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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Roy Hattersley, in a short piece in the Guardian today commenting on this story, illustrates how the fundamental difference between Old Labour and New Labour, is not in their attitude to governance. It is the willingness of the former to express themselves clearly, and their angry confusion at the rhetorical deformations that New Labour uses to lead the public by the nose:
How likely is it that a mother who (whatever her motives) insisted on her son having unhealthy food will be either willing or able to ensure that he is educated at the right school or treated at the best hospital? The Rotherham sausage makes the government’s “choice agenda” look rather overdone.
What Lord Hattersley does not get is that the government is equally contemptuous of people’s ability to make ‘the right’ choices for themselves and their families. That is precisely why the Rotherham sausage smuggling is taking place. Government has removed choices that it does not approve of from the school menu. The ‘choice agenda’ is a three card trick. The method is misdirection; the effect is dirigiste.
Riding the 211 bus from Hammersmith to Chelsea yesterday, I was in a good mood, anticipating a tipple or two with Samizdata Overlord Perry de Havilland. As the bus drew up beside Borders, though, my mood took a significant tumble upon spotting this:
Paperchase is a British stationery chain which also operates within Borders stores, having been acquired by Borders Group in 2004. If you click on that link, you will see that the “Top Marx” line of back to school supplies is the central feature of their new season’s products. The product descriptions refer to the red stars and other iconography as “Chinese emblems”. I suppose that is true, much in the same way that the swastika became a “German emblem”.
It was only a few months ago that a number of people decided to boycott Borders, due to the chain’s decision not to sell the issue of Free Enquiry magazine which featured the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammad. The reply I got to my complaint letter to Borders about this was exactly the same as the one Dale Amon received. It read, in part:
[W]e place a priority on the safety and security of our customers and our employees.
So is it safe to presume that Borders would cease to carry the “Top Marx” line if they were subject to sufficient threats of violence over it? Is it possible that no Paperchase or Borders employee voiced concerns about the wisdom of this line at any time? Or is it more likely that the people at Paperchase and Borders are really that ignorant of such recent history? I am curious what Samizdata readers think of this one.
Conservative party leader David Cameron has introduced a new logo for his party to replace the rather appealing (though not entirely apt) torch of liberty.
Admittedly, the stylised green smudge in the shape of an oak tree represents the Tories under Cameron far better than the bracing Thatcherite torch of liberty. According to the Times article linked above, this is the latest move in a process of ‘decontaminating the brand’. They could have accomplished that to their satisfaction, saved a lot of time and expense AND perfectly encapsulated the Cameronite Tory party by simply borrowing this existing logo.
Well, if you spray acid everywhere:
Public faith in Britain’s political system is being eroded by alarmingly low levels of trust in Tony Blair’s Government, the standards watchdog said yesterday.
A detailed survey of public opinion carried out by the committee on standards in public life has exposed deep mistrust of politicians, with fewer than one in four people saying they thought ministers tell the truth…
The survey exposed corrosive levels of mistrust in the political system.
“This suggests a widespread disillusionment in the way the business of government and politics is conducted – people just do not believe they are being dealt with in a straightforward, honest and open manner” …
Of course, our political masters will conclude from this that the solution lies in compulsory voting.
In recent UK opinion polls, 73% of adults surveyed supported public funding for research into the effects of global warming on hippopotamus obesity in Zambia, 65% supported laws regulating the length of rasta dreadlocks in the UK, 87% agreed with the statement “Islam is a religion of peace and reason”, 67% supported DHSS funded holidays in Spain for pigs and goats forced to work at petting zoos, 97% supported NHS funded cosmetic surgery for Cherie Blair, 78% believes that Elvis and Spike Milligan are alive and well and living in Area 51 in the USA and 75% supported paying more for the tax-funded BBC.
What the hell is one supposed to make of this?
The point at which Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez decided that London should serve as a model for services and governance in Caracas was not immediately apparent. He came in May, visited City Hall amid much controversy and fanfare, and was soon gone.
But the result of his visit is likely to be an extraordinary deal struck with London Mayor Ken Livingstone that would see Caracas benefit from the capital’s expertise in policing, tourism, transport, housing and waste disposal.
London, meanwhile, would gain the most obvious asset the Venezuelans have to give: cheap oil. Possibly more than a million barrels of the stuff.
South American diesel would be supplied by Venezuela – the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter – as fuel for some of the capital’s 8,000 buses, particularly those services most utilized by the poor.
