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The dependably insightful Melanie McDonagh has a refreshingly clear view of one of the two ‘Home Alone’ items currently clogging up the British media until some domestic or foreign disaster provides some real news.
In case you are unfamiliar with the story, a middle class mother in London somewhat deranged by depression walked out of her house, abandoning Rufus, her 12 year old child, leaving him to fend for himself. He managed to do so for two weeks before someone noticed and reported him to Social Services, in spite of his attempts to hide the fact of his mother’s absence. It was the fact that Rufus tried to conceal his mother’s dereliction which caught Melanie’s eye.
There is one further element of this story that stands out. It’s the villain. It’s the thing that Rufus does everything to avoid, that looms in his imagination like some sort of nightmare.
That is the fear that he will end up in the hands of Wandsworth social services. And I can’t have been alone in feeling my spirits sink at the news that Rufus ends his adventure in the hands of social workers, to whom he’s been turned in by the police, even though they pass him on to family friends rather than to an institution.
It wasn’t irrational fear that made him do anything to keep himself out of their hands. He’d been in care before – another thing that sets him apart from the other pupils at Emanuel School – for some months after his father died and his mother succumbed to depression.
Melanie McDonagh is always good at spotting the ‘off message’ angles to stories such as these. I have followed her career with interest ever since she wrote about the war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina that was a head and a half better than most of the dreck which passed for reporting there. It has always puzzled me why she is not a better known journalist than many of the blowhard Idiotarians that infest the British media with one tenth her talent.
I’ve been busy doing normal life for the last couple of days. On Sunday I gave a Christmas party to as many of my friends as I could remember the names of and had the phone numbers of, and could round up. Sorry if you reckon you’re a friend and you weren’t invited. You probably are still, that’s if you still want to be. Anyway, first I had to get it ready, then I had to have it, then I had to recover from it, and while doing that latter thing I had also to sort out a Christmas present for my goddaughter in time for her mother to take it with her tomorrow morning to France, me having forgotten about it until now. Lucky escape there.
So this is a very quicky posting, really just to make sure that, what with Perry still being techno-blighted, David Carr knows he’s not being totally relied upon, like the mug who does all the washing up in a shared student lodging because he has the most team spirit and responsibility.
The posting consists, basically, of the most remarkable single sentence I have read on the web during the last few days of trying to find something quick to comment on here, but mostly failing, until I realised that this thing had really stuck in my head and wouldn’t go away. It first surfaced towards the end of a piece in Scotland on Sunday by Richard Northedge as long ago as Sunday 15th of this month, and it was immediately noticed and reproduced by David Farrer. Here it is:
“The Inland Revenue deals with the widest customer base in the UK. This makes us to all intends and purposes the UK’s number-one service brand.”
Customer base? Service brand? Who and what the hell do these people think they are?
What this most reminds me of is the firing squad sent to execute Captain Blackadder in the First World War manifestation of that great comedy personage enacted on British TV in recent years by Rowan Atkinson. (Blackadder Goes Forth is the generic title, and the episode is called “Private Plane”. Blackadder has been sentenced to death for killing a army message-delivering pigeon.) The firing squad are played nice. They drop by the night before to introduce themselves and to pay their respects. Their leader speaks ingratiatingly of the “terminatory service” which they supply to their “customers”.
But that was a comedy show. This creep really seems to believe that the people of Britain are “customers” for the “service” he and his pals are oh-so-sportingly providing for them. No doubt he imagines that we are all oozing with “brand loyalty” towards him and his partners in state administered robbery.
This quote captures an awful (and I do mean awful) lot about the atmosphere in Britain now, where all manner of institutions boom forth with the language of business, that is to say the language of freedom, while not in fact doing business, that is to say while actually buggering us around in ways we would never consent to if we had any choice about it.
Does this kind of crap get talked in the USA?
The truth is out there. It has been for some time. Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the brute thuggery endured by the Eastern Europeans and the poverty and despoilation to which they subjected, are common knowledge. Likewise the pitiful carnage of Cambodia’s ‘Killing Fields’. The blood-chilling stories of cannibalism in North Korea are corroborated by too many sources to be regarded as mere speculation.
Of course, we crusading capitalists knew all along and made no secret of it, while our left-wing compatriots waspishly accused us of being, well, ‘capitalists’. It was the very worst insult they could muster and carried with the implication that we were liars and wreckers. For so long as they could avoid being confronted with the terrible truth, they could dance ecstatically in the Elysian Fields of La-La Land.
But no longer do they have any excuses. They may still swoon for the nostalgia of heady, revolutionary days gone by but no longer can they plausibly deny the life-sapping horror that the philosophy of Karl Marx has wrought upon mankind.
