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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The BBC is to show a series of documentaries exploring the gun and gang culture among Britain’s urban underclass, it said yesterday. The Guns & Gangs Season on BBC2 will look at the rise of gun crime and whether groups such as So Solid Crew contribute to the culture of violence.
For the uninitiated So Solid Crew are at the centre of a debate over rap music and gun crime after a government minister said the increase in violence was down to “idiots like the So Solid Crew glorifying gun culture and violence”. Culture minister Kim Howells was speaking about the shooting of four girls in Birmingham at a New Year party – two of them were killed. Gun crime has doubled in the last five years, and he reckons the music industry is part of the problem:
For years I’ve been very worried about the hateful lyrics that these boasting macho idiots come out with from these rappers and so on, it is a big cultural problem.
There you have it. It is obviously not the fact that you are not allowed to defend yourself but rap music that makes criminals bolder. And the BBC just adds to the blunder. Other programmes in the season include a documentary examining the alleged links between the gun culture and rap music, another about the source of illicit arms and Sons And Guns, about the mothers of men murdered in gang-related killings in Manchester. In the new £97 million BBC2 autumn season, the corporation promises to focus on “the harsh realities of the modern world”.
Oh dear. So off the mark, you can’t even see the target…
From Liberty’s press release:
Shami Chakrabarti is to be the new Director of Liberty. She succeeds John Wadham who has been appointed Deputy Chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
…
Shami Chakrabarti joined Liberty in 2001 as the group’s ‘In-House Counsel’ and is now recognised as one of the UK’s leading authorities on anti-terror laws. She says that the measures adopted by the Government in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks have made her “ashamed to be a lawyer.”
The Guardian reports:
All asylum seekers who fail to register with the government should be deprived of access to British schools and hospitals, the former cabinet minister Stephen Byers said yesterday in a controversial speech designed to reassure working class voters that Labour understood their concerns about immigration.
At his monthly press conference yesterday, Tony Blair promised that the government would go further on asylum, and said he thought identity cards were right in principle even if the logistical cost was daunting.
In principle there is a case, in my view, for Britain moving towards … ID cards. However, there are huge logistical and cost issues that need to be resolved. It’s worth looking – which is what we are doing – at how you can resolve them, but it’s not a quick-fix for the system because of the amount of time and the logistical process in introducing them.
Mr Byers, in his proposals on illegal entrants who fail to claim asylum, proposed that all employers should get automatic fines of £2,000 for each illegal immigrant found at work.
This would make the body creating the demand for labour – the farmer, hotel or restaurant owner, multinational company or government department – take responsibility for the people employed on their behalf. Special squads should target known areas of illegal working.
Britain has a murky record of official secrecy which stretches back to the Elizabethan era, the BBC points out.
One of the few drama series worth watching over at the BBC (sharp intake of breath!) is the programme Spooks, which purports to show how M15, Britain’s secret service, operates. A short while ago, an episode featured how the various operatives dealt with radical Islamic terrorism.
What interested me was the very fact that such a controversial topic would be aired by the BBC at all. The series tended to start off with a decidedly politically-correct slant, so broaching the topic of Islamo-fascist terror was quite brave. Makes me wonder how the script-writers were able to get this episode on screen.
Well, as this story shows, the episide triggered a number of complaints, claiming the programme was racially stereotyped. But then it is a bit difficult to do a programme about spies taking on the likes of al-Quaeda and it not to encounter such an issue, I would have thought.
More broadly, though, this got me thinking about how television and movie dramas have handled issues like this over the years. In the early James Bond movies, for example, the bad guys were either Russians or former Smersh agents, but as the series progressed and got ever more silly during the Roger Moore era, the villains became less ‘political’, no doubt to avoid the kind of complaints that Spooks has encountered.
There have always been a few interesting exceptions, though. Some of the Tom Clancy books adapted for film touched on issues like Northern Ireland, although often not very convincingly.
Do I detect a change in trend? The American series “24”, for example, makes no bones about enormously contentious issues. I think people want a bit more hard-edged realism in their dramas, and if that means upsetting some people, so be it.
However, I am not sure whether 007 will be staging his next adventure in Bagdhad any time soon.
“We won’t get those new books for two more years,” laments Morrison, who teaches in Manchester, Mo., near St. Louis.
To a large extent, this leaves secondary and even grammar school teachers relying on their own wiles to incorporate 9/11 and the events that have followed in rapid fire order into the classroom.
“The integration is challenging,” Morrison says about bringing Sept. 11 material into her lessons. Morrison says that last year she juxtaposed the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa with Al Qaida’s Osama bin Laden. “Would Villa be considered a terrorist today,” Morrison asked her class?
History is more important than this. History is more important than a teacher’s personal agenda. If we can’t rely on teachers to present facts rather than opinion who can we rely on?
