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Time for me to take a break from all this lofty philosophising about the state of the world and indulge in a little bit of schoolboy humour, made possible by this BBC report on the death of the former Zimbabwean President, Canaan Banana:
The Bananas Split!
November 11th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
 And quite eminent men to boot:
They may not get the debate they want as it is highly likely to be scuppered. Even if they get the debate they want it may not produce the result they want. And even if it does produce the result they want said result will have no legal or political effect whatsoever. But it will have an effect, albeit a marginal one. To date, the idea of British withdrawal from the EU has been unthinkable in any respectable circles. It is the Great British Political Taboo. Discuss our relations with Europe by all means and criticise the EU if you must but suggest we pull out?!! Are you mad? But the problem with taboos of this nature is that they will not bend so they can only break and it only takes a few people to start thinking the unthinkable before they begin to look fragile. If people start saying the unthinkable (and keep saying it) then it is only a matter of time before the cracks begin to appear. We are not there yet. Not even close. But if more people just keep talking publicly about withdrawal then that emboldens others to do the same and eventually the drip, drip effect begins to eat away at the consensus. What starts as a few whispered heresies can grow into a chorus of raucous disapproval. So, more and faster please. November 11th, 2003 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
Patrick Crozier of Transport Blog links to this piece from last August at Tollroadnews about the EU banning one kind of road pricing technology, in order to make things easier for its own preferred sort of technology. Here’s what the EU wants to ban:
And they want to replace it with their own pet satellite based system. I always want to believe the worst of the EU, and unimpeded by any facts, I do. In this instance, I assume that the technology that the EU is engaged in banning is better from the civil liberties point of view than the technology it favours, and that this is part of why it is banning what it is banning. It doesn’t supply as much in the way of incidental snooping and central surveillance as the kit it wants to use. Tollroadnews assert that it’s a bodge of the worst sort, because the new kit will work worse than the old kit. But if it could be made to work, would the system the EU wants be more centralised and Big Brotherish, or from this particular point of view is there no great difference? Obviously, comments welcome. November 10th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
November 10th, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
It would appear that the little village of Norderfriedrichskoog in Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of just 45 inhabitants, has 500 registered companies including subsidiaries of conglomerates like Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa and power giant e.ON Why? Because the town does not charge business tax, that is tax on profits. And the firms have saved €300 million in the last decade. German Finance Minister Hans Eichel is desperate to get his mitts on this loot and wants to ‘reform’ local authority finances. According to Eichel’s plans, all local authorities must set a minimum rate for local business taxes. And there was me thinking Germany was a federation. Wouldn’t the states have something to say about this? I guess Eichel is simply following the EU trend of ‘harmonisation’, ie raising upwards to the highest common denominator. Mark Holland November 10th, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
These simple truisms go a long way to explaining MP & blogger Tom Watson‘s support for passing laws regarding the use of fireworks. On his blog, and on this blog in our comments section, the Honourable Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East calls for more regulation and makes it clear that fireworks will simply be banned if that does not produce the desired effects. And yet when talking about an incident in which a woman was injured by some idiot throwing a firework he himself notes:
�and then proceeds to ignore that fact from then on. I do not know Tom Watson personally but I heard him speak in Houses of Parliament and he seems both affable and reasonable for a politician. But as Brian Micklethwait’s article today says regarding the ‘problem’ of obesity, it is only to be expected that a person whose salary depends on passing more laws to, well, always insist on passing more laws. The United States, for all the many, varied and egregious flaws in that constitutional republic, has at least managed to some degree to place whole sections of civil society off-limits to the law making Tom Watson’s of the world. For example free speech is largely protected against erosion in ways that have not proved to be the case in Britain with the advent of so called ‘hate speech’ laws. In so many ways it is where the USA has managed to constrain regulatory democracy from intruding wherever vox populi wishes it to, and the resulting politicizations of social interactions that entails, that its vast economic power and admirable civil virtues spring. Similarly it is where the United States has departed from those principles (RICO, civil forfeiture, IRS reversal of burden of proof, etc.) that things have gone very badly wrong. And therein lays the problem at the heart of modern democratic states: so much of society has been made amenable to literal force (i.e. political action) that it makes little difference in the long run who is in control of the democratic means of coercion, the end result for civil liberties and several ownership (including self-ownership) will be the same. Face it, in Britain there is little to choose between Tory Michael Howard and NuLabour David Blunkett when it comes to which of them has abridged more civil liberties whilst serving as Home Secretary. Likewise, Janet Reno may have presided over the mass murder of a bunch of wackos in Waco, Texas, but is anyone really going to claim John Ashcroft is not continuing the process of shredding the much vaunted Bill of Rights? The problem is the whole meta-context of seeing as axiomatic that politics is always acceptable just so long as it gets the imprimatur from a plurality of the politically engaged. Until enough people are willing to look to the moral basis of a law and simply refuse to accept the legitimacy of laws just because they are laws, we will always have politicians singing their siren song for your votes to empower not you, but themselves, by offering to solve your every problem with more laws. It is not enough to just not vote for them, you must find innovative ways to not cooperate with them.
