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]

The Colour of Money is Green

I always enjoy a hearty guffaw when American enviro-mentalists claim that they are warring against big business and ‘greedy’ corporations. Those guys should just go over to Europe where they can enjoy working hand-in-glove with corporations in a real partnership for a ‘greener’ Europe (not to mention a more expensive one).

Don’t believe me? Well, take a look this latest ‘triumph’ of green ideology as the EU has passed a law requiring all electrical goods to be recycled

“The new rules, which would come into force in 2005, would require individual companies to pay to recycle their electrical products once the family home no longer had use of them

Mais Naturellement it all got rubber-stamped through the EU parliament without so much as a hitch nor a blink and is being roundly welcomed as a tool for ‘changing behaviour’. That’s what these guys love more than anything on earth; changing behaviour. They get a swelling in their loins at just the thought of it. Our behaviour is very bad you see. We’re all naughty children despoiling the earth and ruining it for future generations of EUnuchs. We must be smacked firmly across the backs of our chubby little legs.

Well, we have been smacked; smacked with the bill for paying for all this recycling which Europe’s state-backed monopoly giants will simply pass onto us consumers. Thankyou, chaps. I wasn’t paying anywhere near enough for my washing-machine. But what is my comfort when compared to the happiness of the greens, the Eurocrats and, above all, Europe’s quasi-state corporations

“The Parliament’s decision was applauded by Electrolux, the Swedish white goods maker, which called on EU Governments to adopt a similar approach. “What MEPs have done is good news for producer responsibility and is constructive,” Viktor Sundberg, a director, said.

Certainly its ‘constructive’. Its helping to construct a wall of protection for the likes of Electrolux from competition both domestic and foreign. Smaller non-state backed companies will not be able to handle the regulatory burden and non-EU suppliers will fall foul of the new laws.

This is why greens were invented; as a ‘black op’ for corporatists who need to protect their patch while fooling the public into thinking they are defending themselves against a ‘radical’ anti-corporate opposition. Still, you’ve got to admit that it works.

The grass isn’t always greener on the other side

In the print version of The Times T2 supplement today, there was an interesting article by Ann Treneman about attitudes amongst a selection of British Jews living in the heavily Jewish Golders Green area of London. One particular section caught my eye in which Rabbi Pini Dunner remarked about a perceived increase in hostile views towards Israel and jibes about Jews. When asked ‘Like what?’ he replied:

“Like the phrase ‘You people…’ Language we do not expect. Colleagues at work will refer to ‘you people…’ What is that? People think: I am British. I am Jewish. I support the state of Israel. That does not make me ‘you people’. You don’t refer to Conservative supporters as ‘you people’ or black activists as ‘you people.”

Yet he is quite wrong on all counts. I think black people (activists, no less) would be hugely amused to hear they are not referred to as ‘you people’ by some sections of British society. And to hear Conservatives referred to in that manner all you need to do is listen to Prime Minster’s Question Time in Parliament.

Notions of identity are a complex thing in a multi-layered dynamic society like modern Britain. As a friend of mine once said to me, “In Jamaica I feel British and In Britain I feel Jamaican.” For her, feelings of identity bounce off context and her context keeps changing. For Rabbi Dunner, his feelings of ‘dissimulation’ from Britain are, I suspect, more a measure of his own feelings than those of British society around him. All I have to do to become one of ‘you people’ is start loudly espousing libertarian views in Britain or mentioning my Catholic background. My ex-wife once told me she hated it when in London she was referred to as one of ‘you Northerners’ (she came from Newcastle).

The British are a patchwork quilt of a people, not some volk, or Rabbi Dunner would find himself in a very different society indeed, one he would be far more removed from culturally than this one. When we express views that support foreign states or have unusual religions, then we should not be surprised when people notice we are different to them in some ways… but neither should be think it really matters all that much. We are all ‘you people’ to someone. Get over it.

Frustrated in France

Great news item via Reuters in Paris (no link yet, sorry):”a Paris bank employee who works for 37 hours a week, has 37 days holiday a year and sometimes wonders what to do with all her free time.

“When I go down to visit my family in Brittany for a long weekend they ask whether I actually have a job at all,” she says of the new leisure granted to her and millions of other French by a four-year-old law that has shortened working hours.

As certain columnists like to say, you couldn’t make it up.

Lets be clear on what really matters

Who cares about Israel playing Godzilla on the Palestinians? Record loss at Lloyd’s? Bury it on page 7. Are the Tamil Tigers coming in from the cold in Sri Lanka? Sorry, you seem to have mistaken me for someone who gives a damn.

England football captain and Spice husband David Beckham has broken a bone!

