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In yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, Janet Daley refers to a major opinion survey. When asked the question of how they would help poor people with £200 pounds (about $360) only one per cent of the survey went for the option of giving the money to local government (even though this option said that that local government would have to spend the money on trying to help the poor) and ZERO per cent went for the option of giving the money to national government (even though, again, this option said that the government would have to use the money to try and help the poor).
The British public overwhelmingly opted for directly helping the poor themselves, or for giving the money to a private charity.
I know one can not trust opinion surveys, but it is possible that most British people are not really as collectivist as they sometimes seem.
At long last, the Liberal Democrats have promised to do something that will genuinely benefit the wider community:
The Liberal Democrats today vowed to deal with the “real” weapon of mass destruction, climate change, and put their environmental principles into action by making all future party conferences “carbon neutral”.
Yes, we can all look forward to a better world for our children if Liberal Democrats stop breathing.
When capital punishment was abolished in Britain in the 1960’s, the resulting public disquiet was mollified by assurances that convicted murderers would spend the rest of their lives in prison.
That assurance proved worthless. Over subsequent years, and by gradual degree, the span of ‘life sentences’ was whittled down to the point where a convicted murderer is now confined, on average, for between 10-12 years.
Apparently, even that is now far too draconian:
Some murderers could serve less than 10 years in prison under guidelines unveiled by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Woolf.
But it would only be in extraordinary circumstances – for example, if they had given themselves up before their crime had even been detected, he said.
The caveat of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ is a promise which will prove to be as valueless as the last one. Step-by-step and case-by-case, the defintion of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ will be widened to the point where convicted killers are routinely sentenced to spend a few hours exploring their inner child with a Court-appointed Outreach Counsellor.
Towards the end of the 19th Century the British State made a contract with its citizens the material terms of which required the individual citizen to surrender up their right to self-defence in return for the protection of the state which, by its agents, would both defend the citizen from harm and pursue and prosecute those who did (or attempted to do) the harm.
Gradually, but inexorably, the state has walked away from its side of that bargain. However, this would be no bad thing were the citizen likewise released from his or her obligations. If the entire contract was simply put in the shredder, it would, at least, leave us free to make our own arrangements for our self-defence and security. But this is not so. The citizen’s promises to relinquish the right and means of self-defence remain not only extant but zealoulsy enforced by the state which has decided that it does, indeed, take only one to tango.
The poor, willing, plodding, dutifully contracting citizen has now been placed in the worst possible situation: forbidden from defending their own life and limb and unable to call on anyone else to do so for them.
The perfect scenario for the perfectly predatory society.
One of the more shameful aspects of the British civil service is the contempt and indifference that it often shows towards former servicemen and women, often viewing their demands as an anachronistic embarrassment. This partially explains the lack of action given the foreseeable plight that over one thousand Commonwealth veterans now face in Zimbabwe.
This article in the Sunday Telegraph detailed the sad plight of veterans whose savings have been wiped out by Mugabe’s hyperinflation, whose lands have been confiscated by the war veterans and whose very lives are subjected to intimidation by ZANU-PF’S thugs. Their cause has been taken up by Col. Brian Nicholson of the Royal Commonwealth Ex-Services League, who has observed the impoverishment of the middle classes under the Mugabe regime.
Mr Mugabe has already closed many of the best schools and forced most of the white farmers out of the country. Now Col Nicholson fears Zanu-PF supporters will turn on the British war veterans, ransacking their homes, intimidating and possibly killing them.
Some may argue that many of the veterans were supporters of Ian Smith’s regime and UDI in the 1960s. As such, they deserve no further support or succour from HMG. These arguments have no bearing on the current vulnerability of this group who are now being targeted because of their origins.
Col Nicholson is circulating his report to senior military figures and other “influential people” and wants them to press the Government to offer immediate financial help and to implement an evacuation plan.
He said: “We are doing our best but we can’t do it alone. If nothing is done these brave, elderly people who fought for the Crown in the Second World War, defending the freedoms we enjoy today, will die an ignominious death.”
