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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Robert Kilroy-Silk is a laughing stock in sophisticated circles, even in those slightly askew sophisticated circles—sophisticated ellipses?—Samizdatistas belong to. But should he be?
A glance at the manifesto of Veritas, the man’s own personal political party, suggests not. Not only is it produced in a deep purple colour that readers of this blog will find comfortingly familiar, but some of the views expressed there wouldn’t be so far out of place here either.
Let’s speed past the tosh about immigration, this year’s must-have fearful tic for every pol-about-town, and see what’s hidden in the exotic interior… → Continue reading: Image is everything, unfortunately
The UK Labour Party, having set in train the laws making possible the recent postal voting scandal in Birmingham, are no doubt hoping voters forget all about it in a day or so. Former Home Secretary David Blunkett, however, has done his bit to keep the light shining on the issue with a typically idiotic proposal: solve the fraud problem with ID cards.
So, let’s get this right. The government, having created a system ripe for fraud and abuse, has one of its former members suggest that it be dealt with creating a system ripe for fraud and abuse.
The Tories should give up now. They cannot compete with genius like this.
(Side observation: this whole affair underscores why some libertarians don’t believe that democracy is a particularly reliable firewall against the corruption of power).
Much has been said about the Labour Party’s election catchphrase “Britain forward not back”. It has been claimed that the phrase was stolen from The Simpsons. As The Times pointed out in February:
[In an episode of The Simpsons] Clinton appears during a presidential debate. “My fellow Americans,” he proclaims. “We must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.”
Last night Labour said it had not deliberately appropriated the slogan from The Simpsons, but MPs said it was another example of a Milburn faux pas.
At the time of the controversy, I watched Milburn on the TV saying that it wasn’t stolen from The Simpsons. I do believe he was right. It actually came from the Tories. When Michael Howard was elected leader, BBC News wrote:
He urged his colleagues “to look forward, not back” and to recognise that Britain had changed since the Tories first came to power in 1979.
This sounds like it could have an affect on the forthcoming election, not just on the numbers of votes that go this way or that, but on what gets said during the campaign. It makes our Labour government look bad.
The judge in a vote-rigging trial says the postal voting system is “wide open to fraud” and has strongly attacked the government’s attitude to the problem.
Richard Mawrey QC was speaking as he ruled there had been “widespread fraud” in six Birmingham council seats won last year by Labour.
He accused the government of being not only complacent, but “in denial”, about the failings of the system.
The lawyer representing the accused in this case has just been on Newsnight, and he came as close as you can (with the look on his face rather than with his mere words) to saying that his clients are a pack of liars. That was a fun moment. This is a ticklish matter for the media, because the people doing these frauds are … er … ethnic.
Now Sion Simon, a local MP right next to where this happened, and something of a Labour attack dog in the Norman Tebbit mould, is saying that there is no systemic problem. Paxman is being quite rough on him. Simon Hughes for the Lib Dems, and a Conservative whose name I did not catch, are saying that there is a systemic problem. And of course, although this row has been simmering for some time, there is now no time to do anything to the system except urge vote counters and returning officers to be extra-vigilant.
Just how bad this will be for the government, I do not know. Maybe in a couple of days it will all be forgotten by almost everybody. But however this particular story plays out in the next few days, I get the feeling that, in Britain now, a political corner has been turned, some time during the last few months.
Whether the electorate as a whole has any plans to vote differently remains to be seen. Many of my friends, such as regular Samizdata commenter Paul Coulam to name but one, have said to me that Blair is about to be re-re-elected with a similar majority to last time around, just as Thatcher was. Coulam certainly said this to me a few weeks back. But governments take a long time to unravel, and what does seem to have happened is that the metropolitan media of Britain have got bored with Labour. They are now more bored with Labour than they are disgusted and embarrassed by the Conservatives, which was not true a year ago. Michael Howard may disgust many Samizdata readers by being just another opportunist political hack, but he is nevertheless, I would say, a much more impressive and consequential figure than his two predecessors at the head of the Conservative Party.
