I believe current dogma is that men and women are absolutely and completely identical except men are bastards.
– Samizdata commenter “Ellen”
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I cannot now remember any more than the general sense of a comment that was deleted by the moderators to this Guardian article: (Dolezal, you may recall, was a white woman who pretended to be a black woman. Rihanna is a popular musical performer.) But the general sense of the deleted comment was similar to these comments, as yet unmolested:
Being a libertarian is, well, very liberating. I do not have to contort myself to fit through the very oddly shaped hoop that demands acceptance of a man transitioning to a woman and demands condemnation of a white person transitioning to black. My exact attitude can remain in a state of Heisenbergian uncertainty. Everyone could be this happy if they could just drop the demand for public acquiescence. Yet it appears they cannot. The assertion that race is objective and gender subjective is so important to some people that an assertion to the contrary must be expunged by the Guardian‘s guardians of public decency. That gives me an idea. We can settle this once and for all in a manner acceptable to progressives and conservatives alike. Never mind having dissent expunged by the moderators, expunge it in blood. Let him, her or xem who will assert that he, she or xe will prove his, her or xir chosen gender and race upon the dead body of anyone denying it by the traditional means of trial by combat. That will get respect. October 6th, 2015 | 50 comments - (Comments are closed)
 A previously private exchange of messages on LinkedIn between a barrister*, Charlotte Proudman, and a solicitor*, Alexander Carter-Silk, disparate in age, has erupted into a ‘scandal’ after the barrister took umbrage at the solicitor’s comment on her photo, which he described as ‘stunning’. Not as stunning as her response, it seems, which we are told, set off a ‘Twitter storm’.
It appears that she ‘connected’ with him on LinkedIn, he viewed her profile and made the offending comment, and she appears to be reporting Mr Carter-Silk for professional misconduct. The Telegraph has piled in with some allegations about Ms Proudman having what one might call an ‘agenda’, being a member of the Fabian Society, and a feminist opposed to equality with men.
Some have suggested that the barrister may have ruined her career, after all, barristers work in the main comes from solicitors, and the message one might take from this is that if you offend Ms Proudperson, she would have no hesitation in seeking to a) disregard any convention as to privacy and confidence in communications and b) seek to publicise your wrong-doing as widely as possible, as part of her ‘jihad’ against misogyny. However, it should be pointed out that she was merely seeking to campaign against the ‘objectification’ of women by men, and no one should conflate private and public, indeed her Twitter feed appears to recognise the risk she runs, and frankly I suspect that she will be the ‘poor man’s Mrs Clooney go-to right-on lawyer of choice’ for a while, or perhaps in a while when she actually starts practising.
Ms Proudman’s rationale for connecting with the solicitor appears to have been to make professional contacts, even though she is not actually practicing at the Bar as she is doing a Ph.D at Cambridge on And there I was thinking that LinkedIn was for recruitment consultants to fish around for prospective clients. Now what if the solicitor accuses the barrister of sexism, after all, would she have reacted in the same way and taken the same steps had a woman of a similar age and standing to the man provided such a comment on her photo? Not to have done so would smack of ‘disparate treatment’, a cardinal sin to the true SJW. Is this not an indication that Twitter is, as someone called Stewart Lee said: “The Stasi for the Angry Birds Generation“? And Lenin was reputed to have said ‘We must teach the children to hate.‘. A lesson that appears to have been well-taught and well-learned. * For those unfamiliar, the English legal profession is divided into barristers, who do in the main courtroom advocacy and specialist advice, and solicitors (who, unlike Mr Carter-Silk) in the main solicit barristers for their clients and pay them to argue a case in court, and do the preparation work for cases etc. September 11th, 2015 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
Eric Raymond is the reason I’m here. He’s the guy I found while learning about Linux who gave a name to my vague sense of injustice at having to pay tax and taught me that a libertarian is a thing. Googling “libertarian UK” after reading his web site is how I found Samizdata, and found out that there were libertarians on my doorstep. He taught me that anarcho-capitalism is a thing. And that it’s okay to like guns. And that it does not make me some sort of lefty for enjoying messing about with Free Software. He explained the economics of it and gave it a better name: Open Source. And he’s out there propagandising, and making some of the software that keeps civilization ticking and not being hacked. And his code is all over the place and you probably use quite a lot of it every day. But he has a problem.
