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If you live in Britain and you do not think crime, casual violence and the background of anti-social behaviour is mounting problems based on the evidence of your own eyes, then stop reading now and keep taking the NHS prescribed Prozac. For all the rest of you, take a look at this report by Civitas. Of course the government and police claim the truth lies elesewhere. No prize for guessing who I am inclined to believe. January 3rd, 2005 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
 If we can have an ‘absurdity of lawmakers’, I suppose we can have a ‘stupidity of doctors’. In the face of attempts to deregulate drinking in Britain, a nation which is unusually restrictive when it comes alcohol compared to most western nations, we have Prof Ian Gilmore, a spokesman for the Royal College of Physicians (an extreme statist professional organisation and political lobby) saying:
However he does not explain why digging the same hole deeper will make things better, given that Britain is already far more regulated than France and also has more serious alcohol related problems. Like most regulatory authoritarians, Gilmore and the RCP simply do not have either the imagination to think that perhaps the over-regulation caused the problem, nor do they have the socialisation to have the notion occur to them that imposing their views on others is immoral. If people get drunk and commit crimes, punish the criminals, not those who drink and do not commit crimes. And in any case, the true criminals are those who added times limits to drinking hours which more or less institutionalised binge drinking. 
The political class at work January 3rd, 2005 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
Governments are now peddling myths to cover up their own inaction during the first few days of the catastrophe. They are stating that the magnitude of the catastrophe was unknown and, therefore, they did not feel compelled to set up the emergency infrastructure to supply information to distraught relatives. One of the first countries to feel the angry wind is Sweden, where the Foreign Minister attended the theatre on Boxing Day night, with appalling lack of judgement. Der Spiegel’s article highlights the comparison between government confusion and private sector organisation:
This contrasts with the role of Lottie Knutsson, the information director at Fritidsresor, a travel company.
It takes a disaster to bring home to many that their political elites, having sold their mess of pottage to Brussels, no longer subscribe to the notion that they are servants rather than masters. January 3rd, 2005 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
One cannot help but feel humbled before the violence of nature. The tiniest of twitches within the crust of our planet and thousands, tens of thousands or even millions die with barely time enough for a prayer. All of us must face the question: “How should a planetary civilization of free people deal with events on this scale?” What do we as libertarians have as an answer to human misery on this level? I know some will shrug their shoulders and say “people chose to live there”, “it should be handled by an insurance pool” because it is the “responsibility of everyone there to be fully insured” … as if people could get or afford it in areas like this which only recently have clawed their way far enough up the hierarchy of values to even know such things exist. I am not suggesting an answer. I have none. I am at a loss. It was easier a few decades ago. Horrendous natural disasters happened in far away places to strange and alien people. They had nothing to do with us, no connection to our daily lives. Now we see real people in real time; It is difficult verging on the impossible to feel distant from the horror we see on television. I will not be surprised if the final toll tops 250,000: a quarter million souls. As horrifying as this number may be, it is by no means the worst nature can dish out. Some day Yellowstone Park will go up. The entire park is, after all, a caldera that blows sky high every now and again. When next it happens, much of the American West will die. Denver and other cities will not look like human disaster areas. They will lie invisible hundreds of feet somewhere beneath thousands upon thousands of square miles of volcanic ash. Denver will become the Mile Under City. There is a deadly fault near St Louis. A century and a half ago New Madrid was the site of perhaps the largest earthquake recorded in US history. It mostly shook trees, scared vast clouds of Passenger Pigeons into flight and annoyed the bears. No one knows when it will slip again. It is not difficult to imagine hundreds of thousands of Americans dead in an unprepared Midwest. Then there is the disaster to rule them all. Short of the once in a hundred million year Dinosaur killer, the worst I am aware of is the Canary Islands landslide scenario. Some believe every once in ten millenia or so half a mountain slides off into the sea there. An Isle of Mann dropped into the Pond. Some scientists think there are signs of shifting already (others do not), and that perhaps we are closer to the next catastrophe than the previous. If such did occur, the resulting mega-tsunami would wipe out the Carribean islands and lay waste to the entire East Coast of the United States for tens of miles inland. There are not many truly safe places on this living planet of ours. The next disaster might be bigger… and closer to home. Give whatever help you can as you might one day find yourself relying on the kindness of strangers. The UK Earth Quake Appeal is reachable at 0870-606-0900. You can also give online. January 3rd, 2005 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
