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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Today being the date that it is, here are two pictures, which I took today, of two of the statues in Parliament Square, which is a walk away from my home. As you can see, I have much to learn about photography, and these images are weak on detail, especially Lincoln. Plus, ever since I had it ‘mended’ about a year ago, my camera has imparted a pinkish hue to any bright light that it sees, of a sort that my knowledge of Photoshop is insufficient completely to remove. The sky over Lincoln started out bright pink, I kid you not, and the blossoms behind Churchill likewise. My camera sees the world through a rose tinted lense. (Helpful Photoshop comments would be welcome.) Nevertheless, I hope that the thought will count for something.
 
These two personages are both commonly regarded as that grandest variety of politician, known as statesmen, and what is more they were neither of them exactly shrinking violets when it came to expanding and strengthening their respective state apparatuses. So, given how we feel about the state and all its works here, maybe they aren’t perfect for all the nuances of the sentiments being expressed. But they’ll do.
When the state of California was hit by rolling power blackouts two years ago, some commentators at the time daftly blamed it on privatised electricity generation, when of course the real cause was the partial deregulation of power in the state. There was no market incentive for power generation firms to increase production, and ferocious environmental controls and “not in my back yard” planning wrangles also crimped capacity.
Well, looks like we could be headed for a similar fate here in Britain, for the first time since the unlamented 1970s, according to this article. If we have a bad winter in say, 2006, the lights could go out for part of the time.
Not all of this can or should be blamed on the current Labour government. But there is no doubt that its determination to suppress nuclear power, its failure to genuinely liberate energy supply and production, could leave the UK facing a serious problem. The economic consequences could be disastrous.
So when you find yourself brushing your teeth in the dark, think of the insincere, smiling visage of Saint Tony.
The visibility of accidents has gone up due to the mushrooming of TV news channels and that’s causing all the worry.
– M.Y. Siddiqui, India’s Railway Ministry spokesman when asked about mounting public anger over the safety record of India’s antiquated rail network, after accidents killed nearly 300 people in the last 12 months
Gabriel Stein, the Swedish economist who gave the UK the concept of a Tax Freedom Day, should be pleased today, on the growing success of his campaign. Brother of the famous Peter Stein, another Swedish economist who helped P.J.O’Rourke write the oxymoronic “Good Socialism” chapter, in O’Rourke’s Eat the Rich, it is a tribute to Gabriel Stein’s tenacity that the meme of Tax Freedom Day is spreading.
To put Gordon Brown under further pressure, after a recent series of Treasury financial gaffes, the Tories have proposed an “Annual Tax Freedom” day (more here, 2nd piece down).
Lord Saatchi, the Tory Treasury spokesman, has called for a public holiday on the day when the British taxpayer stops working for the Treasury and starts earning for himself, currently June the 2nd.
Personally, I’d like to see the Chancellor put into the stocks, in Trafalgar Square, each year, on this day, for a ritual pelting with rotten fruit. To add incentive to the incumbent, for each week the Chancellor reduces the Tax Freedom Day by, this reduces the fruit stockpile by seven of the squishiest items. Lucky citizens, drawn by lot, will throw one piece of fruit each, for every other rotten day of the year their income is stolen! 
But just a simple holiday, perhaps replacing ‘May Day’ and re-named ‘Trafalgar Day’, would be a good start. And a great way to highlight any future stealth-tax rises to the tax-serfs of this country, and tie the hands of any future government by making it clear exactly how much they are robbing from us.
Great work, Gabriel, and his sponsors, the Adam Smith Institute.
Police yesterday released footage of the moment a 16-year-old girl was dragged into bushes as she walked home at 3am. A police officer driving home from work had spotted the girl walking on her own and had rung colleagues at the local police station, telling them to train the camera on her. Officers watching the CCTV footage saw the man carry her 20 yards into bushes.
An urgent message was sent over the police radio and several patrol cars raced to the scene. It is thought the man ran off when he either heard or saw the police cars in the distance. Det Con Mick Blunt, of Adwick CID, said last night:
The feeling among officers is that it could have been a lot worse. A man approached the girl from behind and had a brief conversation before picking her up and dragging her into adjacent bushes. The girl fought back, kicking and screaming, which resulted in her attacker releasing her.
This is good news – the girl was relatively unharmed, if traumatised, and it certainly appears that the CCTV camera was instrumental in saving her. Surveillance cameras are popular with the public precisely for this kind of assistance in crime prevention.
My opposition to surveillance is unabated though. It is based on two arguments. One is, installing a CCTV camera somewhere does not protect people in the area effectively. The effectiveness of such devices is determined by the way in which they are used. In this case, it was the police officer who spotted the girl and decided to instruct his colleagues to train the camera on her who made the difference.
We live in a country with three million surveillance cameras. Why does a case of a surveillance camera being partially instrumental in preventing and potentially solving a crime make it to the headline news? In order to justify the instrusion into its citizens’ privacy, the state has not made a case strong enough for surveillance effectivness. I do not see any corresponding decrease in crime. The only practical use of surveillance camera footage is forensic, after the event. The lenient criminal justice system in the UK is making even that use insignificant.
