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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Ms Shipley, a Labour MP, says allowing the adverts for burgers, biscuits, crisps and fizzy drinks to appear between programmes watched by the under-fives counters the government’s efforts to encourage healthy eating. And so she hopes that ministers will listen to her arguments and back her Children’s Television (Advertising) Bill, which will outlaw advertising during pre-school children’s TV programmes that feature food and drink high in fat, salt and sugar.
My bill will ensure that children’s health is placed before commercial interests.
Ms Shipley, responsible for the Protection of Children Act 1999, is supported by more than 100 MPs and 90 national organisation, including the National Heart Forum, Women’s Institute, National Union of Teachers and National Consumer Council.
I have been overwhelmed by the massive favourable response my proposals have received from parents, health professionals and the wider public. There is a growing consensus that a ban is the only way forward as self-regulation is demonstratively not working. Unfortunately, some sections of the food and advertising industries have not heeded the public and professional calls for responsible marketing.
Responsible marketing?! But of course! The left honorable Lady knows what’s right for our children and if the companies are just not going to listen, well, we will have to do something about that (defiant look, tight lips, chin out). Yes, we shall bloody make it a law so all those disgusting images will not pollute our children’s pure souls… and bodies. Bad, bad companies. BAN THEM!
It is a knee-jerk reaction, yet another page from the government’s book of we-know-what’s-good-for-you-and-we-will-force-you-do-it-even-if-it-kills-you.
I am no fan of junk food that I think is an Abomination unto Gastronomy and neither am I fond of large companies that in their enormity occasionally start behaving like states. But proposing a law that bans adverts of greasy food and sugary drinks is the most stark example of the dellusions governments suffer about their role in the society and individuals’ lives. The quote from Brian’s excellent post about the menace of government’s attempt to deliver outcomes contains the right message:
Government is not there to promote all the virtues. It is not there even to restrain or punish all vices. It is there to restrain and punish a very restricted set of vices, of the kind that cause direct and unjustified hurt to others, of the sort which if unpunished and unrestrained would mean people regularly coming to blows with each other. As individuals, government ministers may regret the fact that so many of us fail to display as much in the way of virtue as they might individually like, but so long as we do not do too much, too obviously, of the vice variety, they will not, in their official capacity, bother us.
Hear, hear, the honorable Lady and Gentlemen.
What on earth is the use of having friends in high places if they can’t do you the odd favour now and then?
The wife of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding father, was pushed ahead in the queue for emergency treatment at an NHS hospital after Government officials intervened on her behalf, it was claimed yesterday.
Mr Lee said that his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, 82, who had suffered a stroke, was given a brain scan four and a half hours earlier than planned at the Royal London Hospital after medical staff were contacted by Downing Street.
Using political leverage to get better treatment is just so much more ethical than paying for it.
This is excellent news. More and faster, please.
This posting now is rather non-topical, in that the clutch of words it refers back to was emitted three weeks ago in a news story about how our Prime Minister is going to stop us all getting so fat. I paid attention to this anti-fat initiative because I was interviewed on the radio about it, and one particular little phrase associated with this story has since stuck in my mind. I still have some print-outs of the relevant media coverage. Here’s how the Observer reported it:
In a letter to Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, a copy of which has been leaked to The Observer, Blair spells out what he sees as the Government’s failure to promote exercise: ‘Government policy has not delivered the outcomes we want in this area,’ he writes. ‘We have started to make progress on the school sport agenda, but also need to more effectively tackle activity levels in the adult population.’
Referring to the Government’s long-term target of getting 70 per cent of people physically active by 2020, the letter, written in July, states: ‘We need an ambitious delivery strategy, using the Olympic bid as a catalyst, to develop more innovative and interventionist policies across the public, private and voluntary sectors in both health and sport if that target is to be achieved.’
Setting aside the nightmare vision of the Olympic Games being held in Britain and coinciding with a government propaganda barrage tell us all to do physical jerks, the phrase that interested me here was Tony Blair’s reference to the government not having “delivered the outcomes” that he wanted. → Continue reading: The menace of “delivering outcomes”
For reasons I cannot even begin to adequately explain, the gatherings of the increasingly angry and militant pro-hunt movement conjours up ‘spaghetti western’ images in my head; the brooding silence, the tumbleweed, the flinty, menacing stares and the ‘man’s-gotta-do-what-a-man’s-gotta-do’ atmosphere of grim resolve.
