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.
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Gloomy prognostications about the future of Europe seem to be flying thick and fast these days. It seems that everybody who is anybody, especially on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, is quite convinced that the whole European continent is riding on a one-way ticket to Palookaville.
Speaking for myself, I am not entirely persuaded. Certainly the combination of demographic decline and economic and political sclerosis means that Europeans have some very difficult choices galloping over the horizon towards them. But that is not the same as saying that they are all doomed and done for. Who is to say that they will not make the right choices?
Well, British historian Niall Ferguson for one. In his reading of the entrails, choice does not even come into it:
The fundamental problem that Europe faces, more serious than anything I’ve mentioned so far, is senescence. It’s a problem that we all face as individuals to varying degrees, but from society to society the problem of senescence, of growing old, varies hugely. In the year 2050, which is less remote than it may at first sound, current projections by the United Nations suggest that the median age of the European Union countries, the EU 15, will rise from 38 to 49.
There is only one way out for this continent, and that is immigration. There is an obvious source of youthful workers who aspire to a better standard of living. All around Europe there are countries whose birth rate is more than twice the European average, indeed, significantly more than twice. The trouble is that nearly all these countries are predominantly Muslim.
So far, so what? There is nothing here that is not being editorialised about in much of the press. But Ferguson takes matters a little further. → Continue reading: Faith is the key?
A relentless and seemingly unstoppable trend in education in Britain is something which I call, at my Education Blog, sovietisation. This means: desperate quota fulfilment frenzies, and, increasingly, statistical measures of educational success which bear no relation to reality. In a word: cheating. Officially encouraged. With the politicians themselves implicated heavily, because they no more want to face the truth about how well they are really doing than anyone else does.
My latest sovietisation posting contained a big slice from this Telegraph article by Frank Furedi about cheating at university, and David Gillies added this comment by way of confirmation of this disturbing trend. The only thing I have cut from his comment was the brief apology at the end of it for going on at such length, which I have assured him was quite unnecessary.
This corresponds exactly to my experiences in academia. As a doctoral student, I would augment my meagre income by acting as a ‘demonstrator’ (i.e. teaching assistant). I would help guide students in the lab courses through the trickier points of the thing they were studying and give them hints when they got stuck. I also had the responsibility of marking the reports they subsequently prepared.
At the end of one term, I was given the task of marking the results of a fairly major project that one class had undertaken. After about ten of them I noticed an ominous trend. Phrases and in some cases entire paragraphs were copied verbatim between reports. As I proceeded, I started to notice that there were several different, sometimes overlapping variants of the report. I began to be able to discern a sort of taxonomic structure – in the end I was almost able to ascribe a sort of evolutionary tree to the plagiarised reports, rather like philologists do with missing or partial texts of ancient manuscripts.
By now both worried and annoyed, I wrote a detailed memorandum, with copious examples of the suspect work, heavily footnoted and with an explanation of my hypothetical taxonomy (I seem to recall it took me about three days to write). I went to the lecturer who was running the course and said, “we have a serious problem.” He looked at my memo and promptly got the Head of Department involved. The Head sent my report over to Admin, along with some thoughts of his own and the lecturer. And then – nothing. The degree of plagiarism varied from student to student. The most egregious example was one in which, as far as I could tell, two students had run off two copies of the same report with simply their names substituted. For these I recommended expulsion. For the remainder, I recommended sanctions ranging from failing that module of the course to failing the course entirely. Most severe sanction actually imposed: loss of marks for that module and a written warning put on file. Most escaped scot-free.
I was sickened. Just a few years earlier, as part of our induction to studying Physics at Imperial College, we were given an afternoon’s worth of lectures on integrity, ethics and the scientific method. We were told in no uncertain terms that not only would cheating get us kicked out, it would end our scientific careers. And yet, in the mid ’90’s, students at a University in the north of England could plagiarise with near impunity.
The reason? Money. Every lost student was a lost grant. So shackled is the University system to the filthy teat of Government (especially post the hare-brained notion that more than a small fraction of a nation’s youth is capable of conducting study at degree level) that chasing grants is the primary, secondary and tertiary priority of universities. Teaching and research quality is important only inasmuch as it can be used to garner a tick in the right box in the latest assessment exercise. Only a complete divorce of higher education from government can halt and reverse this trend.
