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 was a old con trick in London’s East End. A street urchin would ‘hobble’ somebody’s parked car (usually by crawling under and pulling the connectors from the starter motor) and while the stricken owner was wondering how they were going to get home that night, up would pop said urchin, now as Good Samaritan, who would offer to get them going again…in return for a modest fee.
Those motorists were the lucky ones. The rest of us have been forced to hand over sums that are far from modest to urchins that we actually elect and as a result of an almost identical modus operandi.
Since HM government has dedicated much of the last 50 years to sucking every last drop of blood from our veins and is now shocked, SHOCKED to discover that the simple desire to save for one’s retirement is complex and forbidding. Of course it is. Since every successive Finance Act introduces new mechanisms for wealth-grabbing, financial service providers have had to twist and contort like Rumanian gymnasts in order to keep shirts on their customers backs. Just as an anti-body bombarded by viruses develops an ever-more impressive arsenal of chemical defences in order to stay one-step ahead.
The result is a business of pensions and savings that is so brain-gougingly complicated that many professional accountants and bankers admit that they no longer understand it.
So now the grift. HM government comes to the rescue on it’s White…sorry, Diverse Charger to save us poor peons from drowning in a sea of pure gobbledegook. Hooray for the government!!
Tom Burroughes has a dream for the government, I have a message: F*ck off and leave us alone. We’ll build our wealth quite nicely without you.
Heard on the radio news so no link, but a 39 year-old man has been shot dead on the doorstep of his East London home in front of his three children.
Thus far, the killing appears to be motiveless.
With the round of tax increases announced in the last budget, HM Government reached the top of the Laffer Curve i.e. the Chancellor has now looted as much money as he viably can from the British taxpayer. If he wants more, he will have to get himself a drill and start going after their gold fillings.
According to a depressingly large number of people, we in Blighty should all now be happier, healthier, better educated, more cultivated and, above all, kinder and more caring.
But we’re not. Certainly those who work in the public sector are not because I detect that the first shot in a ‘War of the Spoils’ has been fired by Local Government unions who have announced a series of nationwide strikes to commence later this month.
“If the stoppage goes ahead on 17 July it will be the first national council workers’ strike since the 1979 Winter of Discontent.
If this is the start of a massive, bitter and chaotic bun-fight for booty in the public sector, then I give all our readers fair warning that they can expect lots of nauseatingly smug we-told-you-so type postings (mostly from me).
Paul Marks has also been following what Tory great white hope Oliver Letwin has been saying… and Paul sees that Letwin is still trapped within the statist meta-context that ultimately undermines even the best intentions.
Having read Antoine Clarke‘s recent Samizdata article If the Conservatives have a Future… (and read a review by Dr. Gabb) I wish I had been at the Oliver Letwin meeting. However, I have two concerns about Dr. Letwin.
Firstly in all the interviews I have heard Dr. Letwin give (and I have heard many interviews – the most recent only a couple of days ago) his devotion to the ‘public services’ shines through.
It is simply not true that local control will make such ‘public services’ as health and education work. For example, my fellow inhabitants of Kettering, Northamptonshire have no more influence over the work of Kettering Borough Council than they do over the work of Whitehall – nor will some administrative reorganization change this. The only way ‘local control’ is good is if it financed by local taxation – then people can ‘vote with their feet’ by going to the area with the lowest taxes (ditto regulations).
Nor will “getting civil society involved” help matters – as this tends to mean either Blair government style ‘public-private partnerships’ (i.e. sleaze – with the taxpayers being robbed even more than they are by the state acting alone), or George W. Bush style government subsidies for such things as churches and private charities (such ‘help’ can only corrupt the institutions of civil society).
If the state must exist (and human beings of good will can argue well on both sides of this question) then the ‘wall of separation’ between the state and civil society must be maintained – any mixing of the two leads inevitably to corruption. The ‘public services’ CAN NOT work – if Dr. Letwin feels he can not say that (because the voters demand that they work) then he should remain silent. I do not know what the voters will accept – but I do know that telling them pleasing stories is unwise (as when the promises can not be kept the voters will be angry).
