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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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
The Pearce household is getting a paper shredder to cut up all those documents: old bills, etc, that can be used by thieves to steal a person’s identity. It is, as this BBC report shows, a major problem. I do not imagine for a second that identify cards will significantly reduce this problem. In fact they may merely open up a whole new avenue for fraud. So, I am getting a shredder.
This looks like a decent website on where to get these machines.
(Those more fortunately blessed with space can of course just chuck this stuff on the bonfire.)
If reality contradicts your thoughts, that’s delusion. If your thoughts contradict your actions, that’s madness. If reality contradicts your actions, that’s defeat, frustration, self-destruction. And no sane being wants delusion, madness and destruction.
– From the Golden Transcendence, John C. Wright, page 212
You can guess the context.
10 October 2006
Dear Sir or Madam,
YOUR ADVERTISING
We investigate complaints to ensure that non-broadcast marketing communications comply with the British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (the CAP Code), prepared by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP). We also investigate complaints to ensure that television and radio advertising complies with the CAP (broadcast) Codes.
We have received the attached complaint about your national press ad (copy enclosed) and we welcome your help to resolve it. If the copy is incomplete, please send us a complete version. If the copy is difficult to read, please send us a better copy.
Please also check your company name and address details at the top of the complaint notification. If they are incorrect, please let us know.
We shall consider the complaint in particular under Clause 5.1 of the Code (copy enclosed). You should be aware that marketing communications must comply with all other relevant clauses, among which are the attached underlying principles. A copy of the 11th edition of the Code may be obtained from the CAP website, www.cap.org.uk or the ASA website, www.asa.org.uk.
The Code requires marketers to hold documentary evidence for their claims before submitting an ad for publication. Please give us all the substantiation and information you would like us to have. Although it is for you to decide what to submit, you will need to comment on the complainants’ specific objection as outlined in the attached complaint notification. We shall be happy to receive anything else you think is relevant.
Please let us know whether the material to which this complaint relates was prepared/handled by you or by another company on your behalf and, if so, which company. If you have used an agency, please tell us its name. Please let us know what plans you have for future use of your ad. Can you provide us with a media schedule?
If the ASA Council upholds the complaints, its ruling might affect the acceptability of the same or similar claims/advertisements appearing in other media, including broadcast. We are telling you this now so you are aware of the potential ramifications of this investigation. Please let us know whether the same or similar claims are made or are to be made in advertisements in other media, including broadcast.
Our Complaints Procedure leaflet is enclosed.
The ASA’s effectiveness depends on resolving complaints fairly and swiftly. An unreasonable delay in responding to our enquiries may be considered a breach of the Code. So that we can conclude this matter as soon as possible, please respond in writing, preferably by e-mail to […..], within five working days. If you need more time please let us know. If you are not the right person to deal with this letter please tell us and pass the letter on to someone who is. If we do not receive a reply within five working days from the date of this letter, we shall submit to the ASA Council a draft recommendation upholding the complaint. [My emphasis]
Thank you for your co-operation. We look forward to hearing from you by 17 October.
Yours sincerely
[…………]
Investigations Executive
cc: [Newspaper]
bcc: NPA [=Newspaper Publishers Association]
Yes; they did disclose the “bcc”. The accompanying leaflet sets out the complaints procedure. It ends, inevitably, on a minatory note:
Most advertising parties act quickly to amend or withdraw their ad if we find it breaks the codes. The ASA acts against the few who do not. Broadcasters’ licenses require them to stop transmitting ads that break the codes and we can ask publishers not to print ads that dont meet the rukes. Other sanctions exist to prevent direct mail that breaches the code from being distributed and to reduce the likelihood of posters appearing that breach the codes on taste and decency and social responsibility grounds.
Ultimately, we can refer non-broadcast advertisers who persistently break the CAP Code to the Office of Fair Trading for legal action under the Control of Misleading Advertisement Regulations. Broadcasters who continually air ads that break the codes can be referred to Ofcom, which has the power to fine them or even revoke their licence.
There has been a lot of loose talk that it does not much matter if the Democrats take the House of Representatives, the Senate or both.
