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]
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I recall, quite a few years ago now, watching one of those terribly serious TV documentaries that purported delve into the psychology of sexuality. The only part of the programme that I can actually recount was an examination of a gas-mask and uniform sexual fetish that appears to be almost entirely a British phenomenon.
The impressively qualified talking-head that they employed to interpret all of this, speculated that this particular fetish had its roots in World War II when the images of gas masks and uniforms (in the context of great national emergency and danger) left its imprimatur on a lot of impressionable pre-adolescent boys.
This was also shortly after Gulf War I when Israelis were all issued with gas-masks for fear of some chemical attack from Saddam. Hence said talking-head predicted the emergence of a similar sexual phenomenon in Israel in years to come.
It all sounded quite plausible at the time but its very difficult to judge whether or not they hold any objective truth. I was reminded of this, though, by a recent conversation with Dr.Chris Tame of the Libertarian Alliance on this subject and what (if anything) lies at the root of sexual fetish. The object we were discussing was not gas-maks though, but cigarettes.
In short, has smoking become eroticised?
I think there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that it has. If websites like Smoking Models are anything to go by then some people are clearly getting their kicks from photographs like this:
And this:
 → Continue reading: C’mon baby light my cigarette
Our friend Sean Gabb is no stranger to radio or TV broadcasting. Indeed, so commonplace are his incisive contributions to both that Sean himself appears to regard them as somewhat mundane.
But yesterday was different. Yesterday, Sean travelled the studios of BBC Radio Oxford to take part in a phone-in debate on law and order. One of the other studio guests was none other than Tony Martin. As Sean himself says:
This is a case that has at times filled me and many other people with incandescent rage. It is the perfect summary of all that is wrong with modern England. Now, I was invited to meet the man at the centre of the case. Let alone driving – I might have walked the entire circuit of the M25 to be with him. So off I went.
If it is possible to be incandescent with envy then I am.
As is his custom, Sean has written about his afternoon with Tony Martin:
There is in any society an implied contract between state and citizen. We give up part of our right to self defence – only part, I emphasise – and all our right to act as judge in our own causes. We resign these matters to the state and obey its laws. In exchange, it maintains order more efficiently and more justly than we could ourselves. In modern England, the state has not broken this contract. If it had simply given up on maintaining order, that would be bad enough – but we could then at least shift for ourselves. No, the state in this country has varied the terms of the contract. It will not protect us, but it will not let us protect ourselves. If we ignore this command, we can expect to be punished at least as severely as the criminals who attack us. That is what the Tony Martin case is all about. This is not just a matter for the country. The towns have it just as bad, if not worse. If you are a victim of crime anywhere in this country, you are in it alone and undefended. Call for the Police, call for a home delivery pizza – see which arrives first.
Sean has a gift for commentary which few can emulate. This article, as with so many of his other writings, has all the solemn dignity and moving power of a hymn. His melancholy conclusions alone deserve the widest possible audience if only as a chronicle of these troubled times. Seldom has the phrase ‘read it and weep’ been quite so literal.
[Update: I think ‘whoops’ is the appropriate phrase. I drafted this and posted it up without realising that Brian was doing exactly the same thing only marginally sooner. But even duplication can be quite instructive as both Brian and I live up to our respective reputations of him being optimistic and me being pessimistic in response to precisely the same article.]
Madsen Pirie at the newly launched Adam Smith Insitute Weblog, and Andy Duncan at Samizdata both comment unfavourably on the retrospective nature of the law that has been crafted to strip Lord Archer of the Lord bit of his name. Both link to this Telegraph piece. And I’d like to think that there are many other bloggers who have commented in a similar manner, to whom apologies for the neglect.
Dr Pirie also links to his own year 2000 Guardian piece, entitled Sweeping Away Our Liberties, which is well worth a complete read. He lists all the important elements of what is meant by the phrase “rule of law”, and notes that all of them are (i.e. they already were three years ago) being eroded in various ways.
Last two paragraphs:
The pattern emerges quite clearly: government is making laws out of particular cases and eroding the general principles in order to secure a particular aim. It wants to bring to justice the people none of us have any time for: financial swindlers, racist thugs, paedophiles, war criminals, drug dealers and terrorists. Others might include rapists, petty professional criminals who are “obviously guilty”, and multiple offenders whose record will be known to magistrates, but not to juries.
In the interest of bringing these low lifes to justice, the principles which protect the liberties of all of us are swept away. The precepts which have guarded society are destroyed to target particular groups of offenders. After all, we do not want them getting off, do we? In some cases, though, we might accept that, preferring a few unsavoury individuals to walk free rather than compromise the foundations on which our liberties depend. We give the devil himself the benefit of our laws, for how could we otherwise claim it ourselves?
