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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Mary Ann Sieghart has written an interesting article about the rush to subject more or less everyone who comes in contact with children to checks by the state. She rightly points out what a paranoid example this sets by presupposing that people are pederasts. I heartily agree with her article and see this as one of the more extreme examples of the state replacing social interactions with politically mediated ones.
One of the nicer aspects of being a child used to be the random acts of kindness offered by adults outside the family: the friendly shopkeeper who ruffled your hair and gave you a sweet; the enthusiastic PE coach who gave up time after school to help with your gymnastics and was constantly – and wholly innocently – adjusting your body position to get the moves right. These adults were generous with their time and their affection. We knew who the pervs were and took pains to avoid them. Now all adults are deemed to be perverts unless they can prove that they are not. Most will now avoid contact with other people’s children and will refrain from touching them for fear of the action being misconstrued.
And then, in the next snippet by her, she writes lamenting the fact more people do not join political parties. Tellingly she mentions the two main (and largely indistinguishable) political parties.
Labour has a leadership contest coming up, in which members have a vote. Wouldn’t it be fun to cast one? And my local constituency is being split into two, so there will be selection processes for both new seats. I would love to have a say in the candidate selection, especially for the Tories. Having lectured them for years about the importance of choosing more women, it would be great to be able to make a difference.
What puzzles me is that so few people do want to join parties these days. Voters are always complaining about feeling disempowered. Here’s a chance at last to exert some power. Why not stop whingeing and take it? What puzzles me is that so few people do want to join parties these days. Voters are always complaining about feeling disempowered. Here’s a chance at last to exert some power. Why not stop whingeing and take it?
I find that interesting as on one hand she clearly laments the destruction of civil society by the regulatory state and on the other, she urges people to join the institutions who are responsible for doing precisely that. In effect she might just as well be saying: “it is terrible that gangs which threaten people with violence are invading our neighbourhoods and fostering a climate of fear… I wonder why more people are not empowering themselves over other people by joining a gang?”
If this deal goes ahead, it will be the largest example yet of an Indian firm buying a British one. How the world has turned, 60 years on from the end of the British Empire in India.
Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus Group Plc is set to recommend a 4.1 billion pound takeover by India’s Tata Steel Ltd as soon as Friday, sources close to the matter said.
Corus’ board met on Wednesday evening to rubber stamp the deal but is waiting until Tata’s board meets, which is expected on Thursday or Friday, before making an official announcement to its shareholders, the sources said.
It will be interesting to see how those anti-globalisation campaigners, who in the past were the same sort of folk to demand that the rich West gives aid to “Third World” nations like India, respond to Indian business purchases of British and other European firms. That is the trouble with fighting evil capitalists – one minute they are wearing pin-striped suits and speak in posh English accents, the next, something quite different. It must be very annoying.
With our troops safely back, the people of Iraq can then begin building a faith-based society emphasizing the same traditional values that motivate conservatives like you: women at home, prayer in school, capital punishment for homos.
– Howard Dean (channelled by blogging über-wit Iowahawk) is sniffing out votes in unlikely places.
It does warm the cockles of one’s heart to read a lede like this:
Political parties are so small they are “nearing critical condition” in many constituencies, a survey suggests.
Of course there is an agenda accompanying this report from an organisation calling itself Unlock Democracy. UD is a joint project of Charter 88 and the New Politics Network, and their aims are far from pure:
Revitalise local political parties through targeted state funding – Political parties are fundamental to our political system and should be funded in ways that encourage political participation and activism at a local level.
The group cannot seem to keep broken links (which are supposed to lead to their own project sites) off of their main website, but they do manage to get governmental ‘support’ for their People and Politics Day. (I have contacted the New Politics Network to ask what form that ‘support’ takes, and await a response.) The day boasts speeches from Tory chairman Francis Maude, Theresa May, various Lib Dem and Labour politicians, and even the leader of UKIP. Exhibitors include the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, British Union of Anti-Vivisectionists, and the League Against Cruel Sports.
So the good news is that political parties face death. The bad news is, there are people who are trying to keep them alive, and getting governmental support to do so. The surprising news is…nowhere to be found.
UPDATE: New Politics Network’s press officer, James Graham, responded to my query about whether or not taxpayer money is funding this event:
The Electoral Commission, DCA and PEU are indeed financially supporting the event. I don’t have the exact figures in front of me but they have contributed around £17k in total, two-thirds of which comes from the Commission. I hasten to add that we are not making any money out of this project and it is currently just about breaking even.
Well, that makes it okay, I guess! (Not.)
I have just done a posting on my personal blog about Sierra Leone, where a British Army friend of mine is now working. He is back in London just now, and passed on some photos of Sierra Leone that he and one of his friends had taken, and I picked out my favourites to put on my blog.
They illustrate an idea I have had for a while now that maybe one of the nice little things that digital photography, in combination with the internet, will do for the world is to present to it a slightly more balanced notion of what life in Africa is like just now. On rich country TV we only ever get slaughter and catastrophe from Africa, because only slaughter and catastrophe is news. But now, in addition to superbly photographed famine and mayhem, we get less well photographed … well, just stuff. Photos that a generation ago would (a) have been far less numerous, and would (b) have merely languished in the photo albums of a certain sort of expat, are now being displayed to the anyone in the world who cares to glance at them.
I do not claim that the slaughter and catastrophe is not happening. Sierra Leone itself had a horrific civil war less than a decade ago. “Worse than you can possibly imagine”, my friend said. But now, touch wood, things are going better.