My other concern about Dr. Letwin is that he does not seem to understand the true nature of the economy. The economy is not basically sound with a few nasty problems. No – the economy is basically unsound.
Firstly the economy is based on a fiat money credit bubble. Some people (such as Antoine Clarke) may well be very bored by me banging about this so I will keep things short. The basic economic structure of Britain and all the main Western nations is in a state similar to (if not worse than) 1929. It is true that at least we have less chance of beggar-thy-neighbour tariff wars today – but the credit-money bubble must burst (and the collapse will be very bad).
Secondly the Welfare State ‘entitlement programs’ of the Western World continue to grow. Even without a credit-money collapse these Welfare State programs would bankrupt all Western nations (including the United States). As it is the Welfare State will collapse when the credit-money bubble bursts.
Dr. Letwin and the rest of the ‘Front Bench’ of the Conservative and Unionist Party give no sign of understanding any of the above. Their policy concerns are roughly of the same order as being concerned with the lay out of the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Paul Marks
I don’t believe that the Conservative Party has a future. I think most of its members will either go away or pass away over the next ten years. I also reckon that Labour will win the next election (perhaps with a new leader), which will be extremely upsetting for many of the current generation of Conservative politicians.
However, Oliver Letwin MP, at last night’s Adam Smith Lecture, offered the sort of evidence, which if sustained over the next three years, could yet force me to change my mind. It is also an exception to my rule never to listen to political speeches, when trying to predict the future.
But then Mr Letwin is no ordinary politician. His speech was Sustainability and society. He started by setting the infamous Mrs Thatcher remark “there is no such thing as society” into its context and then announced that the rest of what he was going to say was consistent with her full statement.
He then listed four main themes and stuck to them. These were:
- Society is irreducibly complex
- Simplistic targets can be exceptionally destructive
- Crude intervention damages natural regeneration
- Natural systems are able to absorb limited disruption, then degrade suddenly and irreversibly
Especially cute was the use of the ecosystem of the tropical rainforest to illustrate the harm that social engineers can inflict on society. Mr Letwin also described the damage caused by spin-initiatives in the National Health Service and housing estates in the manner of a don discussing the pernicious effects of Byzantine tax policies. Mr Letwin was precisely such a don dissecting Marxist philosophy before entering think-tanks and politics. The deliberate refusal to make the attack emotional or personal was all the more powerful. Mr Letwin didn’t spell out every detail. I figured out for myself that the last point could be a description of the accelerating shambles of the railway, state health system and of course the criminal justice system.
I could have written everything Mr Letwin said on the contrast between local decision making being less bad than remote decision making.
He then answered questions openly, without being afraid to disagree.
Mr Letwin responded to the fear that local tyrants would replace remote bureaucracies. Local tyrants are easier to persuade of the error of their ways or to remove if necessary. Also the harm would be inflicted on fewer people at a time, and mistakes could be rectified quicker.
Mr Letwin also outlined his ideas for a ‘Freedom Audit’ for new legislation. This would at least mean that politicians and civil servants would have to invent ingenious excuses why the most oppressive price of legislation was really liberating. This would force the issue of freedom to be raised before a law was rushed through Parliament.
He also gave his case for drug criminalisation in answer to a Cambridge University student who asked what ingenious excuse Mr Letwin could find for explaining that drug prohibition was in fact liberation. Mr Letwin took that point on the chin and admitted that drug criminalisation was a violation of liberty and “inconsistent with the libertarian position”. He defended this on the grounds that for an individual to destroy his intellect was something that should not be allowed. He also claimed that it would be inconsistent to legalise some drugs and not others (True!). But in his view the total legalisation would cause the collapse of civilisation as we know it. However, he did add that cannabis might not be properly categorised as a drug, which he considered a technical issue.
There are three problems for Mr Letwin’s approach (which I suspect he understands full-well). One is that Labour could steal any or all of his actual proposals. To his credit Mr Letwin appears content with this: he would prefer to be in opposition with the government doing the right thing than in government doing the wrong thing. The other is that a lot of the centralisation he talks about was pushed through by his own party: at some stage he will have to say “We were wrong”, it is unclear whether Mr Letwin will be allowed to say it. Finally, will Mr Letwin’s colleagues have the intellectual integrity to keep to this approach, or will they quickly lose their nerve.
