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October 10th, 2006 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
 This year’s Libertarian Alliance Conference will be on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th November 2006, at the rather splendid National Liberal Club in London. Details and on-line booking can be found here, but a word of warning… the event is filling up quite quickly this year and the number of tickets is finite so if you want to come, book soon to avoid disappointment. October 10th, 2006 | Comments are closed
But not the usual suspects it appears. I just came across this story more less by accident.
Some BNP members stockpile the largest ever haul of explosives found at a house in the UK and this does not make the front page of the national media? Did I just somehow miss the articles about this in the Telegraph, Guardian and Times? October 10th, 2006 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was going try and summon up the enthusiasm to write something about the North Korean nuclear test, but how could I improve upon this? If I had the chance to put a few questions to the Idiotarians of the world, they would be… if the most repressive regime in the world having nuclear weapons does not bother you, what does? 1 Secondly, if one month ago the US had taken military action to demolish the nuclear research facilities of the North Korean state, you would have accepted (a) that preventing people like the leader of North Korea from getting nukes was a reasonable justification to use force (b) that North Korea even had a nuclear weapons programme? Just curious. 1 = and of course the answer is CAPITALISM… and Jews… and BushMcHitler. What is a huge open air prison camp like North Korea compared to that? October 10th, 2006 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
For what a political party is supposed to be, one should turn to Edmund Burke (the man who is often cited as the founder of modern Conservatism), who produced the classic defence of political party – defending it from the charge that is was simply a ‘faction’, a despised term in the 18th century and before, of people out for power. Edmund Burke argued that a political party, as opposed to a faction, was a group of people allied around a set of principles – i.e. they were interested in how government acted, not just in who got power. Burke’s argument was made more credible by the fact that the leader of his own party (the Rockingham Whigs) was the second Marquis of Rockingham. Rockingham was well known to be uninterested in the financial benefits of political power or influence, his being one of the richest men in the land may have aided him in his disinterest, as may have the fact that his wealth came from his unsubsidized landed estates, and the Marquis was well known to be uninterested in power for its own sake (he would much rather give up office and return to running his estates or just watching horse racing, than commit any dishonourable act). Rockingham was no weakling or fool (contrary to what is sometimes said, I hold him to have come to his principles before he met Burke rather than Burke having imposed principles upon him – they shared principles, neither imposed principles on the other), but it was clear that whatever led this man to politics (indeed to be the leader of a party and twice Prime Minister) it was neither financial advantage or lust for office or power. Nor was it some vague ‘desire to serve’. Rockingham was loyal to the King – but he would not take office other than on his own principles. The Rockingham Whigs held that the power of the King should be limited, but they (or rather Rockingham and Burke and some others) held that government itself, whether from the King or Parliament, should be limited. That there should not be wars for trading advantage (as the older Pitt was alleged to have supported) and that taxes, government spending and regulations should be kept as limited as possible, and there should be no special projects for interests in the land whether those interests were rich or poor. Rockingham was not good at writing or clever talk, indeed he had the strange English vice of never wishing to seem more intelligent than anyone he was talking to, and not pointing out an error in what someone was saying if he thought that doing so would undermine them or make them sad, but Burke was a good talking and writing and took up the task of explaining the principles of the Rockingham Whigs. Sadly Burke was mistaken in thinking that all the Rockingham Whigs shared the same principles and this was to be seen after Rockingham died in 1782. It is often said that the party broke up over the French Revolution. With most of the party following Charles James Fox, but some (such as the Duke of Portland and Earl Fitzwilliam, eventually coming to side with Burke on the Revolution), however the strain was clear years before the French Revolution. Pitt the Younger proposed free trade (more or less) between Britain and Ireland whilst the Rockingham Whigs (led by Fox) opposed his bill. BUT Burke, and those who thought like him, opposed it on the grounds that it included a tax on Ireland, whereas Fox opposed it on the grounds that he did not wish to allow Irish goods free access into Britain. More broadly, Burke (and those who thought like him) defined freedom as limited government (freedom from government), whereas Fox (and his followers) defined freedom as the rule of Parliament (a rule in the interests of ‘the people’ of course)… freedom as a ‘free government’. Whilst the goal was to limit the power of the King, or rather of ‘the Crown’ as it was the interests around the throne, not George III himself that were the threat, there was common ground – but over time the basic difference in principles made itself felt. The French Revolution (in Burke’s eyes unlimited state power, in Fox’s eyes a new people’s government freeing itself from the King and ruling in the general interest) was just the great issue that made the clash of principles obvious. So what is this all got to do with the modern British ‘Conservative’ party? → Continue reading: Why the British ‘Conservative’ party is not a political party at all October 10th, 2006 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tom Clougherty, the new face at the Globalisation Institute, linked earlier today to a fascinating Wired piece about a new way of extracting drinkable water from “thin air”. Clougherty is wise enough to use the phrase “If reports are to be believed” when talking about the huge benefits that this invention might have. So, the question is: will it work? It being, approximately, and give or take a big dollop of industrial (and presumably military) secrecy this:
More about this at engadget, where there is comment on the same Wired piece. Do any of our more tech-savvy commenters have any other news concerning this apparently wondrous gizmo, or any opinions about whether such a thing is, in principle, likely to work? October 9th, 2006 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just so you all know, and in case even Guy Herbert missed it, Joanna Lumley (who played the crazy blonde who lived on vodka in Ab Fab) has just said, on the Graham Norton show (BBC1 TV):
She also took a swipe at surveillance cameras, and anti-smoking laws, and the fact that you cannot get within a mile of Number Ten to say boo. To quite enthusiastic applause. I would not imagine that this means very much, but it presumably means a little.  October 9th, 2006 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
This morning, I went along to a business conference where the subject was on the issue of pensions (eyes suddenly glaze over, loses will to live, please when can I leave? Etc). One of the speakers was a certain Adair Turner, the man who, between 2003 and 2006, was chairman of the Pension Commission, a government-created body of the Great and the Good given the task of figuring out how to sort out Britain’s creaking pensions system – a big topic. In his comments today, Turner spent a bit of time talking about what is known as ‘behavioural economics’ and how it shows that, far from being a utility-maximising creature, Man, often as not, behaves irrationally in ways that can be corrected with a spot of gentle paternalistic direction. In the case of pensions, many people simply do not save enough money to cover their old age, even if they know they should, so the argument goes. Other things, like paying off the credit card, or refurbishing a house, or paying for a new car, get in the way. As a result, Turner says we need to compel people – nicely of course – to sign up to pension schemes so that they do not become a burden on the future taxpayer. It is an approach that has in the past been dubbed ‘soft paternalism’ because it is borne out of the idea that economists and other supposedly clever people know better than we benighted citizens how we should arrange our affairs. It is not exactly out of the Ayn Rand handbook, is it? I have several problems with this way of thinking. First off, if we are so lazy, short-sighted or plain thick to run things like our long-term savings, isn’t that rather corrosive of the idea of a nation of free citizens with the right to vote in elections? If a person is deemed incapable of saving for his dotage, should he be allowed to decide which careerist should get the keys to 10 Downing Street or the White House? Are we not endorsing a sort of elitist model of governance in new, supposedly scientific, garb? I think we are. Soft paternalists also perhaps lose sight of why many people are so short-sighted in affairs such as planning for retirement. Over the past century, the Welfare State, and the associated rules and regulations over the private sector, have created a pensions saving system of horrendous complexity, way beyond what should be needed. Politicians have created this monster, so they should hardly then claim that even more intervention is needed to allay the public’s fears. Even the financially savviest citizen faces a forbidding task in trying to work out the best option for savings, even before they have grappled with the latest investment ideas, such as private equity, hedge funds, or whatnot. If one then realises that private savings and the incentives to save have been eroded by things like means-tested benefits and the Welfare State, it is perhaps not surprising at all that many modern Britons are supposedly incapable of thinking about these matters, let alone acting on the calls to save. What I find depressing about the soft paternalist mindset is how little historical perspective it involves. 150 years ago, Britain was already well on the way to enjoying a vibrant and widening market for personal saving and investment through the existence of groups such as Friendly Societies (these were the precursors of the modern mutual insurance and life firms, and some of the names still carry old historical references, such as ‘National Mutual’ or ‘Friends Provident’). This web of saving vehicles, covering even poor industrial workers in Victorian Britain, was fatally weakened by the Fabian socialist thinkers and politicians before and after the First World War. ‘Liberal’ politician David Lloyd George, and many others, fashioned a welfare and pension system that eventually drove the old Friendly Societies out of the primary business of providing for old age and sickness, or at best, to the margins. There is a positive and negative circle at work in this area. If you stifle the ability to acquire private savings, it means that you hamper also the accumulation of a deep and rich soil of self-reliance, responsibility and individual financial know-how.On the other hand, the more that people learn how to save for old age and see their parents doing this, the more confident they become, the less they fear independence and hence resist the easy charms of Big Government. The social and cultural consequences of Victorian mutualism and the subsequent decline have been well-documented by writers such as Ferdinand Mount, David Green of the Institute of Economic Affairs, and James Bartholomew. So the next time you hear a policy wonk or newspaper writer chiding the feckless ordinary Briton for not saving enough, remember that Victorian statesmen like William E. Gladstone were so moved by the thrift and savings culture of industrial Britain that they became convinced that the humblest factory worker was entitled to run their own affairs. A bit of Gladstonian wisdom would not go amiss now. Soft-paternalism may sound nice and cuddly, but the long-term side effects are a steady weakening of positive financial habits. October 9th, 2006 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Work sent me to the Conservative Party conference in last week. It was dull. But I saw the Globalisation Institute had a fringe event so I went along and they gave us all some wine. They had Mark Malloch Brown, the UN’s Deputy Secretary-General, give a speech in which he said this:
That certainly woke me up. It is comforting to hear someone from the UN be so honest. Perhaps next we will find that he is an avid reader of the website UNisEvil.com. Somehow I think it unlikely. October 9th, 2006 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
A while ago I wrote a posting here about how Stalin had maybe made Shostakovich a better composer. Deeper, less flippantly modernistical, more soulful, more significant, that kind of thing. In one way, Soviet repression certainly made Shostakovich preferable to me, because I dislike opera, that is to say, I dislike the sound that it makes. Political repression meant that Shostakovich wrote less opera and more instrumental music. There is no doubt that if Shostakovich had had his way, he would have felt safe enough to write more operas, and that would surely have meant fewer symphonies, concertos and string quartets. All of which I adore, except when the symphonies burst into song, as they did towards the end. I just do not like the way that most classical music singing is done. All that wobbling and bellowing. This style was developed to fill opera houses before microphones, and during the pre-microphone era this was all that there was, if people were going to be able to hear it at the back of the hall. But now, when I compare the average din, so to speak, of this this style with the best of the twentieth century microphone-savvy singers, I find the operatic manner very off-putting and a serious barrier to my enjoyment of and understanding of classical music as a whole. See also this recent posting over at my personal blog about Sting doing a CD of some songs by John Dowland, which I of course welcome. Since writing that posting I have actually heard Sting sing Dowland in a broadcast concert. Frankly, I thought his voice sounded far too strained and I did not enjoy it. But many clearly did, and maybe the CD will sound better. Either way, the attempt was definitely worth making, and I hope other pop singers follow his lead. This concert can be listened to courtesy of the BBC for the next week or so. Ironically, one of the things about the operatic style of singing that particularly annoys me is that even if you do know the language they are supposed to be singing in, you often cannot hear the damn words, and have to resort to reading along with a little book if you want to know what is being said, just as if it was in a foreign language. This drains much of the spontaneity out of the experience. But, even if I can hear the words, I still hate all the wobbling and bellowing. On the other hand, if there is little or no wobbling or bellowing I often love it, even if I cannot understand the foreign words. I just listen to the sound of it, as if the singing was a violin or something. If you, on the other hand, like the way the typical opera singer sounds, then I am very happy for you. I am absolutely not arguing that you should make yourself suffer from my dislike of opera singing even if you now do not. Lucky you. But meanwhile, I personally wish some way could have been contrived to have made Shostakovich’s great English compositional contemporary Benjamin Britten write more symphonies, concertos and string quartets, and fewer operas, without ruining the political culture of the country where he happened to be born and to live, which happens also to be mine. I love Britten’s concertos, symphonies and string quartets, such as they are. But almost anything of Britten’s involving singing, particularly solo singing (classical choral singing I find less annoying), especially if the solo singing is being done by Peter Pears, causes me to switch off. Ironically, had Britten lived half a century later than he did, he might have felt a lot more inhibited about expressing his true ideas, given that so many of them involved the fact that he loved beautiful boys! He might instead have written fewer operas and more string quartets, and critics might then have argued about the alleged paedophilic sub-text of said quartets. And I could have ignored all that and loved the music a whole lot more than I now love Britten’s operas. Anyway, I now want to speculate that maybe this Shostakovich/Britten contrast can be generalised, to throw light on the bigger story of Western classical music. → Continue reading: Political repression and the development of Western classical music October 9th, 2006 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
I do not as yet know a great deal about this. It appears that some company has managed a court order requiring the domain name for spamhaus.org to be taken down. Spamhaus.org are one of the better anti-spam sites and supply an excellent real time blocking list to anyone who wants it. Their service has been free and voluntary and much appreciated by many harried network system administrators, among whose ranks I have from time to time been included. I know nothing about this ‘Ensight’ but I can think of no reason for a legal attack on the Spamhaus folk other than as a means of stopping the information about your current spam hosts from getting distributed to all those who voluntarily wish to block you. Whether Ensight is or is not run by a bunch of spammers I do not know. If anyone has any more information on the events leading up to the court order, feel free to comment. October 8th, 2006 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
The European ‘social model’ is nearing the end of the road:
Those who live by the state will die by the state. October 8th, 2006 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
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