Nonetheless, and to my abject disbelief, students pound the streets of Seattle and Genoa waving ‘Hammer & Sickle’ flags while, emblazoned on their T-shirts, are the images of Mao, Lenin and Che Guevarra. Just what is going on inside their addled brains? It is as if they are suffering from some grievous malady that has struck them completely blind to the glaring lessons of very recent and eminantly accessible history.
If you have been as astounded by all this as I have, then this (somewhat lengthy) article in the Economist may be of interest:
“Books on Marx aimed at undergraduates and non-specialists continue to sell steadily in Western Europe and the United States. And new ones keep coming. For instance, Verso has just published, to warm reviews, “Marx’s Revenge” by Meghnad Desai, a professor of economics at the London School of Economics. Mr Desai argues that Marx was misunderstood and that the great man was right about far more than he is given credit for. In August, Oxford University Press published “Why Read Marx Today?” by Jonathan Wolff. It too is an engaging read. The author, a professor at University College London, is a particularly skilful elucidator of political philosophy. In his book, he argues that Marx was misunderstood and that the great man was right about far more than he is given credit for.”
→ Continue reading: Why old commies never die
Youthful policeman are a standard yardstick of personal maturity and you really know that middle age is looming when politicians begin to look ‘fresh-faced’. However, there is nothing quite like the passing of your teenage rock ‘n’ roll idols to have you looking in the mirror and counting those grey hairs.
“Joe Strummer, lead singer of seventies punk band The Clash, has died at the age of 50.”
‘The Clash’ provided the background music for my student years. I loved them. R.I.P Joe and thankyou.
Since we at Samizdata are only too aware that most of our readers are not British, we take a particular relish in introducing our readers to the rich and fruity idioms of British slang. We see this as a kind of cultural export.
In this tradition, may I refer you to the expression ‘Taking the Piss’. It means being disrespectful to the point of effrontery or the process whereby, having caused injury or offence to someone, the ‘piss-taker’ then goes on to compound said injury or offence for no obvious reason except contempt.
As always, these terms are best illustrated by a real-life example, so here is quite the most blatant example of ‘taking the piss’ that I can imagine:
“The burglar injured by Tony Martin after he broke into the farmer’s home is suing him for £15,000 compensation for loss of earnings.”
I burgle your home then I sue you for trying to stop me. See, that’s called ‘taking the piss’.
“Brendon Fearon, 32, wants the compensation because he has supposedly been unable to find a job since suffering the gunshot injuries in the raid on Martin’s Norfolk home..”
This thing is expecting the rest of us to believe that, had it not been for Tony Martin’s buckshot lodged in his jacksy, he’d have been abroad actively seeking honest, gainful employment. Get the picture?
“The writ gives a number of reasons for Fearon’s claim, including his leg injuries, which prevent him finding work, concern about his “long-term sexual functioning” and becoming “very tearful” when watching a film in which someone dies.”
Woe, woe and, thrice, woe! Fearon may be unable to breed new Fearons. And I too, get ‘very tearful’ when I watch the world go stark, staring bonkers.
“He is also said to claim that he is afraid of fireworks, no longer enjoys ju-jitsu and kick-boxing and becomes depressed when TV shows contain gunfire.”
I know exactly how he feels because I become depressed by the horrible feeling that his ludicrous claim will, like as not, succeed.
I don’t read cyrillic script, but I’m I’m told that this link takes one to a book by Yuri Muchin which is about the “murder” by “the Jews” of Beria and Stalin.
All I can say is, if it is true, where do I send my check to the global Zionist conspiracy. It is hard to think of a greater service to mankind.
The Dnepr launch including the TransOrbital engineering test article for their coming Lunar Trailblazer vehicles has been orbited successfully. According to the Russian company’s news section:
“The third launch of SS-18 missile under Dnepr Program with a group of 6 spacecraft belonging to several customers was performed at Baikonur Cosmodrome on 20 December 2002 at 20-00.”
We can now look forward to a late 2003 attempt on the moon.
Trailblazer test article.
Courtesy TransOrbital
“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”
– P. J. O’Rourke (from the rabble rabble rabble list of choice quotes at the top left)
In so far as this slogan declares a beautiful and simple truth, it does not prompt me to go and read James Lileks. But that’s because I already do read James Lileks. Avidly and regularly (doesn’t everyone?).
All the more reason, then, for a particular phrase or position in his column to stand out for me and ignite a bonfire of ideas in my head. This time, the great man says:
“…make a crack about “Women’s Studies” departments, as I did in yesterday’s screed, and people think you’re opposed to women’s studies. I’m not.”
It is taken from the screed that inspired the above-mentioned slogan and it is a view from which I beg to differ. I am opposed to ‘Women’s Studies’. I am opposed to all ‘studies’ be they women’s, social, peace, gay, ethnic, media, vegan, enviro-mental or any other ‘studies’ one may care to mention.