Already Sean Gabb is admitting that he may have to change his tactics towards the Conservative Party. If Mr Letwin can silence our separate criticisms, they’re doing something right.
I was asked by someone at the reception afterwards if I thought Mr Letwin would swing young voters to back the Tories. On that performance I said “No, but they would have been intrigued…”
I wonder what it is that motivates politicians and bureaucrats to dream up new schemes to strangle free enterprise? That they are wrong goes without saying but are they driven by a genuine (if misguided) belief that they are helping to make the world a better place or are they spiteful and envious ghouls who pursue power so they they can wreak their vengeance on those who are manifestly better then them?
Increasingly, I take the latter view, reinforced by these kind of reports from the Spectator on the new European Pressure Equipment Directive:
“Under the directive, all companies which manufacture boilers will be obliged to nominate a ‘notified body’ —in practice, one of several insurance companies which have been licensed for the task — which will then have the power to conduct an initial inspection costing several thousand pounds, and unlimited follow-up inspections costing the company £700 per day.
Take that, you wealth-creating bastards!! And, for the little guys, a double-whammy. In fact, a death-whammy:
“Large engineering firms will be able to absorb the costs, but for the likes of Ian Stock, whose Carmarthen-based company Dragon Boilers Ltd makes copper boilers for model railway enthusiasts, it could spell ruin. ‘There is no limit to how often the notified body could come and inspect me,’ he says. ‘Any time it can say to itself, “We’re short of money, let’s make a trip to Dragon Boilers.”
Poor Mr.Stock. Still, at least he’s got the message in no uncertain terms. Let us hope he sees fit to spread it.
Boris Johnson, Conservative MP and editor of the weekly British magazine, The Spectator, delivers a furious serve down the baseline to the neo-mercantilists at the Guardian newspaper. He says that organ is getting all worked up about how tennis balls are produced by downtrodden workers in the Third World and made out of precious materials. (I cannot find a link to the story). What do the Guardianistas imagine workers making such things would be doing otherwise? Studying for MBAs? Writing software? Suffice to say that Boris subjects the Guardian’s flat-earth analysis to a superb take-down. Strikes me that the Member for Henley should get his own blog. Boris, come and join the party. We need more British bloggers.
The Labour’s government’s Extradition Bill is a legal obscenity and a dire threat to the liberty of everyone, says the Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties think tank and pressure group.
Libertarian Alliance spokesman Dr. Sean Gabb and Libertarian Alliance Director Dr. Chris R. Tame, say:
“This bill formally applies the EU wide arrest warrant proposals to the UK. What it means, simply and crudely, is that British citizens can be carted off to other European countries on the say so of a foreign judge without the slightest benefit of any legal due process in this country. Moreover, they could be arrested for an array of so-called offences that are not – and never should be – crimes in this country.
In addition to such vague nonsense as “environmental crime” and “computer related” crime the Bill explicitly
allows for the extradition of UK citizens for PC-thought-crimes of “racism and xenophobia”. It is clear that the EU, and this government, is using this phrase in an obscene attempt to smear critics of the EU as “racist” and any advocacy of the virtues of hard-won British liberties as “xenophobia”. Other “crimes” for which British citizens could be deported to Europe include advocating “holocaust denial”, selling Nazi memorabilia and advocating a wide range of unpopular (and sometimes silly, offensive or nasty) opinions – and, of course, plane-spotting. The legal system of Britain, whilst far from perfect, seems a paradise in comparison to the politically corrupt and ruthlessly illiberal Code Napoleon systems of Europe – where you are deemed guilty until proven innocent and can be incarcerated without trial for absurd periods of time.”
Drs. Gabb and Tame conclude:
“If the British government succeeds in passing this tyrannical and obscene legislation it is clear that the social contract has been abrogated in an unprecedented act of treason by our own government. Nothing less than mass civil disobedience and physical resistance by any means necessary is justified by this attempt to allow the abduction and incarceration of British citizens by foreign powers.”
