Yesterday at Instapundit, just in case there are any Samizdata readers who read this but not that, there was a link to a story in the Boston Globe about the failure of anti-gun laws to control crime, in Britain. Depressing. The story. And the fact that the story seems only to be being told in America.
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Don’t know how to tie your own shoelaces? Just what is the proper way to make a cup of coffee? Should a person sleep standing up or lying down? Having difficulty finding your own arse even though you’re using both hands a map? Don’t know how to barbecue sausages? Well, fret no longer because HM Government is here to help you.
This should come as a blessed relief to anyone planning a barbecue this summer. After all, in a country where the mere act of lighting a charcoal briquette is enough to bring on a monsoon, only the hopelessly naive and terminally idiotic can possibly be planning a barbecue in the first place. ‘The Agency’. It sounds so sinister, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. The Food Standards Agency was established in the wake of the BSE crisis to reassure a jittery and highly risk-averse British public that the government was doing its bit to protect them from the evil bugs lurking in their own fridges. Which means, of course, that they do less of their own bit and, thanks to greater dependency and bureaucratic empire-building, today’s patronising message will become tomorrow’s law. I see Sausage Inspectors in our future. It’s just another brick in the Napoleonic Wall behind which our collective goose is slowly being cooked. May 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 The Sunday Telegraph has commented on the latest and most worrying example of the Labour Goverment’s accumulation of power by controlling information. The good Dr Liam Fox, also the Shadow Health Secretary, alerts us to the fact that last week the Government effectively dismantled the UK system of medical confidentiality. Under new regulations, slipped in using procedural devices to prevent debate in the House of Commons, the Secretary of State will be able to demand that doctors hand over medical records – and fine them if, in order to protect your confidentiality, they refuse to do so. The language of ‘the public interest’ is used to assert the right to demand, and receive, confidential medical information. Boringly, the ‘public interest’ is defined as whatever the Secretary of State says it is….
My question is ‘why is this not on the main news but on page 22 in the Comments section….?!’ May 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed
British Chancellor Gordon Brown’s recent splurge on the National Health Service was supposed to be supported by a bouyant economy, but first quarter figures (just released) are terrible.  Manufacturing output tumbled by 1.5 per cent, leaving it 6.5 per cent down on the same time last year ÷ the biggest annual decline since the recession of the early Eighties. A further slump in exports, by nearly 7 per cent, also took a heavy toll. On the plus side that means mortgage rates are very unlikely to rise near term, but taxes may be more likely to rise as the economy stagnates – unless you think New Labour would actually consider reducing state spending? As the graphic shows we have slipped from first to last in the G7 growth league – as the other G7 countries voters all shifted rightwards. Things are going to get more difficult for Brown, sooner rather than later. Paul Staines May 25th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Ever since Tony Blair ushered in the ‘Age of Blandness’, I sense that a lot of people in this country have been seeking a true ‘Voice of Britain’. Personally speaking, I reject such collectivist concepts both formally and informally. However, if there was such a thing as a ‘Voice of Britain’ then Richard Littlejohn would be it. May 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Sometimes the story is something that never happened. And what never happened to me is that I neither filled in nor ever sent in my census form, whenever it was. They sent me a census form, so they do know where I live. I kept the form in case things ever turned nasty. I didn’t treat it as pure junk mail and bin it at once, but I never did anything about it. I vaguely remember them sending me a follow up letter saying something like: oh go on, please, if you haven’t … But I still didn’t, and since then: nothing. No threats, no men knocking on the door. My plan was never to actually defy the government and refuse to fill it in. I was never going to send letters to the local paper and insult local magistrates and refuse to pay the fine on principle. It was just to fill it in only when they really made me. “Oh you mean you really wanted me to fill it in? Why didn’t you say? Goodness. Silly me. Sorry, won’t happen again.” That was going to be my line. But it never came to that. Peculiar. I think what pissed me off about the whole exercise was the slogan at the top, which went: “Count me in!” There was a little child’s hand sticking up, as if I was just begging to be included, and as if the thing was actually a spontaneous exercise in participatory democracy. It was as if the census was really a mass eruption, every ten years, of the popular desire to tell the government how many people one lives with