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It never takes too long for campaigners to set up a website providing all the information that you require to raise awareness and combat this perfidious Bill. If this Bill passes, all that stands between us and an elected dictatorship is the restraint of our politicians. God help us! March 12th, 2006 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 … and why not? After all, as we now live in a de facto one ideology state (and that ideology is populist utilitarianism), what difference do the antics of what goes on in Parliament really make? The sooner we have the government doing away with this fiction of political process and just start ruling mostly by administrative edict, the better really. Far too many people are just hiding behind comfortable fictions. March 2nd, 2006 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
I find the notion that it is news that Tory leader David Cameron is a Blairite so unremarkable that I am puzzled the Telegraph even runs with the story. The closest thing to an actual conservative party is the UKIP because it sure as hell is not the Conservative Party. March 1st, 2006 | 94 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have not seen anything written here on what is being called the Abolition of Parliament Bill – the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill that was going through Parliament last week (whilst ‘Dave’ Cameron was off on paternity leave). I have heard it finally finishes off the delegated legislation process (the process by which ministers and civil servants pass regulations with power given them under enabling Acts of Parliament) – a process that A.V. Dicey observed before the First World War and Chief Justice Hewitt was the last major establishment figure to oppose (“The New Despotism” 1929). It has taken a very long time to finish the process, but it seems Mr Blair will complete it. Of course in a modern big government Welfare State having every regulation examined by Parliament is not possible (one extra reason to oppose a modern big government Welfare State). Still a Statute that allows ministers to alter any regulation (apart from in the field of tax) without coming back to Parliament, and set up to two years in prison as a punishment for failing to obey their arbitrary regulations – well it does seem to a bit much even for Britain. Have I just dreamed it all then? Also nothing on our dear friends the Local Government Standards Board – people have noticed them now they have suspended Red Ken from his position as Mayor of London for a month (for nasty things he said to a Jewish journalist). However, the Board has been doing this sort of thing (and far worse) for years. For example, if a councillor writes to try and expose the “wind farm” con (it is a con because it does not greatly reduce CO2 production – as the wind turbines do not produce much power and have to be “backed up” by coal and gas fired stations which run all the time as a safeguard) they might not (if the Board feels like it) be allowed to speak (or vote) against “wind farms” in council debates. Ditto saying that Council ‘Chief Executives’ are paid too much or are useless (‘Chief Executives’ are the highly paid useless trash who have replaced what used to be called Town Clerks) – if a councillor says that he is in big trouble. There is no automatic right for an elected councillor to oppose government policy (or ‘best practice’) in modern Britain and has not been since Mr Blair set up the Board. If the Board will let you speak and vote fine – but they may choose not to. I am not a fanatical supporter of democracy, but I thought that many people were supposed to be. I have heard very little about what is going on in Britain – most people seem either to not know or not care February 27th, 2006 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Guardian’s Jenni Russell points out that the attitude of British officialdom is changing subtly.
However, I think she is wrong about the cause:
That’s back to front. An illiberal attitude is insufficient for oppression or we would be living under the dictatorship of the Free Church of Scotland. It is actually about power. Unchecked power will be abused. Not may, will. You cannot change the culture of the law – Blair minor – without affecting the culture of the land. British police were once famous for courtesy. But then as little as twenty years ago they had few powers not available to the ordinary citizen. They relied on voluntary cooperation for much of their authority, and the reasonable exercise of that authority yielded general cooperation. Before the merger of the agencies, the Inland Revenue was proverbially gentlemanly and reasonable compared to HM Customs and Excise, though the taxation functions were very similar. The difference in culture wasn’t accidental. Customs had vastly greater powers and found it easier to rely on fear to do the job. ASBO-land is a different place from England. And this is why: as they gain more capacity to order us about, those in office will order us about more. What else? The PM implies he wishes us to ‘respect’ one another and social norms. He claims he has given powers to officials to make it so. But respec’ on the streets will mean something else. It will mean respec’ (in the sense of fawning obedience) towards the same officials who have the powers to make it so. And as we have ever fewer rights – perhaps not even existence – without their say-so, truculence, swagger and oppression by officials will become the norm. February 26th, 2006 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
This pretty much explains the political situation in a nutshell. Serial commenter Pommygranate is writing about Britain but the same could probably be said about almost any western country to varying degrees: the state simply bribes people to vote for a bigger state by making them dependents. His solution is an interesting notion.