The main reason of opposing surveillance cameras rather than putting up with a minor ‘inconvenience’ of being monitored in public places (after all, an honest citizen has nothing to hide, does he?) goes to the very nature of the state. Under the guise of public security, governments happily assume the role of the Big Watcher and lay down an infrustructure that give them greater control over the lives of individual citizens. And as Brian pointed out in his post on road pricing and total surveillance, it is impossible to pry it out of the state’s cold intrusive fingers…
The UK government’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, has claimed that outlawing smoking in bars, pubs, clubs, restaurants and at work would dramatically reduce levels of lung cancer, and other lung diseases, caused by passive smoking. It seems the push is on, by the UK do-gooding society, to follow the example recently set by Michael Bloomberg, in New York.
Significantly, Sir Liam cited a recent government report, which claimed that 88% of people were in favour of smoking restrictions in restaurants. He obviously knows where to hit a government hard, especially one with no other principles than those dictated to it by opinion poll.
No doubt the UK government’s response will be to say, at first, that it has no plans to impose a public area smoking ban. Then it will say if private businesses fail to co-operate with a ‘voluntary’ ban, it will be ‘forced’ to take the necessary action to impose one, and then eventually, it will ‘regretfully’ impose the ban, if the appropriate opinion polls tell it to.
I am non-smoker myself, having taken seven New Year Eves to finally give the filthy weed up, but I am with South Oxfordshire’s very own TV celebrity chef on this one; Antony Worrall Thompson said on Channel 4 News last night:
I believe in smoking and non-smoking areas. If you don’t like a place because people are smoking don’t go in.
No doubt one day smoking will be banned completely in the UK, if these do-gooders keep up their do-gooding work, even in the privacy of your own home. The fact that people have to die of something, eventually, seems to have fully escaped them.
On the day they do successfully get smoking fully banned, thereby creating an enormous black market and making it even more sexually attractive to teenagers causing them to start up in the first place, is the day I will light up again. I am not looking forward to smoking Golden Virginia roll-ups again, but if it is in the cause of freedom, and helps the US economy to boot, so be it!
Andy Duncan may take up smoking again…
The UK government’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, has claimed that outlawing smoking in bars, pubs, clubs, restaurants and at work would dramatically reduce levels of lung cancer, and other lung diseases, caused by passive smoking. It seems the push is on, by the UK do-gooding society, to follow the example recently set by Michael Bloomberg, in New York.
Significantly, Sir Liam cited a recent government report, which claimed that 88% of people were in favour of smoking restrictions in restaurants. He obviously knows where to hit a government hard, especially one with no other principles than those dictated to it by opinion poll.
No doubt the UK government’s response will be to say, at first, that it has no plans to impose a public area smoking ban. Then it will say if private businesses fail to co-operate with a ‘voluntary’ ban, it will be ‘forced’ to take the necessary action to impose one, and then eventually, it will ‘regretfully’ impose the ban, if the appropriate opinion polls tell it to.
I am non-smoker myself, having taken seven New Year Eves to finally give the filthy weed up, but I am with South Oxfordshire’s very own TV celebrity chef on this one; Antony Worrall Thompson said on Channel 4 News last night:
I believe in smoking and non-smoking areas. If you don’t like a place because people are smoking don’t go in.
No doubt one day smoking will be banned completely in the UK, if these do-gooders keep up their do-gooding work, even in the privacy of your own home. The fact that people have to die of something, eventually, seems to have fully escaped them.
On the day they do successfully get smoking fully banned, thereby creating an enormous black market and making it even more sexually attractive to teenagers causing them to start up in the first place, is the day I will light up again. I am not looking forward to smoking Golden Virginia roll-ups again, but if it is in the cause of freedom, and helps the US economy to boot, so be it!
Cross-posted from Samizdata.net
How cool is this, says Alan Forrester without any question mark.
The United States is planning to build an unmanned hypersonic aircraft capable of striking any target in the world within two hours.
I know what he means, but I would prefer a question mark in there somewhere. Talk about power projection.
It appears that the philosophy is a development of the “shock and awe” tactics developed for the Iraq war.
According to Darpa: “The intent is to hold adversary vital interests at risk at all times, counter anti-access threats, serve as a halt-phase shock force and conduct suppression of enemy air-defence and lethal strike missions as part of integrated strategic campaigns in the 21st Century.”
In other words the United States will be able, using aircraft based on its own territory, to strike at individual targets without warning and without the need for foreign bases.
The whole project goes under the acronym Falcon – Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States.
The military journal Jane’s Defence Weekly, which broke the story in its latest edition, says that as well as this futuristic plan, the research agency also proposes a shorter term (by 2010) weapons system.
What I have in mind is the Antoine Clarke question. Imagine the button for this gadget on the desk of your least favourite President of the United States of, say, the last twenty years. Think Bill Clinton, wanting to divert attention from his latest sordid and very public grilling about his sex life, with the power to make big (but cheap) bangs anywhere on earth with a guarantee of no American body bags and timed to the second.