Oh the humanity! The horror… the horror…

Samizdata slogan of the day

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
– William Pitt

Aftershocks in the networked global economy

Lloyd’s of London has reported a record loss of £3.1 billion ($4.44 billion) directly related to the 11 September attacks. Similarly Swiss Re reported the largest loss in its 138-year history of 165 million Swiss francs (£69 million/$98.9 million).

This might be interpreted by some as a sign of the vulnerability of global capitalism but in fact it indicates quite the opposite. The fact that the effect of a huge capital loss in the USA can be spread around the world, rather than born entirely by the target of that loss is an impressive demonstration of the ability of modern networked capitalism systems to absorb losses and ‘keep on ticking’.

And just incidentally, it also highlights that it was far more than just the United States which was attacked by the two aircraft which crashed into the WTC.

Cool Britannia Rule Britannia

Is ‘Britain’ still a culture rooted in evolved wisdom and contradictions that stretch back more than a millennium? Do those Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Celtic and Nordic roots still run deep?

Or is Britain in 2002 the product of a transcendent collective moment in 1945, just waiting these years since for the uncluttered minds of New Labour to sweep away the last remitments of the Old Empire and cut the even older entangled thread of yeomanry and gentry, producing the longed for value-neutral tabula rasa of ‘Cool Britannia’? Is this Year Zero, in which all cultural values are equally valid… dancing around the maypole, Guy Fawkes night, religious tolerance and snogging behind the bike shed are not more or less a part of a collective multicultural state-society than burqas, clitoradectomy and enforced arranged marriage?

Well the verdict is in… in excess of one million people lined the 24 mile route of the Queen Mother’s progress to St. George’s chapel to cast their vote on the impromptu referendum on just what ‘Britain’ actually means. Millions understand that a hereditary monarchy that reigns over society without ruling the state is less corrupting than democratically sanctified political patronage. These same millions know what it is to be British and stood up to be counted yesterday. They were not there just to see what was but also to show to each other was still is.

Samizdata slogan of the day

There are two Englands…and Ted Heath is from the other one
– James Bennett

Technical woes and marvels

Recently my computer, a Blue-White G3 PowerMac, gave up the ghost after years of stalwart service and this, plus some rather more harmonious distractions, has been responsible for my suspicious absence from the Samizdata.

However I shall soon return to inflicting my views on the blogosphere. The multi-talented Andrew Dodge proved that he is capable not just of invoking evil spirits, scaring horses, authoring anti-statist tracts and smoking vile smelling cigars but also of helping me drop a cool £2,500 on a juicy new Quick Silver G4 PowerMac and setting it up for me. I am still accelerating up the curve of coming to grips with OS X (which is beyond cool) but I expect to be blogging my heart out soon.

Samizdata slogan of the day

Men should be what they seem.
– William Shakespeare, “Othello” act III scene III

Great American Beauty

Like many a Londoner living in the middle of the city, it is all too easy to take the cultural riches of this place for granted, such as its many art galleries. And of course my interest can be all too easily blunted by the mind-erasing trash that goes under the banner of “Modern Art”. So it was great to have seen the American Sublime show at the Tate Britain gallery last weekend.

The exhibition features work from landscape painters such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Francis Cropsey and Thomas Moran. Some of the pictures were small, some of them were vast canvasses showing the sheer grandeur of the landscape in the early days of Jefferson’s Republic from the early to the middle of the 19th Century.

What these works all had in common was stunning mastery of paint, a razor-sharp eye for detail and an awareness of how to ram home the vastness of the Rockies, the huge waterfall of Niagara or the rough weather found off the coast of Maine. The virtuosity is staggering, and all achieved without the aids of modern technology. Some of the paintings had a melancholy feel, some overtly religious, some were designed merely to revel in the mastery of paint. All left me moved in some way to feel my admission fee was money well spent.

The show also reminded me that all too many of our current so-called artists haven’t the skill to pull off the kind of visual achievement of their 19th century forbears. They cannot be bothered to put in the painstaking effort, and mask their incompetence behind such nonsense as sheep preserved in liquid or bits of dung chucked onto the side of a wall.

The American Sublime exhibition is a demonstration of how great art can be but also that can be no substitutes for effort and practice. If the purpose of art, as the novelist Anthony Burgess once said, is to enhance life, then these painters achieved that goal brilliantly. Or, to take the definition given by Ayn Rand, art is the selective re-creation of reality in the light of certain values. For these painters, they picked out the great, the awe-inspiring, the sheer scale, of what they saw as America was opened up in the rapidly industrialising world of the 19th Century. These were things that mattered to them, and it shows.