You get more of the things you encourage. I think ESR needs to be encouraged. And luckily, you can, via his Patreon page. Also, on his blog post about Patreon, there is some interesting discussion about Obamacare:
ESR explains his wife’s job loss:
September 2nd, 2015 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
This item at the EconLog blog caught my eye. It has the ring of truth about it:
The author, Alberto Mingardi, is writing about the “cool dude” Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. The man’s rather strained form of Marxism will, so the author of the piece, hurt him not at all because his targets are, for different reasons, ones that aren’t particularly sympathetic, such as the German government, and Brussels. The point, though, its that being a failed socialist finance minister isn’t enough to get that sort of media celeb status without other ingredients. After all, there are quite a few of such people and in some cases, such as former UK chancellor Gordon Brown, he is about as trendy as flared jeans; he has all the media appeal of steel reinforced concrete. The Greek chap has the looks and demeanour of an outsider, even if, in reality, he is as much a part of the Big Government class as the rest of them. He understood that people fall for all this bollocks about wearing leather jackets, riding a motorbike and not appearing to be A Suit. And back in the UK, assuming that Jeremy Corbyn (not exactly the sort of name one associates with horny-handed coal miners or ship-builders) becomes leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, and leads Labour into the sort of disaster widely foretold, he has a career as a media celeb sorted: the ageing geography-teacher schtick with the beard, loose jackets and references to Tony Benn.
August 4th, 2015 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
We need to get people of all races, colours, and creeds to come together and agree with Sharon Kyle. – Jim Treacher is not impressed by the Netroots Nation 2013 version of “diversity”. David Thompson also likes the bit with this sentence in it. June 25th, 2013 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
March 8th, 2013 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
“England has 39 police forces, headed by 39 chief constables or commissioners. In the past 18 months, seven have been sacked for misconduct, suspended, placed under criminal or disciplinary investigation or forced to resign. That is not far off a fifth of the total. In the same period, at least eight deputy or assistant chief constables have also been placed under ongoing investigation, suspended or forced out for reasons of alleged misconduct. No fewer than 11 English police forces – just under 30 per cent – have had one or more of their top leaders under a cloud.”
The Tories are re-learning the point that unionised organisations tend, over time, to pursue their self interest in ways that, unless subjected to the rule of law, will be destructive. This conduct is some way off from the ideal as set by Sir Robert Peel.
December 22nd, 2012 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just to state the obvious, White Rose is inactive. This is due to a simple lack of time on the part of the main contributors. Work, life, other blogging… alas White Rose is currently a ‘blog too many’. Quite possibly WR will be reactivated at some point in the future as Gawd knows the need for it has not gone away. TTFN. January 19th, 2007 | Comments are closed
There has been a chain email doing the rounds. It seems to have caught the public imagination to the extent of being used as a source by at least three well-known national columnists to my knowledge. There are some unwarranted speculations in it, however, and it is worth going through and picking out what’s not true, because what’s left is quite frightening enough. This is long, sorry.
Actually it is now the Identity Cards Act 2006, and (after a strange and unprecedented delay in getting the final text published, and, unlike all other Acts at time of writing, only in pdf) is now available on the Cabinet Office website here (pdf).
Not, quite, all. → Continue reading: Fisking ‘the anonymous email’ April 17th, 2006 | Comments are closed
– Andrew Miller MP (Lab, Ellesmere Port and Neston) of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill which gets its second reading of Thursday. The Bill would permit ministers to change the law by order for the purpose of : “(a) reforming legislation; [and/or] (b) implementing recommendations of any one or more of the United Kingdom Law Commissions, with or without changes.” And they get to nominate the parliamentary procedure for the statutory instrument embodying the order, too. There are safeguards. Criminal offences and powers of entry, search or seizure, may not be created, or penalties increased above a certain level, unless a Law Commission (an appointed body, remember) has recommended it or it is as a restatement of existing law. An order may not impose or increase taxation, except as a restatement of existing law. Which rather begs the question: how, exactly, can a change in the law be “mere restatement”? February 7th, 2006 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Bureaucrats only expect compliance under threat of punishment. Other people will figure out, even if only by trial and error, how to break any system at its weakest points. See Kevin Mitnick on ‘social engineering’, or–if you are the sort of authoritarian who won’t listen to a felon but is impressed by prizes and tenure–any anecdote by Richard Feinman. I can also thoroughly recommend this post by edjog of the Distreputable Lazy Aliens website:
Read the whole thing, as they say. The author has kindly offered NO2ID syndication rights, so any magazines interested in new angles on the lamentable scheme for a non-webical audience should get in touch. January 28th, 2006 | Comments are closed
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