and what one’s religion is, and how much money one earns. ” I can’t help myself, I simply have to tell them! Please, please, give me a form!” For some reason, I didn’t get swept up in this national emotional spasm. Instead, I said to myself: okay if you’re telling me it’s actually voluntary, then that means I don’t have to do it, right? It turns out I didn’t, and it was voluntary. I don’t know what this proves. I think what it shows is that officially administered British life is now getting fuller and fuller of things that you must do, but which actually you don’t have to do. I’ve noticed in radio debates recently that quite large swathes of the very law itself are now sliding into this must-do-but-don’t-actually-have-to-do Twilight Zone. Drugs for example. People are adamant that drugs (and you know the ones I mean, I’m not talking about aspirin) shouldn’t be “legalised”. But, on the other hand, they don’t think the police should actually do anything nasty to people who use drugs. It’s just that saying that you are allowed to use drugs would “send the wrong message”, or some such. When someone in a radio yack-in says that drugs should “remain illegal”, I press for clarification. What should happen to you if they catch you doing them? Oh, that’s not the point, the point is they’re very bad, very dangerous, they stick around in your body, blah blah blah. Yes, but should you be arrested, punished, fined, sent to prison? It’s not about that, blah blah blah. Isn’t it? Well no it really isn’t. That actually does now seem to be the law with drugs. Drugs are illegal, and you mustn’t do them. But, on the other hand, actually you can. Like I say, peculiar. This time it’s you-mustn’t-but-actually-you-can, which is the opposite of filling in your census form, but the principle, if you can call it that, is the same. No links to this. I thought of this story all by myself. May 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Roger Dorrington, the father about whom I reported on Wednesday following his conviction for beating up the drug dealer who was divvying up heroin with Dorrington’s children in their family home, has been told by Judge David Griffiths that he will not have to pay the drug dealer £250 after all. However the conviction still stands and he will have to do 100 hours of ‘community service’ for the crime of defending his children against a predatory heroin dealing trespasser. If Judge Griffiths wants him to actually serve his community, I can think of no better way of him spending that 100 hours than for Dorrington to explain, slowly and graphically, to the idiot on the bench what the reality of trying to prevent two teenage children from destroying themselves with heroin is actually like in the real world outside Southampton Crown Court. Judge Griffiths is just doing what the state expects him to do by demanding that all British subjects be prostrate in the face of any actual threat in which the state does not choose to intermediate itself. Justice for Roger Dorrington and the very survival of his two children does not even enter into that equation. The state is NOT your friend. May 17th, 2002 | Comments are closed
That’s it, that’s the story. Most libertarians know the arguments for pricing roads sanely instead of insanely. This Sky News report tells us that the RAC (Royal Automobile Club), a big fragment of the British road lobby, now ‘gets it’ as well. Perhaps some of the people there even realise that road pricing, far from being “anti-car”, will in reality usher in a new golden age of the car, and put the present dark age of gridlock behind us. May 17th, 2002 | Comments are closed
It seems British Prime Minister Tony Blair can hide his love for the European single currency no longer. On Tuesday’s Newsnight television programme on the BBC channel, Blair claimed it would be a ‘betrayal of national interests’ for Britain to stay out of the €uro for political reasons and said he would persuade voters to join. Well, it looks like the grinning insurance salesman/trendy vicar character who has been our Prime Minister these last five years has decided to plunge Britain into the €uro at a time when developments in Euroland make it even less attractive as an idea. The rise of the Far Right in France, the murder of Dutch leader Pim Fortuyn in Holland, high unemployment and worries about massive unfunded pension obligations make the idea of shackling ourselves to the euro mighty unattractive. Of course the creation of the euro has made it easier for big firms to tap into a pan-European bond and equity market and made prices of goods and services on the Continent more transparent, which are benefits not to be sneered at. But I very much doubt whether Blair is going to flog this risky venture to the public on the grounds that it makes it easier for his Big Business chums to tap the world’s capital markets. Not very touchy-feely, is it? In an age of Visa and Mastercard, instant cash withdrawals and sophisticated derivative markets, it no longer is much of a hassle to operate in a multi-currency world as €uro-protagonists claim. All in all the case for the €uro is weak and Blair is going to have a fight on his hands. Blair wants his place in history. But by staking his future on the €uro, he could become history.  