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.
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Yes, that is right. Regardless of the facts presented about how nationalised industries fail in every other sector, the moral (it is funded by theft) and intellectual (it makes no economic sense) arguments against a socialist health service that is based on force backed appropriation has fallen on deaf ears in Britain.
So how about a purely utilitarian analysis based on life and death? The NHS is institutionally incapable of not perpetrating horrors like this. If you pay taxes in the UK, that is what you are paying for. On nothing other than utilitarian grounds based on self-preservation, do you still want the NHS to survive?
I occasionally use the NHS myself under the logic as as the state forces me to contribute to it regardless of alternate arrangements I might make, I may as well use it to recoup at least some of my own money. In fact I am going to submit to its ‘tender cares’ tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Calling all you former anti-Apartheid protesters of years gone by: do you miss the comradery of old days standing in front of the South African embassies in London or Washington DC or Paris in protest at a regime that treated people not as individuals but just as a collective racial category? Have you not been able to bring yourself to throw out the old placards and tee-shirts? Well have I got some great news for you! Britain is introducing overt political Apartheid and so your time has come again!
Huh? You’re not interested? Oh, I see… it is only so called right wing collectivist racial discrimination you were against, not collectivist racial discrimination itself.
Sorry to have bothered you.
Paul Marks marvels how the insidious bias of the BBC can even mislead a hardened sceptic like him!
Even people who think they are cynical about what they see and hear from the BB. can still be fooled by it. I give as an example myself.
On Monday the 5th of August I watched and listened to the B.B.C. report that there had been the worst one month decline in manufacturing industry since “Mrs Thatcher in 1979” (cue film of Mrs Thatcher).
“Yes [I thought to myself] Mrs Thatcher was very unwise to accept the pay rises that the Labour government had promised to end the winter of discontent – if only Mrs T. had ripped up those agreements on coming to power (on the grounds that the Conservatives had not signed them) and had taken on the unions at once (when the people were strongly against the unions) then the line could have been held on government spending and taxes need not have gone through the roof [as they did in the first years of Mrs Thatcher’s government] and the recession would not have been worse here than it was in other nations”.
Then in the small print of the newspapers today I read that the month in 1979 that was being referred to was January (Mrs Thatcher was, of course, elected in May) . The BBC fooled me totally.
Paul Marks
When I read this first paragraph in a longer piece about Rowan Williams the intrinsically hilarious next Archbishop of Canterbury (he even looks funny), I could not help but marvel over the sheer linguistic and logical absurdity of it
ST DAVID’S (Reuters) – The future Archbishop of Canterbury has been made an honorary druid at a colourful pageant in his native Wales, but he denies that the ceremony makes him some kind of pagan.
Actually it does indeed mean precisely that. The next Archbishop of Canterbury has been made ‘some sort of pagan’, namely an honourary pagan. The Druids are a pre-Christian order whose spirituality is by definition pagan: it pretty much has to be if it is pre-Christian! The Archbishop designate has allowed them to make him an honourary Druid, therefore…
I suppose having some facility with simple logic is not a pre-requisite for a job of such passing consequence to the Church of England.
Ah yes, we must all be thankful for those liberty-loving dudes over in Brussels for saving us from the predations of the British State, according to Antoine.
Well, he’s partly right; the British State is predatory but to look to the EU or the Human Rights Act for salvation is to jump out of the British frying pan and into the European fire. If Antoine cared to trawl through the archives of this blog alone, he would find himself confronted with ample evidence of the lunacy and petty tyranny that has been imposed on us since joining this wretched Reich. This is a trivial, but sadly typical, example
There is no paradox here except that perhaps the British State could afford to be marginally less predatory if it wasn’t for the £1.8 million per day that they must collect from the British taxpayer in order to contribute to the Euro-coffers (and thereafter distributed to Hamas among others). Now that is a f*cking paradox! Besides, we all know that it is only a matter of time before all taxes get harmonised across the EU and nothing ever, ever, ever gets harmonised downwards.
I cannot wait for Antoine’s next mind-boggling invocation: support Chinese Maoists because at least they put an end to foot-binding?
The decision by a British court to rule that HM Customs & Excise does not have the right to 1) reverse the burden of proof, 2) use intimidating tactics against cross-Channel shoppers, and 3) seize vehicles without evidence of smuggling, is a victory for free trade, but a victory for the European Union too.
The ruling was based on a claim that the actions of a British state agency violated rights enshrined in European legislation and that the British government had repeatedly exceeded its powers by ordering Customs’ officers to violate the freedom of movement and free trade. It is worth considering what the judges would have done if the UK had left the European Union, let us say on 1st January this year.
There would have been no basis for bringing the case to court: HM Customs & Excise have always had powers to seize ships carrying contraband and the redress against unfair decisions has generally been poor. The government regulation could never have been challenged (at least since the early part of the twentieth century). What the behaviour of Customs officers would be like: border guards in Nazi Germany perhaps.
As the Euro-sceptic camp never ceased to remind us, parliament was sovereign and could legislate to designate a man, as a woman. But I don’t think many people in the UK are going to cry over the lost powers of the British state. The EU is remote, but so is the British government. Black market alcohol and cigarettes will become cheaper as fewer shipments are seized. The EU will be seen as the defender of individual freedom in this case, making it appear a little less hostile. It also looks as if the UK has stumbled into having a written constitution.
A final thought. We now know that if the UK pulls out of the EU, alcohol, fuel and tobacco taxes would certainly rise.
