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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On the BBC television news programme this morning, I glimpsed a brief and largely uncritical segment on the rollout of what are called Home Information Packs. These will be compulsory for people looking to sell their property and cost, so the BBC programme stated, about 500 pounds (a nice revenue earner for the government). The packs, or “HIPs”, will have to include details about the energy efficiency of a house and they are driven, in part, by the current focus on environmental issues. It is further evidence of how the green movement is replacing old-style socialism as a prime driver of regulation and tax.
The BBC programme profiled a number of people who have taken up the stirring job of checking people’s homes. They will inspect properties, take all manner of measurements, and generally have a wonderful time poking around the homes of would-be sellers of properties. The people on the show seemed a fairly pleasant, if faintly bland bunch – not the sort of people to get Britons irate. The image presented by the programme was all, so, British in its “what a jolly sensible idea to let people check around your home” sort of line that is bog-standard BBC these days. It was vaguely reminiscent of those old 1940s public information films shown in WW2 urging us all to cut the amount of water we use when taking a bath and to keep our gasmask with us at all times.
Tim Worstall, a blogger focusing on economic and environmental issues, has a suitably sceptical line on the need for compulsory Home Information Packs. If they are such a great idea for buyers and sellers of properties, then surely the market would react accordingly. I agree.
But leaving aside the daftness of these packs as a compulsory measure, the broader point here is how enforcement of HIPS is adding another layer of people to the public payroll. True, the HIP inspectors are not state employees, but self-employed. Even so, their jobs have been made possible by the HIP rules. This demonstrates that a lot of jobs today owe their existence to often-questionable legislation rather than consumer demand.
Remember, more than 900,000 public sector jobs have been created since 1997, at vast cost to the wealth-creating part of the economy. People are being recruited to inspect pubs and restaurants to ensure that consumers – even if they have the consent of the property owners – do not smoke. The increasing crackdown on cars in big UK cities means that traffic wardens are also a growth industry. Since 9/11, meanwhile, the security industry has expanded enormously, swelling the profit margins of firms like Kroll or Reliance. The trend is likely to continue. All this is a deadweight on the economy, even though in some cases, such as counter-terrorism and protection against thievery, it is necessary.
We keep wondering at this blog at what point Britons will ever start to seriously complain. ID cards? Not much of a general stir. Erosion of the right to trial by jury? Yawn. EU Arrest Warrant? Yawn again. But maybe things are moving. The recent proposal by the government to impose road pricing across the land and enforce it by tagging cars drew forth a deluge of complaints via the government’s own internet-based petition system. I wonder whether the prospect of busybodies crawling all over a home before it is put up for sale will have the same effect. Let’s hope so.
“Vote Blue” the Tories say, “Go Green”
You think the promise unforeseen?
Have you forgotten when instead
We voted Blue and still went Red?
– Sean Gabb. To see him on 18 Doughty Street discussing the Resignation of Tony Blair, go here.
I am quite fond of the Scots Nats, but then, I am English. The BBC has/had a headline today (which, because of the unique way the BBC is … interpreting web conventions… may disappear without warning) that for a moment made me love them:
SNP planning to cut down cabinet
Wouldn’t that make politics a bit more exciting? Sad to say, it is an administrative detail in Holyrood, not a plot to draw claymores in Whitehall.
The only substantive issue on which David Cameron declaimed that made him in any way preferable (or to be more accurate, distinguishable) from the Blairite Labour Party was the issue of ID cards.
Cameron (eventually) came down against them once he realised just how unpopular the scheme was. Well it seems that the impending Brown government is also going to give ID cards the heave-ho, which if true is indeed a good thing.
So, no excuse left for actual conservatives not abandon the Tories and vote UKIP then.
Before all the waffle obscures matters it is worth remembering what the government headed by Mr Blair actually was – a continuation of the government headed by Mr Major.
