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.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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At least one member of the ‘great and the good’ seems to think that enterprise is important:
Britain will become a 21st century theme park, unless more is done to create an enterprise culture, a business leader has warned.
George Cox, head of the Institute of Directors, warned the UK was at risk of being reduced to “selling…souvenirs”.
A “can do” mentality must be instilled in young people to benefit business, Mr Cox added.
The comments came ahead of a key government conference on the issue, to be held in London on Monday.
Mr Cox welcomed the talks involving businessmen and women and politicians aimed at boosting enterprise.
Since it is unlikely that an invitation to this event is going to be extended to any members of the Samizdata Team, I expect that the politicians concerned are not going to hear the one thing that they should be told: that the way to ‘boost’ enterprise is to unboost themselves.
If youngsters are being deterred from starting their own businesses then they are hardly to be blamed. Who wants to have to spend most of their time, effort and intellectual energy steering a path through a vast forest of regulations, directives and laws only to watch the taxman take a big, wet, juicy bite out of the little profit you have managed to earn. And, to top it all off, you then switch on the TV or open the morning newspaper only to be told that you are ‘the enemy of the people’.
Contrast this with going for a job in the public sector which will give you a guaranteed income, a job for life and the steadfast loyalty and service of the political classes.
It’s a no-brainer. Life is too short.
Ironic, is it not, that Mr Cox and other business leaders worried about the apparent decline in enterprise are taking their concerns to the very people who are responsible for suppressing it? He will get nowhere.
What he may get for his trouble (apart from a round of champagne cocktails and a plate of canâpes) is a set of ‘Enterprise Regulations’. Mock not, that is very possibly going to be the only tangible outcome and there is no shortage of people either within government or elsewhere who will earnestly see that as a solution.
Mr Cox is to be applauded for at least raising the question. The answer will prove very elusive. How on earth does anybody expect a ‘can do’ spirit to flourish in a political and cultural ethos of ‘should not do’?
The growing examples of Western firms outsourcing or “offshoring” jobs, including hi-tech ones in software, to locations such as India has triggered a certain amount of bleating in parts of the commentariat as well as some excellent responses, such as at the blog Catallarchy. What this does show, however, is that those nations best able to cope with the ever-shifting sands of the global economy are those with the ability to harness skills to best effect.
For some time, we self-deprecating Brits have tended to downplay the extent to which we can still punch our economic weight in such a harshly competitive world economy. Well, this entertaining book, Backroom Boys, by Francis Spufford (never heard of him before, BTW) is a pleasurable, if sometimes maddening account of how the British scientists have pioneered or collaborated in a range of economic fields, such as the early space race of the 1950s and 1960s, computer games, the supersonic jet plane Concorde, and perhaps most significant for our present lives – mobile phones.
What I particularly liked about Spufford’s book is how he got under the skin of how scientists work and co-operate with one another. He nailed home the point that in scientific establishments, both in the public and private sector, what counts for a scientist is not necessarily big money, but the respect of one’s peers. For a scientist, you are respected as much for the ideas you share with your peers as to how many times you get your face on the front of Time magazine. In short, he says scientists operate an intellectual “gift economy” where altruism pays.
The book also shows how British scientific efforts, often “hobbled” by supposed lack of funds, often had to adapt and employ more nimble ways of research while their better-funded American rivals could just bully ahead. The best example, of course, is the contrast between Britain’s puny efforts to launch its own space programme, including the Black Arrow rocket programme, and the various endeavours of NASA. (I wonder how many readers know Britain had this programme? I certainly did not).
The story of how Concorde, a collaborative Anglo-French venture came into being and was supported by the taxpayer before eventually being drawn into the maw of privatised British Airways was instructive. Libertarian purists will, of course, blanche at the idea of such a plane being created with tax funds in the first place. I side with them, but I could not help noticing that Concorde came into its own as part of an overall business package when BA became a private business. There is a lot of interesting description in the book about the “halo” effect, whereby a luxury, loss-making entity like Concorde is kept within a business to make the whole operation more appealing. Spufford also reflects about the nature of luxury goods and how they are priced. It may seem irrational that a Concorde seat costs X times more than that of a seat on a Boeing 747, but making the seat so costly was part of the cachet, like the cost of a Rolex watch or an Aston Martin sports car.
Perhaps in a moment of rare hubris, Spufford ends his book speculating about the now-fated Beagle 2 Mars project. He dreams that a “British suitcase is on Mars”. Oh well, you cannot win ’em all.
Are politicians actually capable of thought and articulation or they merely making noises in return for which they think they are going to get rewards?
