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One of my earliest reminiscences is following the adventures of Bill Savage, self-styled resistance fighter and Cockney psychopath, who fought thinly disguised Soviets, called Volgs, in a future Britain that had been conquered by the communist hordes. The comic was that anti-establishment cultural icon, 2000AD, tapping into the punk zietgeist of 1977, and the comic strip was Invasion
British boys’ comics recovered from a rut in the 1970s with a newfound determination to cater for the violent tastes of their teenage market. They differed from their American counterparts as market segmentation led to titles concentrating on specific subject matter: War: Battle, Victor, Warlord and Commando; Football: Roy of the Rovers; Science Fiction: 2000AD, Starlord, Tornado, Eagle and Starblazer. No doubt I have missed out a few, including the weekly reprints of superhero comics by Marvel UK.
Bill Savage was a lorry driver whose exploits appeared in the first issue of 2000AD, spinning into orbit in 1977. This allows an indulgence of nostalgic relish as I recall Birmingham nuked, a clone of Maggie as Prime Minister shot on the steps of St. Paul’s and the new Prime Minister announcing “People of Britain. The Volgans are our Friends! We must not fight them…Hand Over All Your Fire-Arms!” With his handy shotgun and avenging the death of his family, Savage enjoyed taking the war to the occupiers and killing them in a number of diverse ways, followed by a suitable quip. The roadlayer that he gleefully used to ‘level’ a Volg firing squad was a particularly nasty way to go.
Whilst interesting, Invasion was a second world war story, transplanted to the future. The world of 1999 had changed little from the 1940s and there are no dark faces in the comic. A parallel can be made with the film, “Dr Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth, 2150”, another invasion narrative that symbolised England’s vulnerability by trading on the cultural myths of 1940. Nonetheless, even in 1977, popular culture could encompass a comic that envisioned a Britain where lorry drivers kept shotguns at home and firearms were an accepted part of working class life. It seems like another world.
Savage eventually made it to Canada with Prince John, ending his personal war. But, in his pithy way, Savage said it all…
“My cannon stays with me! Greased and ready…”
A few years back I read an essay by some free market activist (whose name escapes me entirely now) about apathy and why it was every politician’s worst nightmare. They can survive hostility and, of course, they bask in adulation but lumpen public indifference is the tar-pit that will gradually delegitimise them and drag them under to irrelevance and obscurity.
A nice theory but wholly untrue. Public indifference is by far the most powerful ally of the political classes. How else can they possibly get away with such a sudden, one hundred and eighty degree volte face?
The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) is blocking grants to ethnic minority projects that fail to promote “Britishness” and integration.
Last week, CRE chairman Trevor Phillips sparked a debate when he said the term “multiculturalism” should be scrapped.
What is all this? ‘Multiculturalism’ should be scrapped? ‘Britishness’ should be promoted? Do mine eyes deceive me or have the cultural revolutionaries at the CRE suddenly been transmogrified into blue-rinse, little Englander, prehistoric, sexist, facist, racist, Tory types? Does Mr.Phillips not appreciate that Pim Fortuyn was branded a ‘Nazi’ and subsequently assassinated for expressing precisely the same sentiments about his native Holland? Does he merit a posthumous apology now? → Continue reading: We have always been at war with Eastasia
If there were ever an annual Ayn Rand award, here in the UK, for Britain’s most outstanding business leader, then a recent contender could easily have been Tim Martin, the founder and chairman of the JD Wetherspoon chain of pubs. He created this chain from virtually nothing, in 1979, and built it into one of the largest leisure businesses in the country. Which is remarkable.
But being a former law student he has fallen into the trap of believing that if a law is passed by a legislature then this automatically makes it a good thing. Because he has just called for a smoking ban to be imposed upon all the privately owned pubs and bars in Britain, following Ireland’s recent heavy-handed example.
