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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It is a story told of more than one matinée idol, and no doubt actionable, so let us call him The Star.
The Star was rumoured in a big Hollywood prostitution case to have been one of the most regular [I almost wrote “biggest”] clients of the latest martyred madam. An interviewer caught up with him.
– “Mr Star, is it true you hired call-girls.”
– “Now I’m not going to comment on the case, and I never had any contact with Miss X; but it is no secret I have used call-girls plenty of times in the past.”
– “But Mr Star, you are known as one of the sexiest men in the world. You could surely have all the girls you want for free. Why pay anyone for sex?”
– “I didn’t pay them for sex. I paid them to go away afterwards.”
It seems our madly interfering government now wants to police our private lives a bit more closely, and thereby make them a bit riskier. According to The Times:
Unmarried women and men will be able to make claims against their partners to demand lump-sum payments, a share of property, regular maintenance or a share of the partner’s pension when they separate. They will also be able to claim against their partners for loss of earnings if they gave up a career to look after children.
The reforms are to be published by the Law Commission, the Government’s law reform body. It is expected to drop any proposal for a time stipulation, so that only couples who had lived together for, say, two years, could bring a claim; or any bar on childless couples.
Plans that would have made it harder for the partner who stays at home to lodge a claim have also been dropped. Courts will no longer have to be satisfied that the unmarried couple jointly decided that one of them should give up their career and stay at home and that the decision was not made just by one of them. […]
The reforms would apply to both opposite and same-sex couples in “an intimate relationship.” But the Law Commission emphasises that the plans are about granting individuals a remedy, not rights, when they split, and says that the measures will not undermine marriage but make the law fairer.
A marriage or civil partnership is a clear, deliberate, decision. I don’t think the state should control the form of family that is possible, but at least those particular controlled forms are optional, and formally delineated. This opens the way for officialdom to delineate and the courts to investigate any relationship for an actionable degree of intimacy, and for divorce lawyers to open a whole new field of speculative actions. Divorce lawyers will just love the idea that there’s no minimum length of ‘intimate relationship’ involved, and that unilateral reliance by one party can create a liability for the other. And they’ve been agitating for it for years (e.g. in Solicitors Family Law Association, Fairness for Families: Proposals for Reform on the Law on Cohabitation, 2000 – sorry, can’t find that online).
It would be an impressive feat on behalf of the state to make both marriage less attractive (some of its appurtenances – for those who want them – would come free) and at the same time to make sex and friendship outside marriage more risky – and possibly more risky the more affluent you are.
It might do some good of course, undoubtably there are people who are mistreated by partners or mistaken about their rights. But to punish every other single person in Britain for the cruelty or ignorance of a few is an appalling way to go. The parade of motivated winners tells you what you need to know: mad clingy girlfriends, scrounging scrubs of boyfriends, family lawyers, smug marrieds, investigators, officialdom, and prurient tabloids.
I can see a spin-off gain for the proprietors of anonymous, deniable, premises for lovers’ assignations. (Brighton?) Perhaps the Argentinian or Japanese speciality hotel businesses would get emulated here. But that would still be risky for the rich and famous. The only people certain to come out with improved credit (in both senses): proper, professional, prostitutes.
If you are not regularly reading Michael Yon, you are really missing out on something interesting.
I am not particularly in favour of sucking up to the Saudis, or of political subsidy for the British arms industry; but can someone please explain why this is vicious nasty corriuption that ought to be internaltionally banned even if it is the custom where the deal is done, and this is a UK local government policy raising a mere £2,500 million a year, in extortion bribes grateful contributions from property developers (on top of which HMRC now is trying to arrange to take a further20% rake-off supplement)?
The Home Office [Bureau of State Security for overseas readers] would be ludicrous in its crudity, if it did not present such a threat to liberty. Bids for more arbitrary power are always, but always, acompanied by a scare story.
Today’s example:
Reid proposes register for terror offenders
John Reid will today propose setting up a terrorist offenders register as part of a series of long-term counter-terror measures.
The proposal, based on similar lines to the existing sex offenders register, is one of a series of ideas that the Home Secretary will suggest should be part of the country’s antiterror defences.
One idea being studied by Mr Reid would be to allow the register to operate retrospectively, making an estimated 40 people convicted under terror laws since 2001 liable for immediate listing.
