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At this very moment, a coterie of bureaucrats and politicians are holding an intense round of meetings and negotiations on a matter of great international significance.
In actuality, what they are doing is plotting the destruction of a nation. Several nations, in fact. But the only one that matters to me is the one of which I am citizen: Britain.
No cruise missiles are involved. No smart bombs, no fighter jets, no artillery and not a single soldier will be deployed on the ground. Instead, the Weapon of Mass Destruction to be employed is called the EU Constitution.
Imagine, if you can, a constitutional document that has been drafted by the editorial team of the Guardian. Well, now you have some idea of what it contains. It is currently in the draft stage under the stewardship of former French President (and those words alone should be enough to raise the hackles on your neck) Valery Giscard D’Estaing. Once completed, it is the instrument by which Europe will be governed.
For a more detailed analysis of exactly what these people regard as the essential missions of European governance, I recommend this essay for the Cato Institute written by Patrick Basham and Marian L. Tupy (who also blogs splendidly from his University at St.Andrews):
“Conversely, the EU constitution is filled with “positive” rights for Europeans that can only be guaranteed by limiting the freedoms of other Europeans. As Hans Werner Sinn, director of the Munich-based Institute for Economic Research, notes: “The document ignores the free-market economy. There is not a word about the protection of property and no commitment to free enterprise and the division of labor.”
But the EU constitution does vow to protect “social justice,” “full employment,” “solidarity,” “equal opportunity,” “cultural diversity,” and “equality between the sexes.” It claims to desire “sustainable development,” “mutual respect between peoples,” and the eradication of poverty.”
Bear in mind that the precise terms of this document are still in negotiation which means they could conceivably get worse. As it is it condemns every European to a sullen and proscribed existance under the velvet whip of a honeycomb of pettyfogging, authoritarian bureaucracies. Some future!
At this point it is appropriate for me to extend my thanks to Philip Chaston who has painstakingly charted the progress of this melancholy circus and, most importantly, the enthusiastic role being played in it by everybody’s ‘war hero’ Tony Blair.
It does give us cause for a deeply ironic chuckle when we see him being compared to Winston Churchill in the foreign press. Janus is nearer the mark, for while he struts the world stage bleating about ‘freedom’ he is quite knowingly pushing this country towards the trap-door. Oh yes, he is being seen to quibble about some of the details but there is no doubt about his commitment to the project.
I suppose we must take a portion of the blame for the misapprehension. Perhaps we should have made it clearer that this man is not trustworthy. Anyway, for the record, this man is not trustworthy. How ironic that he should be instrumental in liberating the Iraqis from their baleful tyrant whilst simultaneously glad-handing the British people into bondage. Sorry, irony is not the quite the word. Tragedy, more like.
We have taken our eyes of this ball for too long. Maybe mesmerised by the spectacle of this man defying much of his own party to do the right thing on the War on Terror, we have scandalously overlooked the fact that he is also busy writing the final chapter of this country’s glorious history.
This is quite a story:
A Muslim cleric who urged followers to kill non-believers, Americans, Hindus and Jews has been jailed for nine years.
Jamaican-born Sheik Abdullah el-Faisal, 39, was told he had “fanned the flames of hostility”, as Old Bailey judge Peter Beaumont delivered the sentence.
The judge recommended that el-Faisal, from Stratford in east London, should serve at least half of the sentence and then be deported.
El-Faisal – who said it is permissible to use chemical weapons to kill unbelievers – stretched out an arm to a group of around 12 shocked-looking supporters as he was led away.
I’ve spent many minutes of my life opposing jail sentences like this. Clearly there is a point where words and actions can’t be separated, but I’m not convinced that this man crossed it. On the other hand, if we are to take these people at their various words over the years, they are at war with us, and the usual punishment for being at war against my country and having the misfortune to get captured is imprisonment for the duration, even if you actually did nothing except wear an enemy uniform. So you won’t see me at any demonstrations on this guy’s behalf.
Two further quotes from the BBC story caught my attention. There was this …
Defence lawyer Jerome Lynch QC, said it was unfair that people such as controversial cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri had been seen by police and not brought to court like el-Faisal.
… which sounds right to me! And then comes this gem:
Mr Lynch said of el-Faisal: “This was a man who, although misguided, was not malicious.”