Now I have no problem with Mr Martin banning smoking in all of his own pubs. But like all the best hypocrites Mr Martin has no intention of doing this, because he realises he will lose too much business to his competition. But this hypocrisy has failed to prevent him from wishing to inflict his own intolerant views upon every other private bar owner and pub smoker in the country.
Which does beg the following question: Are there any truly successful business people here in Britain who we libertarians could actually hold up and respect as role models for the future? Or is it simply impossible in Nanny State Britain for any big business leader to be successful without being mentally flexible enough to accommodate the sinuous and relentless needs of our slave controllers in government?
I need a hero to worship. Does anybody have one?
But for the grace of God, are there any loathsome politicians out there who you sometimes feel you may have ended up like? I have one. His name is Alan Milburn, a man who I sometimes look like and sound like, which for those of you who know the difference really is quite a cross to bear.
Mr Milburn used to be the Secretary of State for Health, here in the UK, until his shock resignation in 2003. We may never know the real reason why he resigned. But when Alan visited me in a nightmare recently, in the guise of my former Marxist Dark Half, he told me he flounced out of government because Tony Blair had become incapable of protecting him from Gordon Brown’s prime ministerial ambition.
But it seems Alan is regretting his flounce and is trying to worm his way back into Tony’s ministerial cash box. This morning, on Radio4’s Today programme, he spent a lengthy chat with James Naughtie banging on about the glorious work-life balance achievements of Scandinavian-style socialism. → Continue reading: Return of the undead
Two news stories caught my eye today.
Firstly B.B.C. Radio 4’s Today show reported that the authorities in the People’s Republic of Scotland have noticed that sport is unfair – there are winners and losers and sometimes the winners win big.
To deal with this problem the local authority in Edinburgh has declared that if a team in a children’s football match are winning by 5 to 0 (or more) at half time the ref should be allowed and encouraged to declare the score to be 0 – 0.
In this way the losing children can have another chance – and their self esteem will be protected.
Soon the careful minds of the Scottish authorities will work out that a better way of ensuring equality would be to declare that all matches end in the score 0 – 0.
Oh well, whilst the English taxpayers continue to fund the Scottish government (latest example – a 400 milion plus Paliament building that was supposed to cost “a maximum of 40 million”) such sillyness will continue.
Also today I got to see this week’s Economist… and I spotted a report on Somalia that I think will be of interest.
As is well known most of the nation of Somalia does not have a formal government. Now opponents of anarchism (or perhaps “anarchocapitalism” as “anarchism” is a word that is sometimes used to refer to some forms of collectivism) have pointed at Somalia and said “see anarchy – it really is vile, bloodsoaked chaos” and defenders of anarchy have claimed “no – Somalia does have a government (indeed it has multiple governments), the Warlords are all statists acting as warring governments”.
The Economist report does not settle the dispute between anarchists and non-anarchists, but it does provide some information.
Firstly that paying the Warlords money to protect oneself and property does not work very well as (unlike the “protection agencies” of anarchist or anarcho-capitalist theory) the Warlords will take the money – but their men will tend to rob and murder you anyway. → Continue reading: Scotland and Somalia
Intelligence sources have confirmed to Sky News that a plan to launch a chemical attack in the UK has been foiled. A highly toxic chemical called osmium tetroxide was to be used in a device. The chemical compound, which can be bought on the internet, causes victims to choke to death in agony. It also attacks the cornea of the eye and can lead to blindness.
The security services are believed to have been alerted after a mention of the chemical was picked up at the GCHQ electronic listening centre near Cheltenham. The speculation is that it could have been used by terrorists to target enclosed spaces such as the London Underground, airports or a busy shopping centres. Even though arrests were made in the United Kingdom, authorities say the operation was being run out of Pakistan by a suspected al Qaeda figure.
Londoners are not novices to security alerts and actual terrorist attacks. Irish Republican terrorists made sure of that. But this is different. However despicable the acts of the Irish terrorists have been, their aim was limited, if not acceptable.
