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Iain Duncan-Smith relaunched the Conservative Party yesterday, announcing that a future Conservative government would abolish tuition fees. Of course, political parties have to reach out to those outside their traditional supporters. But IDS is going about it the wrong way.
Margaret Thatcher got lots of people living on council estates to vote for her. It was not by being left-wing, but by applying her free-market principles to make their lifes better. By giving them the option to buy their houses from the state, she helped them to rise up the ladder of economic prosperity. By allowing parents to have a say in which state school their children could go to, power was taken away from government bureaucrats, enabling parents to take their children to away from failing schools. Her strategy for getting non-Conservatives to vote Conservative was entirely consistent with her principles. Voters believed her policies because they saw their consistency.
By simply adopting socialist policies – and moving the Tories to the left of Labour – IDS is alienating his core support. But worse, he is unlikely to gain the votes of those who support his policies anyway. There aren’t many Old Labour opponents of tuition fees that are going to jump ship and vote Tory. They are much more likely to vote Lib Dem, a rather more convincing party of socialism.
I believe I am guilty of taking the latest Conservative proposals on education out of their context. As a result, I made the mistake of regarding them as an aberration; a singular folly.
However, I should have examined these proposals in the round of their ‘Fair Deal for Britain’:
“The Conservative Party’s fair deal for everyone is built on a unifying commitment to ensure that no-one is held back and no-one is left behind…”
Seen in that context, a return to old socialist education policies makes perfect sense. After all, in a society where you won’t be able to turn round without running smack dab into the dead hand of the state, shoving you along a line of pre-determined ‘fairness’, you cannot expect higher education to be the exception, can you.
Just who is advising the Conservative Party these days? Who was it that convinced Iain Duncan Smith that Clintonesque pain-feeling was the wave of the future? What premium do they think they will derive out of being Labour-lite? What, precisely, is the unique selling point of socialism with a Tory twist?
If I thought it likely that I would get any answers I would put those questions on the back of a postcard and send it off to Tory HQ. As it is, I don’t think I’ll bother. I’m too busy adjusting myself to the next 20 years of New Labour.
Just under a year ago, the Prime Minister’s wife Cherie Blair expressed her sympathy with the plight of ‘suicide bombers’:
Speaking at a charity event in London, Mrs Blair said young Palestinians felt they had “no hope” but to blow themselves up.
Her steaming pile of wisdom was delivered just hours after one of them had murdered 19 Israelis.
But that was then. This is now:
The prime minister’s wife Cherie Blair was forced to pull out of a London charity event following the threat of a suicide bomb attack.
Assuming the threat was genuine, it looks like Mrs.Blair’s outreach exercise was a waste of time.
The good news is that British Conservative Party appear, at long last, to have developed a will to challenge the Labour government. The bad news is that they are doing it by moving to the left:
A Tory government would scrap university tuition fees in a wide-ranging overhaul of higher education unveiled last night as part of Iain Duncan Smith’s campaign to offer voters “a fair deal”.
Parents whose children expect to go to university after 2005, the likely date of the next general election, would no longer have to worry about finding £9,000 to pay for an average three-year course if the Tories won.
Not only are the Tories moving to the left, they are actually positioning themselves to the left of New Labour. It was Blair’s first government which scrapped the taxpayer-subsidisation of higher education, hence the introduction of ‘Tuition Fees’ which simply means that those who wish to attend University have to pay to do so.
The Tories are promising to place this burden back onto the exhausted taxpayer.
The Government will find itself arguing for charging students more, while the Tories will be proposing a return to free university education.
Only in a country such as this, where there is barely any concept of the link between government spending and taxation, can subsidised education be described as ‘free’. As if the act of the Treasury raiding your bank account in order to pay for your University course is much fairer than relying on you to raid your own bank account.
But, bizarre as it is, that is the way things are seen over here and I suppose I cannot blame the Tories for wanting to pander to the bottomless British appetite for more government and ever-higher taxes. After all, their job is to get elected.
Speaking for myself, I can’t be bothered to vote. There is nothing to vote for.
