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.
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In future, Judges are going to have to be less judgmental:
Judges have been issued with guidelines to encourage political correctness in court. Advice sent to all judges and magistrates in England and Wales, tackles misleading social stereotypes that have led to a high-profile judicial gaffes.
Note of explanation: ‘gaffe’ is a term applied to instances of public figures accidentally letting the truth slip out.
Judges are told the term “coloured” should never be used, to avoid using the description “oriental” and to take care that “British” is not used as shorthand for white, English or Christian. They are also given a definition of asylum-seeker, and are reminded that women “remain disadvantaged” in society. “The disadvantages women can suffer range from inadequate recognition of their contribution to the home or society to an underestimation of the problems women face as a result of gender bias,” the guidance says.
Somebody should really slap a Preservation Order on these ‘guidelines’. They have a unique, period 1970’s charm all of their own.
The term “asylum-seeker” is associated with people without a genuine claim to be refugees, and is almost pejorative, the advice said.
Hilarious! We used to use the word ‘immigrants’ until the PC brigade got it banned for being offensive. ‘Asylum-seeker’ was the neutral replacement term. This country is institutionally anti-euphamist.
And judges are advised not to overlook the use of gender-based, racist or “homophobic” stereotyping as an “evidential short cut”. They are also warned against using words that imply an “evaluation” of the sexes, however subtle: for instance, “man and wife”, “girl” (unless speaking of a child) and “businessmen”.
The judiciary is to undergo regular training sessions.
Where they will learn that they are bourgeois counter-revolutionaries and lackeys of the capitalist running dogs.
Here is a list of ‘verboten’ terms:
Coloured: An offensive term that should never be used
Oriental: The term should be avoided because it is imprecise and may be considered racist or offensive
British: Care should be taken to use the term “British” in an inclusive sense, to include all citizens. Exclusionary use of the term as a synonym for white, English, or Christian is unacceptable
Postman: Use postal worker instead
Right on! It is about time that anti-postworkerism was confronted and smashed.
Are you married?: Intrusive and irrelevant
Yes, especially in divorce proceedings.
Mentally handicap: Judges should use instead “learning disabilities” and “people with disabilities”.
Feel free to chip in with further useful suggestions.
Lest anyone forget about the “broken-watch principle” (i.e. even a broken watch is still right twice a day), a reminder is served up courtesy of this excellent and unsettling article by Nick Cohen in the Guardian:
Politicians might be despised, but it is a fair guess that if a home secretary or prime minister proposed repealing the Human Rights Act or tearing up habeas corpus a majority of the population would clap their hands and cheer him on. A paradox of our time is that while ministers are everywhere vilified as scheming liars, and bureaucrats as sinister incompetents, large sections of the supposedly cynical and wised-up electorate are eager to allow them to behave like major-generals.
Sadly true. Mr Cohen even goes on to quote H.L. Mencken:
‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,’ said H.L. Mencken. But in modern Britain it’s hard to know who is the leader and who is the led. It’s easy enough to blame elite politicians, desperate to win the approval of apathetic voters, and elite media managers, desperate to hang on to their shares of declining audiences. But there’s also no doubt that politicians are buffeted by an angry and fearful public which isn’t overly concerned if the punitive measures they demand tear up civil liberties or, indeed, work.
For such great wrongs are liberties which this country fought Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler to defend abandoned without a squeak.
Mr Cohen’s doleful analysis chimes with my own observations and experiences of life in contemporary Britain and because I often come to the same melancholy conclusions I am sometimes accused of ‘revelling’ in pessimism. But this is not true. It is rather that I am unwilling to ignore the evidence of my own eyes and ears.
For those same reasons, I find myself growing increasingly impatient with analyses of our current woes in terms of historical precendents (the 1930’s, the 1950’s and the 1970’s appear to be the most referred to). If Nick Cohen is right (and the evidence points towards his being right) then comparisons with previous eras are specious. We are facing a whole new situation here.
There must be a comedy sketch in this:
West Yorkshire Police were guilty of sex discrimination in refusing to recruit a male-to-female transsexual, law lords have ruled.
The five law lords ruled unanimously that the woman, Miss A, was unlawfully discriminated against in breach of the Sex Discrimination Act.