Now, Paxman is talking about what life is like in North Korea. Apparently people who have tried to escape from that hell hole, to heaven, otherwise known as China, are being executed in public, with everyone else in the town rounded up and forced to watch. Someone even managed to film one of these horror shows, and the BBC showed it. “Worst human rights record of any country in the world.” Count your blessings time.
A while ago here I speculated that one of the effects of the Internet – blogs especially – will be to focus attention on what major public figures actually say, and not just to harrass them about their various scandals and cock-ups, worthy though that also is.
Well, according to the EU Referendum blog, Michael Howard made quite a good speech the other day about defence, which the media mostly ignored. The two main points were: that Tony Blair is too keen on EU integration and not keen enough on the Atlantic Alliance, and that he does not give Britain’s armed forces the resources to do the many jobs he demands of them.
Gabriel might even be cheered up a bit. Not a lot, but a bit.
Personally I think that Howard’s two points are closely connected. The smaller our forces are, the easier it will be for the EU to swallow them up.
You can read the entire speech here.
Today I heavily undermined my Samizdatista credentials by hanging around the political types. I attended a lunch for Boris Johnson’s, MP, supporters and activists from his constituency. Now, you may ask what I was doing there… well, blogosphere works in mysterious ways…
The lunch was rather pleasant and I found those I had a chance to talk to refreshingly switched on and open-minded. The shock was made bearable by copious food and wine.
The politicians’ lair Now, to the heart of the matter, Mr Boris Johnson, MP. I was most intrigued, after many months of Tory bashing on this blog, to find myself on the inside and on the receiving end, so to speak. Although the House of Commons is not an unknown territory, this occasion was different as I went curious to meet the one Tory that seems to break the ranks and is not afraid to mention the notion that dare not speak its name in current politics – freedom.
Boris, the Strangely Illuminated Statesman The speech Mr Johnson gave at the end of the lunch, before he had to dash off to his statesmanly duties, was… excellent. This is what he had to say (reconstituted from my, by now largely unreadable notes, so please give the man a break and challenge me on the detail):
There were three points to note. The first was that freedom is important and needs to be seen as an end in itself, to stop its erosion for other political ends. The Labour government has been spending an increasing amount of taxpayers’ money while reducing their freedom. This is bad for the society. The result is an even more intrusive state under Labour. [So far, so good.]
Boris called for a new style of government, which would get that freedom back. He mentioned a rather scary statistic, the size of the public sector is now at the same level as in the 1979 – when Thatcher came in, ending an era of rampant and shameless socialism in Britain – and is 739,000 people working for the central government (excluding local government and other public bodies). By the time Labour came in the number had shrunk to 430,000. The Tories’ agenda is to shrink the size of the state again.
The second point was democracy. Democracy means that the Tories get rid of unelected regional authorities and the whole tier of government that has not been approved by the democratic processes. The term constitutional non-sense was mentioned in the context of the health secretary having no say about health.
The third issue was taxpayer value. Huge quantities of taxpayer money have been lavished on the public sector and on socially useless projects. New approach to government is needed. [I especially like this one – it was mentioned twice.] Mr Johnson got rather animated when he called for a stop of the ongoing transfer of wealth from the productive sector of the economy to the non-productive. I hope this was a go at wealth redistribution, as his moved on to recommend that the Tories should the party of lower taxation.
Mr Johnson understands that the size of the cake is more important that the equal size of the cake portions
There was the usual pep talk before the elections, which did not come out too badly as it was based on realistic expectations and the belief that Tony Blair should be expelled from the office, which is impossible to disagree with.
More issues were discussed, which are either too local or related to the constituency and as such would probably bore the pants off our ‘global’ readership. All in all, talking to Mr Johnson, one could almost believe that politics can be a way forward. They must have put something in the wine…
Due to sheer coincidence of seating arrangements I had a chance to exchange a few words with our Honourable Friend and mentioned the distinction between the state and the society that dictates so much of our ‘editorial policy’ on political engagement. It seemed to resonate and I could not help but wonder to what extent the Tory party message could coalesce around such a notion. For the record, I am not holding my breath.
