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“Other news today” in today’s Telegraph makes cheerful reading. Here are the first four stories:
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. March 15th, 2005 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
 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 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. March 15th, 2005 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
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:
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. March 14th, 2005 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
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? March 14th, 2005 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
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. March 13th, 2005 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Patrick Crozier writes about MRSA, which stands for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus:
Indeed. The second this gets you to this:
I daresay readers of and writers for Samizdata could come up with the odd reason or two. March 11th, 2005 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
Now who on earth would imagine that a nanny state could ever develop a dumbed down society whose citizens have very real problems dealing with risks? Not Tony Blair, it would seem. March 6th, 2005 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
A regular theme remarked upon here and elsewhere has been the big growth in people working – if that is the right verb – in Britain’s public sector. On the most cautious estimates, about half a million new jobs have been added to the public payroll since the present Labour government came to power in 1997. This article in the current issue of the Spectator puts that figure, after revisions, even higher, to more than 800,000. Jeysus. It goes without saying that the article concludes that much of this increase is designed to build a powerful constuency in favour of voting Labour and embracing Big Government. No kidding. The article goes on to say that the process is likely to end once big tax rises are necessary to foot the bill, provoking an explosion of anger similar to that at the trade union public sector mayhem in the 1970s. I hope a more pleasant resolution is at hand. If the Tories are half-smart, they will figure out a way to outflank Labour and put some radical, attractive options on the table. Some juicy tax cuts might be a good start. On that happy note, I am off to enjoy the rest of Friday evening. March 4th, 2005 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
For some reason, the decision by Bill Gates to become an honorary British knight makes me sad. Has the founder of Microsoft finally, and completely, sold out to the “establishment”? Has his bruising encounter with the looters, whoops, I meant U.S. Justice Dept and EU Commission made him yearn for a respectable, quieter life? Somehow, I cannot see Steve Jobs wanting a gong. March 2nd, 2005 | 72 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Labour Party continues its retreat from being ‘New’ Labour by offering to force companies to give new mothers more maternity pay. Quite apart from the folly of making British business ever less competitive since they took office (making Blair a true ‘European’ it must be said), it is morally revolting the way the state interposes itself into contractual relationships and forces one group of people to give money to another in the hope of getting a net increase in votes for itself (not that the Tories are much better, it must be said). Speaking as a British businessman myself, it is exactly things like this that make me never even consider employing people directly in Britain. It is also one of the reasons why the company in which I am a partner outsources our web production overseas as it simply madness to employ people in this country if you are a small business. But of course Mr. Blair could not really care less about that as all he cares about is short term political advantage because by the time true costs of his policies are felt, he will be long out of office. February 28th, 2005 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
Many have condemned the ghastly Robert Mugabe for the outrageous policy of seizing land from white people in Zimbabwe. Yet even in Britain it is now possible for a group of people to use the political process to take the property of others against their will. In what it nothing less that state sanctioned robbery, people on the Scottish Western Isles will be voting to take the property of long standing owners with no more justification that than they want to benefit from it and the state says they can use the force of law to do so. This is nothing less that mob rule of the grossest sort motivated by straightforward greed, abetted by politicians who see their political power benefiting from presiding over legalised land invasions. A local woman is quoted as saying:
… by which she really means “take control of other people’s destiny” by taking away their property. But she is certainly correct that this is democracy in action, which is why I am so ambivalent about unconstrained democratic politics. Robbery is no more excusable just because the people who benefit from it do so using the force of the state rather than just running the legitimate owners out of town with pitchforks. Remember this the next time you hear some hypocritical Labour or LibDem politico wringing their hands about the behaviour of Robert Mugabe as he dispossesses farmers who have worked lands for several generations. Disgraceful. February 26th, 2005 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
The line here, which I pretty much toe, is that the Olympic Games are an orgy of drug-sodden, politicised insanity, which Britain, London in particular, will spend the next century or more paying for, in the unfortunate event that Britain, London in particular, get the damn things, in 2012. That the politicians all seem to love the Olympics is enough to make me hostile, even though I do have a serious weakness for modernistical structures of the sort that they build nowadays to accommodate sporting events. Luckily, Paris is now said to be the front runner. But, the news from Paris is deteriorating. On March 10th, that gang of bribe guzzlers known as the IOC (International Olympic Committee) will be visiting Paris, and the local unions, purely by coincidence I feel sure, happen to be agitating at that time against … the future basically:
Meanwhile, Mayor of London Ken Livingstone is up to his neck in a row about some insulting and borderline anti-semitic remarks he made to a Jewish journalist, in the course of his ongoing feud with a newspaper group.
Well, it certainly could, and the French press is presumably spinning this story like a nuclear powered top. But, a possibility that does not seem to have been much discussed is that Ken Livingstone’s attitude during this ruckus might be what it is not despite the attempt to get the Olympics for London, but because of it. The initial insults sound less than calculated, but politicians like Ken Livingstone are nothing if not good actors. What if Ken picked this particular fight deliberately? Okay, that may be somewhat farfetched. But the aftermath? After Ken had had time to think things through? Israel has called on Ken to apologise. “International” people, like the people in the International Olympic Committee, are just going to fall over themselves to obey Israel. Not. Tony Blair wants Ken to apologise. And he is another focus of adoration throughout International land. Again, not. I do not know the political attitudes of the IOC people, but I bet Ken Livingstone does. And what if he calculates that hanging tough, in the face of all this pressure, adding further insults to the original insults, will actually get him more points with these people than backing down? February 24th, 2005 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
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