The Home Secretary will say that police should be allowed to continue questioning terror suspects after they have been charged.
He will also outline a plan to allow judges to impose a harsher sentence on people with links to terrorism who are convicted under the criminal law.
This would apply in particular to people convicted of credit card fraud who have links to terrorism.
Another measure would give police the power forcibly to enter the home of a terror suspect held under a control order.
But the pamphlet, to be published today, will not include firm proposals to extend beyond 28 days the length of time that police can hold terror suspects.
Is juxtaposed with:
Security checks on petrol tankers in London
Security spot checks are being carried out on petrol and chemical tankers, cement mixers and other vehicles that could be used by suicide bombers.
Police are monitoring lorries on key routes into London amid concerns that terrorists might copy tactics which have been deployed to deadly effect by insurgents in Iraq. […]
But Scotland Yard stressed today that there was no specific intelligence to suggest that any kind of lorry bomb attack was imminent. [….]
“A counter-terrorism element has been added to the routine work of checking vehicles carrying dangerous goods,” said a police spokeswoman.
The first story is filed by the Times’ home affairs editor. The second by an interesting chap called Sean O’Neill, co-author of The Suicide Factory a highly sensational account of Abu Hamza’s career at Finsbury Park mosque. According to his agent’s website:
“Sean O’Neill joined The Times in 2004 after working for the Daily Telegraph for twelve years. He has covered the Matrix Churchill affair and the Scott Inquiry into arms to Iraq, the Soham murders and the trial of Ian Huntley, and has reported extensively from Northern Ireland. Since 2001 he has focused largely on the al-Qaeda terrorist threat in the UK.”
Mr O’Neill has something of a speciality in reporting the suspicions of the authorities. He clearly has very good police and intelligence contacts, and can make a livid story out of a change in a police checklist. But the inclination of such unofficial official contacts will be to feed such tidbits to the press to suit themselves, knowing an energetic journalist will make much of them.
“Blair calls for homegrown Imams”
A quiet revolution is taking place in this green and pleasant land. In allotments and smallholdings all over the country the age-honoured and customary rows of marrows and ornamental cabbages are rapidly being replaced by a new and exotic species.
Spurred on by a combination of Tony Blair’s exhortations and the availability of generous government grants, farmers and market gardeners from Penzance to Perthshire are nurturing the first green shoots of what they hope will be a bumper crop of Muslim clerics.
Competition between growers is already hotting up as early adopters of the new fashion vie with each other for horticultural prestige. At the 78th Annual Chipping Sodbury Country Fair, Mrs. Gladys Whinge of Tetbury won First Prize for her record-breaking 254lb Imam which she calls ‘Yusuf’.
“The important thing is to use plenty of steaming, fresh horse manure”, said Mrs. Whinge “so I read the Guardian to him every day”.
The retail markets is already gearing up for what they hoping will be a huge demand for the homegrown Imams in 2008 with supermarket chain Waitrose leading the way by announcing that locally-produced Imams will be sold under their new ‘Koranic’ range.
The new logo for the 2012 London Olympics has been unveiled and it has produced howls of outrage. Yet I beg to differ. I think it is perfect.
What does it look like to you? To me it is obvious: a collapsing structure of some sort, perhaps a building at the moment of demolition. The sense of downwards motion towards the bottom of the page is palpable.
Breathtaking. I mean what truly magnificent symbolism. The entire Olympic endeavour has been a massive looting spree with already grotesque cost over-runs (and it is only 2007), so surely something that conjures up images of collapse and disaster is really on the money… and speaking of money, at £400,000 (just under $800,000 USD) for the logo, it perfectly sums up the whole ‘Olympic Experience’ for London taxpayers.
No, if ever there was ‘truth in advertising’, this is it. Well done Lord Coe, I salute you.
to·tal·i·tar·i·an
–adjective
1. of or pertaining to a centralized government that does not tolerate parties of differing opinion and that exercises dictatorial control over many aspects of life.
2. exercising control over the freedom, will, or thought of others; authoritarian; autocratic.
–noun.
3. an adherent of totalitarianism.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary
But are those really the best definitions of totalitarian?