What a superb showing by British shooter Mick Gault. He keeps winning at the Commonwealth Games in spite of having to do all his training in Switzerland.
The reason he has to train in another country is that Britain took a giant lurch towards becoming a police state in 1997 by outlawing all handguns (not to mention seeing firearms crimes soar since then).
It is nice to see HM Customs and Excise get one in the eye from a British court. These people would have you believe they are just acting to ‘protect’ Britain from ‘evil drug smugglers’ whilst in reality just engaging in capricious power trips, confiscating property of travellers without any evidence of wrong doing and reversing the burden of proof with a presumption of guilt.
It is particularly bizarre that Customs and Excise claim:
Cigarette, tobacco and alcohol smugglers cost taxpayers £9 million a day
How does depriving the British state of £9 million per day in taxes, and thereby allowing British consumers to purchase cheaper tax free ‘smuggled’ goods, actually cost British taxpayers? Surly it is the British taxes on cigarettes, tobacco and alcohol that is the added cost to British taxpayers, not the avoidance thereof. Since when is not being forced to pay more money a ‘cost’? The ‘smuggler’ makes a profit by purchasing cheaper goods taxed at lower French levels and then importing said goodies to Britain… and the millions of Britons each year who purchase those less costly tax-free goods are thereby able to afford more of what they want… and the state gets less money to spend on surveillance, property redistribution, bureaucracy etc. etc. etc.
Sounds like a win-win-win situation to me.
In his blog article The Brown Government, Brian Micklethwait observes that the present Labour government is expanding the state. However, Brian thinks this is something new and that it represents the defeat of Prime Minister Blair by Chancellor Brown.
Actually the present government has been increasing taxes, spending and regulations since day one. Neither Mr. Blair nor Mr. Brown are Marxists, but they are certainly not free market folk either. The Brown-Blair dispute is about who should be Prime Minister – it is not about high principle.
However, I am glad that the patronising “you just don’t get it” rubbish about ‘New Labour’ has finally come to an end. There is indeed such a thing as ‘New Labour’ but it is about culture not economics – it is words, spin, ‘lifestyle’.
As I have said neither Mr. Blair nor Mr. Brown are Marxists – but then neither was Prime Minister James Callaghan – indeed Callaghan was rather less of a spend-and-regulate man than Mr. Blair and Mr. Brown.
As for Mr. Blair and Mr. Brown I think I prefer Mr. Brown. Mr. Blair clearly has a deep seated hatred of this country (it is not ‘modern’, European etc – and should be broken up into Euro Regions as fast as possible). Mr Brown may be like this too but if so he certainly hides it rather better.
I have not mentioned the Conservative and Unionist Party. Let me see – lots of expensive trips to various European nations in order to talk about how to make the public services work (i.e. no understanding that the public services cannot work by their very nature).
Perhaps the least said the better.
Paul Marks
Journalist and writer of various leftist economic tomes, Will Hutton, comes in for a bit of a Fisking in this week’s edition of The Spectator magazine, as mention previously by Paul Staines.
Normally, I would be cheering such a piece on but I have my reservations about such articles. It is of course dead easy to belittle a person’s opinions, however dumb, by pointing to examples of hypocrisy. However, it always better and more intellectually powerful to confront a person’s views as such and argue about whether they are sensible or not rather than go after a person’s character. I recall reading Paul Johnson’s book Intellectuals some years ago in which his basic theme was that, whatever one might think of Rousseau, Hemingway and so on, they were all basically shits.
I like to think that we try to play a loftier game here at Samizdata. The libertarian meme will spread much faster if it is propelled by fairness and good manners. Well, most of the time.
A British solicitor has been sentenced to six months in prison under the money laundering provision in the Drug Trafficking Act 1994
Not that he was actually laundering money, mind you. He ‘failed to report suspicions of money laundering’ i.e. he did not go behind his clients back to snitch him out to the authorities and he has now paid the price.
He has paid the price for not sufficiently appreciating that he has been conscripted by the government and that his first and last loyalty belongs to them. I fear he is not the last ‘draft-dodger’ to feel the wrath of the State.
‘When the Proceeds of Crime Bill goes through (it should recive its Royal Assent this week), money laundering will apply to the proceeds of any crime. The implications for the profession will be widespread.’
The Proceeds of Crime Bill will extend the current obligation to report suspicions of money laundering to cover all and any unlawful activity. And it will not be a question of what the professional adviser did know but what they should have know.
The professional classes are going to have their lives made hell and, whilst this is an undoubted injustice to the many who work hard and serve their clients interests as best as they can, there is also a raging irony and a fable here.
The professional classes have always anxiously sought the help of the State in order to establish the restrictive practices and barriers to entry upon which much of their wealth and influence has been built. The same State has now turned on them with a rapacious fury.
This should serve as an object lesson to everyone that the Leviathan may have strong arms in which to cradle you but it also has big, sharp teeth to eat you all up. And the beast cannot help its nature.
Paul Staines sees an old enemy and rejoices that someone else is also putting the boot in where it is much needed.
Over at The Spectator business guru Derek Matthews has a splendidly vitriolic go at failed stockbroker, turned failed newspaper editor and soon to be failed think-tank-wonk, Will Hutton.
How this fraud had a hit book I don’t know, even Blair’s circle think he is a left-wing loony.
Matthew’s piece shows Hutton’s total hypocrisy in glorious technicolour. I hate this guy so much I had a go at him myself a few years ago in an LA pamphlet called The benefits of speculation*
*= Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or similar pdf program to read.
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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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