The latest Free Life Commentary is the occasional essay series written and e-published by the Libertarian Alliance’s Sean Gabb. In the latest, number 112, he descibes how he yesterday spent An Afternoon with Tony Martin:
Since time immemorial, on the third Thursday in September, Thame in Oxfordshire has hosted what is now the largest agricultural fair in the country. From all over England people come to buy and sell things and to see one another. There are tractor displays, and cows, and horses, and stalls selling clothing and food and drink, and vast car parks for the thousands of people who attend.
I was there yesterday at the invitation of the BBC. Bill Heine, a populist libertarian from America, has a show with Radio Oxford, and is in the habit of getting me on air every week or so for five minutes at a time. Yesterday, he wanted me not on the end of a telephone, but in person. Without offering the usual fee that I charge for leaving home, he wanted me to drive for a round trip of 300 miles to spend an hour live on air discussing rural crime and the right to self defence. For that distance and that time, regardless of fees, I would normally have refused. However, this was different. One of the other guests was to be Tony Martin.
He is the farmer who shot two thieves in August 1999, killing one and wounding the other. He was put on trial for murder and convicted. On appeal, his conviction was changed to manslaughter, and he was eventually released on Friday the 8th August this year, having spent more than three years in prison. He could have been released last year, but the authorities argued at the parole hearings that his lack of repentance made him a continuing danger to any thieves who might try to break into his home. He is presently facing a tort action for damages from the thief he neglected to kill – the man is claiming for loss of earnings and for reduced sexual function. His legal fees are being charged to the tax payers.
This is a case that has at times filled me and many other people with incandescent rage. It is the perfect summary of all that is wrong with modern England. Now, I was invited to meet the man at the centre of the case. Let alone driving – I might have walked the entire circuit of the M25 to be with him. So off I went.
And so should you, by reading the whole thing. Sean took photographs of the event, or persuaded others to take photos in those cases where he was a photographee. Sean, to those who have known him at all long, looks impressively slim, while Tony Martin looks pleasingly plump despite his ordeal by injustice, and subsequently by celebrity.
The piece may be about a rather doleful subject, namely injustice and official stupidity. Nevertheless I found that reading it made me feel quite cheerful – cheerful that such men as Tony Martin exist, cheerful that I have a friend like Sean Gabb who is prepared to go to all that trouble just to lend him moral support and then to write about it, and cheerful that I now have the chance to give the whole event another little boost, thanks to Samizdata.
The Publican reports that the British Institute of Innkeeping (BII) is calling on the trade to show support for the national ID card scheme, despite reports that the Cabinet has rejected the plan.
Home secretary David Blunkett is looking to introduce the scheme, which would see the introduction of a compulsory ID card for everyone in the UK aged over 16. This will effectively give the pub industry the single proof-of-age card that many licensees and pub operators have been calling for.
Reports this week suggest that Mr Blunkett’s project has failed to gain full Cabinet support and that the plans have been referred back to a government sub-committee, a sign that there are serious doubts. However, Caroline Nodder, spokesperson for the BII, said most of its members fully back the scheme.
Given the number of local proof-of-age schemes it is hard for licensees to spot fake IDs. So we strongly support plans for a single, national ID card. We need to keep pushing this because from the trade’s perspective it is a very good idea.
Ms Nodder also said the very fact that ministers were sitting down and discussing a concrete plan represented a huge degree of progress.
Up until 18 months ago, ministers made it clear they wouldn’t even talk about an ID card scheme. We hope good sense will prevail. The introduction of ID cards will be a significant way forward for the government because it will help crack down on under-age drinking and has made it clear that is a key priority.
Yes, it’s true, there are people who live on an entirely different planet…
Silicon.com reports that police and Internet service providers (ISP) in the UK have started working together to combat crime on the Internet. Private seminars held behind closed doors later this month aim to identify which electronic evidence could – and should – be made available to police investigating a crime. Detective chief superintendent Keith Akerman, chair of the Computer Crime Group set up by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), said:
We aim to cover all crimes. We will publish working guidelines on how evidence is gathered, its integrity, and its presentation in court
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The actual content of emails is expected to remain private, in all circumstances, in line with Akerman’s statement that the new guidelines will follow the Data Protection Act’s existing laws for telephone operators. Those laws state that police may access details of the timing of a phone call, and who participated, but not the content of the call. “Content is not at issue here,” Akerman added.
The emotive issue of child pornography and internet ‘grooming’ represented the biggest headache for ISPs. While they would never wish to be seen to be condoning such crimes, they risked a serious backlash if they were to implement the more wide-ranging surveillance and monitoring measures which would have been required.
