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Amongst the announcement of the new Serious Organised Crime Agency one comment seems to have been largely overlooked. Tony Blair said, concerning serious crime:
On the balance of probabilities, Blair supports Big Blunkett’s latest attacks on our basic liberties. February 10th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I mentioned before that Ireland has an oxymoronically titled Competition Authority. If that level of government intrusion was all we had to worry about, I wouldn’t mind too much. Unfortunately we are also saddled with the similarly Orwellian-sounding Equality Authority. Their motto is “Diversity for an Equal Ireland” or “Equality for a Diverse Ireland” or something else equally bland but diversely platitudinous like “Be Reasonable, It Pays!”. This bunch of state-stipended, humourless entitlement-enforcers is headed by – some achievement this – probably the most pompous man in Ireland: Niall Crowley. He is an insistent hectoring presence on our radio waves. Through the the op-ed and letters pages of our newspapers he regularly reminds us of our “reponsibilities” in prose laden with jargon, tautologies and sundry infelicities. So it was with delight today that I read Blog Irish’s eloquent skewering of this self-serving organisation and supremo. February 10th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Amidst the voluminous analysis and comment about the Middle East, the part it played in the Cold War seems seldom mentioned of late. But, from the 1950’s right through to the end of the 1980’s, the Israeli-Arab conflict was, at least in part, an important Cold War battlefront, fought out between two proxy antagonists. But, everything old is new again:
This is an excerpt from a longish but thoroughly fascinating article written by German Green MEP, Ilke Schroder. If she is correct (and I must say that the facts on the ground do somewhat bear her out) then it appears as if the European Union has stepped into the role once played by the old Soviet Union. February 10th, 2004 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a sense in which I pity this government. No, really I do. When someone is prepared to exploit any sort of human tragedy in order to get what they want, one is forced to conclude that they have very little left in the way of self-respect or decency. I don’t think any of us truly appreciate just how badly our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, wants a national ID card system but the desire must be intense enough to burn a hole in his soul. It has now got to the stage where there is no bad news too pathetic enough not to be manipulated into a ID card propoganda opportunity, be it a shooting in Shropshire, a murder in Manchester or a child-abduction in Cheltenham. The latest ghastly incident to be turned into a government rhetorical tool is the 19 illegal Chinese immigrants who were drowned off the coast of Lancashire over the weekend:
Alongside the calls for ‘more regulation’ (the chief reflexive response), Mr Blunkett popped up on the late evening news (sorry, no link) in a laughable attempt to persuade everyone that a national ID card would prevent this sort of thing happening again. Complete and utter rubbish, of course. But that does not matter. What matters is the drip-drip propoganda required to facilitate ‘acculturation’. Mr Blunkett and his underlings must trawl through the daily news bulletins desperately seeking the kind of heartstring-tugging stories that they use to piggy-back their pet project into the public realm. Like teenage crack-whores, there is no part of their dignity these people will not sacrifice in order to get their fix. How sad, how pathetic. February 9th, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Robert E. Howard’s pulp fiction does not appear to be the stalwart stronghold of libertarianism that one would expect from an Ayn Rand or L. Neil Smith. Nevertheless, writing in Texas when the Wild West was a living memory, not a history book, Howard found plenty of material for his fantasies. The battles of the Aquilonians and the Picts were an odd Old World confection of cowboys and Indians. The American values of small government and individual freedom have very little to do with Conan’s lax attitude towards property, usually appropriated after cleaving a few skulls. However, as King Of Aquilonia, Conan employed his own brand of statecraft, as he explains to Amalrus, King of Ophir, Strabonus, King of Koth and Tsotha the Wizard as he stands chained and defeated in their hall. From ‘The Scarlet Citadel’ by Robert E. Howard.
May all those who raise taxes share the same fate! February 9th, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
This has no connection with legalising drugs, abolishing income tax (see posting below) or the Samizdata.net metacontext, or no connection that I can now think of. But even so, I like it a lot:
I too am stunned, even though I am not an “animal behaviouralist”. Apparently pigeons do have an innate navigation system, but as soon as they identify a road-based route, they use that instead.
No mate. Crows use the latest global-positioning technology. February 9th, 2004 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is an interesting piece about the impact of the Data Protection Act on the world of higher education. As so often, the attempt to suppress badness results in the suppression of, if not goodness, then at least the entirely reasonable. February 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
I do not know who David Butcher is, but I like him already on the strength of this, that he wrote in the latest Radio Times – which is published, be it noted, by the BBC. It is part of a plug for a programme to be broadcast tonight on BBC2 at 8 pm:
Well that may be going too far, but I do like that bit there about income tax, measured in days per year. And I bet these guys will be pleased about this kind of talk too. February 9th, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
On a long drive, this morning, I came across an interesting piece on Andrew Marr’s Start the Week programme on BBC Radio Four, a radio station I still cannot quite give up. The thrust of the piece was that free market producers in London’s West End are creating shockingly ‘commercial’ and ‘unoriginal’ shows, and that something should be done about it to make life more interesting for London’s chattering classes. → Continue reading: Krapp’s last government intervention February 9th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
The reason that there has been relatively little output this evening is that many of the Samizdatistas were at Samizdata HQ rather than at their keyboards, celebrating the start of new business ventures by two of our number… February 8th, 2004 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
There was a documentary about the Royal Navy in WWII on tonight, and one image etched itself into my mind. With a sidescan sonar they found the wreck of the Ark Royal, and along the debris path there was an unmistakeable outline. A Fairey Swordfish!  This is not just any Fairey Swordfish. This is one of the survivors of Bismark torpedo raids of May 1941. It is sitting at the bottom of the Mediterranean, certainly with all the fabric gone, but still sufficiently intact to give image enough for type recognition. My mind is boggled at the find and I still find it hard to believe. I simply cannot wait until someone figures out how to recover it. And if there is one, there might be more. Who knows? Perhaps the very plane that doomed the Bismark will one day grace the Imperial War Museum. 
click for larger image February 8th, 2004 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Medical researchers have condemned the new Human Tissues Bill as an impediment to teaching and research.
Doctors have to obtain written consent if they wish to use any form of human tissue removed from a person living or dead, even if they are checking for the prevalence of a virus in the general population. One can think of the consequences if tests could not have been carried out for AIDS, given the level of stigmatisation that accompanied the virus. There is a quandary since informed consent is surely necessary before the tissues of any individual are extracted, preserved and used for any purpose, even if it is for public health. However, it is estimated that 3,000,000 samples and 100,000,000 blood samples will require written consent, proving another bureaucratic excess for the NHS. Public health is often used as an argument to override the concerns or refusal of an individual to provide any form of sample. No doubt there is an argument that rational individuals will understand the necessity of acting in concert when faced with an unknown disease or epidemic. However, this is often not the case. Grappling with the issue of public health and a libertarian society, certain questions have presented themselves: Do individuals who refuse to cooperate with ventures sourced in civil society to track and curb the spread of any disease in a minarchy open themselves to claims of compensation since their actions could be viewed as endangering others? At such times, is the action of ‘opting out’ of a collective venture to track and curb an epidemic by any individual sufficient to trigger claims against that individual on the grounds that their actions placed others in danger? Perry de Havilland has limited the notion of public health to “communicable diseases”, but even here, it is unclear if such matters require a coercive authority mandated to use the measures necessary to curb any disease. As it stands, the new Human Tissues Law will require written consent before any part of your body is taken and used for another purpose, even if it is in your own interest. Surely an advance on the contemporary thefts by state institutions in the name of ‘research’. February 8th, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
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