Barely two weeks after Michael Howard trumpeted his alleged belief that “the people should be big and the state should be small“, he weighs in on the side of big state and against the little citizen:
A future Conservative government would reverse Labour’s downgrading of cannabis from Class B to Class C, Tory leader Michael Howard has said.
His intervention comes a week ahead of the change to Class C, which will place cannabis alongside anabolic steroids and prescription anti-biotics and mean police will rarely make arrests for possession of small amounts of the drug.
Mr Howard said: “After thinking about this very carefully, we have come to the view that the Government’s decision is misconceived and when we return to office, we will reclassify cannabis back to Class B.”
Mr Blunkett’s changes introduced a “muddle” which would send a signal to young people that cannabis was legal and safe, when it was not, said the Tory leader.
Well, there is a germ of truth here in that HMG is most certainly in a ‘muddle’ but at least it is a muddle which is shambling along, after a fashion, in a sort-of, vaguely right direction. The motives may not be entirely logical or even honourable but I think it’s results that count here.
But am I to believe that Mr Howard has thought about this ‘very carefully’? Cannabis is only illegal because people like Mr Howard demand that it be so and the question of whether or not it is ‘safe’ (whatever that means) is entirely irrelevant. If he genuinely wants to the state to be small then he is hardly likely to achieve that aim by reinforcing the principle rubric behind big government, i.e. that it is necessary in order to manage the citizen’s health and welfare.
So is Mr Howard (a) disingenuous or (b) really not thought this through at all?
I think we have a right to know.
The natives are finally growing restless. Well, some of them are, at any rate and, for just for a change, this is grass-roots agitation of the righteous sort.
Yes, the people behind the Taxpayers Alliance are as mad as hell and they are not going to take it anymore. The strapline says it all:
Campaigning for lower taxes because it’s our money
Right on, brothers and sisters and Amen and, might I just add, about bloody time too. Ever since the mid-90’s, when the producing classes were finally bullied and browbeaten into dolefully accepting that higher taxes would result in better government services, they have stoically maintained their stiffer upper lips while the fiscal thumbscrews have been steadily tightened.
But the government services they thought they cherished have remained as crap as they ever were and now, finally, a few of them have realised that they’ve been took, they’ve been had.
But (and you all knew that there just had to be a ‘but’) as pleased as I am to finally see these few worms turning, they still have some way to go before they address the ‘root causes’ of their problems:
We have already found £50 BILLION of unnecessary government spending to cut (without closing hospitals or schools, or cutting pensions). That is more than enough to abolish Council Tax or take a big slice out of Income Tax.
The objects of their attack are what they see as the ‘waste and inefficiency’ of the government as if those things can somehow be magically eradicated while leaving the public sector largely intact. However, ‘waste and inefficiency’ are not bugs requiring elimination in order for the welfare state to function properly, they are systemic features of the welfare state itself.
For as long as these campaigners continue to accept the fabian argument that services like healthcare and education must be provided by the government, then their otherwise noble campaign will remain fatally flawed. It leaves them wide open to the counter-argument that state and schools and hospitals must have the necessary ‘resources’ and sooner, rather than later I think, they will find themselves running smack into that brick wall.
But, that said, they are still doing the right thing. Or, at least, starting to do the right thing. I hope it is the thin end of a very thick wedge.
[My thanks to reader Gawain Towler who provided the above link via Terence Coyle.]
It is a seldom-recognised fact that the British are world leaders in the art of grumbling. By a long margin, it is our most popular national pastime. In fact, if grumbling was an Olympic sport (or perhaps synchronised grumbling) then it would be British competitors taking gold, silver and bronze. The other nations do not stand a chance.
And I can find no better example of this kind of world-class, cutting-edge grumbling than this article by Philip Johnston:
Do you ever feel like Howard Beale, the character played by Peter Finch in the film Network? He was a news presenter on American TV who became so frustrated at the refusal of anyone to listen to reason that he invited viewers to open their windows and yell into the streets: “I am as mad as hell and I am not going to take it any more.”
Such conspicuous expressions of indignation are more acceptable in America than they are here. When we are as mad as hell, the most forceful manifestation of our emotions tends to be a resigned shrug or a heavy sigh. Understatement is one of our endearing national characteristics; but it also means we can more easily be taken for a ride.
And that is why we lead the world in grumbling. We have the ideal training programme.
Our predisposition to react benignly to developments that would have other people taking to the streets is to be applauded. But this quintessential mildness relies on governments, local councils and others who can interfere in our lives to do so only when it is absolutely necessary, and then in a fair and balanced way. The current Government is no longer able to identify this fulcrum. It brings in legislation because it believes that its very function is to pour forth a cascade of new laws each year, even when there is no demand for them.