The same policies, more government borrowing, especially in the latter years of the Blair government, more government spending on health, education and welfare (and undermining of the armed forces), more regulations, and more power handed over to the EU.
On Afghanistan and Iraq it is hard to see the government of Mr Major not supporting the Americans (especially in the post 9/11 climate) so no difference on this either.
It is true that there has been so ‘rebranding’, for example the New Labour people seem to have a hatred of any name for a government body that implies a connection with the Crown – and they like sinister names like ‘the Ministry of Justice’, but how important this will prove I do not know.
I suppose the only real difference might be Mr Brown’s ‘stealth taxes’ with lots of complex ways to increase taxes whilst hoping no one will notice. Such as the Robert Maxwell style raid on the pension funds – which (counting lost interest) has cost about one hundred billion Pounds since 1997 (not much if one says it quick). Of course this might lead to a discussion of all of Mr Brown’s Enron style PFIs and other complex schemes – but I find the subject too depressing.
Anyway there is nothing that Mr Blair’s choice for Chancellor has done that Mr Major and ‘Ken’ Clarke might not have done (even the pension fund raid was under consideration by these people – and I bet they would have sold most of the gold reserve for half what it was worth just as he did), remember the ERM exchange rate rigging?
It was supported by all parties (Labour, Liberal and Conservative) with Mrs Thatcher finding herself forced to go along (with hindsight Mrs T. should have resigned rather than go along with it – after all the swine turned on her soon anyway).
Mrs Thatcher was interesting. Mr Blair (like Mr Major) was just another statist politician.
Instapundit noted that we did not rush to comment on the announced departure of Tony Blair but speaking for myself, the reason I felt no need to dash off an article is that I do not really give a damn because it is actually not that important. Glenn expects us to be cheering, but why? About the prospect of Gordon Brown running our affairs? Sorry but that is nothing to cheer about and I cannot really see that this will make a great deal of difference to government policies.
You sometimes hear of how London’s taxi drivers like to regale their passengers with their views on matters of public affairs. Maybe it is their self-employed, independent nature that lends itself to a certain feistyness of attitude. I do not always agree with what I hear from taxi drivers but often or not, they have their fingers on the pulse. Well, it turns out that the news service Bloomberg is polling the men and women who drive the London black cabs for their views on the state of the economy. If their views are correct, the UK economy is slowing down.
To hell with the official government statistics. The cabbies have spoken.
He is an admirable character in many ways. He has achieved tremendous success in his professional life; he is by all accounts a devoted husband and I have read that he is good company. It therefore rather a shame even for the most one-eyed follower of Chelsea FC that Jose Mourinho is such a petulant jerk. It takes quite a lot to make me sympathise with Alex Ferguson, the long-standing manager of Manchester United, or for that matter, his highly-paid football stars, but I think the Chelsea boss has achieved that feat.
Class continues to be a sore point in English sport (I am not really qualified to know about how this works in Scotland or Wales). Football has traditionally been thought of as a working-class game although these days the cost of buying a season ticket are beyond the reach of all but the fairly affluent. Cricket is a mixture; rugby union is thought of as middle class, tennis is the same, yachting is for the posh, ditto polo, etc. (I am not quite sure if Formula 1 fits a neat mould any more. It used to be quite posh, since only rich people could afford to drive fast cars). But in football, there is still a strong working class aspect. So I really do not understand why, if the Chelsea manager is going to insult someone, he brings up poverty and humble origins as a reason to abuse someone. In fact, if a person comes from humble origins and becomes an international sports star, like George Best, Tom Finney or Bobby Charlton, that usually counts in their favour.
By reading Samizdata for several years, I am one of the Americans that has received a major enlightenment regarding Tony Blair. I recently received this link from regular commenter RAB and decided to post it for the benefit of other Americans on the site.
Tony Blair, who was swept into office in 1997 amid higher hopes and greater goodwill than any incoming British Prime Minister in modern times, will leave it a few weeks hence with his reputation in ruins.