They upheld a decision by the Court of Appeal last November.
West Yorkshire Police had argued that Miss A would not be able to carry out certain duties, such as body searches.
Lord Bingham said that, under European law, transsexuals were entitled to the same protection against discrimination as any other individual and to be recognised as belonging to their ‘acquired gender’.
Not to mention endless jokes about truncheons.
Looking for trouble? Well, you’ve come to the right place:
People who refuse to register for the government’s planned ID card scheme could face a “civil financial penalty” of up to £2,500, it has emerged.
David Blunkett said not making registering a criminal issue would avoid “clever people” becoming martyrs.
Got that, dickhead? That is what happens to people who try to be ‘clever’. We do not like clever bastards going around being all….clever. So just pack it in, right, otherwise you will be cruisin’ for a bruisin’. Are we clear, pissant? Because if not, its two-and-a-half grand and a punch in the face.
Now just piss off, mind your own bleedin’ business and do you as you are fucking well told.
Many sound folks are already rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of the long sought UK referendum on adopting the terrifying EU constitution. The general received wisdom is that the anti-Constitution faction will win and that will be the end of Tony Blair’s political career… and certainly if it was held today it is hard to see any outcome other that a crushing victory for the anti-EU side and political ruin for Teflon Tony given that the latest YouGov poll (pdf file) shows only 16% would vote for the UK adopting the EU constitution, 28% were unsure and a whooping 53% would vote against it. Rule Britannia indeed!
But the promised referendum will not be today but rather at a tactical moment of Tony Blair’s choosing. People who see this ‘surrender’ to the idea of a referendum as a fortuitous laps of judgement of epic proportions would do well to ponder the effect that having notoriously Eurosceptic Britain go to the polls will have on the current negotiations with Britain more Federalist European ‘partners’ regarding the so called ‘red line’ issues of foreign policy, defence, social security and the British budget rebate.
Knowing that only if Blair can return home with ostensible triumph on those issues will he be able to credibly spin the EU constitution as a ‘British victory’, the Federalists will be faced with either the complete overthrow of their plans (Denmark or Ireland might be either ignored or finessed, but a British rejection is a rather different matter) or they can settle for a more gradualist victory for their cherished superstate.
Thus the prospects for Tony Blair arriving back and waving a piece of paper with Romano Prodi’s signature on it promising ‘Euro-peace in our time’ is by no means a fantastical scenario… and given the sheer ineptitude of the Tory party and the lemming-like Europhilia of the LibDems, it would be a brave man who predicts with confidence that this would not pull the Euro-sceptic’s political teeth.
Yes, with a little luck it could, and hopefully will, all go horribly wrong for the UK government and we could see the dismal Conservative party back in the saddle in Westminster in the aftermath of a Euro-Political meltdown of not insignificant proportions. However the prospects of Blair indeed getting Britain to sign up to a first iteration of the EU constitution if the Federalists play ball is by no means beyond possibilities. And if that happens, it means it is only a matter of time before the other issues are gradually chipped away in the years to follow. At that point there will be nothing left to fight for and I for in will be in the market for some property in New Hampshire. Do not underestimate Tony Blair.
Yes, I know, picking on the Guardian is just so easy that it is verging on bad form. It is rather like challenging a small child to a boxing match.
And speaking of small children, I hear the sound of the petulant stamping of little feet:
In our country, in our culture, at this time, any referendum on Europe is a pre-emptive cringe towards the Murdoch press and the tabloids. Forget any idea that the referendum debate will be Plato’s Republic in action. It will inescapably be a contest fought on terms dictated by the unelected media rather than by the elected politicians.
This is where the European Union referendum really will be a defining moment. It will mark the extraordinary watershed at which this country’s debased, biased and unaccountable media formally take control of the political process. The British media has often claimed that it has greater popular legitimacy than politicians – “It’s the Sun Wot Won it”, for example. Blair’s concession of the referendum marks the moment when politics formally bowed the knee and accepted that claim.
I can visualise Martin Kettle’s bottom lip trembling as bashes out every embittered word. For Mr. Kettle and his colleagues, the mere existance of anti-EU opinion is such a towering and monstrous inequity that advance tantrums are required to highlight the plight of the beleaguered federast to the caring world. He will probably start hijacking aeroplanes shortly and demand to be flown to Brussels.
