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]
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UKIP it is, then

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Personal views · UK affairs

The UK version of the Huffington Post reports that Ukip’s ‘NRA-Esque’ Gun Control Comments Described As ‘Inaccurate Upsetting Drivel’. Furthermore, advises the author of the piece, Felicity A Morse,

Farage’s support for relaxed gun control is particularly controversial given there is a cross-party consensus that restricting firearms helps reduce gun crime and protects communities.

Emphasis added. Consider yourselves warned.

April 30th, 2013 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)

Mrs Thatcher clones

· Anglosphere · How very odd! · Humour · Personal views · Self ownership · UK affairs

An unexpected pleasure, leftists chocking at the sight of people celebrating Margaret Thatcher, has just got even better.

The Daily Mail informs us that the “Thatcher haircut” is the rage in central London, with one salon claiming to be overwhelmed by demand.

Italian-born Christina Bellucci, 37, a digital consultant, said she felt the look reflected a modern attitude.

‘This is a strong style and gives me authority,’ she said.

‘When I walk out the door I feel a few inches taller, it gives me power without sacrificing any of my femininity.’

April 29th, 2013 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)

A slight discrepancy in the numbers

· Economics, Business & Globalization

Sometimes, a straight, even dryly-written news-wire report can tell you about the vastly different interpretations of certain issues out there. This Bloomberg report about the world of “offshore money” is a classic case in point. The whole article is worth reading, but this caught my eye:

“According to Tax Justice Network, a U.K.-based organization that campaigns for transparency in the financial system, wealthy individuals were hiding as much as $32 trillion offshore at the end of 2010. Fewer than 100,000 people own $9.8 trillion of offshore assets, according to research compiled by former McKinsey & Co. economist James Henry.”

That is one hell of a contrast. You have the TJN’s $32 trillion, or $9.8 trillion. Take your pick.

Suppose TJN is correct. $32 trillion is a lot of money. And I ask myself how on earth a leftist campaign group such as the Tax Justice Network comes up with that figure. According to Wikipedia’s page on the size of the global economy, the latest available figure for the value of total GDP, based on the 20 richest countries, is $18.8 trillion. So maybe there is a “long tail” of money from smaller economies, but even so, it is a bit of a stretch to arrive at $32 trillion, and then to assume that this money is all parked, or routed via, offshore centres. And even if some of this huge amount of money does pass via offshore centres (such as Bermuda, Caymans, Jersey, Delaware, Zurich, Geneva, and er, cough, London) it does not stay there, but is invested in various places. (What would be the the point of just stashing money in a nice Caribbean island rather than putting it to work?)

I have come to the conclusion that while some of the concerns about offshore wealth might be justified if we are worried about finances of criminals and the like, some of the amounts being bandied about are so vast that the credibility of the attacks is seriously compromised. And I remain convinced that much of the current furore about the offshore world is based on a desire by some policymakers to stamp out tax competition and create a sort of global fiscal cartel.

April 29th, 2013 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)

Paying for the Margaret Thatcher Funeral

· Events · Opinions on liberty · Self ownership

I’ll pay my share of the Thatcher funeral cost and that of two objectors if they’ll pay my share of government spending I don’t like.

Any takers?

UPDATE: At least Mr Cameron is being as consistent as I would have expected.

April 28th, 2013 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)

You would have to be nuts…

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · How very odd! · UK affairs

When I read this…

A supermarket chain has withdrawn bags of nuts – after failing to declare they may contain peanuts. The Food Standards Agency issued an allergy alert saying the presence of peanuts was not declared on Booths’ own brand packets of monkey nuts. […] Booths technical manager Waheed Hassan said: “It is our responsibility as retailers to accurately record allergy advice. […] In a statement, the supermarket said it had identified the labelling error and issued a warning to customers.

“If you have an allergy to peanuts, please do not consume this product and return it to your local store for a full refund. No other products are affected by this issue and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.”

So the packets of nuts labelled as… nuts… are being recalled for not telling people allergic to nuts not to eat the nuts.

I would have much preferred if Mr. Waheed Hassan had instead issued the following statement:

“If you are allergic to nuts, do not buy anything labelled as… nuts. And if you do, then either you are illiterate or cannot read English, in which case an additional label telling you not to eat the nuts that you are allergic to from this packet labelled as… nuts… would not help.

But then again, anyone suffering from a nut allergy eating from a packet labelled… nuts… and which, when you open them and see them prior to stuffing them into your gaping maw, look exactly like the… nuts… that you are allergic to, well, such a person is so stupid that we feel that we are providing a public service assisting with their choice to remove themselves from the gene pool. No need to thank us and remember to always shop at Booths! Kthxby.”

But sadly, he did not say that.

April 26th, 2013 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Media & Journalism · Slogans & Quotations · UK affairs

Dave is going to wake up one morning and find that the Conservative Party website, and any other right-of-centre source of information, is going to be shut away behind an “Over-18” “hate-and-porn” firewall and he will be too stupid to work out what happened.

