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]
|
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?:
Mistakes were made.
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.
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.
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
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.
I cannot recall hearing of such a petulant outburst from the normally stately and dignified BBC:
The controller of BBC1 launched an unprecedented attack on Rupert Murdoch yesterday, calling the media billionaire a “capital imperialist” who wants to destabilise the corporation because he “is against everything the BBC stands for”.
Sounds like my kind of guy.
Lorraine Heggessey said Mr Murdoch’s continued attacks on the BBC stemmed from a dislike of the public sector. But he did not understand that the British people “have a National Health Service, a public education system” and trust organisations that are there for the benefit of society and not driven by profit.
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).
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:
Two years on then, it seems that during their customary 1 minutes silence in NewYork and elsewhere on September the 11th 2003, Muslims worldwide will again be watching replays of the collapse of the Twin Towers, praying to Allah (SWT) to grant those magnificent 19, Paradise. They will also be praying for the reverberations to continue until the eradication of all man-made law and the implementation of divine law in the form of the Khilafah – carrying the message of Islam to the world and striving for Izhar ud-Deen i.e. the total domination of the world by Islam.
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.]
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?
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 BOY of eight has become the youngest person to receive an A at GCSE.
‘A’ is the top grade and the GCSE is a national examination paper for pupils of age sixteen.
As pupils across the country received their results, Arran Fernandez, from Surrey, celebrated the grade awarded for a mathematics paper that he took when he was 7 years and 11 months. Only 32 per cent of candidates – most considerably older – reach the same standard.
So little Arran must be the brainiest kid in his school, right? Wrong. Because little Arran doesn’t go to ‘school’ at all:
Arran, who is also the youngest person to pass a GCSE at any grade – a D in the subject when he was five – is educated at home by his parents, Neil and Hilde.
Another successful product of Britain’s small, but growing, home-school movement, I’d say.
His father, Neil, a political economist who achieved a grade A at O level maths when he was 13, is evangelical about the benefits of home tutoring.
“I believe that every child could do this, given the right encouragement,” he said. “Why are children held back in their earliest years? And why are parents, who are their best educators, discouraged from realising and exercising their ability to teach?”
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.
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.]
I’ve read the Daily Torygraph most days now, for the last decade or so, ever since that fateful day I stopped draping myself in the Grauniad every morning, as is the wont of most perennially tax-subsidised students. And pretty much most of the time I’ve found it quite a good newspaper, especially with topics such as its Free Country campaign. On the whole it has also seemed unbiased in its straight news reporting.
But then this morning I find myself staring at a this particular headline, in the news section, covering the changes to the UK’s telephone directory inquiries system:
Callers face chaos and high bills as directory rivals replace 192
For non-UK readers, this concerns the number we always used to phone to get through to directory inquiries. British Telecom, a previously government-owned telecom monopoly since opened up to competition, provided a near-monopoly service on this number, from virtually all fixed lines. → Continue reading: Free market causing chaos again
I love this story. Not just because it sounds the like perfect scenario on which to base 1930’s-style Ealing comedy but because it has given me a glimpse into a world the very existance of which I had, hitherto, not even begun to suspect.
I don’t think many people realise it, but there is a contraband war going on in this country. It is a war which has spawned a clandestine ring of illicit and secretive dealers and buyers operating their own black economy and doing their best to steer clear of the agents of the state.
And just what are these shadowy merchants trading in? Is it narcotics? Is it guns? Is it prostitution? Gambling dens? No, it’s tomato seeds:
The dealer wishes to remain anonymous. Not that he’s ashamed of his seeds: on the contrary, he’s doubts you’ll find better in England. Once you’ve tried their crop, he believes, you’ll be hooked. But if he told you how to buy them, he could be prosecuted – and a small businessman like him can ill-afford a £5,000 fine.
The crop in question goes by the exotic name of ‘White Princess’. But it is not, as you might suspect, a variety of cannabis. Rather, it is a tomato – a “meltingly, sumptuously tasty” variety, according to the pusher, but a mere tomato none the less. And if that strikes you as surprising, you’ll be even more surprised to discover that ‘White Princess’ are just the tip of the iceberg.
This is a story of the bizarre, seldom-seen subculture of unlicensed vegetable-growing. Its wares include rogue tomatoes, “bad” apples and “hot” potatoes; tomatoes are as good an illustration as any of how the market works.
‘Seldom-seen’ is surely an understatement. Who knew such a thing was even going on? Though, reading on, it becomes clear why it is going on:
The Plant Varieties and Seeds Act (1964) makes these tomatoes forbidden fruit – well, at least the seeds from which they are grown.
NEVER EVEN HEARD OF IT!!
According to the act, anyone wanting to sell the seeds of a fruit or vegetable must first register the variety on a National List. Before registration, it must be tested to ensure it is “distinct, uniform and stable”, and a fee must be paid. Sadly for amateur growers, these fees add up to nearly £1,000, in the case of tomatoes, plus an annual renewal fee of £185. There are no exceptions, no grants for amateur growers, and it is illegal for anyone to sell the seeds of unregistered fruit or, by implication, the fruit itself.
Choice-killing legislation at its finest. Still, what the state denies the market provides so no wonder it gives rise to such a lively, profitable and enthusiastic ‘guerilla’ trade.
It’s fair to say Defra doesn’t police the law with much conviction, but the multinationals are always watching. In 1998 a company that illegally marketed grass seed was successfully prosecuted under the Plant Varieties and Seeds Act 1964. It was fined a total of £7,500 and ordered to pay costs of £7,964.
An instructive tale. For non-UK readers, ‘Defra’ is the Department of Farming and Rural Affairs and it is clealy not above moving to protect the interest of the market-hogging corporations. We should never overlook that fact that some large business concerns are not interested in the market they are interested in controlling the market and they use the apparatus of state to do so. Regulatory regimes often result from the connivance between big business and the state.
The linked article is lengthy but well worth reading in my view. It is not just enjoyable for its delightfully, eccentrically British flavour but also because it proves, yet again, that all legislation has precisely the opposite of its intended effect. The aim of the state was to prop up a cartel but instead they have breathed life into a thriving, committed and obviously very well-informed ‘black’ market.
May their tomatoes continue to grow and prosper.
The tabloid newspaper, The Sun is both the best-selling daily newspaper in Britain and (perhaps because of this fact) the most despised among that class of people commonly referred to as the ‘liberal elite’.
The Sun’s peculiar brand of kitchen-table, down-to-earth, working-class, mercifully unnuanced tub-thumping has earned it the nickname of the ‘Daily Red Neck’. To be fair, it is an image that the proprietors of The Sun have never sought to discourage.
But, while its more cerebral counterparts devote acres of print to torturous hand-wringing about the effects of globalisation on the native tribal peoples of the Amazon basin (or something) The Sun is prepared to get its boots dirty and go out and actually perform a public service:
LYING crook Brendon Fearon has been seen by The Sun effortlessly riding a mountain bike — even though he claims he was crippled by freed farmer Tony Martin.
The superfit burglar, who insists he cannot work because of leg injuries caused when Martin shot him, pedalled through streets at high speed.
And that’s not all.
STRIDING along the street with no sign of a limp; DARTING up the three stone steps to his home; STEPPING off pavements with confidence and WALKING his dog without a hint of difficulty.
Yes they actually sent in a surveillance team to follow this urchin around and record the results. I wonder how Mr.Fearon intends to explain this to the Judge (assuming he gets that far).
Once again, The Sun tells it like it is.
|
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.
|