From yesterday’s Telegraph comes this amazing story:
I missed this yesterday, but Norm Geras, linked to today by Instapundit because of another posting about Guardian foolishness, caught it, to whom thanks. I am sure that some time during the last few months I have blogged things which have at least suggested that blogging etc. is capable of replacing the existing media. If so, apologies, and if not, lucky me. This tsunami disaster has made clear what has long been obvious, that the old media and the new media complement and feed into each other, or at any rate they ought to. Bloggers in the right places at the right times can feed stories not just to other meta-bloggers, but to the mainstream media. A few of them were, after all, actually there. And then other bloggers, as I have just done, can point blog readers towards particularly choice mainstream media stories. I particularly admire the way that the Guardian, for all that it is easy for the likes of us to criticise it for all kinds of other reasons, has at least learned how blogging can actually help in times like these, not just by telling the terrible story, but by helping to make it less terrible. January 2nd, 2005 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
… no, not really, but that is scarcely less daft than the statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury that the calamitous tsunami made him doubt the existence of God. As a ‘shoulder shrugging agnostic’ well on his way to just calling myself an atheist, I have serious doubt about the existence of God myself but surely re-evaluating a belief in God every time someone, or 130,000 someones, die does rather suggest a lack of having thought things through in the first place. Unless we are nothing more that meat puppets dancing to a pre-ordained celestial script (which is certainly not Anglican doctrine), the fact we make use of our free will and thereby make decisions that result in us dying in a certain manner (such as, for example, deciding that we will live in a coastal community in southern Asia) neither proves nor disproves anything about the existence of God. Now I have no doubt that the Archbishop is well aware of those arguments and is just indulging in the usual Anglican tradition of fogging issues whilst sounding concerned and looking earnest as an alternative to clearly articulating easy to understand (and thereby easy to attack) positions based on long established doctrines. But then the current Archbishop is a strange bird and the things in which he has ‘faith’ suggests to me that placing too much stock in his judgement is faith misplaced. He says that he, like Tony Blair, has faith in the UN but thinks it should be reformed and improved by giving religious groups (naturally!) and nations not on the security council more power (such paragons of civil rights as Myanmar, Libya, Syria, Zaire and Iran perhaps?)…yes, he wants to have some official say over how the UN’s tax funded patronage gets doled out. And presumably in the spirit of ecumenicist tolerance would also extend that to other religious leaders as well. It is a marvel how the UN gets held up as even a potential source of moral authority by people like Rowan Williams who are supposedly in the ‘moral authority business’, when by design the UN is a club of national leaders that admits mass murderers, fascists, communists, rabid nationalists and kleptocrats of every strip into its rank. January 2nd, 2005 | 73 comments - (Comments are closed)
London celebrated the arrival of the New Year in what was under the circumstances rather too flamboyant style last night, with a firework display in, over and around the Wheel. The trouble with a firework display celebration at a time like this is that you can either do them, or cancel them. You cannot tone them down.  I have more photos of how this looked on my telly here. Huge firework displays fit very snugly into the Way We Live Now, and in particular into the Way We Are Governed Now. More and more fireworks shows are now collectively staged, and collectively viewed, including on TV of course. Meanwhile, free enterprise firework enjoyment is discouraged, allegedly because of safety, but probably also simply because it is free enterprise. I wonder if there is an EU dimension to this? There usually is, after all. The EU is all about centralised power and the suppression of freelance activity. It is also all mixed up with Roman Catholicism. As is November 5th, otherwise known as Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night. Are our continental rulers now discouraging us from celebrating the burning of a Roman Catholic terrorist, who