Yes, somewhere out in merciless, sun-baked badlands, guns are being greased and cheroots are being lit. The Hunting Clan is fixin’ for a showdown:
Thousands of people have gathered around England and Wales to protest against moves to outlaw hunting with dogs.
Organisers said 37,000 protesters at 11 rallies on Saturday and one on Friday, to mark the first day of the new hunting season, signed a pledge to ignore any ban.
Alright, it is actually the middle of the verdant English countryside, but you get the gist.
Having failed in their appeals to reason, common sense and principle, the hunters are still threatened with a government prohibition that will eradicate a centuries-old tradition and the way of rural life that has grown up around it. They are being ‘run out of town’ for no better reason than that they are perceived as an easy target for a government that wants to score cultural ‘brownie points’ with the metropolitan elite.
So the hunters have decided that they are not going to be such an easy target after all. I do not see what else they can do. It is fight or die and they have chosen the former:*
The Declaration is an opportunity for those who support the freedom to hunt to demonstrate to the public, press, Peers, parliamentarians and the Government that we will never accept unjust law. Critically, it aims to convey in an unambiguous way that enough people are committed to either refusing to accept any law that comes into effect (if it does) that any such law would be unenforceable and so fail.
While the language is temperate, the intention is unambiguous: they intend a campaign of civil disobedience. It is an open and explicit challenge to the authority of the British government. What started as protest has become insurrection.
It is still not clear whether the government will press ahead with the abolition of hunting in England and Wales (the ban has already passed into law in Scotland). But, if they do, and these people are good to their pledge, then they are quite capable of making life very difficult indeed for the authorities. In effect, a low-level civil war will be waged in the English countryside.
Regardless of whether or not that scenario comes to pass, I get the feeling that the hunters have started something that will have consequences in the future. The Labour government’s sustained attacks on rural England have led to an awful lot of people getting angry, getting political and getting organised and of such activism are revolutionary movements born. I have no idea how long it will take or what it will become but I do strongly suspect that the countryside movement will metastasise into something much broader and wider than the issue of fox-hunting.
[*The link is to the homepage of the Hunting Declaration where sympathisers can download a copy of the Declaration to sign and send in with or without a donation to the cause.]
So Dianne Abbott’s decision to send her son to a private school is indefensible.
Says who? Says Ms Abbott:
On BBC2’s This Week, Miss Abbott, a member of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, said: “I’ve said very little about this because anything you say just sounds self-serving and hypocritical. You can’t defend the indefensible.
Since Ms Abbot appears to be lost for words, allow me to assist. Here are a few things Diane Abbott could say:
- “I have realised that education is too important to be left to the state.”
- “Perhaps everyone should have as much choice as I do.”
- “If I am not prepared to condemn my child to the state system, why should anyone else?”
- “The pursuit of equality for all means everyone gets crap.”
But Ms Abbot has not said any of those things. And she never will.
Future Conservative UK? It might stand for something else too and no, I did not have ‘French Connection’ in mind. You choose.
Over on the Adam Smith Institute blog, there is much speculation going on about the shape of the future Tory front bench.
I am only passingly curious as to who will be presiding over the continuing erosion of our civil liberties in the next government, regardless of which statist party wins, but I realise other people live for this stuff, hence the link to the worthy ASI blog… I will be pleasantly surprised if it makes a whole lot of difference. Presumably the tax burden will be (slightly) less under a Tory government.
However if you like what David ‘Big’ Blunkett has done to civil liberties in the UK, might I remind you that all he did was successfully implement most of the measure than Michael Howard was pushing for (largely) unsuccessfully as Home Secretary in the previous Tory government. Now imagine such a man not as Home Secretary but as Prime Minister. Lovely, eh?
And I don’t suppose I need remind anyone here who it was that introduced the complete ban and confiscation of handguns in Britain, except those used by the state of course… any takers on that question? And would anyone like to remind us by how much gun crime has fallen now that they are completely illegal in the UK? Any one?
Mr Duncan Smith has become famous at last. He has also managed to get 45 per cent in a confidence vote. To British readers, used to three way elections where such a score would guarantee a big majority in the House of Commons, IDS seems to have done well. But in a two way contest, especially as the incumbent, it’s not so good.
I recall that François Mitterand had the nickname "Monsieur 45 pour cent" because he could never break that barrier in French presidential election contests from the 1960s until 1981. For my part, I really thought that Mr Duncan Smith would be a lot more capable than he in fact turned out to be.
