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]
|
You wait for articles on Dickens and suddenly, three turn up at once. Fortuitously, I have just concluded “Sketches by Boz”, a book that recommends itself to the commuter. It is not a novel to take up, put down or plough through. Published in periodical form, it lends itself to the daily article or chapter, preferably read after Motspur Park and before Earlsfield, and, one likes to think, approximating the reading experience of the early Victorian.
One of the joys of reading Dickens is his written observations of life and lowlife in London, including the accents of the denizens of Seven Dials. Three women in a gin palace (“Scenes: Chapter V: Seven Dials”):
“Vy don’t you pitch into her, Sarah?” exclaims one half-dressed matron, by way of encouragement. “vy don’t you? if my husband had treated her with a drain last night, unbeknown to me, I’d tear her precious eyes out – a wixen!”
“What’s the matter, ma’am?” inquires another old woman, who has just bustled up to the spot.
“Matter!” replies the first speaker, talking at the obnoxious combatant, “matter! Here’s poor dear Mrs Sulliwin, as has five blessed children of her own, can’t go out charing for one arternoon, but what hussies must be a comin’, and ‘ticing avay her oun’ ‘usband, as she’s been married to twelve year come next Easter Monday, for I see the certificate ven I vas a drinkin’ a cup o’ tea vith her, only the werry last blessed Ven’sday as ever was sent. I ‘appen’d to promiscuously, ‘Mrs. Sulliwin,’ says I—–“
The last time that I heard someone swap v’s for w’s and w’s for v’s was on ‘Allo ‘Allo – a pantomime BBC sitcom. This speech pattern was used to mock German officers during WWII.
However, the joke is on us. If Dickens accurately portrays the table talk of Londoners, then some of us used to sound a lot more German than we do now.
He is back and this time he is pissed off!!
Former Labour MP and TV presenter Roberty Kilroy-Silk has emerged from his brief period of public exile to announce that he intends to stand as a candidate for the UK Independence Party in the forthcoming European Parliament elections.
The UKIP leadership will almost certainly regard this as something of coup and not without justification. They have had a dreadfully hard time getting any public traction for their campaign to get Britain out of the EU altogether and celebrity commitments of this nature can (if not turn the tide) at least help to raise profile.
But what will the Europhile side make of this? Hay, is the answer. Indeed, the harvesting is already underway:
Robert Kilroy-Silk, the politician turned TV presenter who lost his daytime show for insulting the Arab nations, has now joined a group of people who think that continental Europe is ruled by “barbarians”.
The former Labour MP, whose opinions have become more right-wing as he has grown older, wants Britain to withdraw from the EU altogether, and to impose heavy restrictions on immigration.
The entire case of the Europhile lobby consists of the wicked calumny that anti-EU campaginers are merely a motley bunch of rabid, red-necked bigots and foaming-at-the-mouth nazi-types who just do not like ‘foreigners’. It is the only weapon in their armoury and they wield it with alacrity.
Given Mr. Kilroy-Silk’s recent, well-publicised and rather uncharitable outbursts (the nature of which were sufficient, in the current ethical climate, to brand him as an incorrigable racist) his candidacy is going to provide the Europhiles with a big dose of ‘see-we-told-you-so’ corroboration for their libels. I expect that they will milk this unfortunate and inaccurate conflation for all it is worth.
I hope that good fortune smiles on UKIP and Mr Kilroy-Silk’s campaign for electoral success but I do fear that his candidacy will prove to be a propoganda victory for the other side.
“When the world was young, and the government took 20% of your paycheque and gave you services that worked, you might be willing to remain what economists call “rationally ignorant” about the details. Now maybe 40% of that cheque vanishes, your mother’s coughing blood in the hallway of the nearest ER, and your country has no army. And here comes the guy from the CBC telling you that his expense account should be a state secret. No sale, comrade.”
-Canadian blogger Colby Cosh lets us know what he thinks about the Canadian state broadcaster’s bid to avoid accountability.
Lest anyone forget about the “broken-watch principle” (i.e. even a broken watch is still right twice a day), a reminder is served up courtesy of this excellent and unsettling article by Nick Cohen in the Guardian:
Politicians might be despised, but it is a fair guess that if a home secretary or prime minister proposed repealing the Human Rights Act or tearing up habeas corpus a majority of the population would clap their hands and cheer him on. A paradox of our time is that while ministers are everywhere vilified as scheming liars, and bureaucrats as sinister incompetents, large sections of the supposedly cynical and wised-up electorate are eager to allow them to behave like major-generals.
Sadly true. Mr Cohen even goes on to quote H.L. Mencken:
‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,’ said H.L. Mencken. But in modern Britain it’s hard to know who is the leader and who is the led. It’s easy enough to blame elite politicians, desperate to win the approval of apathetic voters, and elite media managers, desperate to hang on to their shares of declining audiences. But there’s also no doubt that politicians are buffeted by an angry and fearful public which isn’t overly concerned if the punitive measures they demand tear up civil liberties or, indeed, work.