“President Bush will still have the veto” and/or “the Democrats will not want to raise taxes, or do other bad things, because this will ruin their chances in 2008”.
This talk assumes that President Bush will somehow turn into Captain Veto if the Democrats win – an assumption for which there is no evidence in George Bush’s record. It also ignores the fact that many of the tax rate cuts that have been made are temporary – i.e. unless there is a vote to make the cuts permanent taxes will go up automatically.
Such hopeful talk also ignores the power of the media and of academia: The Democrats are already talking about increasing taxes on ‘the rich’ and the media and academia will present any tax increase as ‘only’ a tax increase on the rich.
The Democrats also have planned a set of new regulations (for example regulations designed to make unions stronger – and thus undermine American industry and increase unemployment). The media will present all such regulations as ‘fair and just’ and academics (such as the ‘economist’ Paul Krugman) will rush to agree – just as they will rush to justify any tax increase.
People who think that “well the Republicans have not been much good, and the Democrats will not be able to do much harm – so it does not matter if they take Congress” are deluding themselves.
Even the ‘likely voter’ defense may not save the Republicans. As many people are fired up to vote by the state of the war in Iraq, and many conservative and libertarian minded people are upset with Republican failure to control government spending (although nonmilitary spending growth has been much lower than it has been in Britain).
With the elections only a couple of weeks away America may well be sleep walking over a cliff.
An almost-hidden jewel in London’s collection of museums is the Gilbert collection of jewels, furniture and historic art in Somerset House, on the banks of the Thames near the Temple tube station. At the moment, there is a retrospective exhibition of the work of the great Tiffany jewellery business, going back to that firm’s origins in the middle of the 19th Century. In some ways, the rise of the house of Tiffany mirrors America’s own rise as a mighty economy, since the industrial progress of that country created vast fortunes, and naturally, people wanted to show this wealth off. And boy, did they do so. I strongly recommend this collection for anyone who wants to see the jewellers’ art at its greatest.
My only word of caution: if you are thinking of taking someone there for the start of a sophisticated date, be warned. The jewels there may give your other half Big Ideas. Very Expensive Ones. Gulp.
India Knight has written an article in the Sunday Times about the realities of life for Muslims and decrying ‘Islamophobic’ views like Jack Straw’s dislike of the Islamic veil. Many of the points she makes are fair ones but I think the underlying premise of her article is completely mistaken.
I am particularly irked by ancient old ‘feminists’ wheeling out themselves and their 30-years-out-of-date opinions to reiterate the old chestnut that Islam, by its nature, oppresses women (unlike the Bible, eh,?) and that the veil compounds the blanket oppression […] That perhaps there exist large sections of our democratic society, veiled or otherwise, who have every right to their modesty, just as their detractors have every right to wear push-up bras?
Fine, but Muslim women wearing veils is hardly something new: they have been a common spectacle on British streets for a good twenty years, so something has changed. The reason why people who were previously tolerant of the more outwardly outlandish Islamic ways was that there was no sense that Muslims were trying to impose their sensibilities on others outside their narrow community of religious believers.
I am not saying there are widespread calls amongst Muslims in Britain to force all women to wear veils, but if Jon Snow (who is certainly no Islamophobic reactionary) is to be believed, there is indeed widespread Muslim intolerance for any exercise of free speech which they find offensive… and by intolerance I do not mean dislike or disrespect (respect is never a right) but rather support for the use of force (legal or extra-legal) to prevent people ‘insulting’ Islam.
Tolerance is a right, but it is one entirely contingent upon it being reciprocated, because tolerating intolerance makes no sense whatsoever. Simply put, because so many Muslims refuse to tolerate non-Muslim criticism of their ways, that inevitably means that fewer and fewer secular (or Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Confucian, Buddhist) people in the UK are willing to tolerate adherents of a set of beliefs in which intolerance of others appears to be endemic.