I’m starting to feel about Bush the way I now feel about Thatcher. She massively strengthened the British state, and its general habit of doing what it likes despite all criticism, for purposes (getting the state a bit more out of the British economy than it had been) that I approved of, and was then ousted and replaced by a very different political tendency. Now Bush is doing the same with the US state, to do other things I approve of.
And Bush too will eventually be toppled, if only by the inexorable force of the US Constitution that will only allow him eight years at the wheel. In a decade from now, when the Democrats have got their act together and when they get to own the White House for another decade, the world will be ruled by armed social workers for whom global gun control will be only the start. (Show us your banking records or bangs in two hours.) Bush will never get to play with this new toy. His successors will.
That’s “how cool” this is.
UK Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson has called for smoking to be banned in public places including bars and restaurants. The Department of Health has said that there are no plans to implement this but are considering the proposal.
Smoking is unpleasant and dangerous, it is sensible to encourage people to give up. However the proposed ban goes too far. The individual should retain the right to choose.
It would be acceptable to ban smoking in genuinely public places such as railway waiting rooms. However bars, clubs and restaurants are simply private leisure businesses which the public can choose whether or not to enter. Many of these would undoubtedly gain customers through choosing to provide non-smoking areas or choosing to ban smoking on their premises whilst others allow it. That would provide customers with increased choice.
This proposal would set a dangerous precedent. In a free society the role of government should be education and regulation, not prohibition.
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe
This site, MagnaCartaPlus, looks like it could be very useful to the sort of people who read this, and for that matter who write for this.
Mission statement
The purpose of this site is to promote civil liberties and to provide information in pursuit of that objective. It is a watch on any attempts by governments to reduce or interfere with civil liberties and freedoms.
Objectives
1. To make British citizens and the international community aware factually of the content of recent repressive legislation passed by the British Parliament and the effect it is having or will have on the lives, businesses and rights of British citizens and those of their descendents using every legally available means of publicity, including, inter alia, the Internet, international, national and local newspapers and periodicals, television networks and radio stations.
2. To illustrate through the use of history and the identification of patterns the effect that repressive legislation developed in Britain (and other pioneering countries) is having or could have globally and to welcome and publish comments and observations from interested people worldwide.
I’m one of life’s intellectual butterflies; not one of its worker ants. So I’m not going to trawl chew through this site and then tell you whether I think it is really as good as it says it is trying to be. Suffice it to say that this page, entitled An overview of Civil Liberties legislation since 1900, which was the page I first got to (by typing “UK” “Civil Liberties” into Google) certainly seems to live up to the promises. Students of British civil-liberties-hostile legislation will find a blow-by-blow account of all the recent legislation, together with links to more detailed analysis of each Act. It’s not a blog. Sorry. This man is not chattering away three times a day, he’s carving his truths into stone tablets.
The only criticism of Matthew Robb I can come up with in twenty minutes – he seems to be the guy doing most of this – is that despite his best efforts he sometimes muddles the subject of “Civil Liberties” with that of “Civil Liberties in the UK”. That trifling complaint aside, this looks like an excellent resource.
But as I said, I’m only a butterfly, and if some of our worker ant contributors and/or commenters were to take a look … If it looks the part, then maybe a permanent mention of and link to it could be put here, somewhere.
noun. RDF is a web content syndication format. Acronym which stands for Resource Description Framework
Given the importance of tomorrow to our many American readers, I have been toying with the idea of posting the words of the Star Spangled Banner as a Samizdata Quote of the day at a minute past midnight this evening. However, although the anthem is stirring, the words are a celebration of an American military defeat of the British. And while this defeat led to the foundation of a great nation, it is not the whole story. In the longer term the two nations who fought that war have of course become extremely good friends. The country of which I am a citizen, Australia, is today an equally good friend of both. And I would rather be celebrating these friendships.
In particular, the third verse of the American anthem is somewhat problematic today.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out
their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save
the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight
or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
This is not terribly complimentary to the British enemy, and our American friends note this by generally leaving it out these days.
Amusingly, the national anthem of Australia has precisely the opposite problem. The second verse of our anthem is this:
When gallant Cook from Albion sail’d,
To trace wide oceans o’er,
True British courage bore him on,
Till he landed on our shore.
Then here he raised Old England’s flag,
The standard of the brave;
With all her faults we love her still,
“Britannia rules the waves!”
In joyful strains then let us sing
“Advance Australia fair!”
And while many Australians have great fondness for the British (although we still really enjoy it when they lose at sporting events), this verse is today considered a little too sycophantic, as well as being a little out of date about who rules the waves. Therefore, it isn’t normally sung either.
In any event, Jonathan Pearce beat me to action, and has expressed the appropriate sentiments about tomorrow already. I would simply like to wish the nation that actually does rule the waves a happy fourth of July.
Update: Yes, the Star Spangled Banner was actually written during and about the War of 1812. Notwithstanding that, I still wish everyone a happy Independence Day.
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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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