Things would have to get very bad for that to be politically possible but is is a good idea. I quite like the idea “you can either work for the state and live of other people’s money or you can vote, but not both”. Not a chance that would happen any time soon but it is a damn fine idea nevertheless. In truth I suspect many people would be happy to make that choice as voting is hardly some blessed sacrament. If so many people do not really care about liberty, are they really so attached to voting? I wonder. February 26th, 2006 | 174 comments - (Comments are closed)
Gervase Markham, who blogs at Hacking for Christ, works for the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit “dedicated to promoting choice and innovation on the internet”. He writes about his recent encounter with a UK Trading Standards officer:
Many people would find the official’s reaction to that surprising; but they do not call them disruptive technologies for nothing. The woman replied:
Disappointing? Yes. Surprising? Not really. Crossposted from the Engagement Alliance February 24th, 2006 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am feeling less of a lone loony than I did. After a decade of my saying the key thing wrong with the demon eyes campaign was that the slogan ought to have been: ‘New Labour: Old Danger’ because the electorate should not have the purported newness reinforced, more and more people in the chattering classes seem to be accepting that there is a danger. Even such fringe lefty agitators as Clifford Chance LLP have offered severe warnings about the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. Too late? The War on Liberty may never end, but it became a general action only in the 90s – just about the time, the Wall being down, and the net routing round borders and censorship, we free-lifers had begun to feel we were winning. Now I find I am doing my bit with NO2ID and we are gearing up for a ten-year campaign. Grand constitutionalist coalitions are being proposed left, right, and centre (which I’m sure are meritorious). The differences between Peter Hitchens and Mark Thomas begin to be indistinguishable when the establishment is of the extreme centre… What worries me is that this ferment is still superficial, a speck of mould on Mr Blair’s Horlicks. It concerns the tiny minority of the population that reads the serious press, say 10% – and of those only the avid followers of politics, maybe a quarter of that. The readers and writers of blogs are fewer still, and more introrse. The mass of the population of Britain is nescient, complacent, and has no interest in the abstractions of liberty, or the threats from power assumed only to be threats to others, to bad people. Many people are happy to claim the status of an ‘ordinary’ person, with “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” from officialdom, while being paradoxically susceptible to fears of everything else. Passively concerned with material welfare, security against virtual risks, and gossip, they graze and are milked as the livestock of the state. This is Foucault’s concept of governmentality in action. Not, pace his fans on the left, a neo-liberal order, but a post-liberal order in which the foundational institutions of liberalism – liberty and individuality, rule of law, the separation of private and public life, a civil society and a political sphere distinct from one another – have ceased to have a meaning for even the bulk of the middle-classes. Where is the cattle-prod that will change the public mood? February 24th, 2006 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you are in Oxford on Saturday and want to join a protest against animal rights extremists, check this out. The Research Defence Society blog has more, as does the Social Affairs Unit and Laurie‘s own blog. February 23rd, 2006 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
A year ago, a headline like this was pure comedy. And this Evening Standard headline that I snapped last night even now has a slightly comic, Carry On Farming feel to it.  Alas, bird flu seems to be getting rather serious. Governments thrive on infectious diseases, because only governments, or institutions that are very hard to distinguish from governments, can contain them. Which is why I always suspect that such “pandemics” (pandemic seems now to be the regular word for an “epidemic”) tend to be somewhat exaggerated. But if I were a politician, I would never dare to say such a thing. February 21st, 2006 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
The 2012 London Olympic Games could be hit by electricity blackouts as energy supplies fall off, according to a poll of scientists and other eminent folk in this story by the BBC. Well, pole vaulting and javelin throwing have not been done in the dark before, but I guess it might have a certain novelty. Seriously though, how should one take these jeremiads about impending shortages to electricity generation? This excerpt from the BBC story makes it clear that many analysts believe that solutions must embrace technologies including nuclear power:
This story of a few days ago suggests the opposition Tories might, in their quixotic desire to appear Green, ditch the nuclear option. This seems rather ironic given that some figures in the environmentalist movement have started to embrace nuclear energy as a way to cut carbon emissions (while not being blind to the problems of nuclear waste disposal and the large capital outlays involved in building nuclear powers stations). I am an agnostic on nuke energy. If it can, in a free market, hold its own compared with other energy sources, fine. But given the vital importance of electricity to our modern, information-age economy, it is madness to tempt disaster by shutting down options now. February 20th, 2006 | 71 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have been ‘on the road’ again since a few days after the New Year. Travel may seem exciting to some, but it does wear you down when you do it week after week. This is especially true when planning is impossible and you cannot say with any certainty which of several jobs will be next in line. You just adapt and make your arrangements on the fly. That said, constant travel does lead to unexpected adventures and misadventures. I would count losing my glasses going through security in Toronto among the less exciting and more expensive of these. Although there are some weeks more to go on this jaunt, the event which most stands out happened before I even got out of the UK at the start of January. Due to contract signings running late a couple layers up the food chain from myself, travel arrangements for my usual January gig backstage at the big Healthcare investment conference in San Francisco were last minute. Translation: they were so late the flights were almost unaffordable so I was booked on a simply ridiculous connection. I left Belfast on an evening flight which dropped me in Heathrow just as the airport closed up operations for the night. My New York flight was first thing in the morning… so I got to sit up all night in the main terminal. Well, my slogan is “Have Laptop, Will Travel”, so after some help from friendly airport staff to move some seats closer to an electric outlet, I settled in for a long, long night of work. Time crawled by. Over the top of my screen I idly noticed a gaggle of armed police wander by and hassle a couple black teens whom I think were also waiting for a connecting flight. One of the cops walked towards me. I naturally assumed he was going to act as a friendly face to London’s major airport; perhaps commiserate on my bad luck in being stuck there over night; or possibly warn me to beware of this, that or the other. I was wrong. He planted himself in front of me in his best “Clockwork Orange” intimidation posture and proceeded to tell me I was guilty of theft. I looked at him blankly. Theft of services. I was plugged into the airport’s electricity. He quoted a section number I was purportedly violating. As I have lived in Belfast through troubled years, I know how to deal with this sort. You smile and you verbally give them squat to grab hold of. They want to provoke a response that will let them play cop. This fellow was very obviously tired, bored and looking for someone to take it out on. I, being one of the few persons in the terminal was ‘it’. He went on. Not only was I ‘stealing services’. I was in violation of… of…. HEALTH AND SAFETY REGULATIONS! I did not have appropriate authorization from the Airport declaring my laptop was safe for use with their AC sockets, and if I were to get electrocuted they might be liable! I quietly studied the hole in his head. He ranted on that I was still stealing power as he talked. Actually I was concentrating on keeping up a fake smile and non-threatening eye contact so as to avoid serious trouble. I was also dumbfounded, but I snapped out of it and casually reached over and unplugged. Slowly. I was not quite sure of the stability of this character and he was, after all, an armed member of a society in which only his sort are armed. With the offending laptop unplugged and as he had utterly failed to provoke any sort of lese majeste remark from me, there was little more he could do. He sternly told me he would let me off with a warning and then retreated and joined his cohorts. They had remained some distance away throughout. Backup I suppose. I might well have been armed with sharp verbs and poisonous nouns for all they knew. The previously hassled white robed African teen was not far away and as our trooper stormed off we caught each others eyes. I shook my head. He wryly smiled back. Wordless understanding passed between us. Welcome to 21st Century London. February 18th, 2006 | 61 comments - (Comments are closed)
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