I love that. He wanted all infidels murdered, but he wasn’t being nasty about it or anything. → Continue reading: On hate-speaking and law-making
There are signs of an unwelcome strain of unilateralism in this country. It is leading to dangerous instability:
“A £10,000 motorway speed camera has been cut down with a blow torch and thrown off a bridge.
PC Adams said the camera was a write-off and the film inside would have been ruined.”
I wish it to be known that I am outraged by this senseless, fascistic attack on an innocent speed camera that was simply going about its lawful business. All civilised people should rise up in righteous anger and resolve that this kind of thing should never happen again!
I wanted to write something about this tale earlier, but have been rushed off my feet with work. Anyway, I think it notable that in an age marked by preening Hollywood celebs and British thespian luvvies spouting peacenik garbage about Iraq, it is heartening that in another aspect of life – sport – there are real examples of folk willing to take a stand where it matters.
Nasser Hussein, captain of the English cricket Test side, will not go down in history perhaps as a victorious cricket captain like Len Hutton or even David Gower. He will, however, go down as a man who stood on an issue of principle over Robert Mugabe’s vile regime in Zimbabe. Defeated, mabye, but not with dishonour.
Addendum: for our American friends who haven’t a clue about cricket, my apologies.
British taxpayers it seems, are not very clued up about the upcoming raids on their wallets, according to this article.
A recent survey showed a high number of ordinary investors do not know that dividends paid out on equity ISAs (tax-free plans which are a bit like 401K plans in the US) will be liable for tax from next April. Brilliant. The government launches a tax-free investment scheme to get us folk to save and hey presto! – whacks us for tax a few years’ later!
The background to all this, of course, is the ongoing slow-motion car accident that Gordon Brown’s stewardship of the British economy is beginning to resemble. Brown has enjoyed about four to five years of a relatively muted press, outside of the most partisan ranks, a flourishing economy coming off the back of the 1990s boom and the Tory reforms.
Now it is going horribly pear-shaped. It would of course be grossly unfair to pin all this on the dour-faced Scot, but his reckless jacking up of spending last year, even while stock markets were cratering, has proven a gross folly. His star is waning. My guess is that if PM Tony Blair does fall because of the Iraqi crisis – and I pray he doesn’t – then it is far from certain that Brown will inherit the keys to 10 Downing Street.
But lest I be accused of partisanship (perish that thought), I should add that the Tory Party’s MPs, such as shadow Chancellor Michael Howard, have not exactly raised the decibel count over such matters as the tax on savings or else. The party is still seemingly wedded to the idea that if they mention tax cuts they’ll be accused of letting Granny starve in the streets.
If any Tory party readers off this blog want to correct me on the above, I’d be delighted to see it in the comments section.
In news which will surprise no one who has actually been following events and listening to what Tony Blair has been saying consistently for more than a month, it has been reported that 300 British SAS troops are already operating inside Iraq. God speed, Gentlemen.
Now please stop this preposterous charade of pretending to need the imprimatur of that exclusive club for mass murderers, thieves, thugs and tyrants (The United Nations) to justify anything whatsoever. We are already well past the point of no return, so just leave those friends of Saddam Hussain and Ba’athist Socialism who write for and advocate the views of the Guardian newspaper to their delusions of relevance.
The moon in silence goes its way and heeds no yelping cur.
knock, knock…
The 13-year-old girl submitted the following essay to a teacher in a state secondary school in the west of Scotland and explained that she found it “easier than standard English”:
My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we usd 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kds FTF. ILNY, it’s a gr8 plc.
Translation: My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York, it’s a great place.
Text messaging, or SMS (short message service), has turned into a new mobile phone language and has rapidly become one of Britain’s favourite pastimes. As the keypad of a mobile phone is difficult to navigate, text message groupies, mostly children, have developed a shorthand to make life a bit easier.
But their English teachers don’t like it:
There must be rigorous efforts from all quarters of the education system to stamp out the use of texting as a form of written language so far as English study is concerned.
There has been a trend in recent years to emphasise spoken English. Pupils think orally and write phonetically. You would be shocked at the numbers of senior secondary pupils who cannot distinguish between their and there. The problem is that there is a feeling in some schools that pupils’ freedom of expression should not be inhibited.
However, the decline in literacy has probably more to do with teachers being ‘confused’ about how to teach reading. Another reason why many seven-year-olds cannot write properly is because their teachers do not know enough grammar to teach it effectively.