As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress.
-Cherie Blair
Certainly compared to the even handed measured words from the delectable Queen Rania of Jordan, the remarks by Tony Blair’s wife Cherie Blair, were crass and appallingly framed, coming as they did a few hours after the latest massacre of the innocent by psychopathic Palestinian suicide bombers. Not a mention from her lips of the horror visited on Israelis and the suffering of their civilian populations. A simple preface to her comments abominating Hamas was all she needed to do to completely change the context of her remarks.
Yet in spite of the cack-handed delivery and timing, the fact is her remarks are patently true in and of themselves and so much of the reaction to what she said was simply a cheap political shot by her husband’s many enemies. Of course I very much doubt that an advocate of force backed collectivism like Cherie Blair actually has any useful solutions to square that particular circle, itself a poison construct of the collectivist mindset.
Yes, Cherie Blair is right that young Palestinians need hope, but it is not going to come from fuzzy thinking collectivists like her. As David Carr said in his earlier post, it is back to the drawing board time. Israel’s demonstrably ineffective military response brings them no closer to victory over the terrorists and the terrorists’ slaughter of Isreali children at bus stops and pizza parlours brings them no closer to a Palestinian state.
Diplomatic and easy on the eyes
Not
…So what? British Home Secretary David Blunkett has been disarmingly frank about the fact he has had to back down on the horrendous planned extension to the already Draconian Regulation of Investigative Powers Act (RIPA). Some commentators have actually been patting him on the back for his admission that the whole plan was ill conceived .
Yet it should be clear that this is in no way a realisation on his part that he was wrong to try and extend this authoritarian infringement of civil liberties on moral grounds, but rather an admission of a failure to read the political support for such an action.
Blunkett and Blair still do not actually see any ethical/moral problems with such people as local councils and the Food Standards Agency being able to read your e-mails and tap your phone calls. No, their contrite remarks are nothing more than acceptance it was foolish of them to assume they could count on widespread political support for such a move.
These people should be abominated for what they tried to do, regardless of the fact they failed. The government are profoundly authoritarian and if the Tories were smart (which they are not), they would use the vast exposed flank Labour has to make this a key issue… but then of course these are the people who have the likes of Ann Widdecombe and Michael Howard in their ranks so I would not hold my breath if I were you.
Walking down Kilburn High Road (a heavily Irish area of London) shortly after the Irish defeat to Spain in the World Cup was a surreal experience on Sunday. What made it even more bizarre was to find a boarded up shop window which carried a few bill posters. Among the promotions of garage music and pop magazines was a fly-poster showing an IRA sniper with the caption “Freed!”. Underneath was a huntsman holding a foxhound and the caption “Jailed?” The stencil-like signature “Real C.A.” [Real Countryside Alliance] explained the poster’s origin.
Of all the places in the United Kingdom for such a poster to appear, the Kilburn end of Belsize Road is about as unlikely as they come. That the poster wasn’t defaced in any way suggested it had only just been placed. English toffs chasing foxes are hardly perceived as ‘brothers in the struggle’.
It did occur to me that the Countryside Alliance was created as a ‘Real Conservative Party’ in 1998, following the moral and practical collapse of the Conservatives under John Major and William Hague.
Now the Countryside Alliance has turned ‘New Labour appeaser’ and is being challenged by a provisional wing.
Can anyone tell me how I get a copy of the poster? I would like one for myself and a couple of spares for forthcoming birthday presents!
I would like to qualify Natalie Solent’s agreement with Brendan O’Neill that right-wing is “out of the mainstream”.
In 1992 the British left was utterly convinced that Labour would win the election. I know this because I spoke to activists from the Communist fringe to the social-democrat Labour ‘wets’ who want deals with the Liberal Democrats. All were convinced at 10pm on election night that Neil Kinnock was the new prime minister. On 1st May 1997 the same people were convinced that “something will go wrong”, “somehow the Tories would narrow the gap”. On both occasions, most Conservatives agreed. I made over a hundred pounds (a fortune for me) in bets with these people about the outcomes of these elections.