– Samizdata commenter Rob

April 26th, 2013 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)

MPs & Guardian readers discover regulatory capture, demand more regulation

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · UK affairs

Say it ain’t so! Accountancy firms ‘use knowledge of Treasury to help rich avoid tax’ – MPs

Margaret Hodge, the PAC’s chair, said the actions of the accountancy firms were tantamount to a scam and represented a “ridiculous conflict of interest” which must be stopped. “The large accountancy firms are in a powerful position in the tax world and have an unhealthily cosy relationship with government,” she said, calling for the Treasury to stop accepting their staff to draw up new tax laws.

In other news, Margaret Hodge called for tighter regulation of the consumer credit industry… civil service procurement… welfare to work schemes… academies… and tax avoidance… and Guardian commenters demanded tighter regulation of the press.

Remember citizens, Get real – get regulated.

April 26th, 2013 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)

UK austerity?

· UK affairs

“Yesterday the Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced that they think the economy is growing again – by 0.3% in the first quarter of this year. You should take these statistics – good or bad – with a pinch of salt. But the breakdown of growth by sector does undermine lazy claims that the economy is in trouble because of cuts in government spending. Whereas the ONS data shows that manufacturing has shrunk by nearly 7% since 2008 and construction has shrunk by more than 15%, “Government” has grown by 6.9%. The real austerity has been in the more efficient private sector, not a still bloated public sector. Is it any wonder that the economy isn’t growing?”

– Matt Sinclair, chief executive, Taxpayers’ Alliance.

April 26th, 2013 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)

Technology is not “destroying our humanity”

· Philosophical · Slogans & Quotations

“If, as I believe, the distinctive distance from our organic nature, we should rejoice in the expression of changing human possibility in ever-advancing technology. After all, the organic world is one in which life is nasty, brutish and short and dominated by experiences that are inhumanly unpleasant. Human technology is less alien to us than nature (compare bitter cold with central heating; being lost without GPS and being found with it; dying of parasitic infestation versus vermicides or spraying with pesticides) and the material of that part of nature that we are: our inhuman, or at least impersonal bodies. Anyone who considers the new technologies as inhuman, or a threat to our humanity, should consider this. Better still, they should spend five uninterrupted minutes imagining the impact of a major stroke, severe Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease on their ability to express their humanity…..Self transformation is the essence of humanity and our humanity is defined by our ever-widening distance from the material and organic world of which we are a part and from which we are apart.”

– Raymond Tallis. In Defence of Wonder, page 200.

April 25th, 2013 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· Slogans & Quotations

“But the only job that someone like Antony Flew would get in a mainstream university today is cleaning the toilets”.

If that is true – then cleaning the toilets is the only job worth having.

– Paul Marks

April 25th, 2013 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)

Azathoth: crisis of trust

· European Union · Humour

Crisis for that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity as trust hits record low, the Guardian reports.

Public confidence in the boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep has fallen to historically low levels in the six biggest EU countries, raising fundamental questions about its democratic legitimacy more than three years into the primordial idiot god’s worst ever crisis, new data shows.

The blind idiot god encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demonic flute held in nameless paws “could do much better if its institutions coordinated better”, according to a press release issued today.

April 24th, 2013 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)

Rob Fisher talking about Open Source Software

· Science & Technology

My next Last Friday of the Month speaker, this coming Friday (April 26) will be Samizdata’s own Rob Fisher, who has emailed me thus:

These are my notes for the ‘introduction’ section of my talk. I think this should give you a flavour of what to expect:

I am going to talk about open source software.

I am calling it “open source” but as we will see there are variations on that theme.

I will talk about the history because it tells us things about the motivations of the people who work on open source software.

I will also talk about the nature of software in general, to put open source in context.

I want to talk about what it is like to develop software, and to develop open source software and proprietary software. I have done a little of the former and a lot of the latter – developing proprietary software is my day job.

And I will tell you about how open source looks today, what kinds of software are open source, who is developing it, who is using it and how an open source project is run.

And I will talk about ways I think open source software is saving the world (from a variety of bad things that would happen without it).

I don’t have a grand thesis to share, no big new idea. What I’m talking about is mostly well known, but my aim is to provide an overview so we can think about what it all means in a broader economic sense, and I’ll share the few thoughts I have about that.

I am looking forward to this a lot, because I expect to learn a lot. I particularly like the sound of that “saving the world” bit.

This stuff is likely to be central to many of the most vexed political and legal arguments of the next few decades. Intellectual property gets ever hotter as a topic, as they continue to lengthen the number of years it lasts. And as “3D printing” gets into its stride, that is adding a whole new dimension of relevance to such arguments. Open Source manufacturing, anyone?

It is already clear from emailed acceptances that there will be a good turnout. There is room for it to be slightly better, but only slightly. Email me soon (go here and click on “Contact”), if you would like to attend.

April 24th, 2013 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
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