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]
|
Who makes the crucial decision about whether to prosecute in the first place? And who picks the person who does this? And who have they picked?
From today’s Independent:
The government was accused of “rampant cronyism” last night after a barrister from Cherie Blair’s law firm was named as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service.
Ken Macdonald, a founding member of Matrix Chambers, where the Prime Minister’s wife practises under her maiden name Cherie Booth, will become Director of Public Prosecutions in the autumn.
Doesn’t sound good, put like that, does it?
A spokeswoman for the CPS said Mr Macdonald had been appointed to the £145,000-a-year post by a panel of impartial senior civil servants and legal figures. She said: “The selection process was completely transparent and accountable. It was an open competition. The fact he comes from a distinguished chambers signals that he is a leading barrister, but the chambers he comes from had no other bearing on the appointment.”
I suppose that could be true.
SFGate.com reports on a legal challenge to the Patriot Act:
Civil rights lawyers filed a challenge Tuesday to a section of the federal Patriot Act that makes it illegal to provide “expert advice and assistance” to groups with alleged links to terrorists.
The ban is unconstitutionally vague and should be struck down, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights argued in a motion filed in federal court.
Some of Samizdata’s more socially conservative readers seem to think gay marriage is a bad idea. But trying to work out why they hold that view is, at least at first, puzzling. They rail against social freedom saying that it leads to social degradation and also to lots of government spending. Well, I’m against ‘social degradation’ and ‘government spending’. So why don’t I agree with them?
The reality is that homosexual marriage would not lead to any degradation whatsoever. Homosexuals already live in a society where on the whole they are able to be open about their sexuality, and are able to have sex without the government arresting them. If the government lets two gay people marry, that if anything encourages fidelity. If you ask social conservatives to explain how this causes social degradation, the response is… BLANK.
The idea that homosexual marriage means that government spending has to go up is just plainly stupid. Homosexuals don’t have children, so they don’t impose the cost of education on the taxpayer. They generally die younger (although I suspect this will change), meaning they impose less cost in terms of pensions. If they split up, the taxpayer doesn’t have to look after the mother because both partners generally work.
The social conservative arguments are quite obviously bogus.
Could the real reason why social conservatives oppose gay marriage be much simpler? They oppose it because they hate gay people. They think it’s disgusting what these faggots do. They think the state should punish them for their depravity.
If not, could they perhaps explain themselves?
John Lettice of The Register writes:
To little fanfare last month the UK’s Office of National Statistics announced proposals for the creation of a central electronic database containing birth, death and marriage records. Announcing the publication of “Civil Registration: Delivering Vital Change,” and a consultation process running through until 31st October, the ONS listed key changes as including the ability to register births and deaths online,* in person and by telephone, greater choice as regards marriage ceremonies and “new arrangements for access to registration information.” The creation of a centrally-held “through life record” for everybody however appears not to have been deemed a key change of sufficient moment to make it to the press release.
That’s paragraph one of his piece. It’s worth continuing. Whatever you think of Lettice’s judgements and fears about all this, you will probably learn something.
While academicians fruitlessly debate the influence of cosmic rays, water vapor, and so on, it looks like the true source of global warming has been identified, and it is . . . France!
A Met Office spokesman said: “There’s very hot air over France, which has engulfed the Channel Islands, and we are expecting it over here.”
Astute consumers of British journalism will note that this story, which was broken in the Sun, is appropriately illustrated in the Sun’s inimitable style.
As a libertarian I shall boycott Ryanair on political grounds while that state- backed parasite Michael O’Leary is in charge.
Before I explain, my apologies to Andy Duncan, for I intend to exercise the privilege of a Samizdatista and make my comment on his posting below a posting in itself. I want lots of people to read it and think as I do.
Why am I so against O’Leary? No, it is not his cheap flights (in themselves cheap flights are a good thing), nor his not paying dividends (I neither know nor care about dividends), nor his safety record (take the risk or don’t: up to you), nor his comments about wishing to be a dictator (unimportant bombast), nor the environment (a side issue: to protect it, privatise it), nor his intention to move his business elsewhere if the bureacrats mess him about (I actively like that bit).