Tony Blair is heroic, Churchillian, principled and upstanding.
I’ve been reading a lot of that kind of thing of late and at every incidence I am caught between doubling up in ironic laughter and throwing open the window to shout obscenities into the street.
I have no way of knowing for sure if this report is accurate. Certainly it’s appearance in the Guardian/Observer means a source-warning is essential. However, if it turns out that they are telling the truth, then the ‘heroic, Churchillian’ Mr.Blair is about to usher in the last stages of the Great Betrayal:
Tony Blair is to give Cabinet Ministers the green light to campaign to join the euro even though the majority of the key ‘five tests’ will not be met.
In the clearest signal yet that he wants to pave the way for Britain to join the single currency, Whitehall sources said that he will allow Cabinet members a ‘freer reign’ to push the arguments on the issue. When the results of the tests are announced in the next three weeks, Blair wants to make it clear that Britain has taken an ‘enormous step’ towards joining, and will argue that the British economy is now closer to that of other European countries, essential to the euro working.
The man who helped liberate Iraq from tyrrany could be about to sell Britain down the river to Euro-serfdom.
Because I grew up in the 1970’s I still associate Trade Unions with the rank-and-file of the British urban proletariat; the lantern-jawed, barrel-chested, horney-handed, hobnail-booted sons of industrial toil. These were the rough, tough, no-nonsense men who hewed the coal, forged the steel and rivetted iron plates down in the boiler-room of the British economy.
In those days ‘male grooming’ meant a smell of honest sweat and a smear of brickdust and anyone who was stupid enough to go into a working class pub and prissily complain about the smokey atmosphere was more likely than not to experience ‘Death by Shipbuilder’.
Alright, I know that’s a cartoon but at least it was corroborated to a small degree in real world of shop floors, lathes and jackhammers. But the coal fields are silent now, the shipyards have all gone and the smokestack industries are billowing clouds of vapour over Taiwan not Teesside and so the Trades Union Congress (TUC) needs new rubrics to campaign on. Out has gone the fiery old rhetoric of revolution, strikes and class war and in has come the priggish, condescending ideology of health fascism:
Pubs, clubs and restaurants could increase their takings by banning smoking, says the TUC.
The TUC is pushing for the ban, because it believes passive smoking presents a health risk to waiters, waitresses and bar staff.
Very useful this ‘passive smoking’ hoax. What would organisations like the TUC do without it?
Rory O’Neill, editor of the TUC-backed Hazards magazine which published Saturday’s report, said: “Big Tobacco (the lobby) has spent big money to prevent UK workplaces going smoke-free.
Ah yes, the hobgoblin of ‘Big Tobacco’, yet another shadowy capitalist conspiracy determined to preserve our right to choose. They’re a ‘lobby’, don’t you know. All ‘lobbies’ are malevolent and driven by greed, as opposed to organisations like the TUC which is motivated solely by altruism and love for their fellow humans.
Let us hear the voice of the ‘lobby’:
But Simon Clark, director of smokers’ rights group Forest, said: “Neither the consumer nor the hospitality industry wants a complete ban on smoking and there is absolutely no need for it.
“If the overwhelming majority of people wanted smoke-free pubs and restaurants it would happen, believe me, because people vote with their feet.
Is this Apostate of Hell trying to tell us that if that people wanted a smoke-free environment then any entrepreneur who opened a non-smoking restaurant would clean up? Just further proof that the concept of a free market is a standing affront to people with agendas to advance and empires to build.
My, how the TUC has apparently changed its tune. In the good old days they denounced ‘profits’ and told the workers that they had nothing to lose except their chains. Now they seem to want to enourage profits while telling the workers to lift that barge, tote that bail, have a little smoke and land in jail.
Not even for a fleeting moment do I believe that President Bush and his cabinet need me to jump their defence. Indeed, jumping to the defence of any politician is not an activity that generally sits well with me.
However, I am prepared to set aside my customary reluctance in the case of George Bush but only because he seems to have become an Aunt Sally for every loud-mouthed class-war agitator who is looking to make a name for themselves with the woolly-hatted, mushy-brained, stapled-face brigade.