This is gesture politics at its most contemptible. It is particularly bad given that the poor of London are, by any meaningful yardstick, considerably better off than their counterparts in the South American nation. The idea that Venezuela, a nation led by a thug who’s democratic credentials could be best described as flaky, is some sort of benefactor to the oppressed masses of London, is an utter joke. It is also particularly ironic that as part of this “deal”, London will “help” Venezuela’s tourist industry. No doubt Venezuelans cannot wait to discover the joys of the British welcoming service ethic.
We tend to dismiss the antics of Ken Livingstone as political theatre. If he wants to stand on platforms with Irish Republican murderers, we giggle. If he provides platforms for gay-hating Islamic preachers, we are all supposed to roll our eyes in amusement. Good ol’ Ken, what a laugh.
Incidentally, I wonder what the British government thinks about this?
The press has covered the walkouts by the brothers, and where friendly to the government has characterised it as ‘brave’. But Tony Blair’s advertised last speech to the Trades Union Congress was fascinating in itself, calculated in a cartoonish way. Who was it for?
Who would be entranced by the sententious, treacly opening, claiming some sort of credit for sympathy with the victims of terrorism and war?
Before speaking to you today, I want to remember all those who died, including the many British people, repeat our sympathy and condolences for the loss of their loved ones and rededicate ourselves to complete and total opposition to terrorism anywhere, for whatever reason.
Who would be persuaded by the windy pseudo-rhetoric, the clichés set in shattered sentences, and exhibition of truism as valuable policy insight?
We have to escape the tyranny of the “or” and develop the inclusive nature of the “and”.
The answer to economic globalisation is open markets and strong welfare and public service systems, particularly those like education, which equip people for change.
The answer to terrorism is measures on security and tackling its underlying causes.
What, addressed to trades unions, was the point in half the time to international affairs, and Mr Blair’s role on the world stage?
Peace which threatens its security is no peace. But on the right terms it must be done.
Yesterday’s announcement of a government of national unity in Palestine is precisely what I hoped for. On the basis it is faithful to the conditions spelled out by the quartet – the UN, EU, US and Russia – we should lift the economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority and be prepared to deal with the government, the whole government.
Then, piece by piece, step by step, we must put a process of peace back together again.
Is this really carefully scripted? Is it aimed at an English-speaking audience? What on earth does it have to do with congress?
And who could miss, or be fooled by, the manipulative slide from lachrymose anectote about exploited foreign workers to the hint (immmediately contradicted) that they might be stopped from coming here at all (and thus from competing for work with union members… er, being exploited…) by magic biometric border controls?
I know this answer isn’t popular, at least in some quarters. But I tell you, without secure ID, controlled migration just isn’t possible.
You can have armies of inspectors, police and bureaucrats trying to track down illegals but without a proper system of ID – and biometric technology now allows this – it is a hopeless task.
And as identity abuse grows – and it is a huge problem now across parts of the private as well as public sector – so the gains for consumers and companies will grow through a secure ID database.
And we all want effective armies of inspectors, police, and bureaucrats, don’t we, children? The whole thing (offered by The Guardian here) is extraordinary. The relevant bits – attacks on protectionism, allusions to Labour’s success in enacting union-friendly legislation – would be a perfectly good TUC speech. Short, but to the point. One might not agree with it, but one could see it as a piece of working political machinery. But that speech is suspended in a mush of late-Blair messianism that is much more instructive.
He’s going to fix all the world’s problems. All it requires is for all the great powers to come to a final lasting peace agreement in which he is playing a vital role, defusing the grievances that (alone?) drive global conflict(s), and monitoring all activities of everybody who lives in or visits Britain using a big database.
So who was the speech for? It was the calling-card of a War Leader for the lecture-circuit, some cynics may say. But this cynic suspects the speech was mainly for Mr Blair himself – that this is how he sees the world, and how he wants us all to see it too. It is a preamble to rants to come.
The Times newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch, has yet to really come out strongly in favour of Tory leader David Cameron, preferring to stick, for the time being, with the Labour Party, or at least maintain a sort of studied neutrality. If you can recall that far back, Blair famously courted Murdoch’s media empire ahead of the 1997 election, convincing Murdoch that a Labour administration would not repeat the mistakes of the past. It worked, and the Times gave Blair and his court a remarkably easy ride for the first few years of Blair’s time in office.
Even so, with Labour in deep trouble, Blair and finance minister Gordon Brown at each others’ throats, the position of the Tories appears to be more promising than for a long time. You might think that Cameron, even though he has shown himself to be trend-follower since becoming leader, might take the odd risk by not trying to creep up to fashionable chattering-class opinion on such issues as Iraq, the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict and the ongoing campaign to crush Islamic fanaticism. Instead, as the Times notes today, what we get is a mixture of truths, half-truths and vacuous sound-bytes on foreign affairs.