Mobile phones have been a particular success, apparently, mostly because regular landline phones, such as rich countries have long had, have been such an abject failure, but perhaps also because mobiles enable Africans to cooperate much more effectively while still not having to commit to something days in advance. My friend says that Africans, just as Western stereotypes have always said, at any rate the Africans in Sierra Leone, are still very bad at doing this.
That is a mobile phone top-up and recharging booth. Mobile phone companies are now making lots of money in Africa. Good for them.
While reading the October 14th issue of New Scientist I came across the following statement in an article titled “Nuke test sends shock waves round the world”:
It may even have been only half a kiloton – the same explosive power as the terrorist bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995
Do you see something wrong with this sentence? → Continue reading: New Scientist Innumeracy
Jose Manual Barroso, President of the European Commission, and grand panjamdrum of Brussels has kindly deigned to share a few words with those of us who do not understand the contribution of the European Union to world peace. Who would have thought that the peacekeeping exercise in Darfur, Sudan, was a success. Barroso has opened my eyes.
I was in Darfur last week, on my way to co-chair the first ever meeting of the European Commission outside Europe, in Addis Ababa – the home of the Commission of the Africa Union. I am amazed at what I have seen in these young people that travel so far to help the people of Africa. I am proud of this Europe, I feel proud to feel European.
Let us look at security. There is a rising demand for a European role in external crises. And the EU is responding. It has doubled the number of peace and security missions in recent years. It is playing a central role in conflict prevention and resolution from Darfur to Palestine, from the Congo to Lebanon.
It is an effective actor because of the range of instruments at its disposal. In Darfur, for example, it is the biggest contributor to humanitarian aid, the main supporter of the African peacekeepers there, and playing a political role in pushing the Sudanese government to avoid another humanitarian catastrophe.
The BBC notes that the number of deaths is “not less than 200,000”, in the latest study from Science although this does not differentiate between deaths by violence and deaths by starvation. This is what happens when the European Union acts to prevent a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’. What man can stand up and parrot success for political gain from the genocide in Darfur?
The man who knows what institutional reform is needed to ensure further European ‘success’.
The Constitution would have helped. But perhaps the grand finality of the word ‘constitution’ set it up as a hostage to fortune, both to intergovernmentalists who felt it went too far, and to federalists, who felt it did not go far enough. Let us be clear about the label which should be attached to further institutional reform. What Europe needs is a Capacity to Act.
Oh masters, if I were disposed to stir your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong — who, you all know, are honourable men. I will not do them wrong. I rather choose to wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, than I will wrong such honourable men.
Overheard in a hospital earlier today:
Question: “Are you married?”
Old gentleman patient: “Sadly, yes.”
Question: “Do you have any religion?”
Old gentleman patient: “No. I’m Church of England.”
And he was not joking, our informant insists.
The quote of the day slot is already taken, but this would have been my choice, had the choice still been mine to make:
If nobody said anything unless he knew what he was talking about, a ghastly hush would descend upon the earth.
That’s from Sir Alan (A.P.) Herbert.
She found it here.
Samizdata mostly manages to avoid ghastly hushes.
I cannot have a situation where businesses close haphazardly.
– Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP, speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme about the Sub-Post Office network, and neatly demonstrating the dirigiste mentality of the Scottish Raj
The threats to liberty in Britain are too numerous to keep track of. Thanks to Josie Appleton on Spiked! for this, which I had entirely missed before now:
The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill, due to return to the House of Commons next week, will mean that 9.5million adults – one third of the adult working population – will be subject to ongoing criminal checks.
It is a House of Lords Bill, but has Government backing.
The Bill would create an Independent Barring Board (IBB), which would maintain “barred lists” preventing listed individuals from engaging in “regulated activities”. “In respect of an individual who is included in a barred list, IBB must keep other information of such description as is prescribed.” [cl.2(5)]
As the Bill was originally presented, you would have no right to damages if you were mistakenly or maliciously included in a barred list, and nor would anyone else. And the IBB would have been an absolute finder of fact, with appeal allowed only on a point of law. So among the things the IBB would have been independent of is responsibility for its actions.
Now things are slightly better, but there’s a cunning pseudo-compromise. You can sue. And you can now appeal the facts. But the criteria applied in the application of policy to an individual case – the core of what the IBB would do – is expressly (with a shade of Guantanamo) deemed not to be a matter of law or fact, and are therefore not to be subject to examination by the courts [cl.4(3)].
The schedule of “regulated activity” is 5 pages long in the printed copy. So you’ll have to look it up yourselves if you are interested.
The practical effect? Well, as an example, as I understand it, if the Bill were currently law, I would be committing a criminal offence in paying someone I trust to look after my elderly mother, who is currently convalescing from an operation, without both of us being made subject to official monitoring first.
Once it is in force, if you wish to be self sufficient – even if you don’t value your privacy, and are confident that theree’s nothing about you to which an official could possibly have objected in the past, and that you might not be confused with anyone else – you’ll need to know if a family member is going to be ill in sufficient time to fill in all the forms and wait for them to be processed. Better leave it to the state – which is of course always perfect.
From The Guardian yesterday:
The Department for Education has drawn up a series of proposals which are to be sent to universities and other centres of higher education before the end of the year. The 18-page document acknowledges that universities will be anxious about passing information to special branch, for fear it amounts to “collaborating with the ‘secret police'”. It says there will be “concerns about police targeting certain sections of the student population (eg Muslims)”.
There are two things I find fascinating about this. Not that it explicitly suggests staff may want to report students to the authorities for “using a computer while Asian” – something which if followed would bankrupt every scientific, economic and medical faculty in the country, from the postage and staff time used in denouncements – but the institutional presumptions involved, and the political context. → Continue reading: Love report thy neighbour
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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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