As I have said before, I have little time for any religion but if people want to live in ghettos with their co-fantasists so that their weird values are the local community norms, I regard that as a problem, but a manageable and tolerable one. It is when they want to extend their influence over others by force that I stop tolerating them. So even if what India Knight says about the realities of life for most Islamic women is true… so what? The nature of life for people who choose to be Muslims is not the root of antipathy to Islam by non-Muslims. Islam is not a race, it is a set of beliefs and therefore it is a choice. As it is something people choose to believe in, it is therefore something upon which they can and should be rightly judged by others. When someone wears the outward trappings of a set of beliefs (such as a hijab, a KKK outfit, a crucifix, a Hammer and Sickle, a Nazi armband, an Ayn Rand tee-shirt), it seems strange they should not expect to be judged on the basis of what those beliefs mean to others.
I dislike the Islamic veil for much the same reason I dislike people who wear pictures of a Hammer and Sickle upon their shirts, not because of what they are (they are just bits of coloured cloth after all) but because they represent a set of beliefs which are incompatible with post-Enlightenment civilization itself and also indicate the wearer will probably not be willing to tolerate me expressing what I think of them if they are true to their beliefs, regardless of how politely I phrase my remarks. That is what I find intolerable.
One of the key rights that makes civil society possible is the right to free association: the right to deal with people who want to deal with and the right to dis-associate yourselves from those who (for whatever reason) you disapprove of without threat of force being used against you.
As a result it should be no surprise that in the ongoing struggle to replace the interactions of civil society with entirely political mediated interactions, that the right to free association is under attack yet again. The right to decide who you must to do business with is being fought for by Catholic and Muslim institutions who do not want to be forced by law to deal with people who are homosexuals (i.e. people acting sinfully according to their beliefs).
Yet no one is even discussing the fact that individuals, such as shop owners or landlords for example, might also want the right to free association Why is this right being discussed only in terms of ‘group rights’? The right of Catholic or Muslim institutions not to have people forced on them by law? What about the rights on everyone else to make their own minds up who they will or will not associate with and do business with?
I do not think that George Walden, former Conservative MP and minister, cares much for David Cameron, according to this article that came out a few weeks ago. Excerpt:
The politics of sentiment increasingly dominate public discussion, and sentimentality tinged with cynicism was what Diana was about. The same is true of Cameron’s social politics. The cant of the new elites emerges with numbing shamelessness in his public declarations. Recently the one-time PR man for ruthlessly profitable trash TV made a heartfelt speech in which he said that money wasn’t everything, and that the quality of our culture mattered. In his more mawkish mode it is possible to discern in the Tory leader’s political pitch a faint echo of Diana’s Christ-like affectations. With her, it was a scrupulously choreographed contact with people sick with Aids. With Cameron, it is an ostentatious tolerance of the lower orders: suffer the hoodies and the hoodlums to come unto me.
Brrr… Walden might as well have called Cameron a patronising wanker. He must be glad the practice of duelling has been abolished.
Iain Dale, usually the most civil of commentators, is not impressed much by Walden, however:
Former Tory MP George Walden was one of Britain’s worst ever High Education Ministers. Since leaving Parliament he has earned a living writing pseudo-intellectual drivel about politics and culture. It’s usually unreadable. I attended a discussion evening with him and his wife a couple of years ago, organised by Living Marxism. He was insufferable and spent the whole evening putting down his wife. In the Independent on Sunday diary there is a piece on his book The New Elites in which he slags off David Cameron for “being a posh man pretending to be common”. Utter rubbish. But even if it were true, it’s better than a pub bore pretending to be an intellectual.
Aren’t Conservatives lovely?
There is an excellent bit of reportage in The Guardian by James Meek, covering the experiences of British troops in Southern Afghanistan that gives a good troop’s eye view of things.
This next week I am off again on a month of continuous travel and will be awaiting my sainthood for putting up with all the ineffective security checks on multiple long flights.
But now, on to the good stuff.
Next week is the second annual X-Prize event out in Las Cruces and I will be at the airport on Sunday a week. As I will be attending a National Space Society board/management meeting for several days before, I understand we will also be co-hosting a party with the X-Prize people
I fully expect to run into many old friends in the commercial space business in the place one would most expect to run into rocket scientists: the bar! Last year I got my clock cleaned at air hockey (while a Japanese film crew wandered about filming and interviewing people) and it is time for a rematch.
Sir: We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority.
– Karl Marx letter to Abe Lincoln, November 1864
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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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