Lucky Tony Blair. Unlucky Gordon Brown.
In an hour from now, we will know if Iain Duncan Smith has survived as leader of the Tory Party…
…or more accuratly, some of you will know, because I have just noticed that there is going to be a fascinating wildlife documentary about the mating habits of the Northumbrian Lesser Spotted Leaping Tree Vole on one of the documentary cable channels.
Update: 
Ruth Lea, the head of policy at Britain’s Institute of Directors (IoD), has been fired. What a pity. Lea put forward views that truly took account of the needs of business, even though the government did not like them.
On an unrelated point, I wonder if George Cox, the IoD’s Director General, is now in line for a knighthood?
To all outward appearances, the Conservative Party has gone mad, and many of its most rabid enemies will now be rejoicing at the turmoil now afflicting it.
Just when the Conservatives ought to be uniting, concentrating on the issues, attacking the government, pulling together, speaking with a united voice, racing ahead in the polls, blah blah, they are instead deep into a leadership battle, concerning the future of a man who has yet to lead them into a General Election. What kind of mad bastard loser psychopath idiots are these people?
That’s the text. But I think that this is a case where the subtext is far, far more important – the subtext and the context.
The context first. For the first time since it was elected over six years ago the Labour government is in serious trouble, six years being the usual time it takes, for some reason, for a Labour government to fall to bits. The Iraq war has turned a relatively amicable coalition of semi-normals and lefties into a shouting match, and the manifest failure of the government to sort out “public services” by any means other then chucking money at them has finally become obvious to all. The honeymoon, the benefit of doubt, wait and see – all that’s coming to an end.
At the deeper level of things, Europe is turning from a Labour issue back to being a Conservative issue. Because of the expansion of Europe, the case for serious deregulation in defiance of the Franco-German axis is now seriously puttable. And ask yourself this: which party of the big two feels more comfortable with such pro-free-market rhetoric? This stuff will play well with the Conservatives and only cause yet more havoc within Labour. The times they are a-changin’ and in a profoundly Conservative direction.
And this – and now I’m moving to the subtext bit – is precisely why the Conservatives are now in such turmoil. Suddenly, it matters who their leader is. This is now a job worth having. → Continue reading: The dogs of Conservatism – fighting now, hunting soon
I have been struggling to find a slick way to use the phrase the ‘gobbledegook’ in this sorry little saga but however I stack it, it still sounds clunky.
Let’s just say, as ye sow so shall ye reap. [From the UK Times.]
TURKEY farmers are barricading their premises to prevent the spread of a savage disease after Brussels banned the only drug that can eradicate it. Ten million turkeys being reared for the £100 million Christmas trade are at risk from blackhead (Histomanos meleagridis), which can destroy entire flocks.
The disease, which enters the gut of birds and attacks their liver, has broken out in France, Germany and the Netherlands and farmers fear that it will be carried into Britain by migrating birds. East Anglia and Kent are particularly vulnerable.
Two predictions:
- It will transpire that this drug was banned as a result of ferocious lobbying by the enviro-mentalists.
- The EUnuchs will try and find some way to blame this whole farrago on the Americans in general and George Bush in particular.
As luck would have it, there is no category called ‘Honking Great Hypocrisies’ so I have had to settle for filing this under ‘Education’ instead.
But that’s appropriate too because this story is nothing if not instructive:
Labour leaders backed Diane Abbott, the Left-wing MP, yesterday over her decision to educate her son privately, days after condemning a Tory MP for saying he would do the same.
Ms Abbott has used her wealth, status and privilege to give her child the best, as is befitting the ruling elite. In fact, Ms Abbott is merely following in the best traditions of Britain’s socialist politicians who have always had a curious and inexplicable penchant for both private education and healthcare (while publicly denouncing both).
Labour MPs were taken by surprise by the news that she had chosen the £10,000-a-year City of London Boys School for her son, by-passing four comprehensives in Hackney and Stoke Newington, the constituency she represents.
In the past Miss Abbott has criticised the Prime Minister, for rejecting schools in Islington and sending his sons to the London Oratory School in Fulham, and Harriet Harman, the Solicitor General, for choosing a grammar school outside her constituency. She once said of Miss Harman: “She made the Labour Party look as if we do one thing and say another.”
Now where would anyone get that crazy, zany idea?
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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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