All is well at the Samizdata.net HQ as one of its current inhabitants missed the blackout by a few minutes having just left the affected area. The blackout was reported to have ocurred at 18.20, halted the traffic in Central London with effects spreading as far as M25 (a beltway surrounding the London metropolitan area). I left the City, which has the post code EC1 after 17.30 and managed to avoid the traffic lights failure all the way to South West London. As far as I know there was no power failure in this part of town and everything seems fine now everywhere.
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Am I the only one to find the Hutton Inquiry news coverage terribly boring and trivial? Almost the entirety of ITV news tonight was taken up by it. The feeding frenzy is so all encompassing George Bush was blamed for a world problem only once or twice in the entire hour! I humbly submit I’d prefer Tony Blair to come out of this with his teflon coating intact. Why? If he loses and resigns we might well find ourselves governed by Gordon Brown. If Tony wins, the BBC can be taken down that final peg or two. It could lose its’ semi-governmental ability to tax every telly in the land. Tony’s time in power is limited but the Beeb is forever. Let’s think of the long term. August 28th, 2003 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 News says there is a massive electrical grid failure in London and lots of the London Underground is out of service. I’m sure we’ll hear more from our London HQ if the lights are on there… August 28th, 2003 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
With a single bound, he’s once again overcome his latest ‘greatest test’, the Prime Minister who claims to be both responsible for everything, including all the decisions, but who didn’t know anything, or indeed take any of the decisions. Confused? That’s what we’re all meant to be. What a performance. You’ve got to hand it to him, Teflon Tony, the wizard apprentice of Slick Willy. He really has become the Master. However, this showdown today was never going to see Tony storming from the witness box to drive up to Windsor to tender his resignation to Her Majesty in a fit of petulance. He’s had the government’s finest lawyers and QCs rolling him over red-hot coals for five days, attacking him in every possible way, to prepare him for this, plus years of experience shrugging off John Humphrys et al, in hundreds of tough media interviews. But Downing Street’s QCs haven’t been entirely successful mainly because Geoff Hoon refused to lie down and die, yesterday. Blair has therefore been forced to adopt the American presidential stand-by defence, the passive voice of deniability. Remember this?:
Who made them? Everybody. Who in particular? Nobody in particular, and besides, it’s all water under the bridge anyway, so could we move on now, and draw a line under this whole thing? Marvellous. But I’m afraid Mr Blair, that Mr Richard Nixon tried this line once too, and look what happened to him. I don’t know if there are any smoking tapes here, or whether Dr David Kelly was the Deep Throat of this piece, who had to be silenced by MI6, but there is something very rotten in the state of Denmark this day, and the smell is still very clearly emanating from 10 Downing Street. And it is not going to go away, however fond your hopes remain that it will. You may even be telling the truth, most of the time. But nobody, including even you, knows when that is. Which 5% is the lying 5%? Or is it 10% of lies? Or is it 50% of lies? I know some of it is lies. But is all of it lies? Surely not? It’s so hard to tell as we watch that Cheshire-cat smile slide all over your face. I do know two things for certain though, Mr Blair. You will never again see a glad confident morning, so long as you remain in British politics, and it’s going to be great fun watching you go down. Is that cruel of me? Possibly, but I’ve paid for the privilege and I’m going to make the most of it. August 28th, 2003 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yesterday saw some interesting developments at the Hutton inquiry: Mr Doberman: Have you anything to say for yourself, Mr Hoon? Hoon: Yes. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. It was someone else. Mr Doberman: So you didn’t do it? Hoon: No. It was that other bloke, you know, the other fella. But it certainly wasn’t me. Mr Doberman: But you still take the full buck-stopping Cabinet salary as a Secretary of State for the Ministry of Defence? Hoon: Oh yes. I love earning well over a hundred and thirty grand a year. Mr Doberman: For doing little that anyone can clearly discern? Hoon: Yes, Mr Doberman. That’s right. I really do know absolutely nothing. I was only obeying my permanent secretary’s orders. Mr Doberman: So what are you then, Mr Hoon? Are you a hopeless liar? Or are you a hapless goon? Hoon: No, it’s ‘Hoon’, ‘Geoff Hoon’. Mr Doberman: Thank you, Mr Goon. No further questions. So it seems today is Antony Charles Linton Blair’s Big Day Out. His last Blairite ex-friend in the Cabinet, Geoff Hoon, has stitched him up big time, good and proper, a man obviously unprepared to