Suggest to a minister that he might try to get through the parliamentary session without legislating and he will look at you as if you are crazy. Propose that existing laws should take effect before new ones are introduced and expect a blank stare. After all, what are politicians for if not to bring in laws? “We legislate therefore we are,” should be written on the gates of the Palace of Westminster.
But what else are politicians for? Pray tell, Mr Johnston?
For those fed up with high taxes, street crime, late and dirty trains, inane regulations, the unjustified use of fines and charges, bloody-minded parking restrictions, excessive public sector waste, preposterous European directives, multi-culturalist busybodies, useless and unaccountable council officials and six-hour waits at the local hospital’s A&E centre, a shrug and a sigh are no longer enough.
And so what? What follows from that? If Mr Johnston is proposing that our time-honoured traditions of heavy sighing, eyeball-rolling, muttering and impotent resignation are no longer sufficient grist for the national mill, then so be it, but where do we go from there?
Yesterday afternoon I was out and about walking in London, and just before I got to Parliament Square I encountered a demo. It was not raucous or unpleasant. It was nice. It was old people complaining about their council taxes, which obviously I am all in favour of.
Following the example of supreme Samizdatista Perry de Havilland, I now take my DigiCam with me whenever I go a-wandering, so I was able to start snapping. At first it was just nice old people accompanied by nice policemen, with nice buildings in the background, but only very crude signs to say what it was all about. However patience was rewarded, and some of the signs were highly informative.
27.2%. Ouch! Whatever happened to stealth taxes? (Hey hey LBJ, you killed 27.2% more kids today than yesterday, you bad bad person. Not the same ring to it, somehow.)
And this one takes onlookers into the university lecture theatre.
Okay, okay, I’m excited, and I want to know more. How can I follow it up?
Wow, a website. They say, in fact Perry just said it to me in connection with this post, that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I reckon best of all is pictures with words embedded in the pictures, explaining everything. Preferably with an internet link.
On a long taxi ride through London this afternoon, I spotted an excellent article by Stephen Glover, of the Spectator, on the increasing government control of the UK press via its new ‘watchdog’ regulator (read: Censor). This is a splendiferous bureaucrat body bearing the relatively innocuous and seemingly inexpensive title of Ofcom:
Well worth a read. Let me supply you with a flavour:
Ofcom is the brainchild of an interfering and overbearing government. We have never been closer to state control of the press.
Hey, I could have written that, even in a really bad mood! I like it!
Say what you like about my MP, Boris Johnson, he does still occasionally knock out a magazine with the odd great article. What does surprise me about Mr Glover’s article is not the increasing control of the press from this New Labour Luvvie watchdog, but the parasitic salaries that these busy-bodies have awarded themselves. They are simply incredible:
The first thing we learnt was that the regulator had awarded more than 70 of its staff contracts worth more than £100,000 a year in pay and perks. This was significantly in excess of Ofcom’s earlier estimates. Evidently this new arm of the state will be quite a little gravy train. Lord Currie, the chairman, and, it so happens, a good friend of Gordon Brown’s, will be paid £133,000 a year for a four-day week. Stephen Carter, the regulator&’s chief executive, receives £250,000 a year.
Blimey O’Reilly!
Seventy apparatchiks on more than 100k a year, who do not actually produce anything except government censorship diktats. Incredible. Even Julius Caesar’s Romans would’ve blanched at this proto-imperial excess.
Well done Stephen Glover and Boris ‘The Blonde One’ Johnson for publicising this New Labour larceny and blatant attack on the UK free press. The Speccie will probably get their publication license revoked, as a result. But, heck. It will be worth it. Keep sticking it to them, Boris!
Dr Harold Shipman, one of the most prolific non-governmental mass murderers in recent history, has killed himself. There will be an enquiry as to why he was able to commit suicide, but to my mind the real mystery is not his death, for which few tears will be shed, but rather why he did the things he did.
Good riddance.
The reasoning is clear and simple: if you drive a car, you must have too much money for your own good. It is time that HMG relieved you of some of this burden:
Motorists convicted of speeding may have to pay compensation for victims, the government has proposed.
The plan, published on Monday, is one of several changes to the funding of victim support services.
Motorists given a prison term or suspended sentence would pay £30 to a Home Office fund providing victim and witness compensation and support.
Those fined for speeding or driving without insurance would face a levy of £5 or £10…
He said a victims fund would put more money into services such as practical support, information to victims of rape and sexual offences, road traffic accident victims and those who have been bereaved as a result of crime.
So, if you get caught speeding, you get punished for sexual offences and murders.