A Foreign Office spokesman said there were “no plans” to evacuate British war veterans in Zimbabwe. He added: “If people are impoverished we would offer the appropriate consular assistance on an individual basis.”
The stunt pulled by pro-hunting protestors of intruding into the inner sanctum of the House of Commons has produced a large number of very predictable responses. MPs and other establishment figures harrumphed that “Parliament’s privileges have been infringed!” and “This is an attack on democracy itself!” and “We must protect this most important of our institutions!” and “The protestors must not alienate people by acting so despicably!”…
Well I have a suggestion for the pro-hunt protestors: ignore all those remarks because the only way to win is to fight your battles on ground of your choosing. As David Carr pointed out earlier with regard to when one of the protestors in the Commons shouted “This isn’t democracy. You are overturning democracy.” – Wrong. This is democracy in action and you are on the receiving end of it.
What they really, really need to understand is that the majority of people in Britain are urban folk who are at best utterly indifferent to the protestor’s concerns and frequently somewhat hostile to them. The hunters and their supporters cannot hope to convince a majority that hunting is something that is either important or even needs to be tolerated.
Do not waste your time making arguments about ‘country livelihood’ or ‘managing pests’ because not only do most people not believe you (such as me, for example), most simply do not care because they feel no particular affinity with you. It is preposterous to argue that the only effective way to put down vermin is to chase them on horseback with hounds.
It is simply not a matter for highly questionable utilitarian arguments but rather for arguing for free association to do what you will on private property. That is the only coherent and more importantly resonant argument to make.
If gay men can congregate together in clubs to do things the majority of people find deeply distasteful, without having to worry about being raided by the fuzz, why cannot foxhunters congregate together to do things the majority find distasteful without worrying about the Boys in Blue showing up? Successfully point out to gay rights activists that making the prejudices of the majority the law of the land is not something they should be comfortable with… and suddenly the class warriors behind the hunting ban might find it much harder to ‘bash the toffs’ as the implications of where this is clearly heading starts to dawn on altogether different groups.
In short, stop making invocations to the graven idol called ‘Democracy’ because it will not hear your prayers. Accept that you are a heretic and raise up an idol of your own. Call it, say, ‘Liberty’ and then challenge your enemies to denounce it.
If you want to defend your liberty to do things in free association with likeminded folk on private property, you will have to come to some very sobering realisations. → Continue reading: Confronting reality
Sometimes it takes a stark juxtaposition to shine the spotlight on the vacuity and moral cowardice of our Fourth Estate.
I was watching the early evening ‘news’ yesterday on ITV1, the more popular terrestrial, commercial station. This is something I can bring myself to do only very occasionally as commercial TV “news” presenters are such unwavering amplifiers of fatuous Nulabour propoganda that they make the average BBC reporter look like Rush Limbaugh in comparison.
Yesterday evening’s first (and, by scheduling implication, most urgent) item was a piece of political agitprop by some organisation calling itself ‘Mothers Against Guns’, barely dressed up a ‘news’ feature.
Not content with the strictest anti-gun laws in the Western world, these people are upset because (wait for it) replica guns are still commercially available. Rooted to the spot, I squirmed through the next five minutes of shockingly blatant manipulation mixed in with junk statistics that were so obviously and ridiculously fraudulent as to be beyond parody. “Nine Tenths of all deaths in this country are caused by replica firearms which are converted to fire real ammunition”. Yes, the Mothers Against Gun frontwoman actually said that and got clean away with it. → Continue reading: How about ‘Mothers Against Victimhood’?
Parliament today finally voted by a substantial majority to outlaw hunting with hounds:
MPs have voted to ban hunting with dogs despite mass demonstrations and the debate in the House of Commons being interrupted by protesters.
The ‘fearless and principled’ Tony Blair (having pushed this law forward as a sop to his increasingly fractious party) failed to show up for the debate and did not even bother to vote.
But plenty of hunt supporters did show up to rally outside the Houses of Parliament in a protest that turned into a pitched battle. By 5.00pm this afternoon, the radio news networks were reporting that Westminster had been closed off by the chaos and blood on the streets. Five hunt supporters even managed to invade the floor of the House of Commons:
It was shortly after 1620 BST that the protesters rushed in, with one shouting at Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael: “This isn’t democracy. You are overturning democracy.”