Apologists for Cameron – some of whom pop up on the comment threads here – like to use the following, rather damning argument. It goes like this: the public will never vote for a small-government, strongly pro-capitalist, pro-America, pro-liberty Tory Party. The English middle class floating voters, so the argument goes, are not exactly the most intelligent demographic on the surface of the Earth, and are convinced that any tax cuts must come at the expense of the poor, the health service and education. Capitalism is cruel and rather naughty. Saving the planet and forcing people to give up their cars is a Jolly Good Idea (for other people). So Cameron, realising that this is what people think, has to appeal to this mindset. Once he is in power, suddenly, he can give up the “hug-a-mugger” rhetoric, tell the Greenies to go hang, slash taxes and regulations, restore in full the English Common Law, stop nagging us about eating chocolate oranges, etc.
Like many cynics, they are wrong. I would have thought that Cameron, if he has any sense at all, would realise by now that unless he lays down a few markers about what he would actually do in power, then he will face a situation where, once elected, it would be hard to push through a radically pro-market agenda particularly if the Tories get a narrow majority. “Where’s the mandate?”, people would cry. And their cries would have some merit. When Margaret Thatcher won power, the Tory manifesto of 1979 was famously thin. There was little mention of the kind of privatisation and large cuts to tax rates that were to follow. But even so, during the 1975-79 run-up to the elections, Mrs Thatcher, along with colleagues like Sir Keith Joseph, did voice a coherent, and sustained attack on things like Keynesian demand management, out-of-control trade unions, nationalised industries, regulations on business and controls on trade. In short, Mrs Thatcher made it pretty clear what sort of administration hers would be like. She gave herself a bit of room to say to the doubters during the hard years after 1979: “This is my platform and the public voted for it”.
Cameron, if he wants to con his way into power, is, I supposed, welcome to try. Britain’s political history is full of adventurers like Disraeli or chancers like Lloyd George. But when I hear libertarian-leaning Tory voters trying to convince me that Cameron is embarking on the mother-of-all deceptions, it sounds suspiciously close to whistling in the dark to sustain the spirits. I am not convinced.
Is this really the best way to combat negative stereotyping?
Britain could face the threat of two million home-grown Islamic terrorists, says a senior Muslim leader.
Muhammad Abdul Bari, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, fears that continued negative attitudes towards people of his faith could provoke a vast and angry backlash.
“There are a few bad apples in the Muslim community who are doing terrible acts and we want to root them out,” Dr Bari told The Sunday Telegraph.
“But some police officers and sections of the media are demonising Muslims, treating them as if they’re all terrorists — and that encourages other people to do the same.
“If that demonisation continues, then Britain will have to deal with two million Muslim terrorists — 700,000 of them in London,” he said. “If you attack a whole community, it becomes despondent and aggressive.”
So, for those people who think that all Muslims are terrorists, Dr. Bari’s message is: you were right all along. You are not frothing, paranoid Islamophobic bigots but astute judges of character. And by the by, I don’t know what ‘media’ Dr. Bari has been exposed to but if it the same press that I have reading then I think he will find that, when it comes to terrorist atrocities, the members of the British Fourth Estate have been tripping over each other in the headlong dash to blame everyone and anyone except Muslims.
But, quibbles aside, I am inclined to be charitable and assume that Dr. Bari sincerely wishes to repair damaged community relations and foster a mutual spirit of tolerance. However, threatening what is tantamount to civil war is unlikely to achieve such a laudable objective.
Dr. Bari is described as a “senior Muslim leader” so I suppose that makes him a representative. I only hope that he is not representative.
The other day, my article about the antics of footballers and the shifting balance of power between players and clubs prompted one or two commenters to argue that this shows that market economics and sport do not always mix. The argument, so it goes, is that a sport like football or motor racing needs to operate an almost egalitarian policy when it comes to limiting the power of any participant, because otherwise the most powerful clubs and participants will dominate a sport so much that they destroy the very competition that makes sport enjoyable. Example: the current dominance in the English Premier League of Chelsea, which is now backed by the vast and dubiously-acquired oil wealth of its Russian owner. Another example: Ferrari and its dominance for nearly a decade of Formula One motor sport.
But while such observations have merit, it ignores the fact that sporting institutions like the Football League or Formula 1, the America’s Cup yachting race or whatever are voluntary associations of likeminded people who want to create a set of rules in order for people to have, well, fun. Those voluntary bodies can change their own rules if a participant’s behavioural dominance starts to squeeze the very competition such institutions hold. People effectively choose to submit to rules, just as members of a symphony orchestra voluntarily submit to the dictates of a conductor. In an open society such as ours, we get a profusion of autonomous institutions set up for the purpose of say, staging sports competitions where there are tight rules on behaviour of the participants but where such participants are free to leave.