An opinion poll earlier this month showed that only 11 per cent of voters still like him; 51per cent think that “he manages to convince himself that whatever he has decided to do must be morally right”.
Some 57 per cent say he has stayed in Downing Street too long, and only five per cent agree that he is “in touch with ordinary people”.
Just 27 per cent think Britain is a more successful society than it was in 1997, and 61 per cent believe that it is a much less pleasant one.
…
Tony Blair has shown himself the most accomplished political actor ever to occupy the premiership.
He is an orator of near-genius, a performer who has for years dominated party conference platforms, TV studios, Parliament, White House press conferences, even the U.S. Congress.
Put him before an audience in his heyday, whether of three people or 3,000, and he could weave a spell worthy of Gandalf.
But now let us step over the camera and lighting cables, walk past the brilliantly painted frontage of whichever modern temple of glitz he is patronising – the Millennium Dome would be appropriate – and venture backstage.
Examine the real Britain after ten years of Blair.
As some people involved in Samizdata know, I have promised not to write posts attacking the local election campaign of a certain political party – at least until the election is over.
As I have promised this I feel uncomfortable in writing anything that could be seen as an attack on any other political party. So in the following both the name of the candidate and the party that candidate represents will not be stated.
On Sunday I came upon a political leaflet. Along with the normal fluff about loving Association Football (candidates, of all parties, really do write stuff like that – some of them even list the pubs they go to) I read the following:
“I have been involved in campaigning for the … party since the age of 6, leafleting and canvassing…”
Now I hope that that “6” was a misprint for “16” – but, such are the times we live in, I can not be sure.
Groups like ‘Alcohol Concern’ like to use the force of the state to make people act the way they want. They do not care about making an argument and convincing people to act a certain way, they want prison and truncheons to make people tow their particular highly debatable line.
Parents who give alcohol to children under the age of 15 – even with a meal at home – should face prosecution, a charity says today. Parents who let children drink should face prosecution, says Alcohol Concern. […] A charity spokesman said: “It is legal to provide children as young as five with alcohol in a private home. Raising the age limit to 15 would send a stronger message to parents of the risks associated with letting very young people consume alcohol.” It is illegal to buy a drink in a pub under 18, but a 16- or 17-year-old can drink wine or beer if having a meal with parents.
You know what I would like to see? Whenever someone threatens me with force if I do not modify my social behaviour more to their liking in my own damn home, I would like them get arrested and thrown in jail. And I would like to see them beaten with truncheons if they do not comply with the cops just like they want for others who do not comply with their wishes. Such people are addicted to using force to impose their will on others and so why not “send a stronger message” that threatening people via the political system is really no different to threatening them with violence via some other institution, like the Mafia, for example.
If ‘Alcohol Concern’ want to convince people that they should not allow their children to drink (which is bullshit, I might add, as I suspect that encourages alcohol abuse in later life), well fine, let them take out adverts and evangelise their views like civilised members of civil society. However when they want the violence of law to impose their views, they should be regarded as anti-social thugs calling for the destruction of yet more civil society. Such people want to see society replaced with ever more politically derived formulae for personal behaviour. And of course such nonsense is unenforceable other than by family members denouncing each other a la the Communist model, which no doubt is what a group like ‘Alcohol Concern’ would like to see happen … which is literally anti-social.
It is not enough to reject the message of groups like ‘Alcohol Concern’, people who want to impose their views on every household in the country need to be held responsible on a personal level for advocating the force backed destruction of civil society. Such people are part of the problem of modern Britain, not part of the solution.
I just heard David Cameron on the news tonight saying that under Gordon Brown, Britain will just be getting “more of the same” of what it got from Blair.
In other words, Gordon Brown is a Blairite. Just like David Cameron then I suppose.
If you are going to vote, and you want a conservative alternative to Blair’s populist creeping regulatory authoritarianism, vote UKIP.
Otherwise just expect “more of the same” from both Brown and Cameron.
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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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