UPDATE: See also this confessional memoir by Natalie Solent.
How international trade works has always been a difficult sell for promoters of economics. Explaining Comparative Advantage is easy if you are holding a lecture, but less easy if you have only a sentence or two. I am reminded of the catchphrase of my economics teacher who would say: “Not everything in economics is intuitively obvious.”
This is unfortunate. Mercantilism – and the neo-mercantilism put forward today by many NGOs – is deeply damaging, especially to the world’s poorest who are “protected” by high import tariffs.
The current buzz-word in trade policy is “offshoring”. Many people in Britain and America think it bad for their country. Yet offshoring jobs is nothing new. It is merely the specific jobs that are moving abroad is different. In the past, the jobs moving abroad were always changing. There is nothing new now. And each time people campaigned against losing jobs to overseas countries, Britain and America kept on increasing the total number of jobs in their economies. Opponents of offshoring do not have the evidence of history on their side.
Further reading: Offshoring service jobs is advantageous
Jack Vettriano may sound like a Sicilian mobster but, in fact, he is this country’s most popular and successful artist.
Born in Scotland, he started out his working life as a mining engineer before a girlfriend bought him a set of watercolour paints for twenty-first birthday. He taught himself to paint and embarked upon a career as an artist. Today, reproductions and prints of his work massively outsell those of Monet and Van Goch and originals hang in the collections of the wealthy and famous (making Vettriano pretty wealthy and famous himself).
Only the Deepest Red Vettriano’s deeply evokative work is rich in art deco erotica noir: elegant, sexy and (in this day and age) subversive. While many artists use a canvas to tell a story, Vettriano uses his to write a seductive novel full of unambigiously masculine and feminine characters. → Continue reading: He’s alright, Jack
Ladies and Gentlemen, courtesy of the Guardian, the Ahmed Yassin we barely knew:
In truth, neither Arafat nor Yassin had Mandela’s special greatness. But of the two, it was Yassin, the founder-leader of the militant Islamist organisation Hamas, who came closer.
Yassin the wise, Yassin the benevolent, Yassin the humanitarian. He was a gift to mankind. It was said of Yassin that he could light up a room, though he generally preferred lighting up buses and cafes.
Yassin had personal glory largely thrust upon him.
Which ‘personal glory’ was so tragically snuffed out by an Israeli missile that was very largely thrust upon him.
Meanwhile, in the shadow of his formal career, he was laying the foundations of his future eminence as both a religious and political seer. He founded al-Mujamma’ al-Islami, the Islamic Centre, which soon came to control virtually all religious organisations – including the Islamic University – in Gaza.
What a wellspring of entrepreneurial endeavour. Yassin the man, the wit, the raconteur and the bon vivant will be sadly missed by his army of adoring fans (at the Guardian).
I am beginning to seriously whether our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is having some sort of breakdown:
David Blunkett, the increasingly angry home secretary, is calling for “lifestyle punishments” to shape Britain into a less violent society. He wants the power to confiscate mobile phones and ban people from football matches. He is also wants to counter the “increasing portrayal of violence” on television. Which sounds like censorship.
No, that does not sound like censorship, it is censorship though given the degree of regulation to which TV broadcasting is subject anyway, further measures are redundant.
One unhappy source at the Home Office told the paper: “These proposals are disproportionate, unenforceable and criminalising and do not go to the heart of the cause of these problems. But Blunkett will not be deterred.”
Lest anyone forget, the Home Office (in common with the rest of our political superstructure) is staffed by people who earnestly believe that rates of finger-nail growth can be brought under control with the appropriate set of regulations. So if even they think that Big Blunkett’s ideas are ‘unenforceable’, then I reckon some pretty deep cracks are beginning to open in the edifice of British government.
Further to Brian’s comments about state sponsored tourism, it gets much worse here in South Australia, where the state government not only advertises for tourists, but funds ephemeral events to attract them. Brian would assume that everything else in this state is a mess- and he’d be quite right.