For such great wrongs are liberties which this country fought Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler to defend abandoned without a squeak.
Mr Cohen’s doleful analysis chimes with my own observations and experiences of life in contemporary Britain and because I often come to the same melancholy conclusions I am sometimes accused of ‘revelling’ in pessimism. But this is not true. It is rather that I am unwilling to ignore the evidence of my own eyes and ears.
For those same reasons, I find myself growing increasingly impatient with analyses of our current woes in terms of historical precendents (the 1930’s, the 1950’s and the 1970’s appear to be the most referred to). If Nick Cohen is right (and the evidence points towards his being right) then comparisons with previous eras are specious. We are facing a whole new situation here.
Despite some of the strictest anti-gun laws anywhere in the world and despite the abject failure of those laws to make this country a safer or better place in which to live, the anti-gun hysteria shows no signs of abating:
The Government will attempt to tackle Britain’s gun culture with plans to be unveiled this week for an overhaul of outdated firearms laws.
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will publish a consultation document which is expected to lead to tougher restrictions on the sale and manufacture of replica firearms as well as new age limits on gun ownership, especially for airguns, starter pistols and shotguns.
The consultation follows lobbying by the police and anti-gun campaigners who say Britain’s gun laws are confused, out of date and in desperate need of reform.
Of particular concern are replica firearms which are popular with gun collectors and can be bought legally but are being converted by criminals into lethal weapons to fire live ammunition.
By ‘reform’ they mean ever-greater restrictions leading inexorably to prohibition. In due course, toy guns, water pistols, potato guns and anyone with the surname ‘Gunn’ will be added to this list.
The whole subject of firearms has gone way beyond any arguments about citizen’s rights to self-defence or law and order or communal safety. Guns are now just bad ju-ju; the modern equivalent of the ‘evil-eye’ or some other medieval, peasant superstition the mere sight or mention of which is sufficient to induce an impulsive and irrational terror.
Bad ideas can be challenged with good ideas but superstitions are far more difficult to combat. For that, we need a whole new ‘Age of Reason’.
What is the difference between a headline and a story?
Well, in this case, a whole world of difference. The headline to this item on the BBC (where else?) spells out in big, bold type:
Calls for tax rise to help children
Ahhhhhh…children. Itty-bitty, helpless, doe-eyed, little moppets. Who can refuse a plea to help the little children? What kind of greedy, stone-hearted monster would vote against the opportunity to bring a ray of sunshine to their adorable, chubby faces?
Spare yourself the struggle with your conscience for only in text of the story does the actual identity of the proposed beneficiaries become clear:
Scotland’s new children’s commissioner has called for a penny on income tax to pay for improvements to child protection agencies, which she claims are badly overstretched.
So the extra tax money is not for children at all but to create more public sector jobs for functionaries.
The only things that are ‘overstretched’ are the public heart-strings they keep tugging on.
If reading about the failing of Robert Fisk and being hunted in a pub by ‘peace’ activist harridans if your cup of tea (it certainly is mine), then you could do worse than read the compelling and pleasingly off-beat Blog Irish:
Having exhausted her ignorance on the subject of Eamo, she suggested that we discuss the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We suggested that after five pints that was probably not a good idea.
With no further ado, she started screeching at the top of her lungs at us. We walked to the other end of the pub, and she followed, still screeching. The pub patrons and staff took no notice whatsoever. She left, and returned five minutes later with five angry women who were apparently going to show us the error of our ways. They searched through the pub, and though we were sitting near the entrance, affected not to see us, and left.
It is a funny old world.
One of my two favourite when-I-want-something-stupid websites, b3ta.com, links to this page of mailboxes, of which this one will undoubtedly be the favourite here. In England this would be forbidden, because it would be a replica gun:
The caption at the bottom of this picture says: ONLY IN TEXAS.
They also link to this, another for our triumphs of capitalism series, a machine for instantaneously peeling hard boiled eggs. This is a truly amazing machine. It is as if the hen is laying the eggs ready peeled. Although maybe that would be rather a bad idea, so forget that please.
Earlier in the week they linked to a fine piece of erotic dancing. Americans who worship our Tony, do not click here.
My other favourite mad stuff website is of course this one. Are there other such places I could visit for similar internet fun? Surely there are. Commenters, educate me.
CNET News.com reports technical problems have delayed the British government’s trials for biometric ID cards by three months. The failure of fingerprint and iris-recognition equipment caused the delay, Home Secretary David Blunkett told members of Parliament this week.
The trial, involving the registration of 10,000 volunteers to record and test biometric ID data, was originally due to launch in February but did not begin until last week. As a result, the length of the project has been cut from six months to three months.
Note how the trial is shortened as a solution to the delay…
A representative for the Home Office told Silicon.com that the problems have now been rectified.