I personally think that if, say, Chelsea tried to squash all competition beyond a certain point, it could drain interest out of the sport and possibly force the league officials to cap things like the use of foreign players and perhaps even limit the size of a squad that any club can have. And that would be “autocratic” of the league but also no assault on the “freedom” of Chelsea since that club draws is raison d’etre from being a club participating in an intensely rule-bound voluntary association.
Also, if a sport gets bent out of shape and the interest wanes, there are things like “breakaway leagues” or new competitions designed to revive interest. The case of motor sport is instructive: in the last few years, there has been a rising chorus of criticism that F1 motor racing is dull, unglamorous and market-driven (and although no-one will admit this, also very safe). So you get a rise in interest in alternatives, such as rallying, motorcycling, saloon car racing, classic racing, revival meetings, and so forth.
There seems to be a sort of parabola of development in sports. As technical excellence and physical fitness of players increases, some sports can reach a sort of stalemate end-point (Brian Micklethwait made this point about squash and the World Cup soccer tournament recently). But so long as sport remains outside the maw of the state and people can arrange their own events, there is no reason why people who become bored by the spectacle of spoiled-brat soccer stars or processional motor racing cannot do something about it.
Whilst the media is interested in the Labour leadership struggle (the issue of when statist Blair is going and whether he is going to be replaced by statist Brown or statist Reid or statist someone else), my interest has been directed towards the latest antics of the ruling group within the Conservative party.
A couple of days ago some of Mr David Cameron’s senior people (Oliver Letwin, David W. and so on) came out with a ‘turning point’ for the Conservative party, a major policy matter. This was to state that the Conservative party would commit itself to much more taxpayer’s money for the ‘public services’ (i.e. the government education, health and welfare programmes). The “traditional Conservative hostility” to such things was wrong (although the idea that the Mrs Thatcher cut government spending is a myth – in reality its growth was just restrained, but even that is now considered a crime against humanity). Indeed it is “part of being human” to support government spending increases without limit – so anti-government types may look human, but we are really not human at all. Mr Cameron himself took time out from his trip to India to denounce the idea of tax cuts in an interview with BBC radio.
Of course Mr Cameron may be in India to learn how to create an even bigger budget deficit than Britain already has (rather than just go and try and get some reflected glory from visiting the tomb of Gandhi – much in the way as he tried to get some reflected glory from the Nelson Mandela stunt last month), but it would be nice if he noted that India has far lower taxes than Britain has (total taxes – as a percentage of the economy) which is one of the basic reasons that its economic growth is faster.
If India tried to have the level of government ‘public services’ spending that Mr Cameron and his people would suggest (even as a percentage of the economy) its government deficit would be wildly greater than it already is – and the economy would collapse (which, given how poor many Indians already are, would mean starvation).
But then Mr Cameron does not want economic growth, he wants economic “stability” – but then he does want economic growth because he wants to “share the proceeds” of it, in order to fight “social injustices” and support the cause of “social justice”. Not just in Britain – but by providing government aid to all the poor countries of the world (far more than this mean Labour government is giving). → Continue reading: Cameron’s ‘Conservatives’ – the madness continues
A British evangelical Christian, Stephen Green, has been charged with using ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour’ after he handed out leaflet contained Biblical quotes critical of homosexuality at a homosexual event in Wales. The article indicates neither he nor his leaflets were abusive or threatening, just that they pointed out that the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin and so it urged homosexuals to ‘repent’ and stop sinning.
What caught my eye about this case was…
Several thousand people attended the event, which included a gay rugby tournament and a ‘top gayer motor show’, and which was addressed on the importance of tolerance by Liberal Democrat council chief Rodney Berman.
So as Rodney Berman is such a strong supporter of tolerance, presumably he will soon also be arguing for Mr. Green’s right to be tolerated for his views and behaviour. After all, tolerance does not imply acceptance or approval and so even if Mr. Green calls for gays to stop being gay (i.e. he does not approve of their sexual behaviour and wishes to convince them to act differently), unless there is more to this story unreported, there seems no evidence Mr. Green does not tolerate gays. Yet some homosexuals who disapprove of Mr. Green’s views of their behaviour are clearly unwilling to return the favour and tolerate him. They called for the law (i.e. force) to be used to prevent him peaceably expressing himself.
As the LibDems pride themselves on supporting (non-economic) liberty, will they come to Mr. Green’s defence and demand tolerance for everyone? I wonder what Mr. Berman has to say on this matter.
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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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