According PR Newswire press release Tim Lord, chief executive of the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association, responded today to the news that EU Health Commissioner David Byrne proposes to use EU Health and Safety Law to impose a blanket ban on public smoking all across Europe.
Everyone, smokers and non-smokers, employees and the rest of us, should have access to clean air. We all agree with that – the issue is how do you deliver it? Commissioner Byrne wants a draconian solution – to ban smoking wherever people may work – and do so via a Brussels directive to all of Europe. The Commissioner should leave health issues to individual countries as envisaged under EU protocol and let them handle their own affairs. He should also note the impact of blanket smoking bans in other countries.
Seattle voters have rejected a tax on coffee. You can read about it here (registration required).
There are many definitions of the Rule of Law, and I’m no lawyer, which may or may not be a good thing, but if freedom before the Rule of Law is to mean anything, surely it means only answering to well-defined pre-established law, rather than to the arbitrary and discretionary edicts of governments, particularly retrospective legislation where you get punished for something you did before it was made ‘illegal’.
Now I’m no card-carrying member of the Jeffrey Archer fan club, but when a government arbitrarily singles out just one man, even one as notorious as Lord Archer, and then ramrods through a piece of retrospective legislation deliberately designed to harm and humiliate just this one single individual, then if the Rule of Law was already on the critical injuries list, comatose in a life support unit, I think now is time to simply turn the ventilators off. What’s the point of keeping them on? The Rule of Law, in the UK, is dead.
Nurses, quickly please, the screens.
Over at Oxblog, Josh Chafetz has some surprising quotes of Gordon Brown on the subject of the EU. I nearly fell off my seat when I read this one:
First, Europe — both within the euro area and outside it — must reject old models that failed and embrace labor market flexibility combined with policies that equip people with the skills they need for work. Because just 5% of Americans out of work experience unemployment for more than a year — in contrast to 50% of Germany’s, 30% per cent in France, and 60% in Italy — we should reject any new directives that damage employment and growth.
I would perhaps not go so far as Josh and say this indicates the reality of the break of Labour with its past. Still… I cannot ignore a sign of economic sanity in early 21st century Britain.
One does need some hope.
Peter Hitchens, the arch-conservative (small-c) journalist and detester of Blairite Britain, might be thought on the surface to have a few things in common with the scribes at this blog. Well, this article in The Spectator in which he defends the British Broadcasting Corporation, should nail that idea in short order.
Hitchens – brother of maverick left-liberal fellow journalist Christopher – shares with many people a widespread loathing of the BBC, the trashiness of its downmarket programmes, the bias of its news service, and so forth. And yet he is fiercely opposed to abolishing the BBC’s licence fee, the tax which is imposed on all current purchasers of television sets to fund that organisation.
Indeed, Hitchens seems to bemoan the rise of commercial television, cable and satellite outlets, as having created pressures on the BBC to dumb down. He yearns for the days before the mid-1950s when the BBC had a total monopoly on broadcasting. He seems to be saying that the BBC is okay so long as it is run in the way he likes. It is totally outside his frame of mental reference to imagine how quality television, however defined, can thrive in a market where consumers pay out of their own free will.
To be fair, he says the BBC should openly allow its broadcasters to admit their political biases in full rather than cover them up under a pretence of impartiality, but also ensure that for each avowed leftwing journalist, there should be a counterpart of a conservative. This may sound quite an improvement, but it is entirely unrealistic to suppose that the programme makers who run the BBC in its present privileged state would concede such ground. The beast cannot be tamed. It must be consigned to the abbatoir.
There is a broader point. Even if the BBC was a genuine paragon of truth, objectivity and high culture, its licence fee would still be unjustified. It is a tax and increasingly hard to justify in a world of diverse broadcasting channels, not to mention the Internet.
In his great book, The Constitution of Liberty, the late FA Hayek wrote in his final chapter, “Why I am Not a conservative.” Hitchens’ article is a good reminder to me why I am of the same view as the great Austrian economist.
Chief Wiggles is is on the warpath. I wouldn’t approach him too closely today if I were a reporter.
He’s absolutely right. The correspondents in Iraq are lying to us by choosing to report only the negatively spectacular. It’s an inherently false view and doesn’t help anyone understand what is actually going on.
I personally saw the same thing happen here in Belfast. I can remember more than one lovely peaceful day on which I found out from the international news there had been rioting a mile away from where I live. From what I have heard, there were times when reporters outnumbered rioters. You can do wonders with the right camera angle.
You see, reporters are like flies. The entire forest can be full of sunlight through leaves and the smell of spring flowers… but they will manage to find and congregate on that pile the bear left behind in the back of its’ dark den.
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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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