The state government is addicted to these things, and has been for a long time. We have just finished the Adelaide Festival of Arts which I read in the Adelaide Advertiser’s dead tree version cost the taxpayer $7 million. A far cry from the start of the Festival in 1960, which was wholly privately funded. And it’s not only the artistic classes that are well catered for. The Clipsal 500 motor race was held last weekend, a festival of motorsport for the petrol head community. The spending of public money on motor sport is also a long Adelaide tradition which I wrote about here and even in the Age of Google, it is quite difficult to get an actual number in answer to the question “how much taxpayer money was spent on this race?”.
Given that, and the way the Adelaide Advertiser keeps telling us how good it is for our economy, one is inclined to think the worst.
Unhappy is the taxpayer forced to pay for public circuses.
It’s only a little thing, but I regard it as a very bad sign when a country starts advertising for tourists. I’m not against tourism, but I am against national organisations which advertise it. I regard them as evidence that everything else in the country is a mess, but that since the place is at least picturesque and ruined and not being built on everywhere, well, at least we can get foreigners to come and drool over it.
I can remember the shock when, during the Jimmy Carter regime I think it must have been, the USA started begging us on TV to give them a visit.
My point? Well, I just saw a TV advert for being a tourist in … Scotland, done by, I think, these people. This has been going on for some time now.
Let me be clear. I am not saying that Scotland is not a fine place to visit. I have visited it, and it is very fine. It has the nearest thing in the British Isles to mountains, and lovely lakes ( which they call lochs), and cute fake castles (which I almost prefer to our real ones), and men marching about in coloured skirts blowing pipes you won’t hear anywhere else. Scotland is great. Everyone should see it at least once. What I am objecting to are the TV adverts. They are the sign of bad times up there.
Their rugby team is certainly an embarrassment.
But while the short-term news in Scotland is obviously bad, the long term news is that the Scots are now slowly if painfully learning how to govern themselves, and generally to look after themselves, without having us English to blame. If you tax, spend, regulate, and generally screw around with everything, bad things will follow. If, on the other hand, you cut taxes …, deregulate … I was for Scottish devolution when it happened and I am for it now even more, and I am not averse to the idea of complete Scottish national separation. I genuinely believe that, for all their temporary difficulties, the Scots are just so much less petty-nationalist and whiny and blame-Englandy than they were before devolution. I am confident that they will soon put the bad old days of begging people to come and visit them behind them, and settle down to making Scotland the sort of place where people will just visit of their own accord because it is so interesting and fun to be in.
No doubt commenters will inform us of all the places where England, or worse, my beloved London, is also advertised on TV.
10 Downing St says the EU Justice Council has agreed to all UK anti-terrorism proposals, including communications data retention standards.
The Council:
agreed to establish new common standards for retention of communications data;
agreed to implement proposals to improve the exchange of data between countries, for example on lost and stolen passports; and
tasked EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security policy, Javier Solana, to bring forward proposals to make better use of intelligence across the EU within six months.
– 10 Downing Street, EU agrees UK anti-terror plans.
Cross-posted from vigilant.tv.
Good news from today’s Guardian, which just goes to show that big news can sometimes come in the form of something bad just very quietly not happening:
Tacit confirmation that joining the single currency is off the political radar until after the next election came today as the “No” campaign confirmed it was ceasing to campaign actively.
The group insists that a “steering committee” will monitor the government’s plans on the euro, but that last week’s budget now means that a referendum would not be before spring 2008 at “the absolute earliest”.
In his budget statement last Wednesday, Gordon Brown announced a “rolling assessment” of the case for euro – but last June told MPs that only one of his “five tests” had been met.
The sixth test – can they get us damn voters to agree to it? – was always the test that mattered. I don’t know anyone who believes that any of the other five matter as much as that one. (Come to think of it, I doubt if I know anyone who knows what all these tests are.) And because those New Labour people didn’t take all the chips they won in 1997 and throw them straight back onto the table and bet them all on the abolition of the pound Sterling, right then, there is a very good chance that Britain will retain its national independence indefinitely, with its separation from the ‘eurozone’ eventually mutating into separation from ‘Europe’ itself. I can hope.