November 10th, 2003 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
Assuming all goes as promised I am to be on the Jeremy Vine radio show at about 12.30 pm today, i.e. in about an hour and a half from now as I write this, on the subject of the latest suggestions/proposals/outrages of the Food Standards Agency.
Well, I suppose it you are Chairman of the Food Standards Agency, then “doing nothing” is indeed not an option. I mean, imagine it:
Doesn’t quite work does it? November 10th, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Really, really sucks. Mark Steyn has a equally damning review of the film in this week’s Spectator (no link, I am afraid) where he also has no time for the portentous, and pretentious, manner in which everyone speaks:
Oh, and plenty of cod theology, just like in the last one… The only good moment in the film is during the fight between Neo and Agent Smith who angrily and hatefully asks Neo the big WHY. Why does he fight him, why does he fight at all?! Himself, other people, duty, honour, or even something as insipid as love? The answer is Because I have a choice. And. you. dear reader. have. a choice. of not. going. to see. the film. November 9th, 2003 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
Greg Nemitz has opened his case in a Reno Court. He publicly declared a claim to Eros and sent NASA a bill for parking its probe on his property. Since he has not received payment, he has taken the next logical step. I know… it sounds crazy: but ‘crazy like a fox’ is a more accurate way of viewing it. Greg has carefully followed legal steps on claims of ownership. He can now force the issue into the court systems. It is his feeling law already on the books is a perfectly reasonable starting point for extraterrestrial land claims and property rights. It is not that Greg wishes to be the first extraterrestrial parking magnate. He is out to force ‘the system’ to make determinations on questions it doesn’t particularly want to face. If the courts make statements about what conditions are required for such claims, he will have met his victory conditions. I wish him luck. November 9th, 2003 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today is Remembrance Sunday and I am watching the Cenotaph ceremony in London. The military band just finished playing Rule Britannia and I remembered, time and again, what an amazing and powerful piece of music it is. Arrogance, defiance and a vow of no submission. It is not a piece of imperialist propaganda, as our transatlantic brethren are prone to conclude about anything British that smacks of national pride, but a cry that represents the desire to defend hundreds years of history and common heritage. It vows that Britons shall never be slaves. Not the country, not her rulers but Britons. And it rings true on this day, when we remember those whose lives were sacrificed to preserve the values that united Britain and her society against her enemies during the First World War and against the totalitarian evil sweeping the world during the Second World War. Yesterday I was arguing hotly (off-line) against the very meaning of the Remebrance Day. It made me angry to think of so many individuals and their aspirations so cruelly and so pointlessly extinguished. Pointlessly, because the war was the result of the European states doing their ‘worst’ on the international scene. The state’s only legitimate role is to protect its citizens, but the First World War was sparked off by political horse-trading and petty international diplomacy that had nothing to do with the lives of those who were called upon to die on the European states’ playground. The British state let its people and soldiers down, by a strategy that counted lives by a heap. Today’s ceremonies are a far cry from the undignified deaths of the millions on the battlefields, in the trenches, they do not remember the mud, the corpses, the fear, pain and despair. And it makes me angry to see the politicians taking on their most pious and sanctimonious expression for such occassions, men who have never known and would never understand that kind of sacrifice but are in a position to send others to it. Their expression contrasts with that of the veterans, whose eyes look beyond the memorials to their memories. And I suppose that is why I join the two minute silence and remember that those who died did not die for nothing. Their memory may have been hijacked and the truth tainted but that makes it all the more important to keep that memory alive.  November 9th, 2003 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yesterday, a group of Australian (and other) bloggers and readers got together in the Three Wise Monkeys pub in central Sydney. Beer was consumed, impassioned conversation was had, a little rugby was watched, and although Tim Blair was not present due to being on his annual drive across America, a good time was had by all. 
Jason Soon, Sasha Castel, and Craig Gaynor appear to be curiously inattentive to the Samizdatista present 
Tim Lambert begs Scott Wickstein to let him know where he got the shirt 
Scott and Tex get into the sort of bonding that was unfashionable amongst Australians until quite recently November 9th, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Guardianistas are worried. Very worried. In a fit of anxiety I can only describe as an accute attack of ‘foodophobia’, they publish two articles on the same day, one of them claiming that young people are too fat:
And the other one claiming they are too thin:
Good grief, what is wrong with all these youngsters? Either they are human blimps or they are walking skeletons. Why can’t they just get it right? What is a caring, concerned person to do??!! The government must get them to eat less….no, wait!…the government must get them to eat more!…oh, it’s a nightmare, I tell you, a nightmare. November 9th, 2003 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
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