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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Even in this era of intense news management and political spin, a public figure will still occasionally (and often inadvertantly) let a few morsels of truth slip out.
For the past two decades or so, and by every standard that can be accurately measured, participation in the established political process has been in steady decline. Voter turnout is consistently lower than it was in the 1970’s and membership of the main political parties is but a fraction of what it was in the 1950’s.
Not surprisingly, this has resulted in a hubbub of worry among the political classes with attendant brow-furrowing and hand-wringing over what should be done about it. Some of the more foolishly optimistic (or perhaps just ill-advised) politicos have launched themselves into toe-curlingly embarrassing campaigns to ‘get down with the kidz’ only to hurtle smack, dab into a wall of indifference. The less exhibitionist among them have been uttering dark murmurings about ‘compulsory voting’.
In the fullness of time, and as the disillusion spreads like sea-fog, I expect that those murmurings will become a demanding roar. In the meantime, the first member of the cabinet, former Defence Minister Geoff Hoon, has added his somewhat more audible murmur to the compulsion lobby.
I am not going to use this article to examine the arguments about compulsory voting, except to say that I am against it. More interesting to me (for the moment at least) is Mr. Hoon’s choice of words:
Mr Hoon said: “My fear is that as the older, more regular voters die, we will be left with a significant number of people for whom voting is neither a habit, nor a duty…”
Is that how Mr. Hoon thinks of voting? As a ‘habit’? As a ‘duty’? Where is the call to democratic arms? Where is the sizzle of enfranchised excitement? Where are the glamourous invocations of citizen empowerment? All long gone is the inescapable truth. Instead we are left with habit and duty.
If I were being charitable, I might suggest that Mr. Hoon chose his words for convenience rather than accuracy and that it would be unfair to second guess him on this basis. But I actually think that Mr. Hoon was being honest. Furthermore, I am prepared to extend to him the rare honour of actually speaking for the nation, or at least that ‘significant’ chunk of it for whom voting has become a sullen and thankless obligation, rather like slopping out the bedpan of an infirm and elderly relative while trying not to succumb to the guilt upon contemplation of the unspoken resolution that it would be better for everyone if they would just quickly and peacefully die.
Small wonder it is why young people don’t vote anymore.
Popular support for ID cards – never all that evident to me in the first place – has collapsed, according to this story in the Daily Telegraph this morning. The article, citing a YouGov poll, says support has dropped sharply in part due to the likely high cost of the cards.
I am of course pleased that Tony Blair and his oafish Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, are facing a serious setback on this issue. Nothing would give me more pleasure than if this most devious of administrations had to abandon this wrongheaded, expensive and oppressive scheme. But I cannot help feel a twinge of dismay that an assault on our liberties may be thwarted not because the UK electorate have grasped the principles at stake but because of the monetary cost. It makes one wonder whether we would happily sell our freedoms if the price were right.
I hope of course that I am dead wrong about that.
Only this past week, I found myself in a polite but rather pointed political discussion with one my elderly clients about the issue of ID cards. She was all in favour of them because, “we had them during them war and everyone was fine with them”. To which I retorted, “we had rationing during the war, do you want that brought back too?”.
Little did either of us suspect that minds infinitely superior to ours…blah..blah..blah:
Every individual in Britain could be issued with a “personal carbon allowance” – a form of energy rationing – within a decade, under proposals being considered seriously by the Government…
Under the scheme for “domestic tradeable quotas” (DTQs), or personal carbon allowances, presented to the Treasury this week, everyone – from the Queen to the poorest people living on state benefits – would have the same annual carbon allocation.
This would be contained electronically on a “ration card”, which could be the proposed ID card or a “carbon card” based on supermarket loyalty cards…
“This is a way that enables us to make the necessary annual changes without radical adjustments to our lives.
“It is about making the small changes year by year. It won’t stop us going on holiday. But it might constrain how many times we fly…”
For some time now there has been a hubbub of grumbling among the chattering classes about the vulgarity of “cheap air travel” with its attendant and intended benefit (or, in their eyes, problem) of modest earners being able to jet off to all manner of exotic destinations at the drop of a hat. “But it’s destroying the planet!” they all exclaim. This is not, I should add, a charge which is ever levelled at the organisers of global rock-concerts for Africa despite the fact that just distributing the various members of the Rockocracy to their appointed warbling-posts consumes enough energy to light up a medium-sized land mass.
But saving the planet is not the point or the object. The real cause of this latest drive for forced austerity is the abundance of something that, only a few short years ago, was an expensive luxury enjoyed by the privileged few. But when tattooed builders, single mothers and lowly clerks can spend several weeks a year wallowing on sun-kissed South-East Asian beaches or sampling the epicurean delights of Tuscany then they are obviously living far better lives than they deserve and something must be done to curtail them.
