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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It is a little known fact but Britain is a world-leader in the manufacture and distribution of paranoia. We even export it.
For most of the time our public officials are hard at work busily churning out the stuff for both the domestic and foreign markets. But, what happens when one health-panic runs headlong into another? Well, the whole machine just grinds to an embarrassing halt:
A council has forbidden pupils to apply sunscreen in school – in case other children suffer an allergic reaction.
Cancer Research UK, which launched the Sun Smart campaign to warn of the dangers of the sun, said it was “amazed” by the policy.
Manchester City Council says it is following health and safety guidelines.
Pity the poor child, stuck out on a limb, while two different nannies squawk at them with two entirely conflicting demands. Maybe the nannies could solve the problem (and do everyone a real favour) by just dropping dead from worry.
“I think we were bamboozled by the Prime Minister into doing the right thing.”
– Michael Portillo on This Week, BBC1, small hours of today
Last night the BBC showed, on Newsnight, a report about why Tony Blair is so well-liked in the USA. He is a persuasive debater and arguer. The USA’s right wingers like him because he stood shoulder to shoulder with Bush over the Iraq war, and the USA’s left wingers like him because when he stands shoulder to shoulder with Bush he makes Bush look like a fool by comparison. That kind of thing.
It was a deft move by the BBC. The government have been complaining that the BBC are anti-Government and anti-Blair. Now they can say: look, here was a piece about how well Blair has been doing.
But exposing Blair to the world as being liked by American politicians is to do him no favours with the massed ranks of the Labour Party, parliamentary and out in the constituencies. Those people, by and large, don’t like American politicians, and especially they don’t Like George W. Bush Jnr. When they could think of Bush as just a joke, he was just a joke. But now he’s bad, bad, bad. With friends like him, Blair needs no enemies.
Two Guardian stories have just been punching home the message. This one points out, for all the usual Poltical Editor type reasons, that Blair is now looking wobbly.
But it was another article by an until-now Blair supporter and true believer, from yesterday, that really caught my attention. This paragraph is especially revealing and bullseye-hitting:
The key issue for Blair seems to be his own sincerity. He is desperate to convince us that he believes in the rightness of his actions. This has been a faultline in his personality from the very beginning. It’s instructive, in this context, to consider the ways in which he differs from Thatcher. Thatcher never claimed to be Good, just Right. Blair’s political personality has always been predicated on the proposition “I am good.” His brilliantly articulate impersonation of earnest inarticulacy has all along been tied to this self-projection as a Good Man. He is careful about not touting his religion in public, but he doesn’t need to, since the conviction of his own goodness is imprinted in everything he says and does. It is one of the things he has in common with the party he leads, and one of the reasons people are wrong when they say that Blair is a natural Tory. Thatcher’s sense of being right fits into the Tory party’s self-image as the home of unpopular and uncomfortable truths. Blair’s sense of being good fits the Labour self-image as the party of virtue: the party we would all vote for if we were less selfish and greedy.
It is Blair’s reputation for goodness, among his own most devoted supporters, which has taken such a knock with this Weapons of Mass Destruction business. To people like me, who never believed in Saint Tony in general or in much of the pre-war hooplah about WMDs in particular, the only surprise was why such a canny operator as Blair should have hung himself on such a nasty hook But for the true Blair believers, this stuff is really hurting.
It reminds me of what I vaguely recall someone saying a thousand years ago about Nixon, just before he resigned. If people like this (i.e. some Nixon true believers the guy had just been talking to) think that something very bad has happened, he’s in serious trouble.
A quite splendid editorial in the Telegraph from George Trefgarne:
If Mr Blair signs the European constitution – which he seems determined to do – it will, as far as I can see, be the end of Britain as a serious independent power. It will also lead to the gradual redesigning of our institutional framework.
The euro beckons. Taxation and regulation would increase as we tilted towards the European social democratic model. Judging by the woes of Germany and France, economic growth would be lower and unemployment higher.