I cannot recommend this exhibition highly enough. It continues until May 19. Fellow Londoners have no excuses. Go see it.

EU cannot be serious

Scene: EU Commission in Brussels. A urgent meeting of EU Officials.

LOUIS: This is an outrage!!

HANS: It is totally unacceptable.

SVEN: Intolerable.

DIRK: We cannot allow it.

LOUIS: To be scorned by such a shitty little country.

HANS: Don’t they realise who we are?

DIRK: How important we are?

LOUIS: We are World Leaders after all. First it was the Balkans, now the Middle East. We are in danger of not being taken seriously again.

SVEN: You mean, we are taken seriously now?

LOUIS: OF COURSE WE ARE, YOU SWEDISH OAF!!!

DIRK: Okay, okay. Let’s calm down. We must present a united front.

LOUIS: The Americans, the Israelis. Is there anybody else out there who is going to humiliate us?

SVEN: The Russians?

LOUIS: Shut up, Sven! We cannot allow this to stand.

HANS: Absolutely.

DIRK: We must put our foot down.

HANS: For sure.

DIRK: Show that we cannot just be pushed around.

LOUIS: Bravo! We must hit back.

HANS: Retaliate.

SVEN: How about a military response?

LOUIS: What with, Sven, what with?

SVEN: Oh yes. Good point.

DIRK: We must do something.

HANS: To show them we mean business.

LOUIS: I know, I’ve got it……!!

SVEN: What?

LOUIS: We will impose immediate trade sanctions on the Israelis.

HANS: Excellent idea.

SVEN: Louis strikes again.

DIRK: That is perfect, perfect.

HANS: That will teach them a lesson.

SVEN: They will never cross swords with us again.

LOUIS: We will prohibit all movement of goods, all travel and all banking transactions to and from Israel.

DIRK: Will I still be able to buy bagels?

HANS: Dirk, you are being very unharmonious today.

DIRK: Sorry.

LOUIS: One week of this and they will be begging, begging us to intervene and impose a solution on the Middle East.

HANS: So are we all decided?

DIRK: Definitely.

SVEN: I vote yes.

HANS: Good. I will prepare an immediate proposal on behalf of the whole Commission.

[Pause]

DIRK: Er…aren’t we…perhaps, being a bit hasty here?

LOUIS: What do you mean?

DIRK: Well…er…maybe it might make things worse.

SVEN: Oh yes, yes. Dirk has a point here. Maybe it could inflame the situation.

DIRK: Cause all manner of reprecussions.

HANS: Hmmm…well, we must avoid being confrontational I suppose.

LOUIS: But we must appear strong.

SVEN: But the Israelis are rather sensitive, just now.

DIRK: And they have a big army.

LOUIS: They do?

SVEN: And nuclear missiles!

LOUIS: Mon Dieu!! [Presses Intercom] “Francois, book me on a flight to New Zealand…”

HANS: And then of course there is the Americans.

DIRK: Oh yes, the Americans…..

SVEN: There is not telling how they might react.

LOUIS: They are a bunch of cowboys….

HANS: Unsophisticated.

DIRK: Savages, really.

SVEN: They might take this very badly.

HANS: Who knows what they might do?

DIRK: And then, of course, there’s Tony.

LOUIS: Tony won’t like it.

SVEN: No, he definitely won’t like it.

HANS: He’ll make trouble for sure. I have an election this year.

DIRK: I’m very frightened of him, actually.

LOUIS: Oh pull yourself together, Dirk.

DIRK: Sorry (sniffle).

SVEN: Er…maybe…maybe we could put the matter on the agenda for a later date.

LOUIS: Yes.

DIRK: For discussion…

HANS: For debate…..

SVEN: As a way of sharing our concerns.

LOUIS: We will think about it.

DIRK: Consider it as a possibility.

HANS: As an idea….

SVEN: One of a number of options.

LOUIS: We can mention it in passing.

HANS: So, we are all agreed on that then?

ALL: Yes.

HANS: So. The matter is settled.

[Long Pause. Somewhere in the building a door slams. Outside a car backfires. In the distance, a dog is barking]

SVEN: Ahem…clears throat…I…I have some proposals regarding the standardisation of milk cartons.

DIRK: Milk Cartons! Excellent!

HANS: Now you’re talking.

LOUIS: Why didn’t you say so before?

DIRK: We must do something on this burning issue.

HANS: At last, we can address this festering sore in our body politic.

LOUIS: We must give the matter our utmost attention.

DIRK: Now we’re cooking with gas. Three cheers for Sven.

HANS: Louis, order some more white wine and cheese nibbles. We’re in for a long session.