A case in point is the current (and I am so ashamed to have to type these words) Mayor of London, Mr.Ken Livingstone. Livingstone is veteran political shape-shifter who has spent the last thirty or so years hitching himself to every po-mo leftist bandwagon that rolled into town and maybe even invented a few of his own. Having been shoved back under his rock by the Thatcher government of the eighties, wily old Ken has since re-invented himself as a cuddly ‘man of the people’; an image that he has assiduously cultivated as a base from which to launch a political resurrection.
Thanks to his favourable media coverage and a severe outbreak of Memory Deficit Disorder (a condition endemic to this country) ‘Ken Il Sung’ managed to get himself elected to this high-profile office that enables him to regale the world with what I suppose he regards as his words of wisdom:
Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, was widely condemned yesterday after comparing George Bush to Saddam Hussein.
Oh well, I suppose it makes a change from comparing George Bush to Hitler.
The Left-winger described the American President as a “coward” who was at the head of a “venal and corrupt administration”.
Anyone who accepted large sums of cash from Colonel Qaddafi in order to set up a trotskyite newspaper has got some nerve calling other people ‘venal and corrupt’.
Addressing an audience of schoolchildren…
I don’t suppose adults would want to listen to all his tiresome bollocks.
“This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown.”
Yes, which is why ‘cuddly’ Ken was at the head of every ‘Stop the War’ march.
Mr Livingstone is used to courting controversy. Shortly before being elected mayor he appeared to endorse anti-capitalists rioters when he said: “Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War Two. But at least Hitler was mad.”
But, Ken, Hitler’s views on the ‘international financial system’ were remarkably close to your own. What are you trying to tell us?
Yesterday he played down his latest remarks, saying that he had made the same point at an anti-war rally in February and that no one took much notice.
No doubt because they were all stunned to hear that you wanted Saddam Hussein ‘overthrown’. You did tell them that back in February, Ken?
Asked about the row, Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush’s spokesman, said: “I’ve never heard of the guy.”
The perfect response. Ken Livingstone: the nobody’s nobody.
Rod Liddle in The Spectator was unimpressed by the BBC’s recent coverage of the British local municipal elections, saying that the BBC seemed determined to play down the Tory Party’s success in winning a lot of seats, and played down the losses suffered by Labour.
The BBC is biased? Noooooooooooo! Say it ain’t so, folks.
If the Devil makes work for idle hands it is surely because he has no need to find any for busy bodies. They are far too engaged on Satanic projects of their own.
These infernal Children of Eternal Night are, it appears, girding their loins and grinding their battleaxes for another Unholy War, this time against….Vitamins!!
In accordance with sacred Samizdata liturgy there is no link to this UK Times article but here are some of the best bits:
The Food Standards Agency says that many vitamin supplements do more harm than good, and urges people to cut down on vitamin C, calcium and iron. It has for the first time set safe daily limits for various supplements, issues strong warnings on six and even demands the ban of one product — chromium picolinate, which athletes and slimmers use to help them to stay lean or lose weight.
Just a warning, of course. Mere sensible advice. A directive. Guidance. Official common sense. Satanic intentions are usually dressed up in the terminology of caring and sharing in order to mask the faint whiff of sulphur. We all know the Path to Hell has been pre-scripted though. This is where it starts and it is only a matter of time and bureaucratic stealth until the vitamin products they have targetted become restricted by law and then made available by prescription only (which must be accompanied by payment of the state fee, of course).
But this is not the first time ominous noises have been made:
Workers at a Sussex vitamins firm could lose their jobs if a European directive on food supplements becomes law.
Owners of G&G Food in East Grinstead have called on Euro MPs to block the European Directive on Food Supplement which they fear would take vitamins, minerals and herbal remedies off the shelves.