But it’s decidedly tricky to wrench people’s luxuries and pleasures from without a good reason. So, enter good reason: “global warming”. If the masses can be persuaded that the future of mankind depends on their austerity then not only will the meekly surrender their wordly goods, they will clamour to hand them over and humbly thank their lords and masters for being so benevolent, wise and caring.
Given that so many modern activities involve energy consumption, the political classes need only play their cards right and “saving the plant” can be developed into a tool of legitimisation for almost complete social control.
But I’m sure that they wouldn’t dare go that far.
Here is a list of the MPs who voted in favour of trying to make you have an ID card. Do you see your MP here? Let them know what you think of what they have done.
Special kudos to the 20 Labour MPs who put decency before party and refused to be go along with this disgraceful attempt to control you.
This appeared in the comment section of the previous post, writen by Michael Taylor. It is just too interesting to leave as a comment:
One thing we in the online community can do is to work to ensure transparency and accountability is brought to this process. We need to find out who has been pressing this scheme from its infancy: that doesn’t just mean finding the Labour Party hacks who’ve embraced it; it does not even just mean finding the Whitehall Committees which pushed it.
It means finding the details of the people who sat on that committee: it means getting their names and track records out in public. I want names and reasons and track records. Where possible, I would want those personal details which they would collect from us out there on the web for all to see. It also means tracking every single hardware and software supplier who is bidding for the work – again, we need personal names not company names. And then these people need to be monitored closely, and lobbied intensively. There needs to be absolutely no place for these securocrats to hide: there must be no secrecy, no privacy for them.
Let us also make sure we use the Freedom of Information Act aggressively to get this information: swamp them with requests for every detail of every person’s career who has ever been on any committee which has recommended any part of this scheme. If nothing else, such an intensive and personal campaign of transparency gives opponents of the scheme the best possible chance of keeping these people on the back foot.
Look, for example, at how angry the govt has got with the LSE’s report. That should be only the merest footfall, the tiniest ripple of administrative inconvenience and distributed informational opposition they must face. Do this, and we will win.
Michael Taylor.
Listening to Tony Blair addressing the EU parliament is a rather strange experience. He calls for reform of spending and recognising economic reality whilst at the same time declaring that he is a ‘passionate European’ and saying that he supports the idea of an intrusive welfare state.
That Blair’s views on the need to ‘liberalise’ makes him a Thatcherite radical in the eyes of many Continental politicians shows how truly doomed to long term stagnation and irrelevance the EU really is. It also shows Blair’s wish to be all things to all people and why in the long run NuLabour cannot help but choke on its own contradictions just as the Tories have.
Peter Hitchens is someone I only intermittently agree with (and this time is no different, after all he writes for that bastion of the right-statism, The Mail on Sunday) but his lengthy article in The Spectator called Conservatives do not have a party had me nodding most of the time.
There is no point in pretending that the Tory party is going to recover. This pretence only delays the construction of a new movement, which cannot flourish until we have said goodbye to the old one. It also gives the Liberal Democrats the freedom to supplant the Tory party, unobstructed, in many of its former strongholds, a freedom they are enthusiastically using.
[…]
So David Davis, who is opposed to European integration if he means anything at all, is compelled to seek the support of federalists. This, the modified Molotov–Ribbentrop pact approach, has been tried before — but only by people who forget how that pact ended. Similarly, Kenneth Clarke is seriously put forward as the saviour of a party he plainly hates.
[…]
You cannot properly defend, say, constitutional monarchy if you have no idea why you believe in it and do not understand why your opponents hate it. You cannot effectively oppose the introduction of identity cards unless your every instinct revolts at the imposition of these oppressive breathing licences on a free people.
Hitchens and I disagree over foreign policy issues (amongst other things) but it is hard not to recognise that the Tories are finished for exactly the reasons Hitchens points out and that it is not in the interests of anyone who cares what happens in Britain to have the current power elite unopposed for any longer.
And before some of our commentariat start muttering that it is unrealistic for someone like me to expect the Tory party to transform itself into a model of libertarian small state rectitude; I am not suggesting that at all. I just think that as the Conservative party is not meaningfully conservative any more and that the party’s leadership clearly do not give a hoot about conserving civil society, it needs to be replaced with something that fills that rather large political niche if the current trend towards politically correct populist authoritarianism is to be effectively opposed.
I was going to write a piece with that title (assuming the allusion would spare me from discipline for scattering the star-field with apostrophes) but it seems Richard Tomkins in the FT has done it first, and, almost certainly, better.