Wrong. This is democracy in action and the hunters are on the receiving end of it. Tempers are flared:
“Banning Easy, Enforcement Impossible – That’s A Promise” and “Tally Ho Tony, We’re Off Hunting” suggested many would not see a ban as the final word.
Particularly popular among the younger protesters were T-shirts which had hijacked French Connection’s controversial slogan to read “FCUK yer ban”.
“These people are very angry,” said Davina Morley, 53, from Yorkshire, who has been hunting all her life.
This is not the end. It is just the beginning.
NO2ID is launching its activities publicly:
Saturday, 18 September
11:00am – 2:00pm
The Corner Store
Covent Garden
33 Wellington Street,
London, WC2E 7BN, Map
There will be a couple of speakers before lunch, including a Labour ‘rebel’, Neil Gerrard MP followed by campaigning around central London, i.e. handing out leaflets, setting up stalls on the street in a number of locations until mid-afternoon.
Please join them to Stop ID Cards and the Database State!
The NO2ID Coalition, who are trying to make sure Blunkett fails in his attempts to introduce mandatory ID cards, argue that:
Cross-posted from White Rose.
One of the downmarket rags that sullies the newsstand on Sunday mornings here in Britain, The People, reports on a story that is so absurd that I would think it an urban legend if I had not read the official reaction to it. A man who works for Southern Railways and scrawls a daily joke on a whiteboard at Hove Station in order to cheer up miserable commuters has been suspended from his job, pending an official investigation. Why? Because one of his jokes was about a dyslexic who went to a toga party dressed as a goat. According to a Southern Railways official:
We had three complaints in two hours. Certain people do find things offensive and you have to be very careful these days. Some people might have found it amusing but we have to cater for all our customers.
Yes, “certain people” definitely make it their business to be offended by things. Howsabout ignoring them and catering for the customers who find it offensive that Southern Railways could be so incredibly silly? Another rail official tried to justify the suspension and investigation thusly:
It is something that could contravene our equal opportunities policy.
This is not “political correctness gone mad”. It is madness masquerading as corporate responsibility.
… but if you think that means the idea of banning smoking in the UK has been condemned, you would be wrong. The headline appeared in the Telegraph above the article reporting that plans to restrict areas for smokers in pubs were denounced as inadequate last night by campaigners pressing for a ban.
The anti-smoking campaigners denounced the agreement of more than 20,000 pubs in Britain to introduce restrictions on smoking to make around 80 per cent of bar space tobacco-free within five years. Smokers in these outlets would be restricted to specified areas or rooms.
The ‘anti-choice extremists’ for the smoking ban, apparently encouraged by evidence suggesting that a big drop in tobacco sales in Ireland due the prohibition on smoking in pubs, are pushing for more. Deborah Arnott, director of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), said:
This is a last desperate throw of the dice by the biggest players in the pub trade. They spin their plans as a smoke-free initiative, but they are nothing of the kind.
They will still leave their non-smoking customers gasping and leave more than half the country’s pubs unaffected.
I must be missing something, I did not notice any spin for a smoke-free initiative. It is a question of choice, not an imposition of a health-fascist measure.
Rob Hayward of the British Beer and Pub Association, which brokered the deal, argued with sensible points:
Clearly with the number of non-smokers on the increase companies want to reflect that in the way they run their pubs. We want to see better choice for non-smokers. At the same time we believe in freedom of choice and a policy that will still allow smokers to enjoy a night out with their friends in the pub.
Indeed. I do not like cigarette smoke in pubs, bars and restaurants although I am partial to a good cigar. But I do like the right of owners to let customers do in them what they wish on their premises. And it seems that even a government survey cannot produce better than 20 percent support for a total ban.
Surveys nothwithstanding, the ban in Ireland caused a 15 per cent drop in trade. A similar loss of business in Britain would lead to the closure of 5,000 pubs. And that’s got to be a bad thing.