It’s because he intends to make his airline strong by massive compulsory purchase of people’s homes, homes they love and desperately want to keep, so that airports can be expanded. Stansted Airport is the one I know about personally, but I stress that state compulsory purchase for any airport anywhere is as clear a violation of liberty as you will ever see. Like force-advocates everywhere O’Leary has a pep-talk about how it’s all necessary for the greater good, adding a positively Stakhanovite spiel about how Britain must compete with France and Germany. I stress that he doesn’t merely go along with this because he can’t imagine any other way; he is an enthusiast.
Also my neighbour saw him speak and said he was an arrogant git.
I don’t know if AynRand.org runs an annual awards ceremony, but if they do, I’d like to nominate Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair chief executive, for the Hank Rearden Award for Top Quality Businessman of the Year. Check out this piece, in today’s Telegraph.
Just to tempt you, here’s some quotes:
We are never paying a dividend as long as I live and breathe and as long as I’m the largest individual shareholder.
It gets better:
Go to Waterside [BA headquarters] and tell Rod [BA’s chief executive] he’s going to grow profits by 12pc this year and he’d have an orgasm… God speed [Rod]. You’re doing an outstanding job. Keep it up.
Our friends, the EU, are also thinking of prosecuting Ryanair on some spurious grounds of whether Ryanair received state aid at Charleroi airport, its Brussels’ base. O’Leary describes this as:
Regulatory bullsh*t.
Excellent! Michael O’Leary has also said that if the EU rule against him, he will shut Charleroi down, and sack its 3,000 workforce. He rounded off this promise, in typically uncompromising fashion, with the following statement:
I’ve no intention of making life easy for bureaucrats.
Bravo, sir! Unfortunately for Dagny Taggart-style ladies everywhere, multi-millionaire Michael O’Leary is getting hitched soon, though he’s not letting it put him off his financial stride:
The reception is going to be cheap. The honeymoon is going to kill me.
Though recently, his thoughts have also strayed to politics and sport:
I think a right-wing dictatorship led by me would not only improve the Irish economy but the Irish football team too.
What a dude. I’ve got some Irish blood in me. If Michael O’Leary ever becomes Prime Minister of Ireland, I wonder if they’ll let me swap passports? I quite fancy Dundalk, which remarkably, is also the home town of The Corrs.
Alex Singleton respects Peter Cuthbertson enough to bother trying to set him straight.
But Cuthbertson has two problems, the first of which being that he seems to think that all authority comes from the state (therefore we need must laws on which hand to hold our forks in when eating fruit salad, and whether to set boiled eggs on the Big or the Little End).
But the second problem is if anything worse. Recently I was in the coffee bar area of the swanky suite of offices where I make a living (at the tax-payer’s expense) whilst two fortysomethings were sorting out teas and coffees for a business meeting taking place on the same floor, but with a different (private sector) company. The woman, was better dressed in her brown-checkered suit than most British female politicians (which is to say that she didn’t look like a dressed-up showjumping horse on steroids or an English sheepdog with dyed hair wearing Nancy Reagan’s padded shoulder suits) without being a glamorous trendy. She was chatting to the man, who was dressed rather like my bank manager did ten years ago. As I was scrambling for teabags, milk etc, the man described how his daughter had invited her boyfriend to meet the parents. The woman then asked if it looked like a serious relationship and did the man approve.
After saying that it could be a promising relationship the man hesitated before adding “He’s quite a promising chap: he’s got a good well-paid job, drives a nice car, has a home in a nice neighbourhood, he looks presentable enough…” The father’s voice trailed off.
The woman interjected: “…but…”
And the man blurted out: “He’s a member of the Tory Party!”
And the woman said: “Oh dear!” with sympathy. The conversation ended: the poor man’s daughter was sleeping with a weirdo.
This story ends on a happy note. Last week I saw the man and he seemed to be in good spirits: it looks like daughter wised up…
There are times when I compare 2003 with the Orwellian world of 1984. In one respect at least, the fictional Airstrip One was far better than present day Britain: kids could have more fun!
Consider this report, that children are being harrassed by intolerant adults into staying locked indoors. Of course we live in an age where most children are treated at best as designer lap dogs or fashion accessories and at worst like punchbags or sex toys. So that actually letting children run around parks, fall in streams, get muddy and avoid obesity and truancy by burning off their excess energy in creative or harmless pursuits are not an option. The streets where I grew up have too many cars parked in them to play football, never mind the traffic.