fall on his sword to protect the Master. Which is just as well, seeing as the Master was going to drop Hoon down a chute, feed him to the wolves, and forget him as yesterday’s bad rubbish. So like rats in a trap they’ve all finally turned upon one another. And a certain James Gordon Brown circles the rats, grinning from ear to ear. And who can blame him? I suspect the Master will still make it through today though, almost in one piece, but with the Hutton report hanging over him like the sword of Damocles. But it’s going to be a helluva dogfight, it seems, to get rid of Hoon, who doesn’t appear to be doing the decent thing and going gracefully. And then it’s going to be that great big Cabinet office for Blair with not a friend in sight, Brownites to the left of me, Brownites to the right of me, here I am, stuck in the middle facing the Chancellor. Oh to be a fly on the wall. Latest Duncan Fortune 500 betting odds? Blair out by bonfire night (November 5th), retired, injured hurt. I must brush up on some biographies of Gordon. August 28th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
So did you vote for Ken Livingstone, at the last London mayoral election? Are you pleased? No doubt many voted for Ken to try to wipe the smile off Tony Blair’s perma-grin face, but a few are now beginning to regret their actions. The average London poll tax payer is now contributing over £220 pounds a year to fund Ken’s baronial circus, on the Thames, with most of it going on the 640 bureaucrats and image consultants he employs to project his avuncular Big Brother image around the capital. His solution-is-worse-than-the problem congestion charge, currently being swamped by the legal costs of two-finger-saluting defaulters, has severely curtailed trade in the West End, particularly the pre-theatre restaurant trade, and his plans to the increase the usage of those very long and very empty bendy-buses, which dribble continuously past my current client’s offices here in Holborn, will put another additional £200 pounds onto the poll tax payers’ bills, at the very least. So are you still glad you voted for him? Yes, there’s the rapacious Gordon Brown and his thirst for stamp duty, both on house sales and share transactions, which is draining the carotid arteries of London’s economic golden goose, but if you think you could spend £420 pounds a year, of your own money, better than Big Ken does right now on social engineering, it may be time to start thinking of another lizard to vote for next time. Unfortunately, Mr Schwarzenegger is unavailable. → Continue reading: The Oyster-Catcher August 27th, 2003 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
On Wednesday evening, for reasons too complicated to explain (which partly have to do with the disaster that is transport in London), I found myself walking down the high street of Clapham in wonderfully multi-ethnic south London. (This is not the same place as Clapham Junction, which is some distance away). This area seemed to have more nice bars and restaurants than it did the last time I was there, and half way down the street I saw a place called the “Bierodrome“. Despite this slightly silly name, I looked at the menu beside the door and saw a vast number of fine Belgian beers listed. As I am a little partial to fine Belgian beer, I walked in and sat down. Most of the beers were bottled, but they had around ten on tap. I ordered a Grimbergen Blonde. This is not an especially obscure beer, but it is certainly a good one. When you go into a bar in Belgium, every beer has its own special glass. These have the name of the beer on the side, and vary in shape depending on the kind of beer, as (it is claimed) different styles of beer taste best in different shaped glasses. Some of the weirdly curved glasses also look kind of cute. The size of the glass also varies from beer to beer. This definitely makes sense, as beers differ greatly in texture and alcoholic strength. It also gives Belgian bars some of their character. Walk into a good bar, and there will be hundreds of different glasses on the shelf behind the barman. Belgian beers are often 7%, 8%, 9% alcohol, and these are best consumed in relatively small quantities. The Grimbergen Blond was at 7% only moderate by Belgian standards, but rather strong by English standards. When I ordered the beer, I didn’t specify a size, as I just expected that I would be given a size appropriate to the beer in question, as happens in Belgium. However, I was given a cute, curved, Belgian style glass, but very big. I asked the barman, and he explained that it was a pint. You see, I was in England. If you are in England and order a beer without specifying the size, a pint is what you get. With English beer this is excellent. In fact, it is superb. English beer is usually (but not always) weaker than some continental drinks, and lends itself to larger glasses. That was fine. → Continue reading: English beer measures and the liberal French state. August 25th, 2003 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
I cannot recall hearing of such a petulant outburst from the normally stately and dignified BBC:
Sounds like my kind of guy.