We have to make sure it is correctly configured before launching it. It’s essential we get the first installation right before it is rolled out across the country. We’ll learn our lessons from this. There were issues of failure in the equipment, but those have been rectified and the technical problems have been ironed out.
Hopefully, famous last words…
For several decades now I have been seeing people I was at school with become semi-famous, the most completely famous of whom is now Richard Branson, with whom I shared a prep school, and even a rugby team for a term. (I was the worst in the team. He was a force of nature whom you really did not want to get in the way of, even then.)
Now, something else along similar lines is happening to me again. I am starting to notice what you might call graduates of the Alternative Bookshop/Libertarian Alliance/Free Market Think Tanks operation of the 1980s. And Greg Foxsmith is definitely a name I recall from those days. He was a customer, subscriber, name I remember in filled in forms, and I think I must have met him quite a few times, although I could not put a face to him until last night. How completely his thinking aligns with mine on all those precious issues, I do not know and do not care, but I would be very surprised if he did not pass the Perry de Havilland metacontext test with some ease. He is, in short, One Of Us.
And last night, Greg Foxsmith was on the telly, and I would have missed it had not a friend (thanks – she knows who she is) rang me and made me watch it. The programme was called Make Me Honest, and if you follow that link and you get to this:
Programme Three: Greg, Carla & Michael – Thursday 6th May 21:00, BBC Two.
Greg, an experienced criminal lawyer, took on two mentees – 21-year-old Michael who had convictions for football violence and theft, and Carla, an ex drug-addict. Greg offered Michael work experience in his own office to help him back into the real world. Greg knew that the first few hours out of prison were crucial for ex-addicts and kept a close eye on Carla and continued to phone her everyday.
With Mike the story was very mixed, and by the end Greg was no longer in touch with him, and was fearing the worst. But Mike had been shown making some progress, and there was definitely cause for hope at the point in the story where the programme left things, as well as foreboding.
With Carla, both the story and the outcome of the story were positively Dickensian, and by “postively” Dickensian, I mean Dickensian, but in a very, very good way. → Continue reading: How Greg Foxsmith helped Mike and Carla
There must be a comedy sketch in this:
West Yorkshire Police were guilty of sex discrimination in refusing to recruit a male-to-female transsexual, law lords have ruled.
The five law lords ruled unanimously that the woman, Miss A, was unlawfully discriminated against in breach of the Sex Discrimination Act.
They upheld a decision by the Court of Appeal last November.
West Yorkshire Police had argued that Miss A would not be able to carry out certain duties, such as body searches.
Lord Bingham said that, under European law, transsexuals were entitled to the same protection against discrimination as any other individual and to be recognised as belonging to their ‘acquired gender’.
Not to mention endless jokes about truncheons.
Let us hope that this story, told by Daniel Hannan in the latest Spectator, gets around:
Contemplate, then, the case of Hans-Martin Tillack. Mr Tillack is a respected German reporter who has written extensively about the Eurostat scandal. This convoluted affair really deserves a column to itself but, briefly, it involves allegations that millions of euros have been diverted from the budget by Commission officials. More recently, Mr Tillack had started to investigate the broader failure of EU authorities to act on tip-offs. It was this that triggered the reaction. Last month police swooped on his flat. He was questioned for ten hours without a lawyer, while his laptop, files and address book were confiscated. Even his private bank statements were ransacked.
The raid was ordered by Olaf, the EU’s anti-corruption unit. Needless to say, no such treatment has been meted out to the alleged fraudsters. In the looking-glass world of Brussels, it is those exposing sleaze, rather than those engaging in it, who find themselves in police custody. Mr Tillack was implausibly accused of having procured some of his papers by bribery. No formal charges have been brought, and he is now planning to sue. In the meantime, though, the notes he had built up over five years of meticulous work have been seized and his sources put at risk.
The lack of interest in this incident is bewildering. Journalists, after all, are usually exercised by the mistreatment of other journalists. When similar things happen in Zimbabwe, they are the subject of stern editorials. Yet here is the EU intimidating its critics with all the crudeness of a tinpot dictatorship. A message is being semaphored to the Brussels press corps: stick to copying out the Commission’s press releases and you’ll be looked after; make a nuisance of yourself and you’ll regret it. As the EU correspondent of a British newspaper told me mopily last week, ‘If they can do this to a German Europhile and get away with it, people like me might as well pack up and go home.’
God help Britain and God help EUrope (and we atheists only say things like that when matters are very serious) if Britain is bullied by its current crop of idiot rulers into voting Yes to the continuing depredations of this pompous, pious, self-glorifying, self-deluding gang of parasites. We must hope that Mr Tillack has big enough balls and eloquent and powerful enough friends for him to end up ahead in the highly dangerous game that he is now playing on our behalf.
|
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.
|
Recent Comments