The contrast with the Orwellian child utopia of Airstrip One is amazing: kids can run around as they wish, there is no shortage of activities for them to enjoy, from attending public executions, to outings in the countryside. But the real fun is in the “spies”. Children are actively encouraged to look through keyholes, snoop into the affairs of adults and they can earn plaudits for exposing corrupt and treasonable behaviour. So when that nasty Mrs B. at the corner of A***** Rd and M****** Rd would should at my friends and I for kicking a football outside her house, we could pick up the phone and denounce her to the Party as an agent of Emmanuel Goldstein!
I wonder if there are any equivalent means for children today to get even with bossy and intolerant adults? They could try this phone number: 0800 11 11 (Airstrip One only).
Philip Lynds, a New Zealander and outsider to the theoretical physics community has recently had his theory on time published. No less a quantum mechanic than Dr. John Wheeler has weighed in on his side… at least to the extent of considering Lynd’s ideas fresh and of great interest. If Lynd is correct, we’ve been following a misconception of the nature of time since philosophers first put quill to papyrus. Read about it here.
If anyone knows of a pre-print of the Lynd paper floating about the net, please inform me. I’d love to read it.
Britain is hot today. Scorching. It’s hot, it’s sticky, it’s steamy and, for the Guardian that means….it’s Kyoto time:
Evidence increasingly points to a weather system shaped more and more not by nature but by humanity. The pattern of industrial development of modern day society appears to be producing too much pollution for the world to cope with. The effects will irrevocably remake the climate for the worse.
And we all know who to blame for this, don’t we? Yes we jolly well do.
On gaining office, the Bush administration, with its roots in oil and big business, withdrew unilaterally from the biggest international commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions – the Kyoto protocol. To gain some scale of how reckless this act of political vandalism was consider this: if US states were independent nations they would comprise 25 of the top 60 nations that emit greenhouse gases – Texas’s emissions alone exceed France’s.
The Guardian runs this same editorial rant about once a fortnight regardless of whether it’s hot, cold, tipping down or a white-out. In the summer, though, they just turn the volume up. They probably call it a social conscience. I reckon it’s a bad case of sunstroke.
China is becoming an increasingly interesting country as far as I am concerned. That is not because I know anything about it. On the contrary, it is because I know so little about it beyond the conventional impressions of it being big, populous and mysterious.
But I keep running across snippets of news that provide some tantalising insights into the way that country appears to be going. This from the Economist:
WITH an increasingly sophisticated and wealthy customer base, Chinese consumer-goods makers are starting to pay attention to brand-building. The smartest are moving beyond simple product ads to marketing an entire lifestyle. In an echo of Nike’s famous “Just do it” campaign, Li-Ning, the largest producer in China’s sportswear market, has just launched an advertising blitz under the mottos “Goodbye” and “Anything is possible”. Costing 15m yuan ($1.8m), eight times the company’s usual ad spend, it taps into the Chinese belief that they can safely wave goodbye to their hard lives of the past, and that the future is filled with unlimited opportunities.
See, I find reports like this fascinating not least because all this entrepreneurial dash is happening in a country which is supposed to be communist. Well, clearly it is not communist. In fact, if the British Labour Party were in charge of China they would probably be looking into ways of trying to put a stop to this kind of thing.
I wonder if the implication in the article is really true? Is China awash with people who believe that ‘the future is filled with unlimited opportunities’? If so then that bodes well for China despite their being saddled with a repressive and ferociously authoritarian government. Who knows if the post-communist hacks that still run the place will be able to maintain their vice-like grip in the hurricane of anarchic forces that all this capitalism and prosperity will eventually unleash.
For reasons I cannot articulate to any satisfactory degree, I believe that China will impact upon the rest of the world in a major way and, possibly, quite soon. Whether this impact will be for good or for ill I cannot say but I do regard the emergence of all this ‘can-do’ spirit to be rather encouraging. After all, political regimes come and go and none of them last forever. The people who are most likely to dictate the shape of the future are the ones who believe that the future is filled with unlimited opportunities.
|
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