“Other news today” in today’s Telegraph makes cheerful reading.
Here are the first four stories:
Convicted man who cooked victim’s brains admits killings
Teenager killed boy for his baseball cap
Elderly woman stabbed to death by thieves
Waiter accused of axe murder
And that last one was not just a murder, it was a decapitation. A few feet away from where her boyfriend works, apparently.
George Orwell wrote a famous essay called Decline of the English Murder. It would appear that England, has, murderwise, bounced back since Orwell’s time.
If you are at all interested in matters British and constitutional, or even in matters British or constitutional, you really should read this, the latest from Sean Gabb.
Final two paragraphs:
The headline news is grim. We have just had imposed on us a Prevention of Terrorism Act more subversive of due process than any law made in peacetime since the 1650s. Add to this the Civil Contingency Act, the abolition of the double jeopardy rule and the allowance of similar fact evidence made by the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the Proceeds of Crime Act, and all the lesser invasions that have come and are yet to come from this current Parliament, and we might suppose all was already lost. And look before this Government, to the Thatcher and Major Governments – those, to be fair, laid the foundations on which the present structure of despotism is now being raised. But look beyond Parliament, to those quiet places where the lawyers gather and discuss what the politicians have in mind for us, and there is a counter revolution under way.
It may be worth giving our support and best wishes to those charismatic outsiders who are now beating on the doors of Parliament. It is still more worth while, though, to thank and support those old men in wigs, whose often pedantic and always long decisions about pounds of bananas and hunting bans are restoring to fact what once seemed the theory of a limited constitutional order.
“The Jaws of the Trap Are Closing” says Sean’s title, and that will almost certainly lead you to think that he reckons, as per usual, that we are all doomed, doomed, etc. But it is not that kind of trap. On this matter, Sean is guardedly optimistic.
I have just read the whole thing, and urge you to do so also, if for no other reason that Sean Gabb is one of the great unsung prose stylists of our time. I read him with pleasure about anything – which is why, in defiance of his oft-stated-to-me wishes, I wish he would become a blogger, instead of just a set-piece essayist.
The recent judgement to which Sean is referring to is to be found here (more disintermediation!), and Sean’s earlier (Feb 2002) piece on this same subject of judicial challenge to the politicians, about the Metric Martyrs case, is to be found here.
This IRA versus the McCartneys (aka civilisation) struggle is truly amazing. First a bunch of IRA thugs murder Robert McCartney. Then, in defiance of all precedent, the McCartney family complains, loudly, in public, and demands justice. The IRA obviously cannot allow IRA people to be tried in a court of law, so they offer to shoot the rogue elements who committed the murder. Not good enough say the McCartneys (they are not anarchists, they want it done by the state. I can see their point).
Now one of the leading IRA/Sinn Fein thugocrats, a repulsive exhibit by the name of Martin McGuiness, has perpetrated another public relations clanger:
Sinn Fein has warned the sisters of murdered Belfast man, Robert McCartney, to stay out of politics.
The party’s chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, told them to “be careful” and not to step over the party political line.
The sisters insist the IRA was involved in the murder with one of them accusing Sinn Fein of taking part in a cover-up.
The family are to fly out to the US on Tuesday to continue their fight for his killers to be brought to justice.
Mr McGuinness said their campaign could leave them open to political manipulation.
He ought to know.
This is not the kind of thing you should tell people who are bereaved, who are good looking (which the McCartneys are, very) and who are on the telly a lot. One of the rules of the modern, TV-dominated world is that bereaved and televised families may say and do whatever they choose and may not be criticised. They certainly cannot be told by a politician-stroke-terrorist not to do politics. But McGuinness is only following another rule, a Northern Ireland rule, which says that if the IRA tells you to shut up, you shut up. So you can see how hard this must all be for him to comprehend. When he issued his warning, he was only doing IRA business as usual.
But business for the IRA is no longer business as usual.