The islamofascists are fighting us because of what we are, because our existence is a daily reminder to them of the failure of their ways. Their aim is our destruction and the notion that they can be appeased is absurd.
For those who missed it, this morning, there was a fascinating article in the Daily Telegraph about the increasing failure of the British state to perform its most basic activity, that of providing personal security to its tax-paying citizens. It seems more and more people are simply withdrawing any hope they may have once held in the British police and are taking their own personal security matters directly into their own hands, with impressive crime reduction results to boot, through the creation and adoption of private police forces.
It seems the Individualist Revolution really is creeping up on us, unawares, as street by street, in Britain, the enfeebled state withers away and people take an ever-increasing amount of private control over their own private lives.
This is not what the state intended. But it is what is happening. Long may this withering process continue.
There is an intensely irritating advertising campaign showing currently on British TV, its cumbersome catchphrase: “If you don’t do politics, there’s not much you do do“. It is run by the Electoral Commission and goes one step beyond explaining to people how to exercise their democratic franchise by promoting “political” interference into almost every aspect of quotidian life.
The animated advert features two men in a pub. The first’s gauche attempt to bring up some tedious manoeuvring in the European parliament is deftly dismissed by the second’s sensible rejoinder that he “doesn’t do politics”. Our statist ‘hero’ is not so easily assuaged however, as each subsequent time the second man complains about various items from pub closing time to sporting achievements, he is pointedly reminded by his friend that he “doesn’t do politics” and thus implicitly isn’t entitled to an opinion on such things. The assumption behind this campaign is that everything that matters – “not much you do do” – ought to be subject to political mediation. In reality, the only reason the pub landlord closes at that specific time is because “politics” forces him to do so. If he “didn’t do politics” so much he might close at a time of his own choosing which may suit him and his customers better.
It is telling that this latest promotion of a society based on political mediation to replace that based on voluntary interaction is not by a political party or a pressure group but by a supposedly independent body. This surely demonstrates the folly of assuming independence as to the proper role and size of government in any body funded by the government.
Blair is a liar. But of course the notion any politician does not utter more than the occasional porkie pie is a very uncontroversial one. But as I said in the wellspring of lies yesterday, one can but marvel at the bare faced effrontery of it when our political masters stand up and state something is true when any person not wilfully blind (or David Blunkett) can see it is patently untrue just by reading a few newspapers or one of several thousand blogs and websites.
Mr Blair said political objections had been removed and the only obstacle now was technical. He made clear he wanted the project to “move forward” as soon as it was feasible.
He risked antagonising civil rights campaigners by claiming they no longer objected to the idea, which would see each citizen required to buy a computer-readable card that would record personal details.
Risks antagonising? Civil rights campaigners no longer object to the idea? Excuse the French, but, what the fuck? Blair is a bare faced liar. The only other alternative to that is that he is so ignorant of goings on outside the cloistered world of 10 Downing Street as to be completely deluded.
I will try my damnedest to refuse to get an ID card and I will openly declare that I do not have one when the sun rises on that evil day. I urge as many people as possible to not just resist but to do so openly when the time comes. They will try to make it very difficult to live without one so we must make the system unworkable by using whatever civil disobedience and intelligent resistance is needed. Do not cooperate with your own repression. Time to get creative, people. Time to get angry.
Cross-posted to:
The Daily Telegraph ran an obituary yesterday for a man who seems to have been almost the archetype of the corporatist economist.
I must stress that I never met Sir Donald and I am certainly not claiming that he did not love his children, or was not kind to small animals. It is just that he seems to have fit a certain patten of economist.
When Rab Butler (British finance minister at the time) produced a plan in 1952 (“ROBOT”) to stop trying to rig the value of sterling on the exchange markets, who leaked the private plan he had been trusted with? Lord Charwell (Sir Donald’s boss) and who worked to rubbish the plan (Sir Donald himself).
I have no great affection for fiat money. But if one has such a thing one should not try and rig its value in terms of other currencies – such efforts just lead to crises after crises.