At the heart of the problem was the education strategy’s “ambiguous guidance” on phonics – a teaching method where children learn how the sounds of words are written instead of trying to memorise their shape. Brian Micklethwait has dealt with this topic on Samizdata.net here and here and I am sure the debate continues on Brian’s education blog. So go and read, if interested. I will just leave you with this txt:
If u wan2 undRst& tXt m$ges thN IMO u nEd a SMS DXNRE or no1 will think ur c%l. nuf Z.
On tonight’s TV show ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ a contestant was asked “Who in 2002 became known as ‘The Quiet Man’ of British Politics?”
The contestant – an attractive if not terribly bright brunette – was offered four choices:
- John Prescott
- Kenneth Baker
- Edward Heath
- Ian Duncan Smith
She had no idea. She used her 50/50 lifeline which left her with Baker and Duncan Smith. She slightly guessed the latter but felt she needed to call her father. He promptly said: “IDS”.
Last year a programme on the same game show asked a father and son who the leader of the Conservative Party was. The programme was recorded the day after Ian Duncan Smith made his first speech as leader of the Conservative Party at the Party Conference. The son said “I haven’t a clue”, the father thought it might be Kenneth Clarke. They asked the audience. A minority knew the answer. Finally they called a friend and got the correct response, although on that occasion the friend wasn’t so sure.
One of these blokes is the leader of the Conservative Party… apparently.
When I was ten years old, I was informed that:
- The National Health Service is the finest in the World
- The Comprehensive School system was the envy of the World
- The Welfare State was the envy of the World
- The Royal Navy was the finest in the World
- The British Army was the finest in the World
When I was twenty, some British politicians still asserted each of these statements, although none seemed to believe all of them anymore. There seemed to be an equal number of politicians claiming that each of these thing was ‘a National disgrace’, which given this was the public sector, was no doubt true.
The elite forces of the British Army are no doubt excellent. Some bits of British military design are excellent. But this does not mean that the British armed forces are fit for combat. In May 1940 the French Army had as many tanks as the Germans. The French Air Force in aerial battle shot down more German planes than the Germans did of theirs. The French tanks were certainly good enough for use by the Germans in other parts of Europe… but even good equipment can be misused, and the finest army in the world can be run into the ground by bad management.
Since 1991, the British Army has recruited according to the whims of political correctness. The rifle only works if assembled in a tent and cleaned before and after each use. The boots melt in the Middle East. The troops have not enough sleeping bags, clothes, soap, tents or fuel for their vehicles. Their communications equipment does not work, last time they saw action in Europe they were able to use their mobile phones, this time these are unlikely to work. The new British tank breaks down. The British Army version of the Apache apears to be less reliable than the version used by the US in 1991. There is not enough ammunition for any of the weapons. There is no medical service worth talking about to save money and because of staff shortages: casualties will queue and die on trolleys in the National Health Service if they are unfortunate enough to be flown home. Obviously the best scenario for a British wounded soldier is to be picked up and treated by one of the other allies (except perhaps Turkey). This may sound like the Crimea in 1854-56. On that occasion the Times decribed the British Army as it left as ‘the finest army that has ever left these shores’. Less than ten per cent of the British casualties of the Crimean War came from combat.
It may be that the US is capable of defeating Iraq rapidly and without considerable losses. But the British Army is not properly equipped, the logistics are very poor and the medical facilities inadequate. I would rather air these points now, than wait for a report from a modern Scutari.
Martin Taylor works within the British legal system. He is deeply troubled by the latest round of anti-money laundering laws.
During the course of this past month the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 has come into force. This is the legislative instrument which has introduced US-style asset forfeiture into UK law. But the Act goes much further than that. It also consolidates and widens the existing anti-money laundering laws and places a quite terrifying onus on those who are charged with enforcing them.
Prior to this Act the UK already had an anti-money laundering regime in place. It was aimed at the proceeds of drug trafficking and potential terrorist funding. The regime established a ‘regulated sector’ which consists of people such as bankers, accountants, lawyers, financial advisers, stockbrokers and anybody else who is broadly engaged in the business of money management.
The laws imposed an obligation on professionals working in that sector to establish and maintain procedures for obtaining and then keeping personal and business information about their own clients so that this could be used to assess whether or not, at any later time, there are unusual or unexpected patterns of spending or behaviour which may indicate money-laundering activity.
But that is not all, for it is professional advisers who are required to police their own clients. If the professional adviser suspects, for any reason, that his or client may be engaging in money-laundering then he or she is required their client and the circumstances of the transaction in question to a special police agency. Once a report has been made the professional adviser can take no further action on behalf of the client until they have been given express permission to do so by the police.