The equally revolting Gerry Adams is now over in the USA, where he usually gets a free ride and choruses of When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. (The BBC showed Clinton and Adams singing along together in happier IRA-USA times.) But this time it is different. Not only have the IRA carried on murdering people. They have also been blamed for a truly enormous bank robbery. President Bush, comparing Adams to Arafat, has told Adams to get knotted, and now not even Ted Kennedy will give Adams the time of day. All of which is just one more little consequence – yet another of those knock-on effects – of 9/11. Suddenly the friends (the IRA) of their enemies (Islamist terrorists) no longer look so appealing to the Americans. They look more closely, and do not like what they see.
Adams was accordingly very much on the defensive. Challenged by the McCartneys, who are also over in the USA drumming up support for their quest for justice, Adams was then shown by the BBC protesting piously that if, God forbid, he had become involved in anything as nasty as the murder of Robert McCartney, then as soon as he had realised the enormity of what he had done, he would have handed himself in to the relevant authority (although he was a bit vague about who that would be exactly) and would have made a full confession. Like hell he would.
Mark Steyn goes into a bit more detail, and has a few more swipes at the IRA. Patrick Crozier (to whom thanks for the link) asks if this is a first for Steyn. Is it?
As Steyn points out, this is a mess which the British and Irish Governments have done a lot to perpetuate, along with all those idiot American IRA-donors. The UK and the Republic have followed a policy of relentless appeasement, and it has not worked. The appeased have taken and taken, and carried right on terrorising.
I have always suspected that if the British Government had said, about a quarter of a century ago, that they would stop even discussing a change in the status of Northern Ireland until the IRA had pretty much ceased to exist, and that if the IRA chose to exist for ever, that would mean Northern Ireland remaining British for ever, that might have settled this thing long ago. But appeasement, for all its fatuities, does at least have the advantage that it makes the nature of the appeased beast unmistakable, and unites all but the most casual of onlookers against the beast. So, now that Bush has changed the rules, the rest of us can all join in and give the IRA the kicking they deserve.
I certainly hope that this is what is now going to happen.
Sometimes, new clusters of immigrants coalesce in London, under the radar of the media, until such time as a whimpering hack from the Review section of some unreadable broadsheet notices that an article provides local colour or anthropological observations, depending upon their political bent.
Whilst at Smart Alec’s in Wimbledon, enjoying a late pint (though disappointed by the fact that Winterwarmer, a fine drink, was no longer on tap as its replacement, Waggledance, is less refined), I started to notice that the entire bar was filled with white immigrants from Zimbabwe, attending a birthday do.
There is no evidence for the length of time that this community has been established or how large it is. Moreover, Googling does not provide any documents for this phenomenon. However, over the last few years, Zimbabweans, many of them thrown off their farms, have travelled to London and set up shop in Wimbledon. The numbers are sufficient for the community to have acquired its own name amongst travellers from the southern hemisphere, Zimbledon.
How many other communities are gradually emerging amongst the suburbs, unnoticed and unlooked for? Does anyone know where the Berbers, the Bugandans or the Shona drink? What are their names for London?
This BBC story tells us that the recent visit by Olympic Game officials to inspect London about its chances of winning the bid to stage games in 2012 cost 680,000 pounds.
Come on ladies and gentlemen, surely you can do better than that. What is the point of being on the Olympic committee if you cannot itemise your bills in the millions? They are not even trying.
It goes without saying that I fervently hope that Britain does not host the event.
Patrick Crozier writes about MRSA, which stands for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus:
Stephen Pollard mentions MRSA (seems that the government figures are rather dodgy), which got me wondering: is it any better in private hospitals? So, I did a bit of googling and uncovered this, this and this.
And the answer? Yes, it is.
Indeed. The second this gets you to this:
Evidence from a selection of hospitals in Sheffield reveals that a far smaller proportion of private hospitals are being blighted by the infection, which has led people to ask why this disparity exists.
I daresay readers of and writers for Samizdata could come up with the odd reason or two.
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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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