Which isn’t to say that history is a collection of numbers and facts. It is much more than that. But it is important to look at history objectivly and without bias. Coming to the argument with many preconceived notions and biases, as these teachers appear to have, does nothing for the students. In fact, it hurts them. History becomes meaningless if it changes to fit a bias. Orwell taught us that lesson. History is written by the victor, but we must make sure that it is also true. If not, then we have lost it.
“Obvious parallels exist especially when looking at World War II.” Some are well-trod ground: 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, for instance. Others are more subtle. For instance, Chase says she asked students to compare the internment of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s to the increased scrutiny Arab-Americans have come in for following 9/11.
At the same time, it is important to look at history from all sides. America is not perfect. But is it really fair to compare increased scrutiny to the Japanese interrnment? Did FDR come out days after Pearl Harbor and urge Americans to not lump all Japanese together? I don’t remember hearing that speach.
This is why I want to teach. I think that many teachers have lost their way in their zeal. There is far too much emphasis on groups and collectivism in schools today. There is far too much PCness in schools today. There are far too many biases in schools today. And far too little honest teaching. History transcendes politics. At least it should. If it doesn’t, we are in danger of losing it.
via USS Clueless
Andy Duncan over at Samizdata.net gives 20 reasons why ID cards are wonderful. Frankly it’s a fraud, he can’t provide even one…
Who’d have thought it? The UK Department of Health has said ID cards are the best way for removing health tourism from the UK government’s dreadful National Health Service (NHS). What a coincidence that the Home Office, which has been struggling for decades to find a problem necessitating an ID card solution, are trying to introduce just the very thing. And at this exact moment in time? Fancy that.
And here’s the best part. State-subsidised UK family doctors already refuse people access rights to their medical lists, if they don’t have the correct UK citizenship qualifications or residency permissions. Yes, the very people whom the ID card is supposed to prevent abusing the glorious wonders of the NHS, are already prevented from abusing it, at least up to the point the government is prepared to stop them. And whatever happens, the Department of Health have said, nobody will ever be refused emergency treatment, whatever their circumstances.
So currently, without ID cards in place, all those whom the state deems invalid for NHS treatment must go to Accident and Emergency departments, which will treat everyone who turns up regardless of status. And in the envisaged ID card NHS future, all those whom the state deems invalid for NHS treatment must go to Accident and Emergency departments, which will treat everyone who turns up regardless of status. Err…Doh?
The only solution to stop ‘health tourism’, where hapless British taxpayers are forced to subsidise the health needs of various global parasites, is to abolish the NHS. Immediately.
That way, everyone pays for what they need, or insures themselves against what they might need. And Britain can start becoming a welcoming place again, which people only come to for its wet Welsh weather and its fine Breakspear ales, rather than trying to sponge off our coerced goodwill after fighting their way through malevolent Blunkettesque security, at the ports of entry, before finding the nearest organised crime ID card forger.
Is this solution too simple, or should I be strung from the nearest lamp-post for daring to suggest that the great white elephant of our wondrous National Health Service should be slaughtered right here, and right now? String me up, baby. It can’t come a moment too soon.
Via Samizdata.net
…the state does, in the person of Mr. Justice Sumner, that is who owns your body.
Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign
– J.S. Mill, On Liberty, 1859
Given that so many in the ‘free world’ are subject to compulsory educational conscription, how many people are in fact ‘sovereign’ over their own minds? And in an era in which the state can force you to put certain chemicals in your body regardless of your wishes, are you sovereign over your own body? If you are a child, clearly not… and even if you are an adult, clearly not.
The mothers, the sole carers of their daughters, argued that immunisation should be voluntary and it was not right to impose it against the wishes of a caring parent and it would cause them great distress.
The elder girl had asked not to be given the MMR jab but had asked for meningitis protection. Some parents fear the MMR vaccine could be linked to autism, even though doctors and most experts say there is no evidence of a link.
Mr Justice Sumner decided both children should receive the jab because the benefits outweighed the risks.
But her views obviously count for nothing. If you do not truly own the insides of your body, then what are you? “The elder girl had asked not to be given the MMR jab”. Is she a slave? A serf? A chattel? I have fulminated before on that particular issue when confronted with people arguing for mandated mass medication… the issue is not one of health but rather ‘who owns your body’. What the judges and doctors who would use the violence of state to force other people to change the chemistry of their own bodies show us is not that they care, but rather their totalitarian mindset.
Can it really surprise us that the state does not respect individual property rights or the right of self-defense if it does not even respect the right of individuals to judge what chemicals should or should not be put in your own body? This is not a minor issue because it goes to the very heart of whether your perception of freedom is an illusion or not.
I think it safe to say that all those people in the British political and media classes who want this country to be ‘more European’ have good cause to feel quietly satisfied today because parts of Britain are, indeed, starting to resemble East Germany:
The image of hundreds of people queuing to register with an NHS dentist provided a stark reminder of the problems people encounter in finding an NHS dentist, experts say.
They need ‘experts’ to tell them this?