Not that Sir Donald even had any real affection for maintaining the “strong Pound” in terms of the American Dollar. Sir Donald supported devaluation in the 1960s – it was allowing the market (i.e. buyers and sellers – there being no such thing as metaphysical ‘market forces’ separate from the choices of actual buyers and sellers) to determine the value of the currency (in terms of other currencies) that he seems to have objected to.
Sir Donald got many of the honours and jobs one would expect to come to a man of his type (head of the National Economic Development Council and so on), and the change of government did not harm him.
No, Sir Donald just went to work for the Labour economics minister (George Brown) working on a “national plan” to “plan the economy”.
Later Sir Donald went to work for the Confederation of British Industry, which (like the old Federation of British Industry) can normally be expected to support ‘moderation’ (i.e. statism).
With economists like this, who can blame the public for the lack of knowledge?
It would appear that a careful study of the works of the favoured economists of their time would just leave the public more misguided in their opinions than they already are.
I would be happy to be corrected in my opinion of Sir Donald’s working life – but I suspect that I have not been misled by the obituary.
I am beginning to seriously whether our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is having some sort of breakdown:
David Blunkett, the increasingly angry home secretary, is calling for “lifestyle punishments” to shape Britain into a less violent society. He wants the power to confiscate mobile phones and ban people from football matches. He is also wants to counter the “increasing portrayal of violence” on television. Which sounds like censorship.
No, that does not sound like censorship, it is censorship though given the degree of regulation to which TV broadcasting is subject anyway, further measures are redundant.
One unhappy source at the Home Office told the paper: “These proposals are disproportionate, unenforceable and criminalising and do not go to the heart of the cause of these problems. But Blunkett will not be deterred.”
Lest anyone forget, the Home Office (in common with the rest of our political superstructure) is staffed by people who earnestly believe that rates of finger-nail growth can be brought under control with the appropriate set of regulations. So if even they think that Big Blunkett’s ideas are ‘unenforceable’, then I reckon some pretty deep cracks are beginning to open in the edifice of British government.
It’s only a little thing, but I regard it as a very bad sign when a country starts advertising for tourists. I’m not against tourism, but I am against national organisations which advertise it. I regard them as evidence that everything else in the country is a mess, but that since the place is at least picturesque and ruined and not being built on everywhere, well, at least we can get foreigners to come and drool over it.
I can remember the shock when, during the Jimmy Carter regime I think it must have been, the USA started begging us on TV to give them a visit.
My point? Well, I just saw a TV advert for being a tourist in … Scotland, done by, I think, these people. This has been going on for some time now.
Let me be clear. I am not saying that Scotland is not a fine place to visit. I have visited it, and it is very fine. It has the nearest thing in the British Isles to mountains, and lovely lakes ( which they call lochs), and cute fake castles (which I almost prefer to our real ones), and men marching about in coloured skirts blowing pipes you won’t hear anywhere else. Scotland is great. Everyone should see it at least once. What I am objecting to are the TV adverts. They are the sign of bad times up there.
Their rugby team is certainly an embarrassment.
But while the short-term news in Scotland is obviously bad, the long term news is that the Scots are now slowly if painfully learning how to govern themselves, and generally to look after themselves, without having us English to blame. If you tax, spend, regulate, and generally screw around with everything, bad things will follow. If, on the other hand, you cut taxes …, deregulate … I was for Scottish devolution when it happened and I am for it now even more, and I am not averse to the idea of complete Scottish national separation. I genuinely believe that, for all their temporary difficulties, the Scots are just so much less petty-nationalist and whiny and blame-Englandy than they were before devolution. I am confident that they will soon put the bad old days of begging people to come and visit them behind them, and settle down to making Scotland the sort of place where people will just visit of their own accord because it is so interesting and fun to be in.
No doubt commenters will inform us of all the places where England, or worse, my beloved London, is also advertised on TV.
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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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