Methinks the executives of the BBC sense that they are in trouble. They realise that ‘Auntie’ no longer enjoys an exalted status as a national treasure and, hence, is vulnerable. The time-honoured and global reputation for fairness, accuracy and objectivity is something they have dined out on, abused and terminally tarnished. And, even if this were not the case, in an era when the market provides so many choices, it is impossible to stem the growing discontent with the arcane and punitive television tax that funds the BBC. But it’s all the fault of Rupert Murdoch and his band of evil capitalists. (Oh, and George Bush of course). August 25th, 2003 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
From the manner in which our governing elites regulate, restrict, control, prohibit and monitor every jot and tittle of our lives, it is probably reasonable to infer that they imagine themselves to be presiding over a motley and sordid collection of cut-throats, gangsters, thieves, perverts, racists, conmen and every other manner of low and untrustworthy creature. This is the diametric opposite of the truth. On the whole, the British are civil, law-abiding and touchingly decent. Personally, I put this down to our common law heritage. How strange, then, that there appears to be no public concern whatsoever about an organisation based in this country and whose members clearly feel confident enough to openly publish and distribute such disturbing sentiments:
Well, at least they’re not going fox-hunting (I assume). I remain a passionate advocate of free speech. I think these people should be able to say whatever they want to say. However, and by the same token, other people are free to draw from it whatever conclusions they see fit. [My thanks to the crew at Gene Expression for the link.] August 25th, 2003 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
In a post about a month ago, I detailed the rubber-gloved rise of the rubbish inspectors, the latest bunch of useless bureaucrats to feast upon the fat of Britain’s once glorious but increasingly manacled land. It seems their army is still on the march to its place in the sun of the regulatory annals of glory. As part of the excellent Stephen Robinson’s Free Country series, Mr Robinson details how these rubbish inspectors are now to increase their own powers of land rulership. Now that the problem of fly-tipping has grown exponentially over the last few years, due to idiotarian government policies on landfill taxes and fridge disposal, instead of the government finding fly-tipping miscreants and protecting people’s property, it is going to punish these injured parties if they don’t foot the bill themselves to enforce the government’s policies against fly-tipping. Which is simply splendid, don’t you think? (Fly-tipping is the process where expensive-to-dispose-of waste is dumped illegally upon other people’s property.) So where you used to think you paid taxes to the state, so they would provide a minimal level of defence against your property, and your person, against ne’er-do-wells, now they’re going to punish you for the actions of these other low-lifes, and still charge you for the police, without actually giving you the benefit of their protection. No doubt as well as having to set up CCTV around your property, for the government’s eye-spy benefit, you will have to pay to have any fly-tipped rubbish on your land sent to government waste disposal centres. Where obviously you will be asked to pay your full quota of landfill taxes, on someone else’s rubbish. And if you don’t do this, the government will, of course, send the boys-in-blue round to make you. Doesn’t this remind you of anything? A mafia protection racket, for instance? All round the government is a winner. It gets more cameras, for free, and more revenue, for free, and the UK’s citizens are wrapped up in yet another layer of interfering regulation, and still HMG can sit smugly around whatever’s left of the Kyoto protocol table to claim that Her Majesty’s Government is the font of all light and all goodness. Doesn’t it make you proud to be British? August 22nd, 2003 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
A little boy called Arran Fernandez that’s who. This lad is clever enough to have caught the attention of the UK Times [No link – you know the drill]:
‘A’ is the top grade and the GCSE is a national examination paper for pupils of age sixteen.
So little Arran must be the brainiest kid in his school, right? Wrong. Because little Arran doesn’t go to ‘school’ at all:
Another successful product of Britain’s small, but growing, home-school movement, I’d say.
Because so many generations of parents assigned those abilities over to the state, doubtless believing that the state would do a better job of it. That same state is likely to respond to the increasingly successful reclamation by trying to put a stop to it. August 22nd, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
How frightfully decent of those splendid chaps at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to set up an online-forum to enable the riff-raff to contribute their thoughts and ideas on the proposed EU Constitution. Registration is a pre-requisite to participation but at least it appears to be cost-free (which is a lot more than anyone can say about participation in the EU itself). So, is this a genuine effort to solicit and publicise pro-Independence opinion or a potemkin facade calculated to provide a veneer of legitimacy to a decision that has already been made behind doors welded shut? Another website established by the Foreign Office may hold just a few clues. [My thanks to Emmanuel Goldstein for both links.] August 22nd, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
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