And what is all this guff about ‘debased, biased and unaccountable media’, as if the Guardian is something other than a national newspaper and, ergo, part of the media? But then thwarted and sulky children often do retreat into consoling fantasy by claiming that their families are not really their families because their real families would not treat them so despicably.
Still, given the perenially low circulation (and their reliance on public subsidy) maybe there is a kernel of truth in the analogy. Nobody likes them, everbody hates them. I think they should go and eat worms.
This could all be a tease (there have been hundreds of similar reports about a referendum on scrapping the pound for the euro).
The EU constitution in itself may not be worse than what the British version is mutating into. If adopted our choices become a pan-European libertarian movement or a secession.
The latter may not be as easy as the Confederate attempt in 1861 from the USA (less public support in the UK, more heavily outnumbered by the rest of the EU etc). Hopefully such a secession could be more Slovenian than Croatian.
The advantage of a referendum is that it cannot be worse than letting the Prime Minister decide alone.
The disadvantage is that it will only happen once the result is known in advance to suit the government, so that when they win, it can slip through the single currency without a vote (that is what the French government did with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992).
Either way spread the word: by next weekend we could have a live campaign on our hands.
How could I possibly pass up the opportunity to gloat over this one?
Will Hutton, Britain’s foremost critic of capitalism and an outspoken advocate for affordable social housing, is married to a property developer who has made a fortune out of selling and renting inner-city properties, often at rates which local council housing officers describe as exorbitant.
No, you don’t get it. Will Hutton is a foremost critic of capitalism for people other than Will Hutton.
Mr Hutton’s wife heads a company called First Premise, which owns and manages dozens of commercial and residential properties in London.
The company specialises in renovating rundown properties – often with the help of public grants – and then makes a profit by selling or renting them out.
The disclosure that Mr Hutton’s own family is among those capitalising on Britain’s property boom will be an acute embarrassment for him.
Nah, he will just dismiss it as a ‘right-wing conspiracy’.
The Left-wing commentator, who appears regularly on BBC television and writes in The Observer newspaper – which he used to edit – has often railed against the iniquities of the property market.
He has been particularly scornful of what he believes is Britain’s socially divisive obsession with owner occupation. Property developers, people who buy to let and middle-class families who live in gated communities have all come in for criticism.
He is trying to shame them out of their well-appointed homes so that he can snap them up on the cheap and re-sell them.
Will Hutton, eh. The High Priest of Pieties. The Sultan of Sneers. The Prince Regent of Redistribution.
Makes you wonder how many other capitalist skeletons are rattling away in the Guardian closet.
Some months ago, David Carr and I had a quick and long forgotten conversation over the subject of withdrawal from the European Union. It is a hardy perennial that fades in and out of debate. This time, I was interested in the ‘Greenland option’ where a region had stayed loyal to the crown of Denmark but had exited the EEC. Similar constitutional anomalies bind the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man to the Crown. The option was not considered realistic because we concluded that the EU would never countenance losing larger portions of their members.
Think again! Labour MEP, Eluned Morgan, tabled a question to Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, asking if Wales would remain a member of the European Union if it declared independence. Prodi appeared to indicate that any region declaring independence would have to reapply for membership.
Asked if a newly independent region would have to leave the EU and apply for accession afresh, Mr Prodi said: “When a part of the territory of a member state ceases to be a part of that state, eg because that territory becomes an independent state, the treaties will no longer apply to that state.
In other words, a newly independent region would, by the fact of its independence, become a third country with respect to the union and the treaties would, from the day of its independence, not apply any more on its territory.”
His answer, written on March 1, also said any application for EU membership would require negotiation and consent of other member states.
Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, viewed the eruption as a spoiler for their spring conference and noted the constitutional implications:
But Plaid Cymru last night rubbished the claims. Jill Evans MEP described it as “nothing more than a spoiling attempt by New Labour on the eve of our Spring Conference”.
She said: “The United Kingdom is constituted as a state through the respective acts of Union in 1536 and 1707. If either act is repealed, the UK as a nation state will no longer exist. On the basis of Romano Prodi’s letter, if Wales and Scotland were to become independent, all component members of the UK including England would have to reapply for EU membership. These ridiculous claims should be treated with contempt and are pure nonsensical.”