As a libertarian I wish we Brits could cherry pick. I wish we could welcome all these Eastern European immigrants who are about to flood in and who want to work, but not take all the idiotic and mean-minded regulations and ‘harmonisations’. (And maybe history will cherry pick exactly that arrangement for me, eventually.) Which might explain why in other parts of Europe the libertarians are all gung-ho not only for ‘Europe’ but for the very Euro itself. In Brussels last week, I heard tell of a Swedish libertarian who voted ‘No’ in the Swedish referendum and who was damn near ostracised by the rest of her tribe. In Sweden, ‘Europe’ is what is going to dismantle their over-bloated welfare state. ‘Europe’ is Thatcherism.
However, the fact that ‘Europe’ may be a better bet than Sweden for Sweden doesn’t make it a better bet than Britain for Britain, so I am still pleased about the indefinitely postponement of the Euro in these parts.
When I edited pamphlets for the Libertarian Alliance, our problem was that we could not expect much in the way of immediate distribution. There was no internet in those days, or not that we knew about or could have used. Nor did we have the resources to print our publications and then to market them, and in the meantime store them. So it was that we relied on (a) the photocopier, and on (b) time. If what we said did not instantaneously find a readership, then it would have to get itself around nevertheless, one pamphlet at a time, by its sheer eloquence.
The time angle meant that we needed a different style of writing, a more timeless style, a style that would not date. We had to write in what I now recognise as a French style – more abstract, more theoretical (but free of any technical jargon), not heavy on detailed evidence (because evidence is liable to date) and heavy instead on generalisations with universal (and therefore timeless) appeal.
We were accused of preaching to the converted, and this was true. We were doing that. But preaching to the converted is an important part of any propaganda enterprise. The eloquent statement of that which is good and true, everywhere and at all times, is something to which supporters can rally and declare their agreement. By saying what we believed, we helped to turn what had merely been a silent army of isolated dissenters into an interconnected network of potential activists and organisers and movementeers. And writers, of course.
In short, we wanted people to write more like this:
Law is justice. And it is under the law of justice – under the reign of right; under the influence of liberty, safety, stability, and responsibility – that every person will attain his real worth and the true dignity of his being. It is only under this law of justice that mankind will achieve – slowly, no doubt, but certainly – God’s design for the orderly and peaceful progress of humanity.
→ Continue reading: Frédéric Bastiat looks at the entire world
Tony Blair’s 10 Downing Street web site is claiming that some spurious target or other, for the National Health Service to recruit an extra 2,000 General Practitioners, has almost been reached. That is, according to some figures produced, and I use the word advisedly, by the UK government’s Department of Health.
However, I have just watched a hilarious piece on Channel4’s News programme where the Royal College of General Practitioners challenged how these good news figures had actually been arrived at? I felt like phoning the programme up and telling its producer about a civil service game called Hard Target, which involves a pack of marked cards, a set of rusty darts, and a small bag of pistachio nuts. But I relented and listened on.
With an increasing number of GP surgeries refusing new patients and an increasing shortage of GPs around the country, for instance in Barnsley, as mentioned by Channel4 tonight, and even in relatively well-funded towns in Scotland, the Royal College puts the alleged increase in GPs at something more like 200, rather than 2,000, and if you take into account the increasing number of GP retirements and the increase in part-time GP working, the full-time figure actually shrinks, in real world terms, to something more like 26.
So, well worth increasing the spend on the NHS then, to nearly one hundred billion pounds, from about sixty billion. I know that’s almost £1.54 billion pounds per extra GP, but hey, is it really possible for us heartless libertarians to put a monetary price on the sanctity of human life and its guardians in the general practitioner service? Shame on us.
Which leaves me in a dilemma? Do I believe the UK government figures or do I believe the ones from the Royal College of General Practitioners set at about 1% of the government’s own claims? It is a toughie, I will admit, but you know me. I always believe everything the government says on principle. For where would civilisation be if we ever lost trust in the government?
I am an Aardvark.
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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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