May 15th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Roger Dorrington is a builder with two teenage sons, called Nick and Joseph, who have a problem with heroin. There is another man called James White who provides them with that heroin since they were 14 and 15 respectively, in return for money. As most people would correctly surmise, the British state says it is illegal to sell heroin to children like Nick and Joseph. Now as a libertarian, I think that blanket prohibitions are not the way to deal with the problems caused by addictive drugs like heroin. But I also think that addictive drugs are a problem and that this is best dealt with via social mechanisms like families and in particular ‘robustly engaged’ fathers like Roger Dorrington. However in the here and now of Britain 2002, heroin is a Prohibited Class A drug and the state would have us believe that this makes dealing such drugs A Serious Matter which should be left to the state’s blue clad enforcers. Now Roger Dorrington is by all accounts a fine caring father to his children and thus does not want drug dealer James White giving Nick and Joseph heroin. As a result he warned the man to stay the hell out of his family house. So when Dorrington came home unexpectedly and found White cutting up heroin in his own house, he beat the drug dealer up and ejected him from his property. White complained to the police and Dorrington was arrested for assault. White was not arrested at all in spite of the fact he brought a class A drug into Dorrington’s house to give to Dorrington’s children. People must not ‘take the law into their own hands’ says the state and yesterday a judge ordered Roger Dorrington to pay £250 (US $360) to the injured drug dealer and do 100 hours of ‘community service’. Dorrington says he will refuse to comply with either order and will no doubt suffer more later as a result. So what exactly is going on here? Well it is not about justice, but then nothing whatsoever any state does is in reality about justice. It is not even about The Law, which is certainly what states say they are about in their tenuous claim to be legitimate expressions of a society rather than a vast engine of criminality. No, it is about what is the true priority of nation states. It is about power. 9 times out of 10, if a person sells (highly illegal) a class A drug (possession of which is illegal) on private property from which they have been explicitly excluded (illegal trespass), this will not rouse the state to do anything at all… yet when a private individual himself uses force to prohibit three illegal acts on his own property the state arrests the enforcer of its own laws and does not arrest the violator of several of its other laws. This is the true face of the modern British state and yet more proof of what both Frédéric Bastiat and Thomas Paine said about State and Society being two fundamentally different things. States only provide justice incidentally en-passant to enforcing their laws. It seems now even that pretence is fading. The only illegal acts that truly stirs Leviathan from its theft bloated torpor is a challenge to its own monopoly of violence backed enforcement. The state not only wants you helpless, it takes concrete measures to make you helpless. No wonder they took our guns away. May 15th, 2002 | Comments are closed
A quick thought for ye – why do we hardly hear a peep from the UK Conservative Party any more about tax cuts and the importance therof in spurring entrepreneurship…not to mention the moral case for such cuts. Has that party, the party that once bravely slashed the insane top rate of income tax from near-100 percent to a more tolerable but still-too high 40 percent, totally given up the fight? Shadow Chancellor Michael Howerd has said nothing on the subject. Truly pathetic. And yet, contrary to conventional wisdom, I reckon that an aggressive tax-cutting agenda linked to a wholesale critique of our monopolistic public services like health care and education could reap dividends. By buying the Blairite idea that tax cuts equals putting granny on the streets and letting little Johnny without enough teachers, the Tories are playing straight into socialist hands. Come on you pathetic Tories, take a slide on the Laffer Curve! May 14th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Libertarian Alliance press release: Telegraph says ‘f+ck off’ to criticisms of ‘Free Country’ campaign Responding to criticisms of his media group’s “Free Country”campaign, a Telegraph journalist has told Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance to “f+ck off”. The Libertarian Alliance, which is Britain’s most radical civil liberties and free market policy institute, has criticised The Daily Telegraph’s “Free Country” campaign on the following grounds: · That it lacks focus Dr. Gabb, a Libertarian Alliance Executive Committee member, made these criticisms in an article sent out on the Internet on Monday the 6th May 2002. He sent copies with a covering letter to various journalists working for the Telegraph group. His covering letter reads:
Posting at 8:15am, Patrick Barclay, who is football correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph, e-mailed as follows to Dr Gabb
Commenting on the e-mail, Dr Gabb said:
Also commenting, Dr Chris R. Tame, Executive Director of the Libertarian Alliance, said:
 May 8th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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