‘Studies’ are not about studying. They are nothing whatsoever to do with pushing forth the frontiers of knowledge. It is not about learning, it is about anti-learning. ‘Studies’ are the colonies of the marxist academic imperium established to train future operatives in the principles and means of deconstruction and social engineering. They are the proving grounds of the middle-class kleptocrats that spend their lives absorbing wealth while serving in NGOs, committees and state bureaucracies, manipulating and publishing statistics and information in order to advance their naked political agendas.
‘Studies’ are a cancer, a rot. Cut open any ‘studies’ department of any university and a million saprophytic creepy-crawlies will pour out, scurrying frantically away from the light. ‘Studies’ are a leukemia attacking the healthy cells of a civil society. Cauterise them, remove them, incinerate them and let the body grow strong and healthy again.
Poor, beleagured France! All they’re trying to do in West Africa is to keep the peace and impose some semblance of order.
“A rebel group in the Ivory Coast has accused France of waging war after a battle with French troops who are trying to maintain a truce in the country’s civil war.”
Meanwhile, the EU Commission in Brussels has denounced French unilateralism. The country’s ‘intellectuals’ are doing nothing except sneer at their leaders ‘simplisme’ foreign policy. The UN has passed a resolution condemning French aggression. Church leaders are urging the French to be more tolerant and understanding. Thousands of left-wing academics and celebrities have launched a ‘Not In My Name’ Petition. African leaders are calling upon the rest of the world to resist French militarism and both the Guardian and the Independent are running editorial columns focussing on France’s right-wing, red-necked President, their dangerous and uncivilised obsession with gun-culture and the danger that their blind, one-sided foreign policy represents to the rest of the world community.
Okay, none of those things have actually happened yet. But I’m quite sure they will. Any day now. You mark my words. Just wait and see.
Such is the quality of the balkanisation nostrum that it can, simultaneously, be a cornerstone of establishment thinking and also packaged up as new, different and ‘radical’. As evidence, please see the case of ‘Ms.Dynamite’, a 21 year-old British recording artist who has proclaimed that her future lies in the political realm:
“There is not anyone in the Cabinet who can relate to me or that I can relate to.”
Welcome to the club, Ms.Dynamite.
“The connotations that come with the word politics are basically middle-class, rich white men who don’t give a damn about what we think. That’s not me speaking as a black person but as a young person.”
It’s the Rocky Hip-Hop Picture Show. Ms.Dynamite is doing the ‘Time-Warp’ and we’re back in the 1960’s.
“I feel that Britain is still an extremely racist country.”
Sounds like she’s been tuning in to that middle-class, rich white man Jack Straw. That’s precisely what he’s been telling us for years.
“It’s important to learn about everybody’s history. I think the only way to overcome racism and discrimination is to learn where we’ve all come from.”
Ah yes, that must explain what the British National Party are trying to do.
Still, all things being equal I expect that Ms.Dynamite will embark upon a successful career in politics sooner or later. She will slide effortlessly into the NuLabour machine.
The Banned Wagon is rolling into town again and, this time, a herb called ‘Kava-Kava’ has been tossed unceremoniously onto the back of the wagon and driven into the wilderness:
“Remedies containing the herb Kava-kava have been banned after it was linked to four deaths.”
Well, four deaths is four too many, that’s for sure. But how is Kava-Kava ‘linked’ exactly? What does ‘linked’ mean? Does it mean that the herb caused symptoms which led to an illnesss, or what?
Questions enough, but the report gets even more obtuse and vague:
“The MCA said investigations had been unable to say what might put people at risk of adverse reactions to Kava-kava.
How the remedy damages the liver is also unknown.”
But that doesn’t matter because:
“Given the expert advice from the CSM and Medicines Commission following the recent public consultation it is clear that this ban is necessary.”
This may have something to do with the way the journalist has written the article or it may that there’s something we’re not being told but, in the absence of those two possibilities, then the case for prohibition is anything but ‘clear’. In fact, it is quite opaque. It is the diametric opposite of ‘clear’. This is ‘Newspeak’; producing no evidence of guilt results in a ‘clear’ case having been made.
Well, that’s about as much ranting as I’m entitled to, I reckon. I have never bought kava-kava and now, I daresay, I never will. Not unless I’m prepared to go to a shady, kava-kava pusher. But, I do detect that we’ve just witnessed another example of the ‘Precautionary Principle’; this is the public policy mandate that all risk must be avoided and which usually manifests itself as an avoidance of all critical inquiry as well.
I have no medical or scientific training but I presume that the people who staff the Medicines Control Agency have oodles of both. Is it too much to expect them to approach matters a bit more…well, scientifically?
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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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