Penalties for non-compliance can be severe. In the case of non-disclosure of a suspicion of money-laundering, the maximum penalty is 14 years in prison. → Continue reading: The British government declares war on Britain
I recall a conversation I had a couple of years ago with another British libertarian who argued that ‘pundits are the new priests’; they deliver ‘sermons’ from their TV or radio pulpits and minister to a befuddled public about the mysterious ways of our secular lords.
Although I can see the argument, I don’t entirely agree. However, the very fact that this kind of argument can be plausibly advanced at all is because we are all aware of the decline of the ‘old’ priests; a phenomenon which gets little attention but is highlighted by leaders like this in the Telegraph:
“But the Church has many good things to offer and it needs to start marketing them more successfully. Church buildings are testament to the triumph of Christianity. Soaring roofs, intricate stonework and stained glass windows echo a pride in Christianity that the 21st-century Church seems embarrassed to admit to. There’s a feeling that to modernise means stripping out pews, replacing organs with electric pianos, divesting priests of their robes and ignoring altars for Communion. But young people need someone to respect and admire. Today’s celebrity culture demonstrates that. If the Church, in its physical, as well as spiritual nature, is not the demonstration of the ultimate aspiration, what is?”
The leader quoted above is, in fact, an open letter from a twenty-something British Christian woman to the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. It is a plea to the Church to arrest its slide into irrelevence and provide some meaningful spiritual guidance to Britain’s Christians.
Despite not being a member of the Church, I can wholly understand her desperation because I can also see that it has gone quite disastrously off of the rails. The absurd and frantic mission to ‘modernise’ has resulted in just about every senior member of the clergy tripping over each other in the headlong rush to embrace every manifestation of fashionable claptrap from global warming to grievance politics. → Continue reading: The Last Trumpet
On the face of it the Conservative Party just now is having a terrible time, with the very telegenic Michael Portillo making life an utter misery for the deeply untelegenic Iain Duncan Smith. But something big is happening in the world which could see off the Labour Party for the next little slice of British history, and bring the Conservatives right back into contention.
The voters in Britain infuriate me. I like the people, by and large. Salt of the earth, most of them. But when they get around to voting, they have profoundly different priorities to me, or to anyone with a serious interest in politics.
Basically Britain’s voters would sooner vote for a party which is united in agreeing to do the wrong thing, than a party which is divided about just how enthusiastically it should resist that (or some other) wrong thing, or do any right thing. Division is all. Unity is all. They vote against the former and for the latter, regardless of what is being agreed or disagreed about. I loath and despise this, as I say, but that is how it is.
Well, for the last fifteen years, ever since the Cold War fizzled out, the Big Thing in British politics has been Europe.
Labour is a tiny bit disunited about it. Most Labourites love it that Europe gives them as much socialism as the real world is ever going to give them, in the form of a ocean of capitalism-hobbling regulations and interferences. A few Labourites aren’t satisfied only with that much socialism and would prefer more and on that basis they complain about Europe.
But such bickerings are nothing compared to the giant axe that Europe slammed into the very torso of the Conservative Party. Conservatives have been at each others’ throats about Europe for, as I say, the last decade and a half. It did for Thatcher. It did for Major. It did for the lot of them.
But now, post 9/11, the issue is no longer Europe. The issue is, to put it bluntly: the USA. Well, not the USA as such, merely its policy of choosing actively to prosecute the War Against Terror (i.e. against terrorists) rather than just hoping that terrorism and terrorists will go away. President Bush has decided to hunt them varmints until there ain’t none left, and what’s more to hunt down the no-good preachers who are stirring them all up, and if Europe don’t like it, too bad for Europe. As Bush said – in one of those scary speeches he made soon after 9/11, which sophisticated Europeans ignored as the gaseous emissions of a politician seeking mere poll numbers and re-election, but which Bush himself actually, it is now turning out, meant – either you’re with us or you’re agin’ us. That is now the Big Question.
And it so happens that the Conservatives are united in being with George Bush, less a few freakish europhiliac grumblers, while Labour is catastrophically divided about the War Against Terror (in the form that the Americans are now choosing to fight it), as today’s dramas in the House of Commons have now made very clear.
If it is true, as I found myself saying last week, that this War Against Terror thing is not just going to be an episode, but maybe something more like an era, then to that exact degree the news is now a lot better for the Conservatives.
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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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