If Prodi’s reading of European law is correct, then declarations of independence by the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, followed by the dissolution of the Union, would be sufficient for withdrawal from the European Union. This provides food for thought since the campaign for an English parliament and for English independence now has another virtuous outcome.
Good news so near St. Georges Day!
Some readers who enjoy British history may recall that period in the 18th Century when highway robbers like Dick Turpin acquired a certain notoriety as they held travellers at gunpoint and stole valuables while simultaneously charming their female victims. Like most such ‘legends’, the truth was usually rather grubbier and more unpleasant.
Well, I had an example of being charmed into surrendering a large chunk of my wealth by force the other morning. As in the USA, where working-age citizens are currently going through the chores of filing their IRS forms, the British Inland Revenue is busy getting us all ready to pay our taxes. I received a form which said, “You have been chosen to receive this new short tax return.” Golly, how grateful am I supposed to feel? I have been ‘chosen’, apparently. It is made to sound as if I have been invited on board a millionaire’s yacht off St. Tropez for a spot of weekend sailing.
Even worse, the form ends with the little motto, no doubt dreamed up by some clever chap, “Tax doesn’t have to be taxing.” Aahhhh! You see, the Inland Revenue can make the experience of telling us how much wealth we must pay out an easy, even pleasurable experience.
Why do I go on about this? Well, in a subliminal way, forms like this encourage the citizen to accept the tax burden as a natural, and even wholly benign part of the human order. It is another way of wearing us down. And that is a bad thing. Personally, I am actually glad that the Americans have a nasty time filing their tax returns because once a year it reminds the citizens of Jefferson’s Republic of just how far they have gone from the modest government ambitions of the Founding Fathers. The easier we Brits can pay our taxes, the less angry we might be about the taxes in the first place.
Of course, this all leaves aside the issue of whether, even in a minarchist or anarcho-capitalist order, we could get by without some form of collective funding for stuff like external defence and internal courts and so on. I have a few thoughts but it is too big a topic for a single blog item. I’ll have to return to this point another time. Of course that’s no reason why others cannot have a go. Comments welcome as always.
It still remains unlikely, but I do feel that is at least possible that the Conservative Party may win the next General Election, here in the UK. With Blair increasingly going off the rails, behind in some polls, and trying to ramrod unpopular policies through Parliament, even against the wishes of his patrons and supporters in News International, there is some hope that we may yet be rid of him before he has his heart attack.
But what will replace him? Oliver I Love Socialism Letwin, perhaps, or David Two Welfare States Willets? It could almost be better, in some ways, if Blair stayed in power, as at least then we would still possess an enemy we could focus on properly.
So, this is a call to any Conservative politician out there, anyone who is active within the Conservative Party who stands any chance of a sniff of power should the Blessed Michael shock us and actually win electoral power. Now it may be too much to assume that the Blessed Michael, himself, is a regular Samizdata reader, but if you are with us, Mr H, I have the perfect plan of action for you to make England the wealthiest, the freest, and the happiest country in Europe, except for approximately one million Guardianistas who, basically, can just sod off.
Sean Gabb’s THE ENEMY CLASS AND HOW TO DESTROY IT: A MANIFESTO FOR THE RIGHT, which I read for the first time this morning, really is or should be the plan for your next government. Take time to read it. Then act upon it. Become a hero.
Tuscan Tony Millard is very unhappy that Britain’s civil servants are on strike. No, not really
I for one was relieved that 110,000 civil servants went on strike today claiming the urgent need for more taxpayers money, presumably to spend down the pub during their 37 days annual paid leave. I calculated that, assuming their refusal to honour their employment contracts results in the withholding of a day’s pay, this little exercise alone has saved us the grand total of £7,403,846 (US$ 13,549,843) without us even having to put down the TV remote/let go of the mouse/whatever.
I assume that you civil ‘servants’ are all now sufficiently dissatisfied with your lot to seek employment elsewhere, preferably not funded by my tax receipts. Viva il mercato, as we say in Tuscany! Well done, lads, and thanks.
Tony Millard
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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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