The queue was prompted by the announcement that a practice in Carmarthen, Wales, could take on 300 more patients – but many more were hoping to register.
The TV news has now picked up on this story and are reporting that over 600 people turned up in the hope of getting state dental treatment. They lined up along the street and had to be issued with lottery tickets in order to prevent disputes breaking out. Over half of them were turned away.
Dr John Renshaw of the British Dental Association told BBC News Online: “That picture evoked a Third World country, where you have to queue to access what ought to be part of NHS care.”
No, that picture evoked life behind the Iron Curtain where people queued up all day to get a meal. And for the same reasons!
This Telegraph piece by John Mortimer is a characteristic mixture of good ideas and bad ideas, of humbug and whatever is the opposite of humbug. I’m sure that all White Rose readers would (a) agree with that characterisation, but (b) argue fiercely about which bit is humbug and which not. Which is the whole idea of this blog. Nevertheless I’d file it under White-Rose-relevant, so here are a few sample paragraphs to make that point:
So, through much of my life, I have witnessed what seemed to be a slow but measurable improvement in the administration of the law. That improvement was to continue, strangely enough, only until the advent of a Labour Government that seemed to have been born without a single civil libertarian instinct.
So now jury trials are to be diminished, previous convictions will be allowed in evidence so defendants will be convicted on what they did in the past, the presumption of innocence has been severely dented and the great principle that a guilty act must contain a guilty intention will be held not to apply in rape cases.
The right to habeas corpus has been denied in certain cases, where suspects may now be held in prison without the hope of trial or charges levelled against them. Just as shamefully, Tony Blair seems about to agree that British subjects should be subjected to what is a parody of a fair trial in Guantánamo Bay. Our great constitutional liberties, struggled for down the centuries, are now being denied.
The righteous wrath of Rumpole will be raised by the intention of the Home Secretary to remove sentencing from judges and hand it over to the vote-hungry hands of politicians anxious, as judges are not, to score political points and please the newspapers.
And so on and so forth. Read at will. Agree, and disagree.
White-Rose-relevant comments from Jim of Jim’s Journal about Homeland Security:
Now I happen to have a lot against Bush … besides the fact that I did not vote for him in 2000 and the only good thing I could think of to say about him then was that at least he wasn’t Al Gore.
I don’t think highly of his handling of national security – within the United States – that is, this ridiculous bureaucratic monstrosity called Homeland Security, headed by that total jerk Ridge. (What’s that matter with Ridge? Well, here’s just one thing, but it shows how wrong he is … He wants to use Homeland Security to track down child porn peddlers and Internet perverts. My goodness, how could there be anything wrong with that? Well, what does that have to do with national security? We have a multiplicity of police forces to handle ordinary crimes. Homeland Security was supposed to be about protecting us from terrorists, you know, 9/11 … So if the terrorist problem is so under control that he has to go looking for other jobs to keep his minions busy, well let’s just save a few billion dollars and dissolve his agency instead.)
Indeed, but that of course is not how these things work. Once an “agency” is set up, it mmediately goes looking for other stuff to do as well, and hence in the fullness of time, potentially, instead.
Principles, once conceded in one policy area immediately go wandering, often in the form of the very agency that embodies the original concession.
Who’d have thought it? The UK Department of Health has said ID cards are the best way for removing health tourism from the UK government’s dreadful National Health Service (NHS). What a coincidence that the Home Office, which has been struggling for decades to find a problem necessitating an ID card solution, are trying to introduce just the very thing. And at this exact moment in time? Fancy that.
And here’s the best part. State-subsidised UK family doctors already refuse people access rights to their medical lists, if they don’t have the correct UK citizenship qualifications or residency permissions. Yes, the very people whom the ID card is supposed to prevent abusing the glorious wonders of the NHS, are already prevented from abusing it, at least up to the point the government is prepared to stop them. And whatever happens, the Department of Health have said, nobody will ever be refused emergency treatment, whatever their circumstances.
So currently, without ID cards in place, all those whom the state deems invalid for NHS treatment must go to Accident and Emergency departments, which will treat everyone who turns up regardless of status. And in the envisaged ID card NHS future, all those whom the state deems invalid for NHS treatment must go to Accident and Emergency departments, which will treat everyone who turns up regardless of status. Err…Doh?
The only solution to stop ‘health tourism’, where hapless British taxpayers are forced to subsidise the health needs of various global parasites, is to abolish the NHS. Immediately.
That way, everyone pays for what they need, or insures themselves against what they might need. And Britain can start becoming a welcoming place again, which people only come to for its wet Welsh weather and its fine Breakspear ales, rather than trying to sponge off our coerced goodwill after fighting their way through malevolent Blunkettesque security, at the ports of entry, before finding the nearest organised crime ID card forger.
Is this solution too simple, or should I be strung from the nearest lamp-post for daring to suggest that the great white elephant of our wondrous National Health Service should be slaughtered right here, and right now? String me up, baby. It can’t come a moment too soon.
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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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