I can add little except a recommendation that the whole article be read in order to fully appreciate the monumental folly that Tony Blair seems determined to commit.
Every so often (and it doesn’t happen often enough for my liking) the British public remind us of the yawning gap between received wisdom and wisdom.
Ever since the 1940’s it has been a core article of faith among the left (and more than a few Conservatives I might add) that services like healthcare and education can only be provided for the masses by central government and funded by general taxation. They even have the gall to denounce alternative models as ‘unworkable’.
Well, if the results of this survey are anything to go by, that canard may be reaching the end of its shelf-life:
Voters are prepared to pay for health insurance if it guarantees them better and faster care, according to a ground-breaking new poll that suggests the public is far more open to radical ideas than politicians realise.
The survey finds strong support among taxpayers for a range of controversial policy alternatives, including giving parents the right to choose private schools for their children and American-style “zero tolerance” policing.
I wonder if there is still ‘strong support’ for British-style “zero tolerance” for self-defence?
The poll appears to contradict the Prime Minister’s claim that voters are opposed to health and education solutions that allow individuals to decide where their money is spent.
And it would also appear to contradict my long-held belief that the British public would never relinquish their single-minded devotion to the National Health Service. The day when consumer expectation finally outstrips the ability of the state to keep up with it may be closer than I had imagined.
[EU for Britain has] been more like getting mixed up with the mafia. First it’s an innocent poker game, then some girls show up, then you need to borrow some money, next thing you know a beefy fellow in a string t-shirt is giving your kneecaps a non-therapeutic massage, and you’re wondering, “Hey, I just wanted to play a little poker. Where did these concrete overshoes come from?”
– T. Hartin’s comment on a Samizdata post
Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has gained Cabinet approval to push forward his plans, for compulsory ‘Magic Eye’ ID cards, for all British citizens.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are entering the abyss.
Clare Short, who resigned as international development secretary in the aftermath of the Iraq war, said Mr Blair should pass on the leadership before things got “even nastier”.
Christopher Lee must have died and gone to heaven, when Peter Jackson offered him the role of Saruman, in Jackson’s stupendous Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Having read the book, many times, Lee will have appreciated every single nuance, every single eyebrow movement, and every single evil grin, of the grotesque Saruman character, as this Maian angel descended into a Sauronian hell, within the mortal clutches of Middle-Earth.
Like many other sad people, sexually unfulfilled in the desperate years of teenage, I also wade through the pages of the masterly Lord of the Rings, every year, to try to cure myself from the terrible memories of all those laughing girls, who walked away from the spot-ridden boy. Or at least, every other year; I now alternate it with the Silmarillion. → Continue reading: Clare gets nasty
Our Glorious Leader has been setting out his vision for the future:
Tony Blair told middle Britain yesterday that it would face a series of new charges for pensions, university education and transport if Labour won a third term in power.
He said new ways had to be found to pay for parts of the welfare state that had traditionally been provided free from general taxation.
Even Mr.Blair now has to admit that the fabian socialist dream of services being free at point of supply is now unsustainable and new arrangements have to be made. In future, people have are going to have the buy the services and commodities that, hitherto, they believed were going to be supplied by the ‘gubbament’.
Well good. That is as it should be. Provided, of course, it is matched by a commensurate and hefty decrease in taxation. But it won’t be and that is the big catch. Instead taxation levels will continue to rise in order to fund a ballooning state bureaucracy. In other words, everybody (but especially the middle classes) is going to be forced to pay twice.
The British keep voting for politics and now they are going to have to pay the bill.
It is Friday evening and blogging about British politics and the Conservative Party was the last thing on my mind. However, this post appearing on Samizdata.net below cannot be left without a calm, measured and reasoned response it deserves. What the f***?! Conservatives?! Libertarian?! A viable alternative?!
After checking the post for any undercurrents of sarcasm, I am still confused. This is due to the words Conservatives and libertarian appearing in the same context. The Tory party is a bunch of stale, narrow-minded and arrogant statists who believe that if everyone was a good chap…there, there…things would go just swimmingly and they would not have to try too hard and use their brains.