Not that the absurdity will matter in practice. I predict that not a single real victim of any real crime will ever see a single penny of that money ever.
When reading the Telegraph on Saturday, I came across an article tucked away somewhere on the fourth page that left me foaming at the mouth. It was about the plans expected in Labour’s next election manifesto to force taxpayers to contribute up to 30 per cent of the cost of running all political parties. I have been waiting to calm down so I can blog about it coherently, and today I noticed that the good Dr Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute has raised his voice already in a letter to the Editor of the Telegraph:
He [Lord Triesman, Labour’s ex-general secretary] says that sound policies need good research, and that is expensive. But taxpayers already pay huge amounts for policy research from our universities. And yet more is freely available from independent bodies and think-tanks.
Taxpayer funding only consolidates the status quo. It will go to the biggest existing parties. How are newcomers (and radical new ideas) to break through when the old guard is awash with funds to use against them?
I can just hear the Labour policy apparatchiks scratching their heads and saying Hmm, we haven’t thought of that, honest…
As Natalie Solent mentioned in a Samizdata.net article yesterday, Robert Kilroy-Silk is taking heavy flak for his remarks about the Arab world and has been brow beaten into a rather ignominious apology.
I was just interviewed on BBC News 24 to put my views on this affair and I pointed out that whilst I found his remarks full of nasty collectivist generalization, many of the points he made about what passes for civilization in the Arab world are simply facts… people do indeed get their limbs chopped off as punishment in Saudi Arabia, women are indeed second class citizens (if they are even citizens at all), human rights are ghastly across a great swathe of the Middle East, the last time the Muslim world was a hive of innovation was in the 12th Century etc. etc… all these things are simply facts.
Yet my point is not to defend Kilroy-Silk, of whom I am not a particular fan but rather to wonder why it is that Robert Fisk and John Pilger can make equally sweeping and egregiously collectivist statements about Israel and the United States without so much as a murmur from the Guardian reading classes?
I have been slightly ill for the last couple of days, and I still am. And one of the consequences of feeling ill is that if you are quite old, you also feel old. And one of the symptoms of advancing age is that you start to fret about how almost all the news seems to be bad. (Well, course it is bad. That is its nature.)
But today, not all. From today’s Independent:
The vast majority of people from ethnic minorities feel British even if they were not born in this country, according to a report from the National Statistics department.
Racial attacks and recent political gains by the British National Party are leading to long-established immigrants becoming increasingly determined to assert their right to be in this country, it is claimed.
The research by the department, formerly the Office of National Statistics, is the first time that ethnic minorities have been asked how they feel about their national identity, rather than about their actual origin. It revealed that both first generation immigrants and those who were British-born had a strong sense of identity with their adopted country.
It would seem that we here all have one thing to thank the BNP for, which is that by claiming loudly that all these newcomers are not British, they have provoked them into insisting that they are.
I recall attending a meeting about five years ago, it must have been, at which we all talked about ethnic issues – issues meaning when people with different coloured skins fight with and shout at each other – and I was struck by the vehemence with which some of the least white people (both visually and sociologically, so to speak) present were most vehement about being British. Struck, and rather pleased. And it seems that my merely anecdotal research has been duplicated nationally, and has come up with the same answer. And I’m very glad.
After all, one of the nightmare futures for this country was that it would stop being one country at all, to the point where different fragments of it became identified not just with different bits of the ex-country, but with different bits of the world. Like the Balkans, in other words, where three different world religions (Eastern Christianity, Western Christianity, and Islam) contend at one explosive meeting point. Was that the future my generation (the last “British” generation) had bequeathed to its descendants? Apparently not.
Of course this new Britain will be – already is – very different from the old one I grew up in, and in which my mother still lives, in the leafy suburbs of the extreme west of Surrey (the bit where Surrey, Middlesex and Berkshire meet, mostly peacefully). But since when was the deal ever that your country remained the same from one century to the next?
In many ways what this means is that Britain has become rather more like the USA, more a country of immigrants and less a country of people who can trace their ancestry back to the Norman Conquest (the Norman Conquest being the event that turned this country into an Anglo-French melting pot).
Many further questions remain unanswered by surveys like this. I wonder, how would the young son or grandson of a family recently arrived in Britain from India, say, have felt watching the brilliant production of Shakespeare’s Richard II that I watched last Monday evening on the television. And I wonder exactly what he would have made of the fact that the actor playing the Duke of Aumerle, one of the doomed Richard’s favourites, was played by a black (Afro-Caribbean) actor? (Maybe nothing at all.) Did that young man feel that this is his history he was watching, as well as mine? I don’t know, but I hope he did.
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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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