When someone uses the term ‘totalitarian’, we think of Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia or Mao’s China. Those were indisputably totalitarian states. We think of gulags and killing fields. We think of secret police and surveillance.
Yet I would argue that all those things can just as satisfactorily described as ‘tyranny’ of whatever political completion. The thing that makes a place ‘totalitarian’ is not the nastiness of it or even the repressiveness of it, but the totality of state control. The real defining characteristic of totalitarian seems obvious from the word itself.
And what is a total state? It is a state in which there is no civil society, just politically derived rules by which people may interact. And I would argue the key to that is removing the right to free association, usually on grounds of ‘fairness’ or ‘diversity’ and by declaring private property to be ‘public’.
Britain has no gulags, no killing fields, it has a relatively free press (though less so than it was), it has no internal passports (though they are working on that with ID cards and panoptic surveillance)… but every year we take more and more steps towards the destruction of a voluntary civil society of free interaction and its replacement with a state in which no aspect of life is not politically regulated. This is often described as making things ‘more democratic’… and in that the supporters of the total state are not being disingenuous, for democracy is just a type of politics after all.
We are headed for a different kind of totalitarianism than that of Stalin or Hitler or Mao, but a total state really is what a great many people have in mind for us all. They seek a sort of ‘smiley face fascism’ in which all interactions are regulated in the name of preventing sexism, promoting health, and defending the environment. The excuses will not invoke the Glory of the Nation or the Proletariat or the Volk or the King or the Flag or any of those old fashioned tools for tyrants, but rather it will be “for our own good”, “for the Planet”, “for the whales”, “for the children”, “for the disabled” or “for equality”.
But if they get their way it will be quite, quite totalitarian.
Until recently, there was a shop named popXpress in Piccadilly near the Ritz hotel in London. This was a little store devoted entirely to selling Apple iPods and iPod accessories. When it was opened, people who analyse this sort of thing found it an interesting experiment, but were not terribly optimistic about its success, at least partly because it was situated only a short walk from the London flagship Apple Store in Regent Street. Higher hopes were held for the other popXpress store near Liverpool Street in the City of London, which was close to many cashed up City workers and far from an Apple Store. Thus it was not a terribly great surprise when parent company Computer Warehouse announced in March that the Piccadilly store was to close (the store in Liverpool Street remains open and quite possibly profitable). Upon learning this, most of us would have said “Oh”, and then gone back to sleep. However, the explanation, when it came, was stunning.
Next to the popXpress store in Piccadilly was and is a sushi bar, a branch of a chain named Itsu. This is what is known as a “fast casual” restaurant: a bit more expensive and with food a bit tastier than McDonald’s, but designed for people in a hurry or on their lunch breaks who want a quick meal and do not want to spend too much money. Itsu belongs to Pret a Manger, probably the king of London fast casual dining (and, incidentally, 30% owned by McDonald’s) . There are a couple of Itsu outlets near where I work in Canary Wharf, and from time to time I eat lunch in those outlets myself. The food is not bad, but it is not exactly worth writing home to Mum about either. I have never eaten at the branch in Piccadilly, and I suspect that few people who know the area do, because the (possibly Japanese government subsidised) Japan Centre at Piccadilly Circus is just down the road, and this manages to both be inexpensive and to serve some of the best Japanese food in London.
However, the Itsu restaurant in Piccadilly gained notoriety last November as the place where Alexander Litvinenko had lunch with his Italian acquaintance Mario Scaramella, where it was for a time believed he was poisoned and where traces of Polonium 210 were later discovered, leading to many radioactive sushi jokes.
As I mentioned, a couple of months after this, the popXpress store next door announced it was closing. Few would have thought there was a connection, but when asked, management explained that that had received “an offer they couldn’t refuse” from Itsu, who wanted to expand their store. Apparently, business had been absolutely booming since the Polonium 210 incident, and they wanted to expand the restaurant (no, I will not speculate as to why this offer could not be refused, and which if any isotopes were involved). Apparently Itsu also brought forward plans to open their first store in New York, as the publicity was apparently a godsend. It would seem that all publicity is good publicity, even when you are a change of restaurants and the publicity was that your food might be radioactive.
