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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Re-arrange the following words to form a well-known phrase.
Their by petards own hoist:
“A CRIMINAL investigation has been started by Scotland Yard into an advertisement from the Gay Police Association (GPA) that blamed religion for a 74 per cent increase in homophobic crime…
Detective Chief Inspector Gerry Campbell, who leads the domestic violence and hate crime unit, disclosed the investigation in a letter to Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative MP. He wrote: “The original advertisement has been recorded as a religiously aggravated hate crime incident following a crime allegation by a member of the public.
“This crime is now the subject of a proportionate effective and objective criminal investigation. The police senior investigating officer is in consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service. Any decision to prosecute is the sole decision of the CPS.”
Do not just read the article, savour it. For the time is fast approaching when this chaotic edifice will collapse into a little black-hole of nothingness under the massive weight of its own absurdity.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in the Financial Times (sorry, subscription required to get to the link) that normal competitive pressures to improve service are not working in the British airports industry. The privatised British Airports Authority, now owned by Spanish based group Ferrovial, has nothing much to gain, he argues, from improving security because it gets no real benefit in terms of consumer response, but it does have an incentive to boost profits through cost cuts, which must, he says, come into conflict with security. Does he have a point?
The way in which BAA operates seems to me to be, at first glance, greatly influenced by government and its regulatory agencies, so I think it would be hard to come down too much on BAA’s neck in this case. The regulatory environment surrounding the current security furore is largely driven by government and looks likely to remain so. So it is probably academic to speculate how security would operate in a ‘pure’ free market environment. If it were possible for people to shop around for different levels of security, it would be interesting to see how businesses would responsd. If airlines could directly negotiate their own security policies with the customer without having to mediate via an airport business or government, then you might get an interesting spectrum. Some airlines would market themselves as high-security, enforcing tough checks on passengers, banning certain types of luggage. If you want to fly on such an airline, fine. Other airlines might go for a more relaxed approach, and passengers would fly in the knowledge that they were taking more of a chance in exchange for not having to put up with intrusive security. Come to that, I am in favour of busineses such as child-free airlines, for reasons spelled out by Jeff Randall recently).
And even if BAA were to remain dominant as an airports landowner, if passenger numbers dropped off alarmingly due to heavy-handed security and massive delays, then sooner or later shareholders of BAA would revolt, or sell the business, and new entrants to the airports business would offer something better. The problem with this subject of course is that we have become so used to the idea of a whole network of big airports being run by one former state-established company that it is sometimes hard to imagine something different. But it could change and there is plenty of thinking that can and should be done on how to use the incentives of the market to improve passenger service and give people the security they want.
Some related thoughts about airports and privatisation issues here.
Inheritance taxes are of course loved by Jacobins of various hues, or by those well-meaning folk who imagine that we have to recreate an economic ‘level-playing field’ with each new generation. On that basis, it is more meritorious for a person to gamble away his millions than to give it to his children or friends. How perverse is that?
– Johnathan Pearce
There is an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement that claims not only are radical Islamists trying to recruit at UK universities, the universities are doing little to combat it (a claim they naturally deny).
I do not know who is correct, but as Shiraz Maher claims the universities are not on top of this problem and he was a former member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, I am inclined to think the worst.
How many Islamists does it take to change a lightbulb?
The spoof post below about how the wretched Tory leader ‘Dave’ Cameron might react to the case for abolishing inheritance tax – a thoroughly good idea – prompted some commentators to wonder about the UK media. It reminded me of an old quote attributed to the late British broadcaster, Brian Redhead, who is supposed to have said (I paraphrase):
“The Times is read by people who run the country. The Daily Telegraph is read by people who fear we are being run by the French; the Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country, while the Daily Mirror is read by people who delusionally think they run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Sun is read by people who do not care who runs the country so long as she has very large tits.”
I do not read Andrew Sullivan’s blog very often but when I saw the Michael Totten (who is someone I do rate rather highly) was guest-blogging there, I took a peek and saw an article Sullivan wrote a few days ago about the plot to blow up aircraft heading from the UK to the US, which quickly reminded me why I rarely visit.
I wonder if Lieberman’s defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn’t find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration.
Riiiight. It is totally sound policy to distrust what the authorities tell us and instead just look for the evidence as we have been lied to again and again, and until I hit the paragraph I quoted above, I was mostly in agreement with what was being written. Lord knows there are more than ample reasons to give the Bush administration a sound and repeated kicking and I am the last person to urge people to trust governments, but concocting weird conspiracy theories is a clear sign that the point of rational criticism has been past and we are entering Bush Derangement Syndrome territory.