So is this an empire-building initiative from the British Food Standards Agency or are they merely minions taking their order from the Pit of Hades? It matters not, I suppose, because battle is enjoined and the signs are that it is going to be long and bloody:
Ralph Pike, of the National Association of Health Stores, which represents 12,500 health shops, was incensed by the “meddling”, and demanded: “Where are the dead bodies? There has not been one death anywhere in the world from people taking a legitimate vitamin supplement. This is disgraceful, and all it will do will scare people from taking safe and legitimate products for no good reasons. The authorities just don’t like people taking control of their own health and they want everyone to abrogate responsibility for their lives to the nanny state.”
Praise be to Mr.Pike for he has surely Seen The Light and is ready to step up to the ranks of the Holy Warriors.
And if you read through this Programme Complaints: appeals to the Governors (pdf file: go to page 8 for the best bits), you can find exactly how they do see it. I love this little gem:
- [E]ven if the two men were involved in terrorist acts, it did not follow that the BBC should necessarily have referred to them as “terrorists” rather than “militants” […]
Read that again… slowly. And again. Once more. Okay? 
Now substitute the words ‘rape’ and ‘rapists’ for ‘terrorist acts’ and ‘terrorists’, and then replace ‘militants’ with ‘sexually forceful’. Read the whole document to get the context of the actual remarks, but do you see where I am going with this?
I would care a whole lot less if these ‘gentlemen’ were not being funded with my appropriated money.
Tony Martin will not be released from jail. He will remain inside for the crime of defending his property for the full five year period of his sentance (he was initially sentanced to life).
The people who make up the parole board which has just decided that he poses an unacceptable threat to people who may in the future break into his home are wonderful examples of what Sean Gabb describes as The Enemy Class.
I strongly suspect their treatment of Tony Martin, found guilty of shooting dead a serial burglar in August 1999, has more to do with the fact he refuses to apologise or acknowledge any wrong doing in his act of defending his property from predators. That a group of parole board members whose salaries are paid by the state predating taxpayers should think that way is perhaps not such a surprise.
As I said before, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. As the political process in Britain has decayed to the point that there appears to be no political cost to the established power elite for the de facto criminalisation of self-defence (never mind that the state can gun you down in the street with scarcely a murmur), and de jure criminalisation of defending your own property, be it from the state or criminals (and the difference between them narrows daily), I wonder if people may simply start going out of their way to avoid involving the state in the aftermath of any act of self-defence.
As people seem to be unclear who to blame for the state deciding it is easier to prosecute law abiding homeowners than to go after housebreakers, and thus most seem unclear who are the correct people in need of having bricks thrown through their windows given that voting seems to make no difference, I expect sales of shovels, bin-bags, deep freezers, hacksaws and baseball bats to start increasing in high crime areas. There may even be a business opportunity for specialised discreet garbage disposal companies to assist this possible future trend.
The core of that problem is rooted in the contempt for private property found amongst the statists who make up the majority of the political class in Britain. Never forget that defending yourself is the ultimate expression of self-ownership and that is something the British state cannot tolerate, particularly the overt socialist parts: these people support ‘democratic’, which is to say political, control of the means of production and that includes your body. Just ask Tony Martin… the state is not your friend.
Burglars and street robbers are to benefit from new rights under proposals announced today by the government.
The extension of the existing rights regime is contained in the Employment (Non-Lawful Activities) Consolidation Act 2003 which has passed its second reading in the House of Commons and is due to take effect from 1st January 2004. Under the new legislation, all burglars are street robbers will be entitled to a maximum of six weeks paid paternity leave and a similar period of statutory sick pay. If any burglar or street robber is a member of a gang or criminal organisation, they will also now be able to claim compensation for unfair dismissal.
A government spokesperson rejected criticisms of the new legislation:
It is simply an administrative measure designed to extend basic protections that already exist for all other employees.
The Equal Opportunities Commission broadly welcomed the new legislation but said it did not go nearly far enough. Spokesperson Elaine Simper-Sweetley said:
The lack of rights for workers in the crime industry is nothing less then scandalous. We believe that this is a step in the right direction but the government must do more to protect burglars from negligent and exploitative householders.
Ms.Simper-Sweetley added that the Commission would continue to campaign for existing Health & Safety legislation to be extended to protect both full and part-time criminals.
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