Actually, that may not be entirely true. Or at least it can be further tested. For come to think of it, another chain restaurant in London was in the news recently. At the Strand branch of pizza chain Zizzi, a man recently entered the restaurant at dinner time, obtained a knife from the kitchen, and used it to sever his own penis in front of diners.
Upon walking past that particular restaurant a couple of days later, I will confess that I was struck by a strong urge to walk in the opposite direction. Really, though, I should go in and ask management what the publicity has done for business. For I may want to take an interest in the business next door.
The latest weird twist in the Alexander Litvinenko assassination has been the release by prime suspect Andrei Lugovoi of his promised ‘stunning revelations’ about the case. His claim was that Litvinenko was in fact working for the British intelligence services and that MI6 had in fact attempted to recruit him as well
Now what makes this all really puzzling to me is that even if this is all true, far from taking the heat off himself and the Russian security services, he seems to in fact be providing the Russian spooks with an excellent motive for wanting to kill Litvinenko.
Am I missing something here?
I am always looking for new and exciting ways to increase the size of my carbon footprint. For example, I actively seek to buy products that originate in far-flung corners of the world, such as New Zealand, China, Chile, California or Japan. I resolutely boycott all modes of transport that do not involve the burning of fossil fuels and, during the bleak British midwinter, I loll around the house in a T-shirt and shorts with the central heating thermostat set to ‘Nuclear Meltdown’ level.
But I still feel that I could be doing more and, indeed, I would be doing more if only I had the kind of information that would help me to make proper, ethical choices. Well, my long wait is finally over. The dark pall of ignorance that has hung over me like the emission cloud of a coal-fired power station is about to be blown away by the sweet, zesty breezes of eco-enlightenment:
Shoppers will be able to tell how much damage their purchases do to the environment, under a government plan unveiled yesterday…
Consumers have little way of judging the environmental impact of goods and services, often relying on the miles such products have travelled from their country of origin.
Praise be! For the first time in a very, very long time the British government has actually done something useful and beneficial. From now on, my conscience will be at peace knowing that not a morsel of food will pass my lips unless it has previously been schlepped from the other side of the world in a huge, smokey, belching diesel-powered container vessel. Not a stick of furniture will adorn my home unless it has been hewn from the arboreal habitat of an exotic, endangered species. Not a stitch of clothing will I wear on my back unless it has been made in a factory that operates on full power for 24 hours a day, seven days a week and whose unscrupulous and profit-hungry owners dispose of their toxic effluents by pumping them into the nearest nature reserve.
I firmly believe that individuals can make a difference and, thanks to this wonderful labelling system, I will be better equipped than ever to do my bit for the environment.
Although I care very little about the arguments regarding the merits of State Comprehensive Schools vs. State Grammar Schools, it is certainly a topic that has much excited Tories over the years.
Thus when Dave Cameron suddenly decided to jettison his party’s long standing support for Grammar Schools, calling their Tory supporters ‘delusional’, he has been rewarded by losing a member of his front bench, European spokesman Graham Brad MP, who has resigned in protest. And of course regardless of the fawning resignation letter, resigning the front bench is the political equivalent of publicly screaming “bite me, you halfwit loser!” in Cameron’s face. He was ticked off by the chief whip for his support of Grammar schools but rather than kowtow, he has taken his leave. I can respect that.
Who would have thought it? A Tory with principles? Damn! Brady is well out of it as he is clearly a man who was going to be very uncomfortable on the front benches with a weathervane like Cameron as leader.
And now I shall return to my profound indifference to the antics of inane party politics.
Of course, you do realise that in 20 years or so, everybody will be smoking again:
WHEN the musical Grease opens in London’s West End this summer, and the teenage sweetheart Sandy draws on a symbolic cigarette, warning notices will be in place around the theatre alerting the audience to the danger she poses.
And that’s for a symbolic cigarette! Imagine the danger she would pose if she blazed up a real one?
The West End theatres fought successfully to win an exemption for actors from the ban on smoking in public places, which becomes law on July 1. But some are now concerned that onstage smoking may draw complaints from the audience.
They should put up a warning sign which says:”Anyone who complains about smoking on stage will have the snot beaten out of them”.
But whatever signs are erected will be temporary. When things get this deliriously insane, it means that the war on smoking is quite obviously and hopelessly lost.
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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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