Both Bush and Blair will not hesitate to use any plot by Al-Qaeda, even those of the more common Keystone Cops Terrorists variety, to abridge yet more of our civil liberties without in fact improving our security one iota. But the notion that the timing of such tactical moves by the police are being micro-managed by Blair, let alone Bush, for maximum PR value is stretching things, particularly given that the PR effect of such a bust is extremely uncertain given the recent propensity of London’s Metropolitan Police for arresting, not to mention shooting, the wrong people.
Moreover, the fiasco in Lebanon was an entirely domestic Israeli cock-up caused by the most idiotic leadership in the Jewish state’s history, so other than the ravings of the perpetually BDS infected Kos/Democratic Underground crowd (who are frankly an irrelevant lunatic fringe in any PR calculations likely to be made in either the White House or Downing Street), it is difficult to see why a military and political screw-up by Israel would have Bush or Blair desperately looking to finesse a diversion of attention away from the violence in Israel and Lebanon. It was really not their problem in any major way and it had largly pushed Iraq off the front pages of the world, which was unlikely to be causing many sleepless night in Downing Street or Pennsylvania Avenue. And I really, really doubt Tony Blair is more than dimly aware of who the hell Joe Lieberman is given that he is hardly a household name outside the USA. Methinks the idea such issues were driving the Metropolitan Police’s actions is frankly bonkers.
Still, I will probably be reading far more of Andrew Sullivan’s blog in the days to come now that someone else is actually writing for it.
There is so much happening in the commercial space breakout right now that it is difficult to keep up. I will just give you a few links to recent events.
The waiting list for tourist flights to Space Station Alpha is growing longer as former Microsoft developer Charles Simonyi has passed his Cosmonaut physical. Charles is in line behind a Japanese entrepreneur, Daisuke ‘Dice-K’ Enomoto who is already in training for a September flight. Meanwhile, the lovely Anousheh Ansari, whose family are the all-american heroes behind the Ansari X-Prize and X-Prize Cup is waiting in line for a slot to open up.
Also in the news, efforts towards a Canadian space port are moving ahead. There is something very poetic about a Cape Breton launch site: I can imagine the tourists spending an evening before their flight listening to some of the very fine Cape Breton traditional musicians. What better way to prepare for a flight than sipping a pint and listening to a few good sets of jigs and reels?
Breaking news: ‘Dice-K’ has been pulled from his flight for medical reasons. Anousheh will likely get the next flight opportunity.
The Conservative Party has launched a fierce attack on cabinet minister Stephen Byers following the latter’s call for the abolition of Inheritance Tax.
According to the Party’s Shadow Treasury Spokesman:
“This is neo-liberalism gone mad, a selfish Thatcherite appeal to naked greed and self-interest”.
He added:
“This ludicrous idea of handing out tax cuts to the rich is outmoded and has no place in 21st Century Britain. We in the Conservative Party are committed to increasing the rates of Inheritance Tax in order to build a fairer society based on inclusion and social justice”.
Party Leader, David Cameron has confirmed that his party will “fight tooth and nail” to save Inheritance Tax and “conserve the post-war walfare state settlement”.
I am listening to the test match cricket commentary, and I can tell you that cricket is about to become extremely big news, of the front page variety.
England are playing Pakistan, at the Oval cricket ground in London. England are two up, but Pakistan are looking favourites to win the final game, despite a good England batting fight back.
Or, they were. Because now something far more serious has happened. A while before the tea interval, Pakistan were punished by the umpires, for ball tampering. (Ball tampering in this case means deliberately and excessively scuffing up one side of the ball, to make it swing more.) The umpires changed the allegedly tampered ball, allowing the England batsmen out on the pitch to choose the replacement ball, and England were awarded five penalty runs. The Pakistanis were found guilty of cheating, in other words. There appears to be no evidence one way or the other to back up or disprove this judgement. (Where are those cameramen when you want them? They were all over it when Cook was given not out when he looked to have hit it, earlier in the day.) The Pakistanis carried on with the game at that point, but now the Pakistan side are refusing to take the field after tea.
“Under law 21,” one of the commentators is saying, “if a side refuses to come out, the umpires shall award the match to the other side.” This has never happened before in international cricket.
The umpire at the centre of this row is Darrell Hair, and he has a history of battles with Pakistan. → Continue reading: Darrell Hair versus the Pakistanis
The ‘end-times’ must be upon us. Former Labour cabinet minister, Stephen Byers, has just said something with which I agree: abolish inheritance tax.
At last we can put an end to all the quarrelsome debates and ill-informed speculation
A fundamentalist Islamic movement is emerging as a common link between several of the men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners.
Well, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
(And, by the way, I wonder what links the remainder of the men? Perhaps it was too soon to call for an end to the quarrelsome debates.)
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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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