However, that’s a subscription-required piece, so I will rehash my main thoughts for those who do not subscribe, and do not still have a venial physical paper habit like mine.
I was dumbstruck by the general soft welcome among free-market types for Alastair Darling’s hints at individual travel charges by satellite. Sorry ladies and gentlemen, but the only word that springs to mind is – “suckers”.
Just because a minister says something is “road pricing” does not mean it is a real live example of a market mechanism. In fact, when a minister in the current UK government says something, one would have thought that by now most people would be looking for the misrepresentation. If the minister seems to be saying something, then the truth is likely incompatible with the impression. → Continue reading: Do not ask the price, it is a tax
Let us not blame Gordon Brown for everything. He has learnt the lessons of his predecessors. The wrong lessons.
Compare:
Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, I do remember my faults this day:
[…]
And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and went throughout all the land of Egypt.
And in the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls.
And he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities: the food of the field, which was round about every city, laid he up in the same. (Genesis, Ch.41)
And,
I announced that I had no proposals to touch on the ‘anomalous but much-loved tax-free lump sum’
[…]
The side offensive began with the imposition in 1986 of a statutory limit on the size of pension-fund surpluses. This was much more difficult for the pension lobby to fight, and as a result I was able to get it on to the statute book. The dramatic improvement in the financial climate of the previous three or four years meant that many occupational funds had accumulated assets far in excess of those needed to honour their liabilities to their pensioners – in other words, and even on the highly conservative basis used by pension fund actuaries, the funds were heavily in surplus. This was not simply due to inadvertence. For these excess funds enabled companies to accumulate income, free of liability to Corporation Tax, in a gross fund
[…]
The 1986 reform put an end to this: no undue surpluses could be created, and existing surpluses would have to be run down over a period to a maximum of 5 per cent of total liabilities.
[…]
The course taken by most companies was the employer’s contribution holiday, whose economic effects were a rise in company profits (and cash flow) and thus in Corporation Tax receipts, coupled with a fall in recorded personal saving, since employers’ pension contributions are officially classified as personal savings. (Nigel Lawson, “The View from No.11”, Bantam 1992)
And saith the chief butler to Pharaoh, pay unto Joseph no mind. For the tax-gatherers counsel that ye take any fat kine that ye find among the people and slaughter them. The meat of the unjust surplus shall feed the priests of your temple. If there be famine the people will gnaw on old bones. And they will be weak and not rise up. But the tax-gatherers will be fat and glorify Pharaoh’s name.
Attention all petty, vindictive snitches everywhere, your country needs you:
New powers effectively criminalising smoking in public were announced by the Government yesterday, with the minister in charge promising an “intelligence-led approach to enforcing the law”.
Informers will be encouraged to report breaches of sweeping bans on the habit, in which company smoking rooms will be outlawed and places such as bus shelters and the outsides of office blocks made no-smoking areas.
Very little encouragement will be required as there will be no shortage of willing and zealous ‘informers’.
What a horrible place this country is becoming.
As a general rule, whenever you hear or read that teaching unions are ‘angry’ then you can pretty much bet all your wordly worth that something good and positive is happening in the education sector.
I have yet to encounter an exception to this rule:
Teachers’ unions reacted angrily today after the Government vowed to press ahead with plans for 200 privately-sponsored city academies.
This hardly means that the (long overdue) commodification of education is upon us but then these public sector mafiosi possess bloodhound levels of sensitivty that enable them to pick up on even the faintest whiff of threat to their vested interests.
I wholly expect that even if these academies do start sprouting up around the country, the curriculum will still be politically-mandated and the sponsors will (in common with everyone else in the productive, non-looting sector) have to navigate their way through a miasmic swamp of diktats, edicts and regulations on their way to getting something resembling decent results.
But, for all that, they do seem to me to represent the first few, tottering, tentative, baby steps towards the long-term goal of levering the state out of the education business. Good.
The UK government has floated the idea of fitting GPS tracking devices into cars as part of a way to enforce road tolls, with a pilot project starting in a few years’ time before going nationwide. One can immediately see how civil libertarians might object to such a setup, given that it could further consolidate the surveillance state.
Even so, the idea of charging for road use has a strong free market pedigree, as the Adam Smith Institute blog makes clear here. Road toll systems operated by private firms need not necessarily involve the centralised data collection systems that our present UK government might favour.
One little detail of the ASI comment made me grin, in that apparently, road tolls in Hong Kong failed in the 1980s to become law because men feared the toll invoices would reveal they had been spending their evenings down the local bordellos. Okaaaay.
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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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