not to take a gap year off at all, but to work hard, get a job, and then use all their energy and idealism to campaign to scrap all tariff barriers, trade “pacts” and other distortions of the world trade system.
As a subject for reading, this I highly recommend. I wonder if any university dons care to put it on their students’ reading lists?
Paul Staines takes a very gloomy view of the situation in Britain’s two wars
I take no pleasure in reporting this, but it seems to be going unsaid in the British press. British forces are painted, particularly by broadcasters, as having achieved a measure of success in Basra due to superior British peace-keeping techniques honed in Northern Ireland.
The truth is very different. To quote from a report;
Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by “the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors,” a recent report by the International Crisis Group said.
The Washington Post reported a senior U.S. intelligence official yesterday saying that “The British have basically been defeated in the south”.
The article went on to say that British forces
… are abandoning their former headquarters at Basra Palace, where a recent official visitor from London described them as “surrounded like cowboys and Indians” by militia fighters. An airport base outside the city, where a regional U.S. Embassy office and Britain’s remaining 5,500 troops are barricaded behind building-high sandbags, has been attacked with mortars or rockets nearly 600 times over the past four months.
In May Blair visited the Basra HQ and came under mortar attack – not a sign of pacification.
The head of the armed forces, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, told the BBC that success depends “upon what your interpretation of the mission was in the first place… I’m afraid people had, in many instances, unrealistic aspirations for Iraq, and for the south of Iraq.” The reality is that once British forces exit Basra the fighting will escalate into a full-scale civil war: Mission failure.
This begs the question – what now is the plan in Afghanistan? They are a people who fought the Red Army and won. The Soviets were brutal and were still defeated. Is NATO going to match and exceed that brutality in pursuit of “victory”? Afghanistan should be monitored closely and elements that present a clear and present external danger should be eliminated. It is not the job of NATO to impose Western values by force as Rome’s Imperial Armies once imposed Roman law.
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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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