My trick is extremely simple. I have noticed that the last people to understand what’s going on are the inner cabinet. In concentric circles around the elite are rings of isolation from the truth. The people who know most are those who spend the least time watching TV political programmes, never listen to the Today programme and don’t rely on reading press clippings for their news gathering. Never speaking to a national politician or spin doctor is a definite advantage. I try to make a point of listening to as little as possible of what politicians are talking about. I also find that it keeps me relatively sane and in good humour.
Instead of asking Alistair Campbell or his Tory equivalent who’s going to win the next election (which is literally how most of the media decide, especially foreign correspondents), I talk to people about the World Cup, house prices and the pleasures of “cheating” the Chancellor out of cigarette and alcohol taxes. Asking about family discloses the local horrors of crime and the national health service.
My conclusions on the National Health Service are that the system is expected to collapse soon, that if this can be avoided by massive tax rises that’s fine, but there is a deep worry about what the future may hold. The public private partnerships are seen as publicity stunts or dodgy deals to enrich politically connected businessmen. At best it is considered a stop-gap solution. The problem that is not being addressed but which is on the minds of many people is “How the hell am I going to afford health care for myself and my family when the NHS collapses?”
On education, as Brian has reported elsewhere, there is a growing underground of teaching going on, not just home education but extra tuition for children. This is primarily a growth industry in the poorest sections of British society and is almost completely unknown to politicians.
On the third world the idea that British experts can or should do anything is a minority view.
The idea that the Common Agricultural Policy is bankrupt morally, financially and practically is almost universal. There is no debate necessary on these issues, what is lacking is the product, the advert for a business that offers a solution rather like the solution to traffic jams mentioned below by Tom Burroughes.
In this respect there is little to be gained from telling international aid obsessives that they’re wasting our money and their time. Everyone else knows. If I were on a TV programme talking about Third World poverty I would make two points: 1) that there is nothing outsiders can do if the locals don’t understand the value of trade and the rule of law, 2) that viewers who care should write to MPs, newspapers a short letter or email saying that the CAP is a disgrace and must be scrapped at once.
If proof that the public debate is way ahead of what the ruling class calls ‘political reality’ is needed, a look at the political demise of all the Clinton/Blair clones around Europe and the USA should be instructive.
The shattering defeat of the British Conservatives in 1997 has been matched by the left in France, Spain, Italy and is likely to be followed in Germany. Gerhard Schroder’s main selling point used to be that he was “Germany’s Tony Blair”. Today his best hope of avoiding oblivion would be a German victory in the World Cup. Defeat to England would be catastrophic (i.e good). Democrats in the USA are reduced to sending out pictures of themselves standing next to president Bush to try to hold onto their fiefdoms. Will anyone remember what these guys were saying about Mr Bush less than two years ago in connection with Florida?
In Britain the Conservative Party is outside the mainstream, almost everywhere else the ideas of free markets and opposition to total welfare statism look to be if not dominant, at least competitive.
The €uro is quietly picking up in the foreign exchanges as the balance tips towards welfare reform. I reckon we will either see remarkably swift demolition of state welfare programmes in Europe, or the €uro is going to lose some of its members. The Euro-socialists are desperate for Blair to take Britain into the €uro soon. British socialists are beginning to wonder if staying out might not be the best way to keep the socialist welfare system going a bit longer. Labour euro-sceptics don’t want to protect the monarchy from Corpus Juris or prevent a European with-holding tax. They see the euro as an expensive policy which will lead to international currency traders deciding what the government is allowed to spend on the NHS. They suspect that Socialist parties will either be socialist and be over-ruled by the bankers, or ditch socialism and be ditched by irate public sector workers. If the recent French experience of the Socialist Party is anything to go by the Labour socialists have a point.
It can’t be a coincidence that the issue that has most agitated Libertarian Samizdata lately: the RIPA, has seen a government back-down (at least for a while) which was prompted by amateurs taking on the government and the Tories playing catch-up. The ‘Grauniad’ (Guardian) readers may shout to each other how important they are, but hardly anyone else is listening.
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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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