Today’s edition of Britain’s Sun tabloid features five readers who demand: “End our childcare misery, Mr Blair“. That so many middle and working class people in this country turn to the state to solve any challenges they face in life is, if depressing, unsurprising when one considers the prevailing British attitude towards government’s role in individuals’ lives. This comment from PM Tony Blair sums it up succinctly enough:
Some mothers will want to stay at home and look after their children, and that’s fine. But if they don’t we have to support them.
Actually, Mr Blair, we do not have to support financially any person who chooses to have children and then chooses to rely on others to look after them while they go out to work. (You may feel you need to ‘support’ them in order to be re-elected, but let us not confuse what you do in the interests of your career with what is right.)
I understand the dilemma – one may want to have children but not be able to afford to do so without earning a certain income, which may require full- or part-time work – but one makes such choices and then deals with the consequences. I doubt seriously that any of the women in the Sun asking Mr Blair to ‘end the misery’ of having to struggle to raise children on limited budgets, whose ages range from 31 to 39, went into parenthood without realising that making ends meet would be a concern. Kids are expensive, and although there are ways to make them less expensive (even the wealthiest parents I know buy and sell baby gear and other children’s stuff on eBay or in consignment shops or at NCT sales), people decide to have them with the full realisation that this life they are creating will need to be looked after and cared for. With that comes expense, and the need to work out how to meet that expense. All pretty basic stuff, one would think. But reading the complaints of parents who think that the state should be easing their burdens – brought about by choices they have made – with other peoples’ money, it becomes clear that we have in this country bred a population of adults who think and behave like children. I will do what I like – it will be fine! (But somebody better be there to rescue me and kiss my boo-boos better if it is not.)
Perhaps it is a shame that life is not so easy that we cannot always have everything our hearts desire (children, enough money in the bank, personal fulfilment outside of stay-at-home parenthood, trendy, slightly politically subversive t-shirts for our babies), but that is not a situation that the state can change with any amount of money they may take fom you and me.
“But think of the children!” comes the usual plaintive wail. To do so is terrifying: a nation of babies raising babies can only end in tears. How much will we be expected to spend on cleaning up this spill before the idea that individual choices matter ceases to be answered with a “Yes, but…” and a tax demand?
Hate crime. What it is exactly? Opinions vary but in essence it means that a given crime, such as assault, murder or defamation, will be treated more seriously if the perpetrator is judged to be motivated by certain politically disfavoured prejudices.
It means that if someone smashes a bottle in your face because you are black (or catholic or muslim or homosexual), rather than because they want to steal your wallet or because they caught you in flagrante delicto with their girlfriend, then that is more serious. The actual substance of the crime is not what makes it a ‘hate’ crime, just the motivation to commit it against a member of a designated group of people based on their race (which in reality means ‘certain races’), religions (meaning ‘certain religions’) or sexual orientations (meaning ‘homosexuals’), that then becomes a hate crime… crimes against philanderers, drunks, football supporters, loud mouths etc. are not hate crimes.
You may hate supporters of Celtic Football Club but if you bash one of them over the head with a two by four, that is not a ‘hate crime’, it is just assault and perhaps GBH. Unless of course the Celtic supporter in question happens to be a nominal Catholic but you are a nominal Protestant.
It is a criminal act which attracts extra sanction because of what the perpetrator was thinking at the time. In short, a ‘hate crime’ is a ‘thought crime’, albeit one usually only applied to thoughts held by certain politically disfavoured classifications of people.
Do you really trust something as corrupt and fallible as a political process to create laws not on demonstrable facts (who hit who with the two by four) but on what people think? Sure, motivation matters: for example being put in fear of your life can justify violence in self-defence, even (sometimes) in Britain. But to legislate that certain groups are more sacrosanct than others is collectivism at its most intellectually pernicious because it denies the individual basis of rights and assigns value on the basis of group membership. We all know where that can end up.
If you think laws should be based on crimes against individuals regardless of what race/religion or sexual orientation they have, then you might want to go over to the Hansard Society on-line consultation on Hate Crime in Northern Ireland and tell them that group rights are not a form of human rights, they are their antithesis.
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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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