was, like them, hell bent on reversing the defeat of the Spanish Armada? Whatever the reason, and however much I hate what the new arrangements may or may not symbolise, I prefer the new firework dispensation. I recall being in Germany over the New Year some time in the eighties, and seeing the entire sky of Germany lit up at midnight on the dot. I thought to myself, we should do that, instead of the sputtering, long -drawn-out, chaotic, dog-scaring mess that our November 5th celebrations have degenerated into. (This year’s, to my ears, were particularly feeble and pointless.) Having them all at one means that we can all enjoy them all at once, and then go back indoors and get stuck into the New Year. Which I hope is a happy one for all who read and write here. None of which means that the inconsolable unhappinesses of many in the world just now, which for me have been most vividly and most gruesomely evoked by Amit Varma, should be ignored. Who would have thought that the eastern coastal parts of India would, following the tsunami devastation, be afflicted by a shortage of kerosene, of all things and among many other things? Yet it is all perfectly logical. Burying the bodies is taking a long, long time, and by the time many are reached they have decayed and cannot be dragged. Grab hold of a leg, and you end up holding only a leg. Yet the bodies must be disposed of, to prevent disease. So, they must be burned. But for that you need… kerosene. For the link to that piece I thank Instapundit, who I think has been outstanding in recent days, both with his abundant tsunami linkage � what is happening, what needs to be done, how to help, etc. – and for his abundant postings about and linkings to other matters. Update: as Instapundit again notes, there is now more Amit Varma reportage. So a very unhappy New Year for many. If any of those reading this are personally afflicted in any way by these terrible events, please know that you have the deepest sympathy of all of us here and of all the other readers of this. January 1st, 2005 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Environmentalism is the banging shithouse door that the socialists are finally going to find themselves able to barge through and screw us all. January 1st, 2005 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
My very best wishes to all our readers for a very happy New Year. By way of clarification, the reference ‘New Year’ is based upon the standard, current, accepted Western Calendar which is not to say that the Western Calendar is in any way preferable or superior to any other form of Calendar be it religious, cultural, historical, scientific or regional and which may or may not be recognised by any other person, group of persons, organisation or self-defining community based either in a particular jurisdiction or transnational. Please note that this greeting in no way implies any judgement against any other days which may or may not be recognised by any other party as marking the beginning of a new year or any implication that any such recognition, and any celebratory rituals that may or may accompany such recognition is, in any way, less valid or worthy of respect. Furthermore, the extension of best wishes does not imply any obligation of acceptance or reciprocity in any form from any person or persons or other parties who do not recognise the standard new year or who do not recognise or celebrate the turning of any year (howsoever defined) or who may recognise (whether officially or informally) either the standard new year or any substantially similar event without the need for good wishes or by means of the customary extension of other greetings or forms of accepted social coda. Finally, the use of the term ‘happy’ refers merely to a state of emotional being that may or may not be transient and acceptance of the best wishes does not imply any requirement on the part of the acceptee to be either in a state of happiness or arrange their affairs in such a way as to induce a state of happiness either in whole or in part. Nor does use of the term ‘happy’ imply that any alternative or different state of emotional being or emotional response is any less valid and the use of the term ‘happy’ (whether accepted with best wishes or not) should not be construed as any declaration that happiness is either a superior or desirable state of mind. Thank you. January 1st, 2005 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Happy New Year from the Editors and Contributing Samizdatistas in the British Isles, America, Australia and Europe! January 1st, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
The tsunami disaster in Asia appears to have spawned something of a pissing contest in the West:
HMG may now be forced to raise its own bid. And the French. And the Germans, And the Japanese. And the Australians. And then the Americans will feel obliged to up the ante again in this unseemly ‘my-foreign-aid-dick-is-bigger-than-yours’ antler-lock. And people call me cynical! December 31st, 2004 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
December 31st, 2004 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
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