Libertarianism is a dirty word to them, diversity means more illegal immigrants, freedom is predicated on the fact that everyone just comes round to their point of view and their confidence is based on arrogance. In case you missed it, I do not rate the Tory party highly. There is very little difference between them and the New Labour, apart from the latter being much better at public relations and spin.
Philosophically, the Tories are as libertarian and exciting as a schoolmaster on valium. Their position on Europe is still confused, their views about taxation not very inspiring, what with NHS and education still being considered bottomless pits for taxpayers’ money, the BBC would be untouchable if it was not biased against them and individualism is something that does not happen to most people.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as fixed political competency, i.e. if one political party goes bad, the other improves. And so, as the Labour party is stumbling into a disaster of its own making, the Tories are certainly not meeting them on the way up. I do not know what the alternative to Labour is in the current political layout, but the Conservatives are certainly not it.
And for all those concerned, Samizdata.net shall never be a slave to any adjectives.
Update: BBC to replace Tories as “official opposition” .
Brian Micklethwait is right to say that the government is falling apart. It has faced revolts from its own party on foxhunting, Iraq and foundation hospitals. It is seen by many as having misled the people about the reasons for the Iraq war. Hospitals and schools are in crisis despite having more money than ever. National Rail is a bottomless pit. The payment of Tax Credits has been a disaster. Now the government is lurching even more to the Left, introducing draconian employment laws to appease its backbenchers. As for Europe, the government has completely failed to get a grip: it keeps on saying that it will not give in on items in European treaties, but each time it does exactly that.
The reality is that government is not just incompetent, it is a walking disaster. John Major’s Conservative Party might have had its problems, but it was never this bad. The Third Way is rarely heard of these days. Like a drunk, Labour’s Way involves stumbling all over the road.
Yet there is an alternative. There is one major party that broadly promotes libertarian ideas. It vocally states that we are overtaxed and over-regulated; that the European Constitution and Euro are wrong for Britain; that government-control of healthcare and education does not work; that the BBC’s business model needs “examining”; and that individuals should be free to make their own choices about their lives.
What is the name of this libertarian party?
Conservative.
With his surname partially derived from the Gods, and his standing as an Englishman of Scottish descent, you may already know I love Iain Duncan Smith, beyond the edge of reason. But yesterday, in Prague, he ripped open his long silence, on the European issue, and moved to lead the Europe-wide revolt against the long-planned socialist super state. Which, for those of us in the “Get out of Here” Euro-nexus, within the Tory party, is excellent news; it confirms our faith, in why we voted him in, as leader.
As the Maastricht rebel leader strutted his stuff, he even picked up a favourable review from Alastair Campbell’s scoop-favoured creatures on The Sun. Trevor Kavanagh, their maverick political commentator, feared by the Downing Street lie machine, and a man, by order of Rupert, beyond the reach of Labour-supporting editor Rebekah Wade, also said about Duncan Smith:
Europe will hear him and Britain will agree
In my opinion, IDS is the bravest man, in British politics, from the entire period of the last 30 years. Can you imagine having woken up, every morning, for the last two years, and then been forced to view the world through his semi-oriental eyes? He has been vilified, pilloried, and humiliated, in every newspaper, on every Channel 4 news programme, and on every BBC web page — virtually every single day — for being a charisma-less, hopeless, and witless fool. But he has come through this burning fire, to nudge ahead of Phoney Tony in the polls, much to the incredulous bafflement of the New Labour-Guardian-BBC aristocracy, which rules this once glorious, and sceptred isle.
It’s a fragile lead, admittedly, and there’s still a lot more work for IDS to finish, to cement it in; even assuming it’s not Gordon Brown who ends up as the initial beneficiary, from Tony’s fall; and yes, it’s a shame about that bovine statism, inherent within the general Tory Party; and yes, I would prefer a straight decision to just get out of the EU Dodge City, right now. But on the topic of Iain Duncan Smith, army officer and gentleman; I am a believer.
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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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